Author: Tetman Callis

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:16 am

“We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, ‘You don’t know what you are talking about!’ The second one says, ‘What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?,’ and so on. In order to be able to talk constructively, we just have to agree that we are talking about roughly the same thing.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphases in original)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:52 am

“Our most precise description of nature must be in terms of probabilities. There are some people who do not like this way of describing nature.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphases in original)

the philosopher smokes potthe philosopher smokes pot

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:45 pm

when we crack open atoms
or stare into space with x-ray eyes
or break another genetic code

we think we’re discovering the what behind the what

but we’re not discovering the what behind the what

it’s all just different versions of the what

and it’s all very fascinating when you first get into it
but after a while you just need your what to hold still long enough
for you to get your plow in

that’s the what

anybody got a light?

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

agnosisagnosis

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:31 am

something happened outside my house last night,
i don’t know what, it started when i was
asleep. there were bright lights when i woke up,
blue and red flashing police lights, police
car headlights and spotlights, footsteps running

clat-clat up the sidewalk right outside my
bedroom window, the silhouette of a head,
haircut like a police man’s haircut
silhouetted in the police lights on my
bedroom window curtain. and all at the same

time a police car turning and speeding
into the alley behind my house. you
can walk down this alley and pound on my
bedroom wall, i’m right there. and police car
headlights sweeping across my curtains.

a man’s voice saying stop! put your hands up!
and another man’s voice saying i was
just— this all happened real fast whatever
it was. less than a minute is all it took.
the police were on the street, their blue and red

lights flashing for a while longer. the police
helicopter came over, its searchlight
shining down on the alley and my wall
and my kitchen window, where i stood in
the dark inside my home, peeking out through

the blinds at i don’t know what. this morning
there were shattered beer bottles on the corner
down the street, near where the blue and red lights
were when i was at the kitchen window.
shards on the concrete just across from

the playground at the lutheran school,
next to my friend mary the retired
librarian’s house. me and mary
and the lutheran children, all safe now
in the bright daylight from we don’t know what.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:29 am

“The true logic of this world is in the calculus of probabilities.” – James Clerk Maxwell (quoted by Richard P. Feynman in The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I )

order of chaosorder of chaos

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 4:49 pm

i ordered some chaos the other night

but when it arrived
it was piping hot
and had been sliced into squares

i sprinkled it with black holes
stirring them in well
kinking and curving all its straight lines
cooling it cooler than the coldest ice

edible it was not, so i drank it
wiping my vanishing mouth
with the back of my disappearing hand

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

new orleans (september, 2005)new orleans (september, 2005)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:21 am

new orleans drowns
new orleans drowns and i sit in a coffeeshop
new orleans drowns and i sit in a plastic wicker chair
at a dark green table on the patio of a coffeeshop in a city in new mexico
new orleans drowns and the cries go up for help
please help us god we are drowning
we are forsaken, stranded, dying of thirst
water everywhere but none to drink
we are awash in the poisoned sea

new orleans drowns
new orleans drowns and the faces and voices on the television news
are black if they are in new orleans
raising their voices and their hands to plead for help and deliver us into their rage
new orleans drowns and a black man sits at a table just to my right and reads the paper
and i am a white man and i am afraid to look at him
damn straight i am afraid

new orleans drowns
new orleans drowns and i have no boats
no emergency supplies
no heavy lift capacity
no politicians in my pocket all wound up and set to dance
set to make their crazy sounds, they smile, they look concerned
new orleans drowns

new orleans drowns and people sitting at a table just to my left talk about
the wine festival last weekend, it was fun
there was plenty of wine, lots of cheese
someone even got to be interviewed on television
new orleans drowns

