House of Leaves (71 page)

B.

The Pelican Poems

A Palimpsest of Austere Pelican Jake

Prospero dreams

‘twixt green sea and azur’d vault

setting war

while the corner clock ticks

in
the
evening den.

“Charlotte. Charlotte.

The moments here are short

and I am mad.”

(mutinous waves usurp the land)

dear God

here?

and
raising
a sun struck hand —

yes here

again.

— For Claudia. New Haven.

May 26, 1988

Pelican Considers
a Cha-Cha with a Long Island Ice
Tea
In Hand

Mr. Jake misplaced his armor.

And
how the wind
whistles through,

“A
swell
of thought,

the tumescence of a moment,

only
that, but…?”

A father tossed
in
that

storm

with iron
cufflinks

cut
by Cain.

“We hesitate in chance”

But
Pelican’s begun
now

—Avatar

Pelican’s begun his occluded dance.

—
Left at Klub Restauracja. Warsaw.

July 6, 1988

Pelican
Jake
on
the Eurydice School
Bus

We hold our dreams

in lost
dreams

and
tear our hearts out

over
chance.

“She carried
the
songs

of centuries”

and
in her passing

my madness

passed.

—
For the
waitress
at Cafe

Wilanowska. Warsaw July 7, 1988

Pelican’s Pen

A jinx
of ink,

Lo the star!

All is chance,

nothing
planned—

only
the will

these
words command.

—
For
Marek.
Warsaw.

July 7,
1988

Pelican’s
Juvenile Metempsychosis

Will you steal from this blind man

When
I would
give
you all
.

I stumbled when I saw,

but Gloucester was never

this
far
gone.

I see
feelingly and
at

this
height
there is only

so
much
fall.

Alex
brought him back

with a light tap
on the glass

and
then
lighting a match,

“Romeo
or is it
Lear tonight”

— Left
at another
Warsaw cafe.

July
8, 1988

Pelican’s
Cocktail Mythology

Three
muse

over
an
elegant ruse

concerning a lingual wall

which only
I
can pass

over.

Their eyes are beautiful

and plans wild

and laughter
unconcerned.

“You’re at it
again”

“Yes, on a high
sea wall,

yes at it
again.”

— For a beautiful three
at a
Warsaw
hostel.

July
8, 1988

Peli
can’s Religious Ruminations

One forgets

that one is one.

I
rnust try

to

remember this.

— [illegible)
Warsaw.

July
9, 1988

Pelican’s
Promontory Dance

Hyperion curls

have
you consulted

the
plans
for these
whirls?

We
seldom
know the pattern.

though
that
never matters,

not if you know the notes.

I’ve forgotten.

I can’t hear.

—
On behalf of a Warsaw Lady who showed me I
couldn’t
dance.

July 10, 1988

Pelican Misunderstanding
a Portentous
Sign

Future
pens

and
wars
with
feathered knights,

The drumming thunder,

the
azured lights,

rising
In these eyes.

Do you hear?

“It’s Patter
Sir.

He’s in the back,

knocking
at
the
gate.”

And the warlord’s
fatter

(Pelican’s cat)

mewing
for
his milk.

And
all now is thunder

for the
lightning has
passed.

—
For Anna. Krakow

July 10, 1988

Pelican’s Worrisome
Wake

A semiotic Eliotic dream

with Proust bumbling around unread

—an intuitive guess

commands awake.

Sledgehammer harmony

played deceptively right

in this non cadence.

“They’ve
taken
the
beat away”

And Patter and Quisling said she’d

raise the union from the sea

and be Hawthorne bread.

This is the way the world ends

Not with a
bang
but an alarm clock.

The mewer lands
with
a comforting glance:

There
now
you know this game.

— For Zbyszek. Poland.

July
15,
1988

On
the Lining Brim
of
Being Brow Shy

In a rage of questions
again

this preponderance
over a dumb
show

and Quisling and Easle
peckering

it out over their
own

running conversation,

he found this at Petitgas
1857

in the lock of a heart

and
a disabled
cardboard box.

There’s the chance of
the
thing.

There’s
the
design.

“Fashion
I believe is only
right

when meant for the right time.”

— For
the owner of the Pentgas
hat
store. Copenhagen.

July
20, 1988

The Still Concordance of a
Summertime
Memory or
Gaze—Whatever
You Will

Easle, cl
airvoyant,

intruding with
rapacious gab

harkens nevertheless

with
a pique
ear

on Pelican’s semanteme arrangement:

It
’s a colored chord

(not necessarily a mauve word)

‘A
flute piping on a

Hamburg corner
and
tarnished

slightly too.”

Pelican
admires
the

gate
of the idea

and
as
Basic passes
by

he
forwards a hand-

“There, it
should be there.”

And
he
knows
that that will

hold for at least a
little while.