the man takes the broom out to the back porch
sweeps off autumn’s fallen leaves
the cat rubs against the man’s leg
sees the broom
scampers off
the man sweeps
the cat sits in the yard
watches the man
the cat’s tail swishes
this way
that way
fallen leaves rustle
the cat’s tail swishes
this way, that way
rustling fallen leaves
in the yard
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
distant whistle of the midnight freight
pulling into the rail yards downtown
burring rumbled whirr of freeway traffic
passing endlessly behind my house
murmuring voices of next-door neighbors
home from the show and not yet drunk
muffled clink of the spoon against
the bottom of my ice cream bowl
a cough from somewhere outside
a cricket from somewhere inside
the ticking clock on the bookshelf
(Published in High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico (2012, Outpost 19); copyright 2012, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The American, even in the early eighteenth century, already showed many of the characteristics that were to set him off from the Englishman later on—his bold and somewhat grotesque imagination, his contempt for authority, his lack of aesthetic sensitiveness, his extravagant humor. Among the first colonists there were many men of education, culture and gentle birth, but they were soon swamped by hordes of the ignorant and illiterate, and the latter, cut off from the corrective influence of books, soon laid their hands upon the language. It is impossible to imagine the austere Puritan divines of Massachusetts inventing such verbs as to cowhide and to logroll, or such adjectives as no-account and stumped, or such adverbs as no-how and lickety-split, or such substantives as bull-frog, hog-wallow and hoe-cake; but under their eyes there arose a contumacious proletariat which was quite capable of the business, and very eager for it. In Boston, so early as 1628, there was a definite class of blackguard roisterers, chiefly made up of sailors and artisans; in Virginia, nearly a decade earlier, John Pory, secretary to Governor Yeardley, lamented that “in these five moneths of my continuance here there have come at one time or another eleven sails of ships into this river, but fraighted more with ignorance than with any other marchansize.” In particular, the generation born in the New World was uncouth and iconoclastic; the only world it knew was a rough world, and the virtues that environment engendered were not those of niceness, but those of enterprise and resourcefulness.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language (emphases and spellings in original)
we dug holes in the cold dirt, scooping small caves for our small superheroes
who rested there after battles with their slightly-larger adversaries.
the dirt was sandy, packed after infrequent rains, but crumbly,
powdery, and laced dun-red with iron oxides. the caves could easily collapse.
we played there every day, marking our caves with tumbleweed twigs or with pebbles,
or with the memory of a pattern of stones in the back wall—
or for my newest cave, almost the best, by stuffing it full with my wadded-up
brilliant red superman cape, surviving item of that year’s trick-or-treat.
a corner of the cape i left poking through an air-hole in the roof of the fragile superhero’s hide-out. my best friend, digging his cave beside mine,
said it was about time i finally took that stupid cape off.
the next day my cape was gone, my cave destroyed. my best friend’s cave
had been badly damaged. it looked as though godzilla had passed rampaging through.
the authorities took our report, but said there was really nothing they could do.
we felt the feelings of betrayal one will feel when fantasy battles with reality
and reality wins. a few minutes later we went to play ball.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
this morning, pre-sunrise, down the paved bike trail along the river,
by the sewage treatment plant, i pumped in seventh gear through a stretch
populated with countless gnats in hovering clouds. it was still too dark
to see them well, but they peppered my arms and face, ticked against
my biking helmet as i rode through their domain, my head down, eyes squinting
to keep them out, mouth barely open and my breathing shallow to keep them
out of my throat or god forbid my lungs.
a flycatcher i passed sprung from its fencepost perch and fluttered along the trail
in front of me, swimming through the air in a meander confounding to any euclidean,
the flycatcher snatching gnats from the air, breakfast served the old-fashioned way.
flycatcher, be there again tomorrow morning, in the dawn.
i shall be there also, inshallah.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“If there is anything that irritates sailors and makes them feel hardly used, it is being deprived of their Sabbath. Not that they would always, or indeed generally, spend it religiously, but it is their only day of rest.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
at an arcade, a sort of funhouse place, large, cavernous, dark,
there was an empty seat beside you. we were all of us players
of the funhouse video games to sit and wait in these seats
while the games were explained, then we would be allowed to play.