(Copyright 2005, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:18 am

[T]he requisitioned civilians. This concerns a category of witnesses, often children or adolescents at the time, of whom one finds no trace in official reports or archives. Neither victims nor executioners, these people were often requisitioned at their homes on the morning of the execution by an armed man; sometimes they were requisitioned because they had a wagon, a shovel, cooking utensils, a bag, or a sewing needle. This invisible group, undoubtedly, make up one of our principal discoveries, all the more so as they appear nowhere in written documents. At most, they are referred to in the passive form: ‘The graves were dug,’ ‘the clothes of the Jews were taken off,’ and so on. But by whom and how? These requisitioned civilians were not hiding at their windows watching the columns of victims marching toward the graves. Neither were they perched on trees in the distance. They were at the place of the crime, very often well before the Jews were brought there. And this anonymous labor assisted the executions from start to finish, beside the victims and their murderers, sometimes sitting on the grass, only several meters from an open and screaming grave. A vital point is that these requisitions were not simply improvised. They were made an integral part of the implementation of the crimes. At times more than 150 children were used. Forced actors, these requisitioned locals shine a light on these dark events and allow us to gain an accurate understanding of what happened.” – Father Patrick Desbois, “The Witnesses of Ukraine or Evidence from the Ground: The Research of Yahad-In Unum” (collected in The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives, 2013) (emphases in original)

stop signsstop signs

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:00 pm

i bicycle through the city in the
pre-dawn faint blue light from the wakening
sky, in the blue, white, yellow and red light
from buildings, signs, lamps and cars. down streets and
along sidewalks i roll on my ten-speed.

a man gets into his pickup truck, turns
on the headlights and starts the engine, puts
the truck in gear and pulls away from
the curb right away. i pass and think that’s
no way to warm up an engine and i

hope he doesn’t run me down. he’s behind
me as i carefully run a stop sign
he has to stop at. he passes and he
doesn’t stop at the next stop sign, he runs
it carefully. i am a leader of

men this morning, setting the example
for others to follow. i bicycle
through downtown, along the red-brick sidewalks,
using the wheelchair ramps at the street
corners to smooth and speed my passage.

across the street, at the army recruiting
center, a woman soldier stands outside
in the yellow light from the building’s lamps.
she stands in her camouflage uniform
and smokes a cigarette, i think, or

maybe she doesn’t but she should and i
want her, in her uniform, with her
muscular butt and her short blonde hair
under her army fatigue cap. i
bicycle by fast, hoping she sees me

and longs for civilians and i am a
fool, but a happy fool am i.
ahead of me at the next corner a
man digs angrily through a garbage can.
he has long, dirty blonde hair and is bald

on top. he wears the scruffy clothes of
america’s lowest and most-lost class,
the inmates and homeless, interchangeable.
he’s throwing garbage around, looking like
he’s looking for something of some value,

maybe an empty can for recycling
or a full one for drinking from, and as
i pass him he looks up and throws a piece
of garbage at me—a small, wadded up
piece of what feels like a junk food package

when it hits my leg. part of me wants to
turn around, stop my bike, get off and get
in a fist-fight with him for his insult,
but i am forty-seven years old this
month and long past brawling in the streets so

i console myself with the thought that he
has probably not been long out of jail
and will probably be there soon again,
while i will not be if i behave
myself; if i am careful which stop signs

i run and who sees me run them; if i
am careful to commit my worst crimes in
the privacy of my own home, toward
which i pedal my bicycle, rolling
slowly uphill into my neighborhood.

(Copyright 2005, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

yardworkyardwork

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 7:06 am

landlord mowed the cats.
landlord mowed the welcome mat, grasses, bushes, seedling trees and twigs,
small rocks.
the small rocks.

cats batted small rocks. fresh-mown cats howled thin yowling cat-howls
after landlord mowed their water dish.
cats batted small rocks, pirouetted feline pirouettes with slender twigs.

slender twigs littered the cats’ back yard.
slender twigs littered the fresh-mown cats.
bushes of cats danced along the edges of the lawn.
small rocks rolled across the welcome mat.
small rocks rolled.

small rocks rolled between the cats’ paws, under the soles of landlord’s feet.
unmown hose was rolled, safely stowed upon the drive.
landlord rolled the fresh-mown cats across the welcome mat,
down the drive through splintered seedling trees to where the bushes dance,
where the twigs pirouette at night, under the vulpine moon.

