yellow poems

granny & the bathtub   or   (in the baskets along the pavement on the rua da prata the bananas for sale are tremendously yellow in the sunlight)

the bananas are not yellow in the sunlight

the sunlight turns their yellow off

bananas are the apotheosis of sunlight

antitheses of everything that’s off

which would you rather have, someone asked—

the yellow of bananas, or its opposite,

your name, or the yellow of bananas?

Who would shrug to such a question, or deny it?

We all know, and have learned since the earliest childhood,

That yellow is more in bananas than bananas in yellow.

This knowledge has not stopped us, however,

From preferring yellow.

If, though (and the questions must be stated),

Yellow is not yellow in the way bananas are bananas,

How then does one get through a typical day,

Is not-yellow more useful than the affirmation of bananas

Granny used to tell me to use yellow in the bathtub.

Granny used to tell me duckies weren’t bananas.

Granny used to tell me things that never helped me

Determine if the use of yellow was less than yellow.

I went to the banana merchant one sunny fine day

And asked for two kilos of his highest quality yellow.

He looked at me the way merchants do when asked such questions,

He looked at me and he sold me no bananas.

The morning after my mother died i was eating a bowl of yellow

When a knock came at the door.  It was my mother.

Of course.  Haven’t I always told you not to put your yellow in a bowl,

It belongs on a plate. Here. Use this one. And she slammed one down.

when i die i’ve always known i would turn to yellow,

reflecting somehow the sunlight in the grave.

there, it’s never night, night’s also dead,

i will be not i will be

along the rua da prata

in the baskets along the pavement of the
rua da prata the bananas for sale are tremendously
yellow in the sunlight

on the rua da prata the shrewd banana merchants
have become yellow, like their bananas

the banana merchants buy their bananas directly
from monkeys who, being shrewder but less
mercantile, laugh more freely

the monkeys’ knowledge and the bananas’, not
entirely analogous, is no more or less so than
the merchants’

yellow is the quality the monkeys sell, but the
merchants think what they are buying is bananas

along the pavement banana buyers stroll, and
become the sunlight in a manner not
unbefitting

bananas, monkeys, merchants, buyers (all
eaters of bananas but bananas), children of
sunlight, on the rua da prata

tremendously yellow.   Tremendously.   how
monkeys hold adverbs in their bellies like truth
while we shrewdly trade bananas

you have heard it said that yellow has no
opposite, but monkeys disagree – the opposite
of yellow is this

 

yellow days

on a good day
but what is a good day?
i see the sun as an overturned turnip truck,
the turnips dancing their happy deaths
On a bad day
but what is a bad day?
the sun is a charred tuna on beds of burning lemongrass,
the tuna flopping on its barbecued grave in the incarcerated sky
On other days
but are there other days?
the sun is just the sun,
and tuna and turnips are in the sea and the earth,
And that is that 

brownspotted saddies

d
in the baskets along the pavement of the rua da prata the bananas for sale are tremendously yellow in the sunlight. hermadida cox strides in silver sandals. She is of the lineage of the third provedor of the Hospital Real de Todos os Santos, which until now has made little difference. Juan de capos da masa di conquistadodo du alvararo comes from a long family of banana merchants, which has made much difference. Hermadida and juan are about to meet, not over bananas, as one might expect, but below them. ms. Cox, whose nickname is nixi, is fretting about her pet poodle, albert, who’s very cute but has a present problem with indigestion, causing consternation. Senor de capos da masa di conquistadodo du alvararo is obsessed with the daughter of senor de conquistadodo da alvararo di masa du capos, the banana merchant across the way, who has recently returned from amerika after a lengthy absence, quite transformed, and is temporarily helping her father sell bananas, to great effect, including the notable decline of juan’s revenues.  He casts now barrowsfull in the targus daily, brownspotted saddies, as he calls them, but in Portuguese, after a pessoa poem, or so he thinks. Juan’s marriage is less than good enough and he has compensated for this perhaps more tragic decline by means of his bananas.  Now, though, he is in an alfacinha tizzy, his marriage being what it is, his bananas becoming what they are, the banana merchant’s daughter stretching his diameter of joy and sorrow in the ancient way, and unbeknownst to him in any rational or sensuous sense, nixi just appearing.  Wearing just a straw straw hat, lightly magenta’d sundress, and silver sandals, concerned only of albert, still it is challenging not to be distracted by the bananas in the baskets, albert’s unfortunate duodenum giving way to yellow’s temporarily superior existence.  In the brilliant sunlight the bananas’ yellowness is tremendous, paling lemons and rapeseed, turning butter brown.  They redefine yellow in such a way as to make all other redefinitions seem restatements, as if yellow comes into existence solely and firstly on the rua da prata, as if it seeks these bananas to call its very own and see, virginally, itself. Nixi briefly loses her breath, her thoughts of albert.  But, then, now, look, here, there, upahead, totheright … – … – … brownspotted saddies. She recalls the pessoa poem, or thinks she does.  Albert returns rushedly and with him guilt for his departure.  Why even is she not with him now? Why is he with the detested mother who cannot love him according to the methods he is destined to be loved?  All this, and more, the brownspotted saddies bring, in the midst of yellowest yellow, under the unspotted sun.  she wavers, faintly hints at toppling.  The banana merchant’s daughter catches her dimming eye, rushes out to catch her, to save her from the pavement, but this rushing and catching and saving at the very time alfonsanano on his bicycle is racing through after having stolen bread from mrs peccabilo, whom he hates, and all—the banana merchant’s daughter, nixi, yeah, yes, her memories of Alfred too, the stolen bread, alfonsanano, the bicycle, some bananas, sundry tourists, many locals we shall not mention—conglomerate briefly and are dispersed, flung indeed, and nixi to below the saddies for her appointed meeting with senor de capos da masa di conquistadodo du alvararo, quite etiologically opening doors to his divorce and albert’s irrelevance and the recovery of juan’s revenues and the redisappearance of the banana merchant’s daughter and the sunlight, which has been the one dependable character in our story, continues to shine in the baskets along the pavement of the rua da prata, and in it, tremendously yellow, bananas are for sale