i sat beside you. you told me your name was kathy, but i knew this.
we first met when you were sixteen and i was seventeen.
you were still sixteen, but i was as i am now, except i was still married.
the funhouse had distorting mirrors. they all do.
it was a boy’s night out for me. i had wandered for the first time
into this funhouse. we sat and listened to the long instructions
as to how to play and win the games, but i didn’t care to win,
nor even much to play. i was there looking for what everybody
looks for but never can give a name to. you were spunky and flirtatious,
told me how good you were at the games, told me, you’ll see.
it was time to play. we got on our knees, as instructed, before
the video games. i didn’t know how to play mine, didn’t much care.
it was something to do with spaceships shooting other spaceships.
you finished yours before i finished mine. it turned out you hadn’t
done so well after all, but it was time for you to leave.
there was a man there, smiling and friendly and, if not young,
he was younger than i am now. i thought he was your boyfriend,
and i was disappointed until you told me you wanted to see me again
and asked me for my number. he remained smiling.
he may have been your father.
it was late. the funhouse was closing. we all had to leave.
i pulled out my wallet and fumbled for a card, finally finding one of my own.
i gave it to you and told you to call me at my office, not telling you
not to call me at home due to the wife. (but kathy, i don’t have a wife,
not any longer. haven’t had one for years.) you said you would call,
saying it in a way that means it is true, then you left.
i went outside, into the night where many other young persons
were making their ways back home, some getting into cars while others
waited for buses. i wandered the parking lot, looking for my car,
the funhouse workers eying with suspicion this old man
who had come to play with the children. i held my car keys in my hand,
but my car had been stolen while i was inside playing games.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
she asked me what sort of experience i had
i told her any sort that she could possibly want
she asked me what kind of wage i would need
i told her i would work for free and pilfer everything she owned
she asked me if i knew how to file
i told her there was no jail that could hold me
she asked me if i liked to drink
i told her i’d rather hold a pebble under my tongue
she asked me if i smoked in bed
i told her i would if she set me on fire
she asked me when i could start
i told her i had never stopped
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“In learning any subject of a technical nature where mathematics plays a role, one is confronted with the task of understanding and storing away in the memory a huge body of facts and ideas, held together by certain relationships which can be ‘proved’ or ‘shown’ to exist between them. It is easy to confuse the proof itself with the relationship which it establishes. Clearly, the important thing to learn and to remember is the relationship, not the proof. In any particular circumstance we can either say ‘it can be shown that’ such and such is true, or we can show it. In almost all cases, the particular proof that is used is concocted, first of all, in such form that it can be written quickly and easily on the chalkboard or on paper, and so that it will be as smooth-looking as possible. Consequently, the proof may look deceptively simple, when in fact, the author might have worked for hours trying different ways of calculating the same thing until he has found the neatest way, so as to be able to show that it can be shown in the shortest amount of time! The thing to be remembered, when seeing a proof, is not the proof itself, but rather that it can be shown that such and such is true. Of course, if the proof involves some mathematical procedures or ‘tricks’ that one has not seen before, attention should be given not to the trick exactly, but to the mathematical idea involved.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphasis in original)
all the betitted women, all the embosomed girls,
hippy-hippy-hippy shake me to my foundations as i walk,
to my roots while i stroll.
all the betwittering schoolgirls, all the emblazoning matrons,
swishers of sashays this way and that way,
slackening, skirting, bloused unto perfection.
all the bare-legged havens, all the hosieried homes,
dizzy me to staggering in this heat.