(Published Pearl 43, Fall/Winter 2009. Copyright 2009, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 7:04 am

What was your reaction when you saw the blood? This simple question can stimulate the witness to describe the scene to us, adding new elements. In a general way, during all the interviews, it is a question of keeping the focus on what the person saw or heard. To that end, an inalterable rule: to remain fixed on the objects of everyday life, all the while respecting the viewpoint of the witness in such a way that does not bias the witness’s account. That, incidentally, is the irreplaceable contribution of oral history, which offers precisely the possibility of “looking” through previously unseen points of view.” – Father Patrick Desbois, “The Witnesses of Ukraine or Evidence from the Ground: The Research of Yahad-In Unum” (collected in The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives, 2013) (emphasis in original)

pretzelspretzels

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 4:42 pm

my boss is getting divorced
mid-life crisis time for him and his wife
childhood crisis time for their kids

what went wrong i don’t know
usual stuff i guess
little things big things
little things that become big things

like this thing he does at the office
he stuffs two or three pretzels in his mouth
then stands behind me where i sit at my desk
and talks to me with his mouth full

little pretzel pieces fall out and litter the carpet
i found one on my shoulder once, too
i wouldn’t want to be married to that

but most mornings i’m pretty flatulent
sometimes it’s pretty bad
i wouldn’t want to be married to that, either

and in fact
i’ve been divorced for years
farting away

the boss should be careful about standing behind me
eating pretzels or not

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:11 am

“What is time? It would be nice if we could find a good definition of time. Webster defines ‘a time’ as ‘a period,’ and the latter as ‘a time,’ which doesn’t seem to be very useful. Perhaps we should say: ‘Time is what happens when nothing else happens.’ Which also doesn’t get us very far. Maybe it is just as well if we face the fact that time is one of the things we probably cannot define (in the dictionary sense), and just say that it is what we already know it to be: it is how long we wait!” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphasis in original)

winter gameswinter games

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 4:52 pm

when the sun shines
i can finish my cheese sandwich
step outside in my heavy coat
gather up fat brown sparrows
and pitch them across the street
throwing them hard at the neighbor’s spiny yucca

soft feathers ruffling as the sparrows zip through the air

i tally up the points
so many for bull’s-eyes

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

lost causeslost causes

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:04 am

i’m reading about kosovo
its unmiks and kayfors
its pee-ohs and various constitutions

and i truly want to care about all this
—i am an educated, liberal man—

but i dreamed last night of a girl i had sex with
twenty-five years ago

(i will spare you the details i will not spare myself
or maybe i’m just being selfish)

then there was the girl i saw yesterday walking slowly away from me
she had a tattooed hip showing above the low waistband
of her pull-me-down pants

sex fractures my fragile concentration
leaving me just another of the world’s lost causes

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

things to wantthings to want

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 4:56 pm

coffee (with cream)
creamed corn (from the deli)
cherries (with cream)
fresh cherries fresh-washed
hot cherry pie
hot cherry pie with ice cream ice cream ice cream!

cream
cheese
cream cheese
cheddar cheese
chile verde
chips
cheddar cheese chips dipped in chile verde
chicken
chocolate (all types) cappuccino cannabis coitus
ice cream ice cream ice cream!

