Jack Scott

2016-02-20 12:00 am

Godfather Frog   	  

The Lake of the Lost Fisherman
lies in a long, long valley,  
not unlike a nine-pin alley    			
		  beneath round, scudding clouds       
like Rip van Winkle’s bowling balls.

In this farthest north of frigid Maine
I camped in August frost by night	
beside a chilly lake the color of the sky,
writing at, by day, a book-to-be: 
The Moth That Made it to the Moon.

There was no refuge from the chill
of each cloud’s shadow,   	
no insulation in this clear, thin air,
except coats and sweaters
and constant campfire tending.  
No protection from capricious gusts                   
which scattered all my pages
and sent me scrambling after them,
except paternal vigilance   			
and rocks and forks and spoons
pinning paper moth wings 
to my picnic table,  			
crude lepidoptery.

The passing of each cloud 				passage
unveiled the sun     
and let its heat stream through,   		
drenching me in sweat.
Overdressed or underdressed,
it was hard to get it right, 
the thermostat was crazy,
and so perhaps was I,
stranded by affliction 
a thousand miles from home.
Weighing misery against disaster,	 
I thought it best to stick it out	
there with one working eye
until I felt safe enough  		 
to drive that far with two.
So I sat in my confinement
waiting for parole,
and wrote in two dimensions	         			 		  of a mental multitude.			
Ascetic?				
Hardly.
No-brainer self-denial: 			
I could not afford motels and gas,

Going to the nearest town
for food and fuel
and, of course, more beer,
I found a doctor 
who put at least my mind at ease.
Conjunctivitis . . .  how did I get it?
So many possibilities:			 
of them: mushroom poisoning
while plundering  maniacally.
He gave me salve and eye drops, 
and gauze to darken it.    
He said self-healing- probably-		
given time and self-control,
if I kept from rubbing it 			
and, of course, the other.
Two pink eyes!
A thought I didn’t want to think.

I had two neighbors out of sight,
camping up the beach
around the bend.
ex-smokers to be, 		
they had planned this trip 			 
to kick their demon, Nicotine.
	Former lovers at the moment	                       forgoing social graces,		 
	  in their smoke deprived 
	  and shrinking minds, 			
retiring from the human race	          
on this severe vacation,
shunning one another
and the lake’s community :
Me.
Perfect neighbors for a writer.

They took long healthy hikes
in different directions,
each avoiding all the things 
that might ignite 
short fuses of their tempers	
to explode withdrawal‘s dynamite.	    	
Him, I never saw;
her path included me
strolling daily past
in her silent, absent way
up and down the beach,
her private treadmill.
Passing close enough to touch,
preoccupied,
tormented, it seemed to me,	 
brushing past my elbow
without acknowledgement.

On the third day 			
she somnambulated by as usual
without “Good morning” or a glance
fading down the beach
into out of sight.
Then she broke the fourth wall
of our private little play
and ran back straight to me.
 “Come see! You have to see.
A monster spotted dark and green.
Bigger than I’ve ever seen.”
Her description didn’t match
a grazing moose or thirsty bear,
but might populate Loch Ness
in imagination.
In her excitement, 	       
she was jumping up and down,
while reaching for a cigarette		
she didn’t have.
Breathlessly, en route she told me 
of their masochistic mission,
swearing she would die or kill 		
for just one puff.
“Who would you kill?” I asked.
“Someone who would rather die.”
The curious cyclops		 
and the resurrected girl
stalked swiftly side by side-
some years apart-
on the trail of mystery. 		
Nearing target’s habitat		 
she grabbed my arm and pointed.
” There! I told you. See!” 
			
I saw: Godfather frog
at rest in lotus garden pebble nest
just within green-magic lake
presiding over furniture 
he might arrange, but cannot make.
So perfect and so emperor
he might be served by fairy staff			
his choice of crayfish, salmon, trout
if he had hunger
when homecoming elves and trolls 
present him with their catch,
bounty of the spellbound lake.
    
