Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

Why I Could Be A Mystic

                       -- for Debi

the book was lost, it was
a good book, a poetry
book. one I hated to
lose. I wanted to find

it, looked on every shelf,
might have put it away
wrong. made me sad,
I've lost too many books.

looked under every bed,
looked in the closets.
I heard simon perchik
was a lawyer, wanted

to find his bio. I even
looked in the vegetable
bin in my fridge. I looked
again, on every shelf,

saw the spot where it
belonged, under the
beds again, cleaned
out the dust. I've lost

too many books
before, this is no
good. I thought perchik
was a diplomat, not

a lawyer. I went to bed,
got up, looked under
the bed again. there
it was, I think it appeared

by magic. simon schuchat
was the diplomat. how
did it get there
the third time I looked?

As Usual

last night, the moon was full
and the bridges were lit. you
were out scavenging, as usual,
under bridges and beneath the moon.
you found things, picture frames,
glass marbles, broken dolls. you
are not beautiful, but you think
you are and demand my response.
the architecture of your speech
is faulty, lacking in context.
you bring me things I need
and offer to cook food for me.
I have lost the ability to deny
you your wishes. you are not
beautiful, but you make me think
you are. I think about buying
food for you. you ask me for
baltic amber filled with insects.
the moon is indeed full.
the bridges are lit and people
are using the walkways in large numbers.
I went out to find things
to impress you with, scraps of speech,
old photographs, rusty coins. you
tell me I am lost, you tell
me to bring you flowers and leave.
I will not cry in your presence.
it is true. you are not beautiful,
but I will not tell you this.
neither will I tell you that
I love you and that 1 knew
I would find you. the architecture
of your leaving is complicated.
you have designed many bridges
but will not build them.
 you ask me for jewelry and
I deny you jewelry. you ask me
for food and I deny you food.
I knew that you would leave me,
and I did not regret it.
the moon was full last night

and I watched you walking,
scavenging, asking me to cry for you.
you are not beautiful, but the
bridges are lit, the moon
is full and the night is very long.
I will not find things for you.

Avoiding History

avoiding history is a family tradition,
draft dodging, missing wars, as far
back as my fathers go, I find
no soldiers, no warriors and also
no lovers. we don't write
in my family, we withdraw
our stories on objection, stop
telling them. we keep secrets.

I keep my own secrets and rarely
tell them, keep my truth
from coming back to hurt me.
I learn slowly but I learn well,
to keep my secrets, avoid history.
I avoided history by protesting war
and by refusing to marry.
I learned late, but I learned well.
your eyes tell your history, your belly,
in its soft geography, hints at mine.
I don't enlist, I avoid being drafted,
my bridges burn behind me.

I read history in the slope of her breasts,
her silence uses me in my telling.
I have many ways to lie,
using a sharp knife to separate
flesh from nerve, bone and tendon.
how many times have I undressed you,
hearing you tell me that I don't care
about anything, until you turn
away from me, turn on me, turn
to stone. I turn you over, exploring
history in the cleft of your ass,
touching with my hands but never
touching you, feeling alone finally,
shedding uniforms and telling stories.

lies return in the secrets I keep, hints
I cover with long explanations.
you come to me, naked, asking questions
 and feel betrayed, telling me finally

that I don't matter and never
was real to you. I tell you
I was a soldier, that I fought,
and you lie to me by undressing yourself,
nakedness concealing your aims.

I read history in the curve of your thighs,
my tongue seeking your skin, seeking
you in your skin, tasting
beneath your skin. I find
your secrets, I tell your history
and turn my back to you. in sleep,
you back away, waking,
you dismiss me and I write a secret
history, full of lies and silences.