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

fossilfossil

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:10 am

here is a rock
size of a small fist
a child’s fist

on the rock
size of a birthmark on a child’s hand
is a fossil

the fossil is of a sea creature
a shelled animal
it is exquisite
hold it up to your eye
you can peer into the small dark chambers of the fossil

time has been kind to the creature this once was
it looks pretty good for being two hundred million years old
give or take

i scratch these words on paper
seeking immortality

(Published in High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico (2012, Outpost 19); copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:09 am

“A poet once said, ‘The whole universe is in a glass of wine.’ We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I

the wolf spider saysthe wolf spider says

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:22 pm

the housefly is what you want.
gnats, they’re just morsels. starvation rations.
you can eat all the gnats you can catch,
and they’ll never be enough.

at night, you can go down and see if you
can catch yourself a baby roach or something.

there’s earwigs. but they don’t come around often,
and they’re a lot of trouble. those big pincers
on their tails. segmented armor so they can
swing their tails right over their heads
the way scorpions do—arachne save me from
scorpions—and if you ask me,
i don’t think they taste all that good.

no, give me housefly, succulent and fat.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

coffee flycoffee fly

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:21 am

i am not making a fresh cup of coffee to replace
this fresh cup of coffee just because some stupid fly
flew in to float parboiled on the steamy surface.
if the coffee is hot enough to kill that fly
(and it’s dead, see? stupid fly), it’s hot enough to kill whatever
was on that fly, and if it isn’t, then whatever was on that
fly is in the coffee and will have to take its chances
in my stomach’s hydrochloric acid; though i will take
a fork and remove the carcass, careful not to break anything off.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:19 am

“I must confess that I do not understand why things are so arranged, that women should seize us by the nose as deftly as they do the handle of a teapot. Either their hands are so constructed or else our noses are good for nothing else.” Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “How the Two Ivans Quarreled,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)

fingertipsfingertips

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:49 pm

i like the smell of earwax on my fingertips.
it has a musky, acrid smell.
whenever my ear itches inside, i rub around with my little finger,
with the tip, down inside the earhole,
which has a latin name that i forget.
the tip of my little finger comes out with a little smear of wax,
bright brown, sometimes almost orange,
glistening on the pad and nail.
i rub this little fingertip against the rest of my fingertips and my thumb.
if no one is looking, i casually pass my hand by my nose,
and smell the smell of my earwax. i’ve done this for as long as i can remember.
i bet other people do it, too. i watch them passing by me on the street.
i casually pass my hand by my nose, pretending i’m about to scratch,
or that i’m waving a shy hello. they scratch and wave back.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

it pleases me to reportit pleases me to report

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:09 am

it pleases me to report there were no
murders in the neighborhood last year.
the map in yesterday’s paper was wrong—
those killings took place one block further south.
that’s a completely different neighborhood,
it has a different name and i tell
my son, don’t you ever cross that street
and go into that neighborhood, it’s
a completely different neighborhood.
and what’s more, i tell him, when you hear
gunfire, don’t look, just get down right away.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:07 am

“There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service.” – Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “The Cloak,” Taras Bulba and Other Tales (trans. various)

living colorliving color

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 4:52 pm

how much more humble we would be if our flatulence were green.
we would trail tell-tale clouds, iridescent and glowing.
there would be no pretending as to who was responsible.
no way to lie or to prevaricate.

how much more truthful we would be if our noses quickly turned purple when we lied.
if not more truthful, then probably we at least would not say as much.
not so many lies about love and sex and death.

imagine if our lips flushed bright crimson whenever we had thoughts or feelings of lust.
no more pretending not to notice the luscious babe or hunky stud.
we would constantly be outing ourselves.

what if our fingernails flashed a blazing yellow when we were afraid?
no more stiff upper lips and steely glares to cow both friend and foe,
unless we wore thick gloves.

imagine a presidential press conference if we were wired in this fashion.
it would be a bio-neon hullabaloo.
the president would enter the room, his hands jammed into his pockets.
the fingernails of the rookie reporters, and of the press secretary,
would all be flashing chrome yellow.
the lips of more than one reporter would be a fully flushed crimson,
even if maybe the babes weren’t so luscious nor the studs so hunky.
every time the president went to say something, his nose would suddenly go purple.
in a little while we would see
that he had the chili cheese and bean burrito for breakfast again.

(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)