Today's Not Opposite Day

Charles Bernstein


Can't say can't not
Overlay of marooned croons
jilting their masters with
aluminum spoons.
I thought I sawed a mocking berth
a wrinkled lawn, a floating palm.
Going nowhere faster than a
speeding bullet on a personal
crusade to quilt the noise
& make hems glide.
The glue uncorked smelled sweeter than
a carriage ride through heaven but turned many
an head in opposite confection.
All together on the
blinkering rip of fate.


Dust on the mirror, tain of overex-
posed entrails; Roy Rogers & Tonto in
cross-country ski race for the benefit
of ardent but indirect reversi-
bility; suspension ridges tumbling
down, fudge brown, my fair cormorant.
Throw that spit ball at me one more time &
I'll fold into the eternal vapors
of my maker's marks. The revolution
will begin not with a call against sin
but with a hankering for boot-leg gin.
Then promise me a roll or a muffin,
a hole in the ocean, & I will wrap
it with twine & keep it with mine.


What's that thing in the tree?
Is it a robin or a bumble bee?
What does it mean, what does it see?
What is it trying to say to me?
The furnace is cold before it gets hot.
Melon is sweet but sometimes not
The lamp she burns with a piteous light
It's not time to sleep but it feels like night.


Readers are cautioned that certain statements in this poem are forward looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. Words such as "bluster", "rotund", "interstitial", "inebriate", "guerrilla", "torrent", "prostrate" and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and projections about the aesthetic environment and assumptions made by the author and are not guarantees of future performativity. Therefore, actual events or performances may differ materially from those expressed and projected in the poem due to factors such as the effect of social changes in word meanings, material changes in social conditions, changing conditions in the overall cultural environment, continuing aesthetic turmoil, risks associated with product demand and market acceptance, the impact of competing poems and poetry distribution systems, delays in the development of new poems, imagination capacity utilization (ICU), and genre mix and media absorption rates. The author undertakes no obligation to update any projective statements in this poem.


Misery loves euphony
and always tips the head waiter.
I put my
claw on the lute before coughing
up the clash.
The spot on her Gap dress
is the scarlet
letter of the media's star chamber
as bait becomes
stitch in the social cartilage of
mystification and retrenchment.
Xeno dunks twice where Parmenides speculates.
"You should really
wear your hat because your head
looks red." The
soul's solution the heart's despair. Nor
touch nor taste
nor smell nor hurt. The Mayor
bellows down the
hall, "The only thing they really
want is more
blue laws." As if realism gets
us any closer
to the real, counting any closer
to encounter. The
more bytes exchanged, the more men
that are put
in chains. But polis will never
be the same
as police. There
are no words for this and
these are them.


Four score and seven years ago our poets brought forth upon these continents a new textuality conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all meanings are plural and contextual. Now we are engaged in a great aesthetic struggle testing whether this writing or any writing so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on an electronic crossroads of that struggle. But in a larger sense we cannot appropriate, we cannot maintain, we cannot validate this ground. Engaged readers, living and dead, have validated it far beyond our poor powers to add or detract. That we here highly resolve that this writing shall not have vied in vain and that poetry of the language, by the language, and for the language shall not perish from the people.


What I like is that it
gets deep right away:
not profound, over your head.


The principal of the remission of
Singularities obviates against
The law of occipital mooring to
Percolate the ammoniated
Quantum of ramification in ob-
Verse proportion to the flap rate of the
Differentiator. The factorials,
Or rather valumetric cadences
Of these factorials, substantiate
The assignable quiddities of ax-
Iomorphic qualification while
Dampening atavistic insurgence
of flexogenerative allocations.
Furthermore, and above all, anecdotal
Sampling suggests an exponential
Retardation of subsequent protean
Aggregation if pharmacosuturing
Is strictly factored for its intervallic
As well as protosemantic incrementation.


You're not from here, are you? I mean
people like you always act as if you
own the place, know what's really
going on, understand what makes things
tick, as if your precious imaginations
or deep insights are more significant
than what's right in front of your
face. So please, keep your big nose, your
insufferable theories, your exquisite
predilections to yourself.


"Is there a phone upstairs?" she asked
"& do you have T-1 line? I've scarcely
time to comb my hair & still need to
polish my chimes."


A dog bit a child on Lakeside Drive. A mailbox was pulled out of the ground on Mulberry Point. An injured cat, still alive in the road, was sighted in the vicinity of Goose Lane. There was a breach of peace on Water Street. A Chestnut Grove resident reported scraps of discharged fireworks and six sharp objects, possibly darts used with a blow gun. A person was bitten by a dog on Elizabeth Street. An attendant at Chucky's Mobil reported an altercation with a man who, after filling his tank, made several requests for something to clean the gas from the side of his car. A Chestnut Grove resident found a dead bird killed with a small dart, such as those used with a blow gun. A homemade blackjack was found in the town hall lot. A Grist Mill resident reported a stolen real estate sign. A piece of fence was damaged on Whispering Pine. A town ambulance struck a town cruiser. A man installing an electronic dog control fence was bitten by a dog. No illegal activity was found in connection with a woman holding up a sign asking for work. Damage was reported to a door at Bob's Cycles and Stoves. Criminal mischief was reported after youths apparently moved a picnic table. A Lone Pine Trails resident reported trouble after he spotted a neighbor taking his newspaper. Swastikas, inverted crosses, and German SS symbols were found written in blue marker on the outside of the window frame at a store in Fleishman's Plaza. An intoxicated person fell on the green. Loud machine noise was reported by a Manor Road resident. A property owner on Old Whitfield street reported his lot was being used by someone unknown. An unresponsive person was found lying in a boat on Half Mile Road. A Clear Lake Manor man reported a missing parrot. An unknown vehicle was reported on Flat Meadow Road. A 7-foot dinghy moored on a pond was reported stolen but later found at the opposite end of the pond. A sick skunk was shot on Tanner Marsh Road. Eggs were thrown at a plate glass window. A neighbor reported a neighbor for stepping into her yard. A man was found sleeping in the grass next to his song.


Man standing by his word, women
and children kibbutzing.
The man seems immobilized by the
gravity of his position, the stupendous
weight, after all, resting on his
spent shoulders. Sparrow flies from
branch to branch, testing the inclination
of the trees. Rumor of contagion sweeps
through the camp, soon replaced by
infinitesimally flexible incumbency,
turquoise incunabula, varnished handlebars
of the celestial taxicab.


Not the God outside whom you obey
But the God inside who you become


What do you see, Nonny?
What do you see?
A tune & a stain
Waiting for me

Will you go there, Nonny?
Will you go there?
It's just by the corner
Right over the bend

Who'll you see there, Nonny?
Who'll you see there?
A monkey, a merchant, a pixelated man

What will you say, Nonny?
What will you say?
I'm just a nobody making my way




This poem was originally published in New American Writing #17 (1999) and is used with the permission of the editors and the author; a portion of it will be appearing in the October issue of Harper's.