ZOMBIE NOTES
by
Maureen Owen
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DAYS & NIGHT'S
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This is certainly not a painting by Ni Tsan
a fourteenth century master whose obsession was
cleanliness his sparse landscapes practically all
brush & hardly any inkwash But more
in the style of Shen Shih-ch'ung his milky monochrome
The Pavilion of the Luxuriant Trees where
two figures discussing on a balcony seem to be immersed
in a pile of Necco wafers
& you & I go out of the house
& scream "Fuck you!" at each other in an open field
hurling a bottle of Rolling Rock (two good sips still left!)
into the dark all because of a paragraph in the
New York Times magazine section describing a
serious young woman machinist as "loving the arc
of the welding torch and the flow of the molten
steel" & I said "sexist" over your shoulder & we
left the lake early.
Water
and a preparation of pine soot & the pines so thinly
arranged the painter gazes out of a wicker window
into rectangular fog Obviously no one has ever
told him he lacks depth perception! Below
his spongy jowls his palms must be sleeping
on his knees crushed in the folds of blue bamboo leaves.
Often the simplest words! only take you to the edge
of the sea where to the artist you are merely a tall dot
who has run out of land
or as Frank O'Hara once said to me
as we were strolling in the tide
"Baby, this is weather! ........
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SARAN WRAP
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the other night at dinner when you said
"I've never known a famous writer & I probably
never will" I experienced "Future Shrink" a
wool sweater trounced in hot suds or cotton too
long under water like Thomas Hardy who found out
he had fallen in love with his own niece not knowing
she was the illegitimate child of the illegitimate daughter
of his own mother or saran wrap in steam
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WE CAN'T FIND THE TRAITOR BUT OF COURSE
HE'S STAYING RIGHT HERE IN LONDON
AT THE WINDSOR HOTEL
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Calmly & with an air of detachment she folded the great
ship in two & sank it ... no
I must have imagined that I must have imagined
the french fries the wind aching over the hot rods
night's crushed geography where all the wrong people
went off with the wrong people I must have imagined the
air off the steeple's dark point where in telling her story
she seemed not to notice that one by one all the men who
left her became novelists I must have imagined someone
sent me her ring in a small box they said this is her ring
we thought you'd want to have it but it wasn't her ring
I was dreaming again I must have imagined the
motif of confronting birds or pigs
who like sharks & children will put anything
into their mouths the world considered in terms of
chewable & non-chewable & then two days later the
cartoonist's spouse committed suicide. I must have imagined
the paper flew up from your hands! the milk exploded
on the stove! I must have imagined love was out of fashion
the spectators came to be shocked! the knobs resembled
elephant's eyes you always loved this weather. Unlike
the horse who relies on the assumption that no one is
there as to the sound of hay drifting on a thought
of hay dreamed up & sent ceiling I must have imagined
that we would go on calling it what it was meant to be when
we said it & I would never need to measure the chairs to
make my point! I who pounded on your dreams &
walked backwards in snow to confuse you I must have
imagined you were calling just to rub it in!
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Novembers or straight life
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It's guys like Emerson that always fuck it up
Who from his journals -marked for later use in
Social Aims under "Manners" wrote
My prayer to women would be, when the bell rings,
when visitors arrive, sit like statues.
Impossible! to give passionate head after reading that!
Impossible to blow you under propelling tables! our
beers whitecapping on the nap Oblivious! of swizzle
sticks & Cinzano ashtrays embedding in our backs!
While the Pope hits a new low & the Professor who is so
brief as to be left with nothing more to say has rectified
this once again by repeating everything three times . . . . . even
a tree surgeon will bend over the fence asking "Is your
husband home? Is your husband home? Is your husband
home?" as though you didn't hear him instead of simply
choosing not to answer. How To Talk To Assholes was a
possible title I was considering in honor of the doctor
studied my severely swollen thumb & inquired as to whether
any strenuous exercise had been taken of late "perhaps yanking
a fitted bedsheet over a mattress?" he postulated. . . . . .
"Is this a town?" I asked
"Yes," said Uncle Alfred, "this is Raven Brook,
and here is Jake waiting for us."
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A PIECE
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Well. . . . . . . . . I suppose I was talking about how
he said to me "They called Jack Kerouac a sexist!"
So I said I said the thing is I said you
have to decide whether you're going to overlook any
sexism because you think he's such a great writer
So you put the question the whole question of sexism
aside when you read him and concentrate on the value
of the writing itself . . . . I mean it doesn't alter the
fact of his being sexist that he was holocaustically
sexist. He wouldn't deny it I'm sure I said. In
VISIONS OF CODY he talks about how the woman takes
the "melted marble of man's sperm" and transforms it
into "a large bulky piece of decayable meat" and
that as far as young women were concerned he couldn't
look at them unless he tore off their clothes one by
one and that that was about all all he could say
about all girls . . . . "and only further refinement is their
cunts and will do" he said. Well . . . . . . . . . . .
But then this guy said to me he said "Yeah,
but you don't think he's sexist do you?"
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Winter is so punk. It's Steel shades shaded tin &these
strung-out Ash trees their anorexic limbs dovetailing
with the light. I often go walking with a second figure
we laugh about how we both should have taken up
painting instead. Once
from an opposite crosswalk We saluted a man with
Fuchsia for hair A thatch the hue of Modern Magazine Pussy!
We chortled. Winter is so punk
the sunlight's raw & all the bushes Seem to be
in poor health sometimes you wish
you still knew the people you used to know
better
I was still stirring the noodles
when he threw the broccoli back into the frying pan
& the fight was on! It must be a sign
that the disappointments of life are setting in.
