Five Poems by Frederick Pollack

Hand-me-down

We’ll ignore what the former “middle classes”

(even they abandon the term)

get into when things get really bad;

it does its job, excusing bloodshed.

Those literates who are still extant

and talking revive, in a big way,

“past lives.” An influencer says

we do remember them, it’s just denial,

a wilful mental fog that blocks them out.

The good news is, surviving readers read

more history, the bad is that it’s all

dumbed down. An Epstein type,

exposed and hounded, says he was once

the “Walter” of My Secret Life,

Messalina a foremother; he couldn’t

help himself. Any number of saints

withdraw from the world. Attila

slaughters three households, Countess Báthory

her own. Mussolini is re-elected,

his supporters overjoyed. Grieving, I see

that the self has become unsupportable: lacking

a parent to become, it so to speak

collapses upward. Now I must post this,

I who was Hegel and Freud.

 

Offline

 

First we give them clay.

At first they’re almost catatonic,

then shriek about how much money

they could be making, crap they’re missing,

progress towards higher levels

in games. We don’t mind if they scream

and curse, but make it clear there’s no

food until they stop throwing

clay at us or each other and

sculpt something.

 

Then wood. Woodcuts, toys, boats,

something. This involves knives,

augers, etc.; every hand

is scarred. Fights put some of them

on the floor,

seldom severely but always messily

wounded. They shriek for help,

overlook the first-aid kit in

plain sight. We watch benignly

to see what they will do.

 

Before we turn them loose on

more socializing projects, we hold

a meeting. Rage: “You refer to yourself

as ‘we’ but it’s only you,

isn’t it? You’re just another boss!”

The response, hurt: “Does a boss

care about your development?

Observe you so thoughtfully, so

penetratingly?

Does a boss cry?”

 

“It’s just a fucking labour camp!”

Not so, we reply;

not till you merit one.

Ripeness 

 

It’s possible that failure ends.

But you have to become it in time.

Too early, and youthful hormones

sour into rage;

too late, and heart lungs liver punish you.

Do it right and you find yourself,

as Marx said, proletarianized,

though without his promised change in consciousness:

your triumph a walk to the drugstore,

successful eradication

of mould from a shower curtain,

each meal, each check you can cover.

And the world you inherit

will be white strips of cloud

reinforcing sturdy grey,

like an advanced cardboard.

Too Big to Fail 

 

Zuckerberg’s plan, the Metaverse,

is implemented. Sleep

remains real, and the occasional drink

and death, but otherwise

you go from your mostly virtual

bed to a luxurious, sunlit

office where avatars meet;

then nobly shop; avatars date …

(Debt remains, but it and you

are one, and effortlessly plotted.)

The young are already here, the old

not far behind. Unwieldy goggles yield

to a chip, un-feared, or something in the blood ...

Day is palatial, even

in the better homeless tents.

 

My first thought, needless to say, is how

my work might posthumously benefit.

Poetry remains, on some strange basis

(phantasmagoria?) for stranger fans.

Real nature poets are too hard

to follow, but I, with my ruins,

crows, presumption

of dust and walking count as such.

You visit my tomb and, following

tradition, add a pebble

to the overflowing pile upon it

(the real grave somewhat different).

Conjuration 

 

They wanted to befriend me, but something

conventionally called a voice

intervened. Minor differences,

mere physical distance

forbade, even emails became

too hard to write, perhaps there would be

one call … But while I

knew them each had made

some remark, and the voice told them

that these, however offhand,

would in my memory become them

and part of my general theory, which I would

parse like a Talmudist …

Perhaps it was my voice.

 

Towards the end, if the narrative has

you cornered, and you’re sick of it but

of course can’t discard it, try to

detach yourself a little

from it, admire it from a distance.

Not like a creed but like some minor

work or era in which you somehow

specialized; it paid the bills.

Then any residual guilt or resentment

becomes a madman preaching on the steps

of your favourite temple, the one to the Unknown God.

Drive him off; the faceless figure

within, to whom few sacrifice,

will assume the features of a friend.

Frederick Pollack, Washington, DC - is the Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Two collections of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, (Prolific Press, 2015) and LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Magma (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc.  Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire  Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review,  Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc.

fpollack@comcast.net