William Eggleston, published in Grand Street 49, 1994.
Conceptual Poem: Ode to Gas
Dale Smith
Dale Smith
Gas makes things go.
From here to there
Is a long way.
Gas makes things go.
“I” like it because
It gets “me” around
Real easy. It lets big trucks
Drop my greens
At the grocery store.
Gas, you makes things go
So I won’t know
A walk in summer heat.
No one believes it
Will go away. Gas,
Please don’t go. I want
Everyone to be okay.
Especially my friends
Who live in far-off sub-
Urbia. And others like me
Who await deliveries
Of things from far away.
(Gas, remember
That great nose hair trimmer
You brought me from China!)
When it’s hot I like
Cold beer from Pacific
Northwest breweries.
We know who to thank
For such hopsy convenience.
And Gas, while I’m at it,
I can’t imagine
Austin to Phoenix
Without you. I love too
Flying with you
In a Boeing engine
Across the dust-parched
Topos of New Mexico.
Gas, you’re great and
You keep the show alive.
What would we do without you?
Curl up with a goatboy
In some itchy grotto
To weave our own clothes or
Make plastic garbage bags?
Hey, Gas, sometimes you
Make me feel creepy.
Are you my friend?
You hardly call anymore. Do
Bovid features turn you on?
There he goes, bah-bah
In the green patches of
Desert pasture. Gas,
Go on. Mount
His back and do
Your thing, if that means
You still like “me.” O
Promise me that you’ll come
Again tomorrow!
From here to there
Is a long way.
Gas makes things go.
“I” like it because
It gets “me” around
Real easy. It lets big trucks
Drop my greens
At the grocery store.
Gas, you makes things go
So I won’t know
A walk in summer heat.
No one believes it
Will go away. Gas,
Please don’t go. I want
Everyone to be okay.
Especially my friends
Who live in far-off sub-
Urbia. And others like me
Who await deliveries
Of things from far away.
(Gas, remember
That great nose hair trimmer
You brought me from China!)
When it’s hot I like
Cold beer from Pacific
Northwest breweries.
We know who to thank
For such hopsy convenience.
And Gas, while I’m at it,
I can’t imagine
Austin to Phoenix
Without you. I love too
Flying with you
In a Boeing engine
Across the dust-parched
Topos of New Mexico.
Gas, you’re great and
You keep the show alive.
What would we do without you?
Curl up with a goatboy
In some itchy grotto
To weave our own clothes or
Make plastic garbage bags?
Hey, Gas, sometimes you
Make me feel creepy.
Are you my friend?
You hardly call anymore. Do
Bovid features turn you on?
There he goes, bah-bah
In the green patches of
Desert pasture. Gas,
Go on. Mount
His back and do
Your thing, if that means
You still like “me.” O
Promise me that you’ll come
Again tomorrow!
An excerpt from Robert Walser’s “The Walk” (1917)
For the children of poor folk the country road in summer is like a playroom. Where else can they go, seeing that the gardens are selfishly closed to them? Woe to the automobiles blustering by, as they ride coldly and maliciously into the children’s games, into the child’s heaven, so that small innocent human beings are in danger of being crushed to a pulp. The terrible thought that a child actually can be run over by such a clumsy triumphal car, I dare not think it, otherwise my wrath will seduce me to coarse expressions, with which it is well known nothing much ever gets done.”
To people sitting in a blustering dust-churning automobile I always present my austere and angry face, and they do not deserve a better one. Then they believe that I am a spy, a plainclothes policeman, delegated by high officials and authorities to spy on the traffic, to note down the numbers of vehicles, and later to report them. I always then look darkly at the wheels, at the car as a whole, but never at its occupants, whom I despise, and this in no way personally, but purely on principle; for I do not understand, and I never shall understand, how it can be a pleasure to hurtle past all the images and objects which our beautiful earth displays, as if one had gone mad and had to accelerate for fear of misery and despair. In fact, I love repose and all that reposes. I love thrift and moderation and am in my inmost self, in God’s name, unfriendly toward any agitation and haste. More than what is true I need not say. And because of these words the driving of automobiles will certainly not be discontinued, nor its evil air-polluting smell, which nobody for sure particularly loves or esteems. It would be unnatural if someone’s nostrils were to love and inhale with relish that which for all correct nostrils, at times, depending perhaps on the mood one is in, outrages and evokes revulsion. Enough, and no harm meant. And now walk on. Oh, it is heavenly and good and in simplicity most ancient to walk on foot, provided of course one’s shoes or boots are in order.