d

            puke and tampons and all things yellow

This morning the human is a beautiful disaster
A constipation of jelly beans
An unflushed toilet of tampons
Haven’t i seen the human like a sidewalk lay itself down by forgettable avenues, cars pouring down its esophagi, moon and sun like calculus in the neglected heavens
I have seen something
I have seen a simulacrum of mathematics,
Though i don’t know what this means
I have seen the text of a dream in a mirage of concrete
I have seen
I have seen
I have seen the human low and smelly like a puked g&t
I have seen the woman and the man dance into each other like softballs
What have i seen?
I have seen nothing.
The world is as beautiful as genocide
Tampons are our future royalty
Dawn breaks the way it always does, over easy
I think i have counted to 8 or 9
On a good day
8 or 9 is less than 4
i know because i studied math once,
in a vomiting cubicle in lee’s palace on a throne
you dogs of sunrise
you beautiful dogs of sunrise
walk down thine appointed stairs to the high blinding
and weep,
not for that or this or the child on the stoop who weeps
not for the stew of stars or your own lonely destiny
but only for this morning
only for this morning on its treadmill of glory
in its wormy-fingered dew
we miss each other like meteors
words are burnt kale chips
the human rides a slide of sunrise
to the tune of toast and slaughter
it slips into its automobile like a vagina
we are less than trees
we sing only of a torn blanket in an incarcerated crib
on the back of … on the back of … not gods, …
on the back of …   
But only this morning

fuck pessoa

i forget about yellow
i forget about the rua da prata
i forget about bananas
i forget about sunlight
but i don’t forget about sunlight
or yellow
or even bananas
i forget about the rua da prata
i forget about in the baskets along the pavement on the rua da prata the bananas for sale were tremendously yellow in the sunlight
but i don’t

dundas square

fire hydrants too are yellow,

in the manner of fire

pavement is yellow

in the avocado morning cradling its burden of feet

men with their yellow ties,

as irregular as streetcars
women yellower than yellow walk on themselves.

weeping the pavement with yellow tears,

all is yellow, even the avocados,

which exist, truly, only in my mind:

the red purses are yellow

the orange tangerine ads are yellow

the memory of night is yellow

the horrible knowledge of a winter cast irrevocably
into the future is yellow

yellow is the imperfection of perfection,

G^b, another tyranny in the news

The picture of god i saw in the glassblowing furnace

(no, god was white)

white is yellow

the streetcars as they round the intractable corner

birthed like endless siblings from an original dawn

are yellow

even bananas are yellow

tremendously yellow

all is yellow in the prism of this empty holy may

the skyscrapers like flowers,

death like a daffodil

falling accidentally in my coffee

and floating, saying nothing

          may prayer

I hide in the marrows of harrowing.  I lie in the lies of truth.  The clouds of my days are tongues, wagging hope that hasn’t met itself.  the grave rises like a smiling spectre on the seeds of spring.  All is tea and crumpets after all.  One can only hide in them, and lie.  One can only wag and meet the meeting that hasn’t met.  Let us order pizza on the verandah of our tears.  Let us wash the dishes.  Let us count to ten the way they used to in the yesteryear.  I am a battery.  I store energy.  I am packaged by the past for future whirrings.  I sing the songs.  I have not known alleys the way i would have known them if i had wanted to.  I can count to ten.  I think.  On days i think.  The roofs are green.  Like god or tomatoes or silent films.  I climb the holy mountain like an injected sheep.  Bliss and condolences.  They remind me of my mother.  Who after all isn’t dead, but dead.  Let’s count the suns.  Let’s ride to Rome the way the slaves always do in movies.  I do not hide.  I hide in hiding.  Clouds climb like bricks to Auschwitz and do not count.  I count.  I count the springs.  I hide in truth.  My days are like the grave.  Tea drinks us all.  i sing the songs.  I’m never much as clean as yesterday.  And that is it.  these choppy sentences, signifying themselves.  Let us crumpet.  Amen.




*** this ninth and final yellow poem is rabidly and impoverishly presented, due to the usual translation exigencies.  so be it. ***

in the baskets along the pavement on the rua da prata the bananas for sale were tremendously yellow in the sunlight

 

 

in along on for in

            the the the the the

                        baskets pavement ruadaprata bananas sale yellow sunlight

                                    were

                                                tremendously

?          ?          ?

the bananas¹

            were

                        tremendously

                                    yellow²

in the baskets

            along the pavement

                        on the ruadaprata

                                    ¹for sale

                                                ²in the sunlight

 

in the pavement

          along the sunlight

                      on the baskets

                                  for ruadaprata

                                              in the sale

in the ruadaprata

             along the sale

                         on the pavement

                                     for sunlight

                                                 in the baskets

in the sale

      along the ruadaprata

                  on the sunlight

                              for baskets

                                          in the pavement

in the sunlight

    along the baskets

                on the sale

                            for pavement

                                        in the ruadaprata

the yellow

              was

                          tremendously

                                                  banana

 

 

 

sunlight the in yellow tremendously were sale for bananas the prata da rua the on pavement the along baskets the in