He was, as she said, enormous,
more than large enough 
to swell and burst belief.  	                 	 
Sovereignly safe, his attitude,
monarch of his history and survival,
imperially ballasted on his throne
of rock and stone and gravel,
recklessly ensconced   
two inches from the top-
foolishly vulnerable.

Here was my great divide,
the fulcrum of my human scale,
the reckoning of my tug of war		
between impulse and wisdom.		
I’d collected mushrooms obsessively
in blind compulsion,
pillaged living things I didn’t need 		 
for any purpose
but to try to own them, 			
plucked beauty from its pristine setting,
powerless to simply feast my eyes 
and enjoy enjoyment
instead of orgiastic plundering.                 
Killing is the terminal disease				 
of the ultimate collector.

Addiction’s child was silent
as she followed me back home.

From my tent I got my trident, 
long wrapped instrument 			       			 of intended death,
its points impaled  in corks and clad in foil;
around it twined its nylon coil.
Once shiny, new, and deadly,
now well into the age of rust
it was thinner now, 
but on this expedition 
still thick enough to kill. 
I felt awe and power,
a bloodlust much like greed.
My walking stick- a mountain pick- 		
became a double agent:
when I fit the lethal tool upon this tip	
it was harpoon. 			

		Returning to the scene
		of the crime-to-be
		we sucked in air
		and held two breaths.
He saw us coming,
he saw us there,
godfather frog saw me.

Having much experience 
with targets that I’ve missed  
I hoped he’d move, escape,
while he had his chance.
He saw me move.
He did not move

I struck the king’s own fool, 			 
the stubborn lord within his pool 		
and so became his victim.
He was passive 
as all points went in  and through,
the spear in to its hilt,
he was that thick.
Needlessly, I pinned him down;
he did not move a bit.
I held him there a long and silent time.
He sat right there and took it,
stared up at me,
but still he did not move.
Cold blooded, intending hibernation,
but overcome by torpor
of too-sudden winter’s breath
could explain his sluggishness. 		

I raised the monarch up
impaled upon my fork.
The girl said, “My god, he’s big”,
and old, I thought, and old.
Out of water, 
weighty as a melon
and about that size.
I feared my spear would break,
but we were bound together.

She ran to tell her husband,
through the suns and shadows,
became smaller, became gone.			
I was left alone with what I’d done
and what I’d yet to do.
I’ve heard frogs sing, 
so they must cry,
but he wouldn’t make a sound,
and did not move.
He only looked at me,
and blinked,
the only sign he was alive.

Since he resisted death thus far,
the worst of it,
the killing yet remains.
Revelation in an instant,   
karma in a flash  
dark epiphany. 			
I did not need you
and you did not need me.

I took my trophy home,
my albatross,
and, moving paperwork aside,
set him on my table.
The barbs were cruel,
they would be crueler 
coming out than going in.
I had no tool to cut them off.

My sharpest knife I sharpened sharper.
Should I kill him outright?
That would be kinder
if I deserved to use that word.
How would I do it?
What was his anatomy?
Where was his heart?
I plunged my knife 
into where, on him, 
my own would be.
I did it quick.

His blood was flowing freely now.
His pain was moving him
to try -in vain-  at last
to escape the pain and me,
a struggle which I won 
because I had to.
					
I couldn’t find or pierce his heart-
or he could live without it.
Mercy wasn’t possible;	            
to end his pain 
I must intensify it.
I had no choice,
but to do it quick 
and get it over.				

I tried to cut his head off,
but there was no neck   he had no neck
and cut was but a verb,
I sawed and hacked at him,
I mutilated more.
I hope for John the Baptist’s sake
that he was not as tough
or they had better steel. 			

I’m sorry, does not do the job,
I’ll go away will not undo it. 
I wasn’t simply taking life
but ruining it by degrees. 

I persevered, and so did he.
He tried to breathe-
great gulps- 
through his gaping mouth.
His eyes rolled round and round
like something going down a drain.
He was madness in wild motion.
His stubborn head stayed on
because I couldn’t get it off.
I could have used the hatchet
if it had occurred to me.

