Waterbug

With Flying Color Crayons

I remember a few colors (after looking them up
several times). I've finally got the idea
that puce is a brownish purple.
It sounds like it should be greenish gray --
a juicy puke. And periwinkle is...soft blue?
I think I'd better look that one up again.
Is it crimson or scarlet that's a bluish
(rather than a warm yellowish) red?
I think Crimson. Isn't "burnt umber"
a nice sound? Nicer than "brown."
And sienna? (I confuse it with sepia,
which, since it comes from squid ink,
I think should be black, but it's faded brownish
yellow, right?

When I was a child in school,
I had difficulty keeping each color within
its boundaries. I kept crossing the lines.
Now I can't keep colors within their words.

Speaking of school days, remember those huge
collections of crayons we were given? Each
with its intriguing color name? And so often disappointing,
forest green and fire engine red (or whatever they were called)
and royal purple and violet and gold-flake --
all producing the same grainy,
flecked, dull tints, more alike than different,
shades of gray compared to the visions evoked
by their names, as rich as whpped-cream-"slathered"
hot fudge sundays (topped by cerise?).

I'd try to make them as bright as they sounded,
and have bits of wax break off and adhere
to the paper. Spinach was spinach
and a Crayola color crayon was (at least
in MY grubby hands) always and inevitably
a Crayola color crayon, one more false promise,
one more hoped-for entryway into a world
of sunsets and autumn brilliance that, on close approach,
became a scribble on a pealing wall.

Dean

What's in a color?

People, knowing that I'm an artist
sometimes ask me what the names of colors mean.
"What is teal? vermillion? saffron?"
I don't know. I would know yellow ochre,
burnt umber, phthalocyanine blue
(green tint) but that's only
because I have to order them.

Going to a paint store
or the lipstick counter
is a real challenge,
names like nutmeg,
eggshell, wet sand.
(I hope I haven't remembered the eggshell
from the cosmetic counter.)

Once I studied the names of colors,
convinced that I should know them, and
precisely where they lived in the
spectrum. That's a laugh. People
invent names (and reassign them)
faster than I can remember.

Pam

What's in a name?

I too forget names of people
(if I don't use them often)
and have never been good
about names of flowers, trees,
tools...

I can tell you "that's some sort of
pine tree," and I recall that if the cones
point upward from the branch, it's a fir,
and I'll recognize a giant redwood.
I can spot a maple, an elm, a rose,
a sunflower -- the obvious ones.

I like to tell myself (consolation)
that not knowing the names of things
keeps me honest as a poet.
When I have nothing to say,
I can't rhapsodize about named rare hybrids
of orchids or roses or sedge (whatever
that is), odd-named ferns, exotic African frogs;
I can't describe the metal gadgets
that stand next to the fire place
(andiron -- I remember andiron)...

However, from crossword puzzles
I remember that the plastic tip of a shoe lace
is an aglet. I once (for 8 months) had to tend to
a coal stove, so I know anthracite from bituminous
(which nearly destroyed the stoves, when it was all
we could locate in one port). Though I can't recall
if the bucket (tapered away from the top) into which
I shoveled clinkers was a hod or a coal shuttle.

Yesterday I couldn't think of the word for
the spindly metal prongs of a typewriter -- the ones
from the head of which protruded the letters
of the alphabet. In my poem, I called them "thingies".
(But the thing that zip-dings at the end of each line --
that's a platen.)

I remember Elvis's middle name (Aron) and
Warren Harding's (Gameliel) and that Gameliel
was a Jewish scholar and head of the Sanheddrin --
maybe around Jesus' time? Oh, my head's a nest
for a large magpie family. But I met a friend
who knows another friend recently, and when
I started to tell friend two, I could not recall
friend one's name, so next time I met her,
I made very sure to remember that name,
and now (a few weeks later) it's gone again.

But I remember visiting my grandfather
shortly before he died, a large man, shriveled
and thinking he could go to the back hall
(which didn't exist in that facility)
to get me an apple. He had me confused
with my father, my uncle --
it was all scrambled. But when that made me tear up,
he reached out his once muscular arm, now
a scrawny thing, and held me to him and
consoled me. He may have remembered
my name, my grandson status, who cares --
he knew my need.

And though, probably, I've never met you,
I feel I do remember you.

Dean

Why should I know his name

Yesterday, a friend asked if I knew of [famous historian].
"Who," I said? "You know
I don't remember names."

I have enough trouble remembering the names
of those close to me, and the generic names
of things: "plant," "flower," "tree."

(And after all, do they remember
my name? Well, there you have it.)