i duck inside to air-conditions, where i watch the walls and scrawl.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The American is not, in truth, lacking in a capacity for discipline; he has it highly developed; he submits to leadership readily, and even to tyranny. But, by a curious twist, it is not the leadership that is old and decorous that fetches him, but the leadership that is new and extravagant. He will resist dictation out of the past, but he will follow a new messiah with almost Russian willingness, and into the wildest vagaries of economics, religion, morals and speech. A new fallacy in politics spreads faster in the United States than anywhere else on earth, and so does a new fashion in hats, or a new revelation of God, or a new means of killing time, or a new metaphor or piece of slang. Thus the American, on his linguistic side, likes to make his language as he goes along, and not all the hard work of his grammar teachers can hold the business back. A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meet the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
i had a bowl of soup with susan at six
and a cup of coffee with cream
she also had a cup of coffee with cream
we watched the sun go down
the moon come up
we followed with fresh melon
berries
and bed
in the morning we’ll have eggs and toast
and more coffee with cream
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
1.
the woman i was in love with that year stopped along the trail,
pointed up and said, my boyfriend and i call that one penis rock.
i looked. she and her boyfriend had a way with names,
but he wasn’t with us.
later, looking down from the rim,
all the rocks looked to me like penis rock.
2.
further along the trail, we stopped for lunch.
she sat in the dirt, eating by clumps of wildflowers,
her long legs drawn up.
she shared her meal,
leaving water and saltines for the local gods.
3.
the trail back down was littered with apache tears.
thousands of apaches crying for thousands of years.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Radio means freedom. You have the radio on, and you can paint the garage. With television, it’s a commitment. Radio is your associate—you have it with you, and you’re listening while you’re doing something else.” – Vin Scully (quoted by Bill Chuck, “Drop the Mic,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 22, 2023)
i wanted to be a hero but there
were no openings. positions were
available only in heel. i would
have to start out there and work my way up,
a daunting corporate ladder for
any go-getter to climb, although it
looks to be guaranteed lifetime employment.
there might even be a pension at
the end, and meanwhile, along the way, there
will be everything i can possibly steal.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
i fall into the crazies now and then
then and again
again and again the crazies a chasm beside me a yawning thing
a virtual construct, definite reality
an appetite, a vacuum, a wallow for the wallowing in
even after washing off, the dirt seems ground into my skin
crazy dirt
crazy, crazy dirt
(Published in High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico (2012, Outpost 19); copyright 2012, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“Monday, Nov. 10th. During a part of this day we were hove to, but the rest of the time were driving on, under close-reefed sails, with a heavy sea, a strong gale, and frequent squalls of hail and snow.
Tuesday, Nov. 11th. The same.
Wednesday, Nov. 12th. The same.
Thursday, Nov. 13th. The same.
We had now got hardened to Cape weather, the vessel was under reduced sail, and everything secured on deck and below, so that we had little to do but steer and to stand our watch. Our clothes were all wet through, and the only change was from wet to more wet. It was in vain to think of reading or working below, for we were too tired, the hatchways were closed down, and everything was wet and uncomfortable, black and dirty, heaving and pitching. We had only to come below when the watch was out, wring out our wet clothes, hang them up, and turn in and sleep as soundly as we could, until the watch was called again. A sailor can sleep anywhere—no sound of wind, water, wood or iron can keep him awake—and we were always fast asleep when three blows on the hatchway, and the unwelcome cry of ‘All starbowlines ahoy! eight bells there below! do you hear the news?’ (the usual formula of calling the watch), roused us up from our berths upon the cold, wet decks. The only time when we could be said to take any pleasure was at night and morning, when we were allowed a tin pot full of hot tea, (or, as the sailors significantly call it, ‘water bewitched,’) sweetened with molasses. This, bad as it was, was still warm and comforting, and, together with our sea biscuit and cold salt beef, made quite a meal. Yet even this meal was attended with some uncertainty. We had to go ourselves to the galley and take our kid of beef and tin pots of tea, and run the risk of losing them before we could get below. Many a kid of beef have I seen rolling in the scuppers, and the bearer lying at his length on the decks. I remember an English lad who was always the life of the crew, but whom we afterwards lost overboard, standing for nearly ten minutes at the galley, with this pot of tea in his hand, waiting for a chance to get down into the forecastle; and seeing what he thought was a ‘smooth spell,’ started to go forward. He had just got to the end of the windlass, when a great sea broke over the bows, and for a moment I saw nothing of him but his head and shoulders; and at the next instant, being taken off of his legs, he was carried aft with the sea, until her stern lifting up and sending the water forward, he was left high and dry at the side of the long-boat, still holding on to his tin pot, which had now nothing in it but salt water. But nothing could ever daunt him, or overcome, for a moment, his habitual good humor. Regaining his legs, and shaking his fist at the man at the wheel, he rolled below, saying, as he passed, ‘A man’s no sailor, if he can’t take a joke.’ The ducking was not the worst of such an affair, for, as there was an allowance of tea, you could get no more from the galley; and though sailors would never suffer a man to go without, but would always turn in a little from their own pots to fill up his, yet this was at best but dividing the loss among all hands.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
junkie is as junkie does as junkie waits in wanting
junkie is as junkie has the junkie itch for scratching
junkie scratches junkie scratches
deep deep deep deep deep-set itch as junkie waits in wanting
waits in wanting lies in waiting
wants in living lies in wanting
junkie is as junkie is as junkie lies as junkie is
as junkie does as junkie is as junkie dies in wanting
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
bright mars in the morning sky, brilliant
red-white light embedded in the cantaloupe
glow just above the shadow of the earth.
