Fighting Against the Floor

HOMAGE TO CLAUDIUS PTOLEMY
—Octavio Paz

I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.

(trans. by Eliot Weinberger)

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A little Octavio Paz to give us paz on Mexican Independence Day. Otherwise, it's a day for Russell Edson:

THE HALF-AND-HALF MAN
—Russell Edson

A man had two feet. One was a woman, the other a man.

Appropriately one wore a woman's high-heeled shoe, the other a rough work boot.

And this was true of his hands and his nostrils and eyes. And this was true of his testicles, one of which was an ovary...

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THE FLOOR
—Russell Edson

The floor is something we must fight against. Whilst seemingly mere platform for the human stance, it is that place that men fall to.

I am not dizzy. I stand as a tower, a lighthouse; the pale ray of my sentiency flowing from my face.
But should I go dizzy I crash down into the floor; my face into the floor, my attention bleeding into the cracks of the floor.

Dear horizontal place, I do not wish to be a rug. Do not pull at the difficult head, this teetering bulb of dread and dream...

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ON THE EATING OF MICE
—Russell Edson

A woman was roasting a mouse for her husband's dinner; then to serve it with a blueberry in its mouth.
At table he uses a dentist's pick and a surgeon's scalpel, bending over the tiny roastling with a jeweler's loupe...

Twenty years of this: curried mouse; garlic and butter mouse; mouse sauteed in its own fur; Salisbury mouse; mouse-in-the-trap, baked in the very trap that killed it; mouse tartare; mouse pouched in menstrual blood at the full of the moon...

Twenty years of this, eating their way through the mice... And yet, not to forget, each night one less vermin in the world...

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THE PHILOSOPHERS
—Russell Edson

I think, therefore I am, said a man whose mother quickly hit him on the head, saying, I hit my son on his head, therefore I am.
No no, you've got it all wrong, cried the man.
So she hit him on the head again and cried, therefore I am.
You're not, not that way; you're supposed to think, not hit, cried the man.

...I think, therefore I am, said the man.
I hit, therefore we both are, the hitter and the one who gets hit, said the man's mother.
But at this point the man had ceased to be; unconscious he could not think. But his mother could. So she thought, I am, and so is my unconscious son, even if he doesn't know it...

_______________________

—Medusa

Medusa encourages poets of all ilk and ages to send their poetry, photos and art, and announcements of Northern California poetry events to kathykieth@hotmail.com for posting on this daily Snake blog. Rights remain with the poets. Previously-published poems are okay for Medusa’s Kitchen, as long as you own the rights. (Please cite publication.)