[translated from the German by Christopher Middleton]
John Chamberlain, “Essex,” 1960, auto parts
Charles Ray, “Unpainted Sculpture,” 1997, painted fiberglass
THE MAN WHO HATED CARS
For the children of poor folk the country road in summer is like a playroom. Where else can they go, seeing that the gardens are selfishly closed to them? Woe to the automobiles blustering by, as they ride coldly and maliciously into the children’s games, into the child’s heaven, so that small innocent human beings are in danger of being crushed to a pulp. The terrible thought that a child actually can be run over by such a clumsy triumphal car, I dare not think it, otherwise my wrath will seduce me to coarse expressions, with which it is well known nothing much ever gets done.”
To people sitting in a blustering dust-churning automobile I always present my austere and angry face, and they do not deserve a better one. Then they believe that I am a spy, a plainclothes policeman, delegated by high officials and authorities to spy on the traffic, to note down the numbers of vehicles, and later to report them. I always then look darkly at the wheels, at the car as a whole, but never at its occupants, whom I despise, and this in no way personally, but purely on principle; for I do not understand, and I never shall understand, how it can be a pleasure to hurtle past all the images and objects which our beautiful earth displays, as if one had gone mad and had to accelerate for fear of misery and despair. In fact, I love repose and all that reposes. I love thrift and moderation and am in my inmost self, in God’s name, unfriendly toward any agitation and haste. More than what is true I need not say. And because of these words the driving of automobiles will certainly not be discontinued, nor its evil air-polluting smell, which nobody for sure particularly loves or esteems. It would be unnatural if someone’s nostrils were to love and inhale with relish that which for all correct nostrils, at times, depending perhaps on the mood one is in, outrages and evokes revulsion. Enough, and no harm meant. And now walk on. Oh, it is heavenly and good and in simplicity most ancient to walk on foot, provided of course one’s shoes or boots are in order.
[translated from the German by Christopher Middleton]
John Chamberlain, “Essex,” 1960, auto parts
Charles Ray, “Unpainted Sculpture,” 1997, painted fiberglass
THE MAN WHO HATED CARS
Susan M. Schultz
The man, unlike most men, hated cars. He disliked the Civic, the Explorer, the Odyssey. He couldn’t abide the Buick, the Pontiac, the Cherokee. He was made nauseous by the Bug, the Rabbit, slept poorly over the Camry, the Corolla, the Infiniti. One day he saw a Toyota pickup truck illustrated in brightly colored fetuses. On another he saw a Hummer sport a sticker about freedom somehow not being free. When he was a teen, his friends made mantras of their engines, calling their names out in the night. But his were clean hands, better suited to poetry or prose, to jazz. He yearned for neighbors who could talk to him; there was no mention of vehicles or brakes or gears or shifts or even mechanics in his language. His metaphors were pure, their movements governed by the moon, the tides, the canopies of stars. Some days, when he took the bus, he considered transfers, but mostly he stayed put, isolated within his nest to which no one drove, fearing his ire.
As a young man he’d ridden a bicycle from valley to valley, in his basket a Bible and a baseball mitt. The universe had seemed a wheel with spokes then, and a missionary zeal drove his legs like pistons (though he’d later renounce the comparison). But he grew tired of distances, the labor it took to speak his faith in double-plays. He began to walk the parts of cities between the parts that others knew: he trudged past termite-ridden cottages, newspaper vendors without teeth, the old Asian men who talked story on their haunches, the homeless Mormon pushing her cart.