mars closer now than at any time in
history, maybe closer now than at
any time that would make sense, any sense
that could be felt and not the dry, remote
sense of numbers too large to be
comprehended. mars very close, mars next
door, in the holiday flags. mars the guide
star, illuminating, defining,
constraining, determining action and
reaction and reaction again. mars
the spotlight, sole light lighting the dark. bright
mars in the morning sky, growing closer,
blood-red light filling shadows, filling
the noon-day sky, filling the evening
sky, filling the midnight skies, filling all
the time in history. mars a presence
sensed in every dry bone, seen in every
eye, heard in every wailing song. mars a
mars now too large to be comprehended.
(Copyright 2003, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“To enhance the value of the Sabbath to the crew, they are allowed on that day a pudding, or, as it is called, a ‘duff.’ This is nothing more than flour boiled with water, and eaten with molasses. It is very heavy, dark, and clammy, yet it is looked upon as a luxury, and really forms an agreeable variety with salt beef and pork. Many a rascally captain has made friends of his crew by allowing them duff twice a week on the passage home.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
i have got to find a way and
there has to be a way and
i have got to find a way and
there has to be a way and
i have got to find a way and
there has to be a way and
i must find it
i have got to find a way and
there must be a way and
i have got to find a way and
there must be a way and
i have got to find a way and
there must be a way and
there must be a way and
i must find it
i have got to get away to get away to get away
and there must be a way to get away to get away
and i must make a way to get away to get away
and i know i’ll get away i’ll get away i’ll get away
and i know there is a way to get away to get away
and i will make it
i will focus on my bliss on my bliss on my bliss
i will focus on my bliss it’s a part of every bliss
i will take a few deep breaths a few deep breaths a few deep breaths
i will focus on the bliss all is bliss all is bliss
all is bliss goddammit all is bliss
(Copyright 2000, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
standing we’ll sing a rational anthem,
clamping our hands flat firm to our chests over the locations
where we believe our hearts to be.
yes they’re there fluttering and pumping.
we sing.
we feel in our palms the thumping of those hearts,
feel in our bones over ribs and sternums the buzzy
vibrations of our voices as so loudly we hail
the triumph of every well-considered thought and aptly-planned act.
we sing the body mechanic,
ever fruitful in its justly-measured ways.
we stop our song precisely when it’s done,
returning our hands to our sides.
