Philomene Long's Cold Ellison I
“Cold Ellison,” the apartment
building on Paloma Avenue where she and John Thomas lived, became a theme of a
number of Long’s poems.
Cold Ellison
I
By Philomene
Long
“Cold cliffs more
beautiful
The deeper you
enter
Yet no one travels this
road”
Cold Mountain - Han
Shan
In this old cold
building
The
Ellison
In this small dark
room
I sit
cross-legged
Upon an old stale
mattress
The feathers are
finally
Leaving my
pillow
To rejoin the birds of the
air
At least once a
month
The upstairs neighbor’s toilet
overflows
Our ceiling
bulges
The walls turn black and
green
in this dripping
room
All my clothes are
torn
Our only
guests
The ghosts, the
mice
Only
dust
Over dog-eared
books
And drifts of
paper
Like dirty
snow
My daughter stays away,
says
“You were never a
model
For a nine to five
job.”
My son visits
occasionally
Long enough to
smile
And ask for an
aspirin
In this cold
room
The window is bricked
up
The pipes
leak
Puddles always on the kitchen
floor
Never any rice in the
pot
Once there was a
view
A eucalyptus tree, a ghost
gum
It was cut down in
June
I, who once was
proud
That they called
me
“The Queen of
Bohemia”
Now blush,
ashamed
“John!” I
call
“I’m trying to bring
myself
Out of something
–
To
nothing...
I’m going to
pray
To embrace this
poverty!”
“Pray to embrace
silence
We already have poverty!” he
says
“Hey. We’re doing pretty
well
For a tired old
man
And a crazy
lady...
Tomorrow I’ll get
you
A crown of
rhinestones.
Do I give you
enough?”
“John, to have
you
For my
companion
Through the glass
centuries
Your diamond
body
Calm, enormous
land
This is the only
center
That I
seek.”
At
night
The cockroaches come
out
They walk across my
neck
To get to Masami Teraoka’s
print
“Zen Monk On A Blue
Whale”
Hakuin contemplates
death
They take refuge in the
Buddha
Little insect eyes. Sad.
Sad.
But too many. A thousand at
least
So they must
die
We’ll use the money
from
Selling our books of
poems
To purchase roach
poison
There are no
roads
From this cold
Ellison
Better sit
still
And quiet the
ills
Of the
mind
I sit high in this old
building
Higher yet the sky passes
slowly
The birds
swirl
incautious, completely
free
I climb the
road
To cold, cold
Ellison
The road that never
ends
“Who can break the snares of the
world
And sit with
me
Among the white
clouds?”
–from The Queen of
Bohemia, Philomene Long, Lummox Press
Posted: Sat - March 1, 2008 at 03:56 PM