One hand pressed hard up on him, 		
the trident in my other hand         
I wrenched at it with all my strength 
and empathy,
but could not pull it free .
It tore him horribly.
He lurched, 
the king,
the monster tried to leap
and screamed as loud as I.
I threw the goddamned nightmare-
fused frog and spear-    
as far as I could hurl it.
Blood spattered everywhere.
He screamed and writhed his agony.	     	
I turned, but couldn’t walk away
I couldn’t leave him as he was
in slow excruciation.
I had to get the spear out.

I held him down again 
and plunged the knife into him
back and forth and up and down
stabbing, slicing round the tines,
a massacre in miniature,
butchery without yet slaughter.
I cut and cut and cut.
The monarch bled more freely, 
but no longer flailed about,
was still for now,
all but his eyes which followed me
like magic pictures on a wall.
His pulse beat on beneath my hand.

I have tried to kill before
but never got the knack.			
Relieving them from misery
just seemed to make it worse:
they have always died 
of more pain than they could stand .      			
I smoked half a pack of cigarettes,
started drinking beer,
gathered up my bloodied pages		 
in whatever order.
His eyes were still wide open,
still intent on me;
they blinked 
when they decided to.
His inner light seemed dimmer now,
beclouded and more alien
as if fueled by stubbornness,			
but his eyes 
were no less determined. 				

The sun and clouds had worn me down,
the mushrooms and the wet and chill,
the oscillating sweating heats,
a dim and angry sick right eye,
loneliness 
and fears, more than a few,
but most of all
my crime was wearing me.			
In fairness and comparison
my whining had no merit.

He would be my supper
to palliate my act;
the royal line must not die out.
I would honor him
by inviting him to dinner,
following dismemberment.
I skinned the legs,
amputated at the hips
then divided at the knees.
I did the same to forearms;
large enough to eat.

I opened him,
a thrumming factory.
The heart beat on,
the stomach pulsed, a pantry.
I took three large stones from it, 
small stones, I took four,
minnows and  five crayfish 
fresh enough to fish with,
a feathered bird, a mouse,
two smaller frogs . . .
The monarch was a glutton,
he’d eaten half the sea.

With some of this as bait
I’d eat the fish they caught,
a pale attempt at penitence		
to Nature and to him:
now half a leather melon
		left over from the leather rest of him.	

		Despite this gory surgery
he still refused his death.  	
Each time I touched the table
his eyes would blink and nearly pop
as if exposing me 
to some arcane photography;		 
he sensed my feet upon the ground.

I would have called upon my neighbors
to help me find my sanity
but they would think me crazy.
I couldn’t fish, 
or even think of it;
the water frightened me.
Nor animate my moth-
such arrogance to try
to resurrect a creature 
whose life I’d hoped 
would spring from me,
who now had stolen future
from the real thing:
a creature with a living past.   
I’d sacrificed a legend 
to mediocrity.

My neighbor came to call on me
at leading edge of fearful night. 		
She came smiling, smoking
in good natured curiosity.
Shame on you I thought
 but didn’t voice hypocrisy.
All things told, it’s shame on me. 
“Are you really going to eat it?”
She saw my preparation 
soaking in a pan.
“I hear the French eat them,” she said.
“My husband didn’t really want to see.”
 Then she found the head 
just as the head found her.
She screamed 
and ran smoking up the beach.

I fed my fire- 
a beacon and an amulet-
to shield me 
from the coming darkness
and its dreaded population. 		
When I got it roaring
I impaled the legs to broil
upon some upright sticks.
I boiled carrots and potatoes, 
fried up all my bacon
as the dusk grew thicker.
I ate potatoes first- 
bland:
the salt was on frog’s table.
I counted it as his.
I ate the veggies and the bacon
and drank a lot of beer.
When my entre was golden brown, 		
that of it that wasn’t black,
I bit into it and chewed
and chewed,
then tried to swallow.
It tasted like the worst of fish 
that ever swam
or creature ever crawled
from septic tank of demon fiends.
	