our bones now quiet,
we sit,
scarcely feeling what may as well be our hearts.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“There is nothing more beautiful than the dolphin when swimming a few feet below the surface, on a bright day. It is the most elegantly formed, and also the quickest fish, in salt water; and the rays of the sun striking upon it, in its rapid and changing motions, reflected from the water, make it look like a stray beam from a rainbow.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
the echo in this hotel atrium
echo in this atrium
echo in this hotel atrium is pronounced
a fountain near me fountains
gurgling its fontane gurgling
fontane song
a woman laughs
her laughter echoes
her perfume i can smell
it smells fruity
fruity woman in the atrium
i am eating an apple
an apple seed is in my mouth and i would like to spit it out
i pull it out instead
politely
discreetly
using thumb and middle finger
according to certain principles of design
what’s left of the apple is on the table in front of me
turning brown as apples do
i pick it up
i take a bite
the sound of my biting
snapping
crunching
echoes
i take another bite
a door chime chimes
chimes nearby and echoes
the woman still smells like fruit
she laughs again
a vacuum cleaner vacuums clean a hall around the corner from the fountain
fontane gurgling
the apple tastes good
a heavy object clatters in the
heavy object clatters in the hall
echoing echoes echo
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
fog burning off now, catching rays
fog juices trickle down gutters to sewer grates
fog ashes eddy on sun giggles
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“The glory of mathematics is that we do not have to say what we are talking about. The glory is that the laws, the arguments, and the logic are independent of what ‘it’ is. If we have any other set of objects that obey the same system of axioms as Euclid’s geometry, then if we make new definitions and follow them out with correct logic, all the consequences will be correct, and it makes no difference what the subject was. In nature, however, when we draw a line or establish a line by using a light beam and a theodolite, as we do in surveying, are we measuring a line in the sense of Euclid? No, we are making an approximation; the cross hair has some width, but a geometrical line has no width, and so, whether Euclidean geometry can be used for surveying or not is a physical question, not a mathematical question. However, from an experimental standpoint, not a mathematical standpoint, we need to know whether the laws of Euclid apply to the kind of geometry that we use in measuring land; so we make a hypothesis that it does, and it works pretty well; but it is not precise, because our surveying lines are not really geometrical lines. Whether or not those lines of Euclid, which are really abstract, apply to the lines of experience is a question for experience; it is not a question that can be answered by sheer reason.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphasis in original)
the most remarkable cacophony
of sound today at lunch. i was walking
down first street, past the railyards, when the noon
amtrak came in. as the train braked, from
various wheels on various cars
there arose a chorus of screeks and
squeaches that sounded for all the world
like an orchestra tuning up. and i
was not on drugs. the sounds sounded not
unlike something off a beatles album
(sgt. pepper’s, i think), or like
a contemporary classical
composition. as the train slowed to
a stop, the sounds rose in pitch, like a
crescendo, and then ceased almost as if
a conductor had brought down his baton.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
i read a new yorker story the other day
it had everything a new yorker story ought to have
it had lesbians, professors, sexual degradation
multiple marriages, marijuana
alienated children of a certain age
woods and second homes
snow
i could never write a story like that
i don’t know any professors and i have only one home
it’s pitched in the middle of the desert
far from the woods, out where it never snows
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“In order to understand physical laws you must understand that they are all some kind of approximation. Any simple idea is approximate; as an illustration, consider an object, … what is an object? Philosophers are always saying, ‘Well, just take a chair for example.’ The moment they say that, you know that they do not know what they are talking about any more. What is a chair? Well, a chair is a certain thing over there … certain?, how certain? The atoms are evaporating from it from time to time—not many atoms, but a few—dirt falls on it and gets dissolved in the paint; so to define a chair precisely, to say exactly which atoms are chair, and which atoms are air, or which atoms are dirt, or which atoms are paint that belongs to the chair is impossible. So the mass of a chair can be defined only approximately. In the same way, to define the mass of a single object is impossible, because there are not any single, left-alone objects in the world—every object is a mixture of a lot of things, so we can deal with it only as a series of approximations and idealizations.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (emphases in original)
tristan,
i must confess that this past weekend was a disappointment. you are walking distance away but it’s not possible to schedule in time to fuck. i know we aren’t allowed to fuck during the middle of the week. and obviously we aren’t allowed to fuck on weekends either. holidays only?
isolde
isolde,
i will come to your apartment after i get off work tomorrow
and i will strip you naked from the waist down
and i will slip two fingers into you
and i will squeeze you till you come
and you come and come again and again
and you come until you beg me to stop
then i will lie on my back and pull you down to straddle me
and i will push myself into you
and i will hold you to me so that you cannot get away
and i will fuck you until i am satisfied
and i trust that will answer your question
tristan
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)