The man who hated cars imagined communities of various use, where the young and the old, the middle-aged and the more middle-aged, walked down avenues beneath wrought iron lamps. He saw clearly that a Civic could not refer to the polis, or that the Odyssey could not find truth (or even Penelope). He knew class wars erupted over steel, that empires had been built or fallen over rubber. When he took to the streets, bearing signs of his discontent (reading “Live Close or Die!”) no one saw him though their windshields. But the spring day he collapsed on its hard shoulder, an altar appeared (flowers and Pepsi cans, a movie ticket), marking the site of his intimacy, and ours.
The man, unlike most men, hated cars. He disliked the Civic, the Explorer, the Odyssey. He couldn’t abide the Buick, the Pontiac, the Cherokee. He was made nauseous by the Bug, the Rabbit, slept poorly over the Camry, the Corolla, the Infiniti. One day he saw a Toyota pickup truck illustrated in brightly colored fetuses. On another he saw a Hummer sport a sticker about freedom somehow not being free. When he was a teen, his friends made mantras of their engines, calling their names out in the night. But his were clean hands, better suited to poetry or prose, to jazz. He yearned for neighbors who could talk to him; there was no mention of vehicles or brakes or gears or shifts or even mechanics in his language. His metaphors were pure, their movements governed by the moon, the tides, the canopies of stars. Some days, when he took the bus, he considered transfers, but mostly he stayed put, isolated within his nest to which no one drove, fearing his ire.
As a young man he’d ridden a bicycle from valley to valley, in his basket a Bible and a baseball mitt. The universe had seemed a wheel with spokes then, and a missionary zeal drove his legs like pistons (though he’d later renounce the comparison). But he grew tired of distances, the labor it took to speak his faith in double-plays. He began to walk the parts of cities between the parts that others knew: he trudged past termite-ridden cottages, newspaper vendors without teeth, the old Asian men who talked story on their haunches, the homeless Mormon pushing her cart.
The man who hated cars imagined communities of various use, where the young and the old, the middle-aged and the more middle-aged, walked down avenues beneath wrought iron lamps. He saw clearly that a Civic could not refer to the polis, or that the Odyssey could not find truth (or even Penelope). He knew class wars erupted over steel, that empires had been built or fallen over rubber. When he took to the streets, bearing signs of his discontent (reading “Live Close or Die!”) no one saw him though their windshields. But the spring day he collapsed on its hard shoulder, an altar appeared (flowers and Pepsi cans, a movie ticket), marking the site of his intimacy, and ours.
for Linh Dinh
Future
Henri Michaux
(written in 1938)
Centuries to come
My absolute present, always present, obsessionally present …
Born as I was when it didn’t seem all that easy to go from Paris to Peking, when it was so late in the afternoon we were afraid of not getting home before dark.
Oh! Centuries to come, I see you so clearly.
A great little century, all bright and shiny, the fourteen-thousandth century CE, believe me!
The project was to get the moon aspirated out of the solar system. A nice problem. It was in that terribly hot autumn of the year 134957 when the moon began to move so fast that it lit up the night like twenty summer suns, and left as planned.
Centuries infinitely far off.
Centuries when the homunculi, the size of a closed umbrella, lived from 45 to 200 days, in possession of the appropriate wisdom.
Centuries of 138 species of artificial men, all, or almost all, of them true believers—of course!—and why not? flying undamaged, whether in the stratosphere or through twenty layers of poisoned gas.
I see you,
No I don’t.
Girls of the year twelve thousand who, as soon as people start looking into mirrors, will know how to make fun of our clumsy efforts, so close to the ground.
You’re hurting me already.
If I could be with you for just one day I’d give up my life right away. Pity there’s no one to offer me that chance.
All that fooling around with airplanes (we were still using gasoline, you know, Jet-propelled), the profound imbecilities of still childish social experiments bored us to hell, believe me.