We lolled in the hay til noon intellectually discussing
passion You can't blame short hair for everything!
Remember when the word moonlight meant romance &
now it just means holding down two jobs
My
uncle Trap got layed-off the track for five years for
doping horses As a kid I used to hold them for him
Shank in hand I'd ask "How come you give them a shot before
they run?"
to make a constellation he'd say into which
or upon which other constellations fit or are placed
unfitted & are cut by circumstance to fit
other times he'd just say
"Vitamins."
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for Edwin Denby
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He said see
That building that
isn't there
that's where de Kooning
used to live
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for Ulysses on his high school
graduation
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Just come home when you need to or how does light get
between the stars if there's no electro magnetic forces
in space
A small roaring in the foliage of poplar &
reed heat throbbing upward over the damp gravel
the last clump of tulips falls apart Grey Tropical. .
. . . Yes it's true! Basically you have
to learn what life is about from the vertebrae pattern
of a frog! all that remains is to be mentioned or
don't put cast iron in a sink full of suds overnight &
if you can't speak to them in real language always
use code. Suppose this mist centered on stage left &
demanded our attention because when everything was finally
settled one of the dates got switched & it all had to be
rearranged again But O you are so beautiful staring
out the train window Saying
"I hate Liza Minnelli!"
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from "Letters to the Letters S and F"
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Tuesday the first letter
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Dear S
Today I didn't agree with what I said yesterday to you
about having children or not having children Except
that I love these three Even as she will always sing
the praises of every tiny horrible aspect of being a mother that I
hate Sometimes I think I've learned everything I know
Kyran explained at breakfast how if you have a diaper on you
don't need to wear underwear & WCBS New York told about a man
completely on fire who was rescued by his wife She
put out the flames with a garden hose Now & then a spouse
comes in handy The air is full of light & today I
received mail from The Blinded Veterans Association, The American Lung
Association, Connecticut Light & Power, Bob Holman, DISCOVER (the news
magazine of science) sub titled "Can A Heart Attack Be Stopped," Katharine
Hepburn, The Abortion Fund, Wausau Underwriters Insurance Company, Ronald
Reagan, National Women's Health Network, The Print Center, Manuscripts from
Albany, Lynn, MA, Columbia, & Atlanta, a card from Helen Adam just back
from Germany en route to Arizona & another graced package from Tom
Weigel w/a note Bob's card is a Winter Sunrise in the Grand Tetons tho
it is August here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
She taught herself how to draw in this garden that summer.
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Wednesday November I I
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Dear F
Tonight missing John Cage at the Poetry Project. There is something
very John Cage about missing John Cage but I regret I am not there
to see his wisdom and hear him chuckle at himself for appearing as
himself.
Just now you called sounding depressed. I'm no puff ball myself these
days what with looking for a job and all. I want to feel like
Patrick who just came through the room saying he should study for
his Spanish final, but he'd end up watching the hockey game instead.
"I have no control over what I do," he tells me. "I like taking
life as a big joke because it is." Myself I have always been
too serious I boycotted the royal wedding Refusing to even
watch the interviews with Prince C and Lady D on the telly For
Lynch & Doherty! in British prison for
Bernadette McDonnell beside her starved father
's coffin For the desperate rioting poor in the streets of
London! I boycotted the royal wedding! I wanted to call
attention to my cause by flying the Irish flag from the roof, but I
couldn't get hold of a flag I thought of posting an announcement
"WEDDING BOYCOTT HERE!" but who would see it jetting by in their
Subarus & pickups So my boycott went on without notice. . . . . .
. . . . .Except for those unlucky few who
had to listen to me berate them for their obvious bedazzlement with
royalty as they sat all ears to hear prince C nasal
his secret on how he has managed to just not go "mad" living
with the eyes of the world on his every move!
Life's Tough
all over Baby I thought some people can't even get noticed dying
of hunger in an English prison
But it was over with a bang wasn't it & now Thanksgiving
is for certain We will bring all delicious side effects & wear our
Halloween costumes I am a huge parrot w/wild red-orange & yellow head
in my long black w/red velvet inside cape or as someone suggested
as we were T or t ing a volcano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Monday November 23
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Dear F
The yellow pigments
of the marsh were becoming blue with the tide the air was like
the corners of a large transparent box those leggy reeds
she told me were called Johnson Grass in the south Blazed
palomino but despite the fierceness of the caption "Cold"
under the picture I am still unable to find a place for
Vladimir's line: "His eyes burned like a pair of angry assholes
in the snow." If Arthur Conan Doyle had written like that do
you think Sherlock Holmes would have been changed appreciably?
Patrick & I have just finished The Speckled Band a grizzly
tale of murder & are now reading one that involves a young
hydraulic engineer whose thumb has been completely hacked away
not much different than the morning news on WCBS Except
that Holmes is often emotional & acts like he 's just snorted
enough coke for 4 normal people Then coming by Cox
School I saw the gangster woman with her face from the
Dick Tracy comic strip the same 3 deep lateral grooves on
each side &the same yellow hair intense
as today's light
Cadmium
___________________________________________________________________________Copyright 1985 by Maureen Owen. Published by Sun Books.
Although Sun is no longer in operation, copies are still available from Light and Dust. $7.00 + $1.00 shipping and handling. Order along with other books from the Light and Dust Publishing section, or send check to:
P.O. Box 4190
Kenosha, WI 53143