	The result was Pavlovian,
	negatively speaking.
	I ran retching down the beach
	and threw the limbs into the lake  
	where I’d thrown the guts before.
	Something there might eat it, 
perhaps a monster fish.
The head was where I’d left it
and there it would remain
until tomorrow’s light. 
I was terrified to touch it.
I turned my head away 
and kept it so.

From biology dissections
I knew the twitching spasms
of natural dead frogs,
but I lacked experience
with incredible amphibia    		
of this occult place.	 			

Curse this throwing up 
	when there’s nothing more inside.
God damn you H. P. Lovecraft,
god damn New England , too, 
curse the fucking state of Maine 
curse this stinking lonely lake
and its demon frog
and while I’m at it,
curse my erstwhile love
wherever she may be,
for not being here with me,
	but most of all curse me.

	How will I fare this night?
There’s no human soul in sight
or near enough in mind.
I am more alone than I have ever been.
This path I’d taken:
first north 
toward what I thought was love, 
then further north away from it,
through overcompensation,
into discomfort beyond measure.
I have gambled with my soul,
battling wilderness
on its terms and with its odds,
an amateur with more to learn
than I thought I knew.
Though my life’s been spared so far,
my mind’s still in its vise
to be branded by the wild
before set free.  		
The memory of that frog
must stay with me.
It must!
Lest  I lose the rest of me:
the human.

Here is firewood 
and a fire.
Beside it I will be
awake til dawn,
awakening.

I am so sorry.
					



L23 ®Copyright 1973 Jack Scott. All rights reserved. 
From Poemystic.com

Jack Scott

2016-02-14 12:00 am

						


I, Mobius

Ms. does not know 
she holds time on a leash.
A walk in woods
lasts as long as woods.
Mushrooms do not melt away.
One wades into amber willingly.

I still walk beside you, as if you.
You still walk beside me as if me, 
your arm around me,
my weight upon your shoulder.
We bear it . . . 
feathers.

We cannot get there from here.
(It is exactly two hours 
from my bed . . . . . . to your bed.)
We cannot get here from there. 
(It is exactly two decades
from your bed . . . . . . to mine.) 
I did not leave. You did not come. 
I begin the walk knowing its end.

Soybeans soya 
We tread the hardest, driest ridges, 
neither hard nor dry, 
soft enough for sowing soybeans
with our toes,
more than damp,
wet,
well wet.

Frost not yet having bitten
is poised to strike.
Yet, now, for us: calm,
comfortable though soggy, 
this day.

We veer right,
Siamese compass points,
pulled together 
more than by North,
each forsaking direction 
for our notion of it.

We have no destination, 
tugged perhaps by dark
(hard to see in such soft light.),
bent toward supper at the end,
unhungered, starting out.

We haven’t had forever, yet.

The woods are not easy to enter.
A moat intervenes, not perilous, 
but at the zoo it might keep things with teeth
from biting you

The way to cross is always
ahead or through.
The water lies perhaps 
eight inches deep. 
(on the average)
Our boots are seven inches high.
(on the average) 
Our still dry toes,
overconfident, impatient, reckless,
say what the hell,
there are no alligators! It’s time to cross! 
At any place! Here ! Now!
M.C.P. (me) I carry thee . . . 
(Water depth: ten inches
on the absolute.)
. . . into briars
whose lace evokes a delicacy
which isn’t there at all . . . .
they bite!

Without a map we find no door
and, searching, find no key. 
Bulldoze we backwards
through brambles into woods,
bowing, bobbing, oddly graceful, 
(Twenty feet of barbed wire
is now a single final briar.)
suddenly we are free to rise -
levitation in a simple gesture
fine enough to lift
a tiny cup of China tea.
We set each other free
and straighten as we bent,
orientally.

We turn and enter Seikei
winter wood.

