patty seyburn
12:12 a.m.
Who carved that frieze? Tinted that fresco?
Imported that marble from the toe of Italy?
The architecture of darkness turns
furniture to monument.
(Galatea chose the reverse commute.)
A bloom suggests; a tomb decrees.
No wonder the dresser drawers
stick, clad in shadow.
Bask in it. (How unheimlich!)
I wish – I wish – I do not know what to wish for –
just another night in the conditional.
Swig from a flask of sighs.
A river, a bird, a pot, a well.
The subconscious – such a peacemaker.
A dream of broken eggs means my petition granted.
This holds true also of nuts, cucumbers, all
vessels and glass and
breakable things.
Celebrity (i)
So it’s me and Merv Griffin at my coffee shop.
My & Merv watching the minivans & jags, Porches & trucks and the family of Benzes.
Me & Merv at adjacent round tables: he’s working
on some sort of project, perhaps writing
his tell-all, the underbelly of talk-show hosting:
dopers and wheezers, green-room indulgence.
He has the same good, white head of hair as my Aunt Marilyn
who now stands in for my mother as the one
who loves me unconditionally.
She says: make meatloaf with a packet of onion soup.
If I did: no one would complain, it’s true.
Me & Merv & the cappuccino machine
and singer-songwriters: they say, woe, woe is me, no one
can see me cry.
Me & Merv, we’ve no reason to cry.
I mean, I’m sure we could both dredge up something.
Why live there? It’s the best house
in the worse neighborhood, and the resale value
of misery never keeps up with the market.
If my mother were here, she’s be thrilled to see Merv.
She might want to say: hello, Merv.
What was Merv’s shtick? I can picture Carson’s golf-swing.
That handsome Jack Paar.
Perhaps I should say something on her behalf: Hello, Merv, my mother
is dead but she was a big fan. Or the more subtle:
My mother, she was a big fan.
He would say: Did I do something
to alienate her affection? I think Merv would talk like that,
with an avuncular twinkle.
And I’d say: no, she died, I’m sure that wherever she is, she’s still a big fan.
Either way, we’re discussing death
and that wouldn’t be fair to Merv
though he probably has a few thoughts about the afterlife
having been 39 for awhile.
I might get a little weepy and he’d reach for a handkerchief
but wouldn’t have one in his navy blue, V-neck pullover sweater.
He’d think: well, I can’t go there, anymore, and no one
would enjoy the benefit of sitting near Merv Griffin
and it would be my fault.
You have to keep cool around celebrities.
You have to pretend they’re no one special, that we’re all equally special.
Pretend you don’t know who they are
or you don’t really care, because you’re famous, too
but if you were you’d know each other from those A-list parties
and sundry red carpets.
You have to say things like: I admire your work
if you say anything at all. You have to not
spill coffee near them, as it resembles
a pretense. You have to pretend
they are no one, less than no one
though you tell your children: everyone is equal, no one is better than another.
Are you better than Merv Griffin?
I think not.
In order to respect his privacy, though, you must ignore him.
Me & Merv just two compadres on the road to industry.
Me & Merv shuffling & staring at our papers.
Me & Merv with soymilk in our coffee: his back to me,
my back to the wall.
And when someone calls my cell-phone, I refer to Dinah Shore
just so Merv knows that I know his generation.
Dinah Shore! Wasn’t she married
to Bert Reynolds? An older woman?
Wasn’t that all the stink?
Me & Merv watch a cop talk to a small kid,
charm the small kid.
Merv, he’s not afraid of cops.
My registration sticker is expired, so I fear them.
I look like several cops’ old girlfriends, with whom things
did not work out.
This does not serve me well.
At traffic school, I was told to leave
by a vast woman who caught me talking
on my cell-phone in the bathroom.
They mean business, there.
And I had made such good friends: the well-worn woman
who worked in the craft shop, with the stalking ex-.
A guy with full-sleeve tattoos.
We hung out at the break, we went to the Burger King Lounge:
we bonded. I was told
to get my purse and leave. I never saw them again.
The next time, I made new friends
and was cautious. The gentleman who taught us our obvious
lessons had the guise of kindness, but you could tell
that any perceived bit of lip would land us
in hot, hot water. He told us
pretend stories, apocryphal stories about people who did
stupid things. How it wasn’t
the law that screwed them, but hubris, assuming
they’d never be caught. I wanted to say:
you have forgotten the origins of drama:
their stiffnecked pride was inevitable,
hubris is friends with fate.
I did not say this, and that pair of abstractions rested on my shoulders
like those lead capes you wear in the dentist office
to protect you from too much radiation while they turn
your mouth into negatives.
If fate has friends, do justice and mercy share a flat?
Boredom is a powerful engine.
Particularly in the hands of a guy whose car has a siren.
But me & Merv weren’t worried about the cop.
He was handing out stickers, grinning.
The mom flirted a little – you could see it
in the way she held her elbow.
I wanted to ask Merv what he was thinking.
If he was wondering: why are we all so entirely driven
by self-interest?
Perhaps Merv is blessed with purpose-driven optimism
like my friends who use many exclamation points
as though irony does not exist, has not been our
stock in trade for the bulk of a century.
How I admire their glee!
It does not reconcile with the bitter taste of this expensive blend
and the unalloyed soy that Merv & I so enjoy.
Yes, Merv drinks soy, it’s true.
I call the tabloids.
They do not take my call.
I am bereft.
Merv does not say: what is wrong?
But he can sense it.
He’s empathetic, this celebrity.
That’s why so many came to talk to him, late at night.
And now, here we are, in the mid-morning
saying nothing, nothing at all.
