Waterbug

How Do I Know So Much?

What makes you think the FBI is so heavy-footed
that their inspections would leave footprints
we could see? They work in mysterious ways
their wonders to perform. For example,
instead of uniforms, they wear neatly pressed
suits and ties (rumor has it). And, except on shows
or in books where they are the heroes,
they always get in the way (officious jack-asses)
of the much smarter local cops, who have to
put up with them -- another great disguise,
incompetence. Amazing how I feel
I know all about them, though all I know
about the FBI comes from movies, novels
newspapers and TV shows.
Have I ever met one in person? How
would I know? But isn't it odd
to catch myself knowing all about
something I've never seen, touched, heard
(does hearing Ashcroft or Reno do a TV news conference
count?) There's a file cabinet about a foot from my left hand
now. I just stopped typing to touch it. I see it, open it,
touch it nearly every day. I've had it for years.
Yet if you asked me if I know a lot about file cabinets,
I'd tell you, "Not really" -- I mean, they have these mysterious
gizmos for latching, locking, making the drawers come out
smoothly. I know little about that. I couldn't tell you what
metals are in mine or what sort of paint (beige, in this case)
coats them. But "the FBI", which I've never seen or touched
or talked to -- I know all about it. The CIA too. Even
the NSA. (I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you --
and I've probably never met or heard of you, so that
would be quite a trick, even for me.) Oh, yes, and I know
all about you, too. I know that your language is English,
and that gives me the keys to your heart. But that's
just poetry. I really do know all about the FBI.
What I know may be wrong, but that just means
the FBI doesn't know how to be the FBI.

Dean

The Ultimate in Privacy

Saturday
you mentioned the B word,
I mean B-O-M-B.
And there was no increase in traffic
to the Blog.

Gee.
Even the FBI
isn't paying attention.

We must be destined
to obscurity!

Pam

Day-Dreaming Boys

"What if I just slammed the door on you?"
"Well, what if I just broke the door down?"
"Oh yeah! What if I was waiting for you
behind the door with a baseball bat?"
"Well what if I pushed you back between the door
and the wall so hard that you squished your nose?"
"What if I jumped out too fast and clobbered you
with the bat?"
"What if I ducked and punched you in the belly?"
"What if I kicked you in the balls?"
"What if I had a gun?"
"What if I had a bazooka?"
"What if I had a Sherman Tank?"
"What if I had an H Bomb!"
"Oh, don't be silly!"

Dean

What a great game

What if is such a great game
— Calvin and Hobbs style —
making up the rules as you go,
That I can't conceive of why we don't
play it more often.
What if I were famous
and we lived in three mansions
and people wanted all the paintings
I could paint.
What if Deanotations
suddenly became a national phenomenon
An we had to buy the big Wang building
(You know, the one we used to pass on
Wisconsin Avenue) and put
DEANOTATIONS in large letters
at the top just to have room for all the staff.

I suspect the world of having some sort of
what-if lever, a happiness gage, a governor.
"Oh, that one over there...too much fame.
Assign one wart for the left side of the nose."

Or maybe we just think it does.
To avoid a universal handslap,
we regulate ourselves.

Pam

Any If

What if, each time you posed
a "what if", the universe
instantly complied.
I think it wants to,
is eager to become
whatever you dream up,
however tentative --
or there are no end of universes,
and you leap from one to the other
as easy as "what if".

But that's scary -- what if
I were in the airless absolute zero
of inter-stellar space? What if
an elephant fell throught he roof
and landed on my head?

No, I think we decided
that that wouldn't be OK.
I don't know why --
are we mortal or something?
Can't we undecide anything
we decide? But someone persuaded us
we'd ruined his day with our
supposings, so we began to doubt
ourselves. (What if we began
to doubt ourselves? -- that was
the thought we could not
undecide, because the doubt
now polluted our ability to decide.)

Ah, then grammar began to hold sway,
and we qualified our decisions every which way
and our old unamendable decisions piled up over us,
tons of junk -- we'd become subjunctive.

Yes, we were the first lawyers.
Our play, in which worlds and galaxies
were no more weighty than ideas,
became shackled in conditions -- let there be
light, if no one has a problem with that
and with the understanding that
this has nothing to do with me,
it's not my fault, God told me
to say it, and I am only a figment
of grammar.

Decisions became contracts,
and we contracted, so that our old decisions
(made when we were big) are much too big
for us to change now. Our old decisions
(we call them "this universe") now
decide us.

What if they didn't?

Dean

What if

And what if...

nothing ever changed?
What if we were still
Neanderthal, the dinosaurs
still roamed the earth.
What if cars had not been
invented? What if
you and I
had never met?
What if,
due to a series of
small accidents,
we never got conceived?

Hell, I could play this game forever

    without changing a thing!

Pam

Sometimes change is for the good

Sometimes change

Is positive, is something
you've been looking for.
Sometimes it's surprising,
the hurricane that veers off
at the last moment and
hits Punta Gorda
instead of Tampa.
Sometimes changes
are unwished for at the time
and years later you think
"You know, that's the best thing
that could've happened!"
Sometimes change is a mixed blessing.
Change is probably what
keeps us alert, keeps the wheels greased,
keeps the dust out of the machinery,
lets us anticipate that next leap and then the next
gracefully.

Pam

I'm Just a Wacky Hack

I love the sound of "wacky racket".
Try saying it rapidly
over and over
without slipping into
Elmer Fuddiness.
Let’s extend it:
"The Iraqi’s wacky racket
whacked a wicked rocketing return."
(If only rackets were used in Croquet,
we could bring in "sticky wicket".
Why does the world make poetry
so difficult?)

Dean

Wacky racket

Millions for bombs,
zero for art.

Now that's a wacky racket!

Pam

Encaustic Word Play

Encaustic Word Play

Why do colors wane
in wax.
Painting – what a wacky racket,

though it is more profitable today
to whack Iraqis, as stated in the new
Marine motto: "Iraqi? Whack it!"
(That’s the spirit, John Wane –
right as rain, white as Wayne,
the rite by which we reign,
we energetic few, the Dictatorship
of the Petrolitariat.)

The marines need a new motto. One of them
was just convicted of selling secrets to the enemy.
Apparently he’d lost his Semper.

Let’s stretch terrorists on Iraq (a hard place,
indeed). Let the racks rain colors,
bright red as flesh wanes to waxen.

Sin Cerely Yours,

Dean, 8 September 2004