Poem For Lorna Dee On Our Birthday

I didn't want to talk about birthdays,
they're no comfort to me anymore,
they bring me things like
atom bombs and electric chairs,
and the wrong kind of chemistry,
what I wanted to talk about was
lightning, not lightning striking,
which is what this birthday reminds
me of, but about ball lightning, about
how scientists argue, about how most
say it doesn't even exist, but observers
have noted that it gives off little heat, that
it is spherical in shape, that it glows
in different colors and moves, sometimes
hovering or bouncing, and that it
often disappears with a loud explosion.

but that's not why I wanted to talk about
ball lightning, it's that some
observers think it might explain spontaneous
combustion in humans. little is known
about spontaneous human combustion
and less is widely believed, but there have
been reports of bodies burned in their
own substance, without external cause
and showing a remarkable lack of
damage to surrounding objects. also
reported but not understood is
the near total disintegration of the body
to a powdery ash, this effect being unusual
to the point of impossibility. there is some
suggestion that this supposed phenomenon
is related to a sharp increase in local intensity
of the earth's magnetic field. but I didn't

want to talk about combustion, or
 magnetism, or about attraction, I
only mentioned combustion because
I wanted to talk about the four color problem.
when I was twelve and reading math,
I learned about maps, how cartographers

knew you could color any map
with only four colors having each adjacent
area different, but no one had
ever proven this. I worked on the
problem with no success until
I started to find girls more compelling
than math or maps of the earth.
but I didn't want to talk about
the earth, or even about maps,
which represent the earth, or about
maps for finding you, what I really

wanted to talk about is topology,
about the nature of connections,
connection between points, and between
things, about shapes which can be
deformed, smoothly and continuously,
without tearing or cutting, not like
a sphere into a doughnut,
which must have a hole torn,
but like a coffee mug, which is
thus the topological equivalent of a doughnut,
and biology proves it is true that
each part of a female has its equivalent
on the male, that there is no male part
lacking its female analogue. and I know
that what used to be so different
for me is really the same, that you are
my other and are also me, and that
on our birthday I wish us both
another poem.

An Offer of Full Disclosure

go ahead and ask, I answer all questions, don't answer those
     questions, I stand naked instead and offer my list of
     adjectives
my favorite color is yellow, best movie is, last book read and
     here
     is a file of my legal papers, you can measure them, but they
     are sealed and illegible
I have been to Michigan, read almanacs and spent one summer
     in the
     garment district, smelling of beer sweat each night on the
     subway, dirty, drinking from a half pint of Fleischman's and
     reading Lenin
I have no opinion on the balance of trade which I wish to share
     with you or Japan. I have written on the political economy
     of
     sex, particular aesthetics and a treatise on the structure of
     complex symbols. they are not available in libraries.
I readily admit to a conflict of interest, I have some eighteen
     children, whereabouts unknown, and deny the status of
     child
     support payments
there is contrary testimony from four women who claim to be exwives,
     current wives or concurrent wives. some of these
     allege
     I've had lovers
references available on request, go ahead and ask, I no longer
     answer
questions from the audience will not be taken, queries from the
     jury will not be heard, judges will be hanged. damn the
     torpedoes, damn all the questions, I've already told you all
     you need to know
I have dabbled in history, read economics, practiced several arts,
     white and black and have earned eleven boy scout merit
     badges.
     I have studied linguistics and derived statistics
whatever else it is you need to know, go ahead and ask, I no
     longer
     answer those questions. I try as hard as I can to make
     people
     happy and no longer care who is happy
my favorite comedian is, my drug of choice is, music is, my
 

favorite state penal law is, I am not now nor have I ever
     been, deny membership in, admit predilection to, stand
     guilty
     whenever accused of
I don't answer, do answer, go on and ask, your questions need no
     answer, no lists or equations
my sign is, my name is, my address, my resume, phone, I told
     you this isn't me

Salonika

on the piers of Salonika, work
has stopped, goods are not
being unloaded. bound inland,
they stay in the holds
of still ships. the barbers
of Salonika stop cutting hair, stop
shaving beards.

it is quiet, a few walkers about.
in Salonika, the waterfront is
quiet, men speaking softly, stray
syllables in the air. a time of fire,
illumination, of shining, an
ecstasy at work, standing
against the deep sadness
of cold salt air.

the merchant's stalls are closed,
the courtrooms dark. laws are
overturned, commandments inverted.

some Cassandra, a sly fingered
dealer, is selling a hand
of cards, a heartless tarot, whose
pictures are all the same, each
new hand telling the same story,
each new card another fool.

she turns statues to the window,
to catch the failing light,
reflecting hard against
the stale darkness.

the mines of Magnesia are not
being worked, the shovels lie
rusting on the ground. white
metal is not being forged, gray ore
is not moved to the docks.
 in Salonika, commerce is absent.
in Salonika, only the thieves
are working, entering

dark buildings, moving in silence.
the pickpocket, with a gentle touch,
practiced and skillful, years of learning
to evade notice and misdirect
attention, slipping evanescent hands
in and out so quickly, leaving
victims empty, without even knowing.

a darkness is being sown,
the air charged with anxiety.
there is a quickening, a pulse
forming, something growing,
a breath too delicate for thought
beginning to take shape.
the tigers are pacing in their cages.