The maze has shredded
our proportion;
we have shed our size
in these surroundings.
We’ve dwarfed, 
now soybeans, ourselves,
to, perhaps, a larger eye.

There’s no phone pole in sight
to give these oaks a proper height,
no squirrel ninety times the length of nut;
the moat was deep as eye.
On this farther shore
we’re at the mercy
of a higher sky.
There is no airplane or other bird
to give this sky a human scale; 

The pine that needled 
through the Fall
and all the rest whose leaves
have fallen short of South
for winter 
have buried
the measurement of masters:
beer cans and other castaways, 
twelve inches to the foot.
We’ve feet, but what’s an inch, 
some other kind of toe?

Despite your father’s deed 
to this and all we can survey,
dare we assert dominion
on any terms?

We do, as heir apparent,
not own this place;
we are guests of owning not.

Succumb, says reason;
Enjoy, says all the rest.
Within these floral boundaries
we are the only fauna here
relying on each other only
for the sense of what we are.
Outside of time,
as well as not to scale
and out of sight,
we know
we could not have planned it
better,
and set about the job at hand.

One does not find mushrooms
until one finds mushroom.
We search in haste to plunder.
(first frost will waste the wonder
like crystal guillotine.)

Then . . .
there’s one!
its head still upon its neck.
We catch it . . . Ours!
wrest it from its ferny nest.

Now, bent to mushroom height
we see them plentifully
through prisms of their lower air:
abundant . . . a bonanza.

One picks more quickly
than one can later: clean,
and sort,
and cook,
and eat,
and more . . .

Two pick far more greedily
than one and one.
Later, maybe we’ll determine
which is Icarus,
and what is ick.

Headstone furnished oaken parlor
pallored: 
by spidery overhang,
by squinting sun:
anemic,
almost none,
by sea stunt rime
an efflorescence
enough light to lance the shade
revealing shades within the shade:
circle within circle,
headstone ring,
marble bible bookmarks
inscribed once,
erased,
etched again: Anonymous.
Lodestones
drawing me as from a sore,
or dream.

Still erect, 
I parallel the living
as you lie level with all your rest.
I could not read your ghost
of chisel print.

I didn’t try, 
I didn’t pry
- not through lack of interest -
I respect the intimacy of death.
Do what you will down there
beneath your oaken canopy;
I did not peek.
Later, I asked, “Who?
Your names were not familiar.

I am at the end of pier
Silent
Mirrored
Unbeheld
Bobber
awaiting fish
or recall.
I float on wood on water.

I assist geese
lifting from earth
with my belief in flight.
Supported by mists,
buoyed by grays,
drawn between this time
and this place
I disavow distance
in any court of physical law.
I am in contempt of gravity.
I draw slender vowels from chimneys
by the faintest consonance of air and lips.
I weep,
but do not frighten duck away.

This is stuck like music sticks,
but this will never end.

Mobius at the beginning,
I am, at the end, Mobius.
At the end
you are leaving within me.
In the beginning,
I am entering within you.

We skirt the soybean field,
traverse the moat,
brazen the briars,
molest mushrooms,
séance a cemetery,
plumb an endless pier . . .
(That last was me, alone.)

The rest: my arm around you,
through you,
you equally surrounding me.

A root,
a seed
toed
into fertile mush
a putty amorphous.

The distant chimney
finesses a final sentence
with an exclamation point
(perhaps the chimney is near.)

There is never again.
There is only now, in handcuffs.

Here dog.
Doggie doggie dog.
Dog.
dog.
Abner, you’ve lost weight.
NO!
The scale beam is longer,
More subject to error.
I would not make you lose weight.
I would not have you lose weight.
You are the same,
Abner.
You still molest my knee,
An expendable.