Pam

Out of the Closet

"He came out of the closet."
I remember when being in a closet
was an adventure. Of course
my body was small, so closets, then,
seemed larger, but that wasn't it.
It was the hiding and trying not to giggle,
the wanting to be found, but not
too soon, best when two of us
were snuggling there, threatening
to tickle, the burrowing down beneath
intimate drapes, coats, dresses, smells
of Mom and Dad, mothball pungencies,
fascinating shoes (especially Mom's -- how
could one wear such things!). Mysterious
devices and trinkets -- garters and girdles
and other engineering marvels; shoe horns,
an inlaid wooden box of costume jewelry
(that is, treasure, what did we know
of "costume"?), old phonograph records, scents
of neatness and disorder, faint hints
of sweat, stronger remnants of cologne,
perfume, old fur, leather -- a belt
with an ornamental silver buckle,
a box of buttons, hundreds of buttons,
a box of coins, some of which had
square holes in the center, why
would anyone ever want to come out
of the closet?

A Very Private Poet

Emily says "How public -- like a frog."
Or a dog, licking his crotch
on the sidewalk.

But the private things are all
thoroughly public. If a thousand or a million people
read these words, that same day, every one of them
(well, almost)
will piss, shit, be naked, touch body parts
associated with nakedness. Many will fuck.
Each will taste saliva. Each will see
tiny imperfections in the retina that float
as the eye turns. Most will pass gas,
many will pick or blow their noses. All
will inhale air past snot and spit;
exhale air moted with minute spray of spittle;
most will scatch in so-called private places,
hardly any will not have some thought
that is forbidden (didn't you just have one?),
and many (most of those of a certain young age)
will look longer than they should at a breast
or ass or other body part. Most will think about
how good it would be to kill someone.

We share almost everything, especially,
all the things we cherish as private.
My biggest secret is my poetry,
though I give it away in reams
to anyone who will have it.
I am desperate to be public,
look! Here I am! No, right here!

Oh well, how do you like it
in this closet?

Dean

How private indeed

How private indeed
to be alone in your own
skin!

How private in fact
to know nothing about
anyone except that role
which they present to you.

And you, how does it feel
to reveal to yourself who you are.
Are you more than father?
Or son? Mother or wife?
Do you know?

Pam

A Matter of Character

Private means not public.
Private means (often) pubic.
One likes to think one's pubic endowment,
if made public, would be considered
private first class.

Increasingly in our society,
pubic is public. After all,
we stand erect, nothing concealed
beneath a tail and between haunches.
Little remains private among primates.

The first time I was naked with an adult female,
I saw, in the area so long hidden from me,
a dark triangle of hair, nothing else.
This had to be hidden?

In a way, the most private act (well,
there are things more private -- at least,
more shameful) is the least pubic,
for when a concavity fills a convexity,
both cease to exist -- in a way.

Odd how much difference a letter can make --
an L of a lot of difference. Minus I, who is speaking.
Minus I, genital becomes gental (which sounds like
gentle). And an uncircumcised male genital
is gentile. None of this is genteel. Why so anti-feminist?
There are ladies as well as gents. This discussion
is not ladyeel. Ladies don't speak of ladyitals.
Ladies, be ladyle to your gents.

Other letters that make a difference are E and S:
Never underestimate a lady.
Always undress to mate a lady.

This is stupid stuff. But why did that triangle of hair
disappoint me (at first)? And why did it, yet,
excite me? And if our skin is stripped off,
are we yet more naked? Or less? And why
do people go naked inside their clothing?
And what happens if you take off your clothes,
yet are being someone else? How odd it must be
to be someone you are not, even on the toilet.
It must make you look forward to being dead,
to embrace another and lie naked together
and yet be unable to be yourself.

How private!

Dean

Now you see, now, now....

Now you see,
girls don't think that way.
I didn't have a jigger.
With no external part to jiggle
I had to wait for the whispers of others
more expert (or crafty) to notice
there was more to that area than pee.

And my first experience with breasts
was a boy who mashed them like they were
exercise balls. "Stop it," I cried.
"Why? Doesn't it feel good?"
Ninny. Took me a long time to trust another
with my private parts.

For girls, there were books called:
The Facts of Life and Love, which talked about
DATING, and propriety, for parents who didn't like
to broach the hushful subject. And only peripherally
did they touch upon the body and its functions.
One day, having read The Book, I asked my mom:
"Mom, I have one question. Why do they refer to it
as the public area?"

Pam

I walk with it and I talk with it...

I lay in the bath tub, trying to be fair.
If I scrubbed my left knee with soap,
I'd scrub my right knee the same number
of times. I would talk to my hands,
my feet, tell one foot not to mind,
because I liked it just as much as the other foot.
Oddly enough, I never noticed my penis,
the part (looking down) that was single,
probably because I had the usual childish
kidney-bean figure, and hadn't paid attention
to what poked up just beyond that hill.
I specifically remember the day, lying in the bath,
I noticed the odd shape (I thought it looked
like a fireman in his hat), small and neat,
and asked my Dad (who had stepped into
the bathroom), "What's that?" and he said,
suppressing a grin, "That's your jigger."
Why, I wonder, did he say "jigger"?
Or rather, why don't we all? Anyway,
the penis stands (or jiggles) alone, like
the cheese or the head. It has no other part
to love it, no brother, no playmate, so gradually,
I forsook my childish tenderness for hands
and fingers and knees and feet and arms and
legs, because, it seemed,
my penis needed me more.

Dean