Salome

             -- for Brant Lyon

do you remember
that cartoon, was it popeye, with louis
armstrong singing I'll be glad when you're
dead, you rascal you? he was
a cloud, turned into a head, following
bluto and singing. bluto
learned fear. I love those cartoons
because anything could happen, like
popeye's arm turning into an anvil or
into a machine gun. like all the cans
and pots in a kitchen becoming
a jazz orchestra, matches dancing
and lighting themselves. it was
a cool day in early spring, we
had the unveiling at my mothers
grave, my brother and his wife
and their adopted children.
anything can happen, you
can buy yourself a family.
she was dead, as it turned
out, buried and a headstone
was set in her earth. larissa
was going to come with me, not
that I needed her to, but to give
her a chance to make up for
what she did the time of the funeral.
but she didn't come. anything can
happen, I remember her learning
to come. that week, I got a set
of poems rejected, but they
weren't my poems in the envelope,
 it wasn't my name on the rejection slip.
they never told me what they did
with my poems, the ones I sent
them. I think they were published
and no one ever told me. there
was a woman in boston, with the same
name as me, a girls name, though, but we
always got each others phone calls.

I put her number on the wall
near my phone, ready
to give to all her friends. I
heard she did the same for me.
I'm hoping she's the one
who got my pubs, my poems might
have been hers after all.
anything can happen. maybe
it was her mother's unveiling
I went to, her kids
my brother adopted. I'm going
into my kitchen, she might be in a can
of sardines in my cabinet, opening it
from the inside, ready to sing
and dance for me.

Wanting

my bride of two natures,
a calico cat, lying in wait
with a lace gown on her arm,
wanting. she is wanting,
waiting, a neon sign
with letters missing,
spelling a new word,
a word unintended.
oh, she has plans, she does,
and won't tell me
if I am in them.
I wait for her, wanting,
an unintended groom,
with a check in one pocket,
an invoice, a ring in
the other, closed in a small box,
my rented tuxedo growing old
on me, becoming smaller and tighter.
I try to loosen the white tie
which is shrinking around my neck.
I am choking and pretend
there is no symbolism.
while I pretend, symbols grow
everywhere, popping up like road signs,
like scarecrows, like cornfields.
what symbols they are!
credit cards, malls, supermarkets,
books of advertisements,
 billboards, rules, instructions,
robots, carnations, policemen.
I am summer corn, ears ripe,
about to be harvested.
the reapers are coming,
tractors and mechanical things.
my bride is being born,
she circles like a cat,
approaching an altar.
some priest sheds blessings,
some rabbi, a mayor, a judge.
lawbooks are being read,
prayerbooks examined, a glass

is being broken. wine is poured.
I am drawn near, then kept away.
I am your woman, she says,
it is my job to confuse you.
I am not yours, she says,
you are confused.
I pull off my tie, my tuxedo shreds,
I emerge, like a butterfly,
as superman and can fly

Jesse Weiner, a New York City poet, is co-editor and publisher of Salonika. Weiner is a graduate of SUNY Old Westbury and Harvard Law School. His poetry has appeared in Arshile, New York Quarterly, Wormwood Review, Mississippi Mud and other magazines.
Weiner reports that he is no longer practicing law because he is disabled with multiple sclerosis. He tells us, "I figure that if and when I'm ready to work again I'll learn disability law. They're already asking me to give talks on the subject and I should probably know something about it first. It should serve as a way to get back to work."
"As Usual" was first published in Random; "Avoiding History" in Black Bear Review; "Why I Could Be A Mystic" and "An Offer of Full Disclosure Salonika" was published online in The Astrophysicists Tango Partner Salome Wanting.