Instead of coming back
and turning right
(The house is always on our right;
we are clockwise people.)
I turn left
for a long moment alone 
on the pier.
You turn right
into the house,
into bronze.
I remain lead
upon the wood
upon the water.
I rummage through all my pockets
and from them throw
something . . .
Midripple . . .
plunk . . .
lingers, until the end of 
dip
dip
dip. . . . .
Waiting, 
I see the marsh,
the woods
are stippled with our footprints
each
with
us
still
in
,it
all with us still in them.

Office echoes quiet typewriter.
Each day I eat half a lunch for two,
far too much for one.
You went all the way home for lunch,
and dinner, 
and breakfast,
leaving your pencil, 
and all of your correspondence,
notes . . . notes. . .

. . . in the stillness of geese,
who, risen above the earth,
do not climb higher,
and cannot fall,
wallpaper the mind.
I had many thoughts
while you were in the house.
I’ll tell you while we walk.
I like your jacket . . .
goose down.

Now we trespass marshes,
evicting silence
as water is evicted 
by diving into it,
silence 
closing behind us like a wake.
When we speak to each other
the marsh absorbs it
with all its other gasses,
holds it like a breath.

Sanctuary doesn’t leak one drop
of gossip.
We’d better 
find some mushrooms though
to validate our time away,
(Virtue is only a mother away,
and she quite near.) But,
so long as we do not gather
mushrooms,
we do not have to go back ever,
supper would forever stew.

We would own time,
every way of it, but one.

But mushrooms do find us.
Drawn by harness of collecting fingers
we found what we sought,
which ended the search.

What you don’t know 
is that when you turn right 
to leave our world,
I turn left to stay within.

I enter the cemetery 
without knocking,
respectful of your relationship
with each other
and with my friend - your relative.
I do not peek or stare.
I envy.
A quiet gathering of peers, 
a loud intruder, however mute,
who wants to understand
before he joins you.
Again we parted nameless,
you, because I couldn’t read yours,
me, because you couldn’t ask.
Again I asked our friend;
again she told me;
again I forgot.
Someday, I’ll learn to listen.

With no more feet than two,
I occupy every other footprint
we
made.

Should we count the soybeans?
Or weigh them simply 
in our minds?
Numberless, 
they weigh nothing, untouched.

The joy, the pain
of growth
heal over like the field,
forgotten like the crop,
except for soybeans,


crop droppings, 
tithed to furrows,
persisting,
a currency of time,
escrowed
until the time is come again
for another go at it,
another golden glint of green
in God’s eye,
another crop and its survivors.

Mushrooms-
berries of decomposition:
take them, take them all . . .
try!
You do not endanger mushrooms,
you cannot arrest decay
by plundering them 
from their hosts.

If sin was intended, 
none was committed.
Ms does not know she holds time on a leash.

Abner,
into the house,
the parlor
can be clearly seen
through an open window
from the end of the pier.

Ms is holding the phone, 
a shorter leash,
(at which end is she attached?)
and as she listens,
and responds,
a blackboard is erased,
rechalked
with smiles I’ve never seen,
laughter, 
never heard.

My end of pier is sinking.

Whoever I was, I am
within the loop
until you break the loop,
let time fall limp,
go flat
with us still in it.

Abner 
come out
come 

Here’s real mud
and all the rest of it
miles of scents,
tracks,
footprints.

There can be lead and bronze
in memory,
as well as things
that have never been.
All of memory’s elements
can sink to bottoms 
of forgotten waters,
or float on nothing
more substantial than air.

Time never breaks,
only clocks,
and leashes,
and Mobius loops.

You said you would remember me
complete.
I can’t remember
a single set of footprints,
only pairs.
So how, for you,
can I, as half a handshake,
ever be complete?

Of all the weights of mist,
of gray,
of bronze,
of mushrooms,
of geese,
three hundred pounds of us
persist on separate scales,
however nourished apart.

Three hundred pounds of memory
will tend to lose some weight,
however well I see in gray . . . 

Here, You,
Abner. 
I, Mobius 

Ms does not know she holds time on a leash.

			



L5 ®Copyright 1973 Jack Scott. All rights reserved. 
From Poemystic.com