They were beginning to detect the radioelectric echo coming from the direction of Sagittarius, 2,250,000 kilometers away, recurring every fifteen seconds, and another, so much fainter, millions of light years away; they had no idea what to do with them.
You who will understand the finest structures of the thought and character of man, and his superhygiene,
who will have explored the nervous system of the great nebulae,
Who will have begun to communicate with beings wittier than man, if any, who will live, who will travel through interplanetary space,
Never, Never, no NEVER, however hard you try, you’ll never know what a miserable suburb the Earth was. How wretched we were and starved for Higher Things.
Everywhere felt like a prison, I swear!
Don’t believe what you read (professionals, you know …
We deluded ourselves as best we could, 1937 wasn’t funny, though nothing was happening except starvation and war …
There we were, nailed to that century,
And who would go all the way? Not many. Not me.
We sensed the dawning of freedom, in the far distance, for you.
We wept, thinking of you.
There were a few of us.
Through our tears we saw the immense stairway of the centuries, with you at its end,
we at the bottom,
And we were filled with envy, Oh! How we envied you, and hated you too, don’t think we didn’t, we hated you …
My absolute present, always present, obsessionally present …
Born as I was when it didn’t seem all that easy to go from Paris to Peking, when it was so late in the afternoon we were afraid of not getting home before dark.
Oh! Centuries to come, I see you so clearly.
A great little century, all bright and shiny, the fourteen-thousandth century CE, believe me!
The project was to get the moon aspirated out of the solar system. A nice problem. It was in that terribly hot autumn of the year 134957 when the moon began to move so fast that it lit up the night like twenty summer suns, and left as planned.
Centuries infinitely far off.
Centuries when the homunculi, the size of a closed umbrella, lived from 45 to 200 days, in possession of the appropriate wisdom.
Centuries of 138 species of artificial men, all, or almost all, of them true believers—of course!—and why not? flying undamaged, whether in the stratosphere or through twenty layers of poisoned gas.
I see you,
No I don’t.
Girls of the year twelve thousand who, as soon as people start looking into mirrors, will know how to make fun of our clumsy efforts, so close to the ground.
You’re hurting me already.
If I could be with you for just one day I’d give up my life right away. Pity there’s no one to offer me that chance.
All that fooling around with airplanes (we were still using gasoline, you know, Jet-propelled), the profound imbecilities of still childish social experiments bored us to hell, believe me.
They were beginning to detect the radioelectric echo coming from the direction of Sagittarius, 2,250,000 kilometers away, recurring every fifteen seconds, and another, so much fainter, millions of light years away; they had no idea what to do with them.
You who will understand the finest structures of the thought and character of man, and his superhygiene,
who will have explored the nervous system of the great nebulae,
Who will have begun to communicate with beings wittier than man, if any, who will live, who will travel through interplanetary space,
Never, Never, no NEVER, however hard you try, you’ll never know what a miserable suburb the Earth was. How wretched we were and starved for Higher Things.
Everywhere felt like a prison, I swear!
Don’t believe what you read (professionals, you know …
We deluded ourselves as best we could, 1937 wasn’t funny, though nothing was happening except starvation and war …
There we were, nailed to that century,
And who would go all the way? Not many. Not me.
We sensed the dawning of freedom, in the far distance, for you.
We wept, thinking of you.
There were a few of us.
Through our tears we saw the immense stairway of the centuries, with you at its end,
we at the bottom,
And we were filled with envy, Oh! How we envied you, and hated you too, don’t think we didn’t, we hated you …
[translated by Mary Ann Caws and Patricia Terry, from The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century FRENCH POETRY, edited by Mary Ann Caws]
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“…It comes, I tell you, immense with gasolined rags and bits of wire and old bent nails, a dark arriviste, from a dark river within.”
Posted By: Don Share on June 10, 2008 at 11:59 am- Gregory Corso, How Poetry Comes to Me
(& epigraph of his book, Gasoline)