The Night Book

• Poets and Pornographers

  Posted: March 4, 2008, 9:58 pm by Levari

  The poets and the pornographers
  meet in the same place
  every night
  after the city has emptied out.
  
  Not the tourists
  nor the police
  can tell the
  poets and pornographers
  apart.
  
  In fact,
  the poets and pornographers
  can barely tell
  each other apart,
  let alone notice
  the absurdity
  of the situations
  that has brought them to this
  state
  of comraderie.
  
  The pornographers
  provide the cognac,
  the poets bring
  the cigars;
  it's been like this for
  longer than either
  can remember.
  
  Anything that happens
  between the hours
  of midnight and dawn
  has no
  precedent
  and is decided on
  a case by case
  basis.
  
  The poets and the pornographers
  laugh at each other's
  foibles, ticks, indiosynchrocies;
  
  they admire the same women and men;
  
  they mix freely,
  judge each other solely
  on moral grounds,
  and enjoy the missing
  hollows of each;
  
  sometimes they even
  crawl in.
  
  The poets and the pornographers
  often pair up, make love,
  spend days, weeks, even years
  only
  to split apart and recombine
  without wisdom or madness;
  
  it is only the pornographers
  that truly lament
  the passing of time
  while the poets
  invite gray hair
  and wrinkled skin.
  
  The poets and pornographers
  repeat, repeat, repeat
  all the same mistakes
  over and over again
  proudly.
  
  And often,
  the poets and pornographers
  cannot tell
  who is who,
  what is what,
  where they were last year,
  or even this morning.
  
  (They switch sides all the time.)
  
  The poets and pornographers
  keep their own secrets,
  agree to no memory,
  fight each other to the death,
  laugh at the rotting body's nakedness,
  weep at the rising sun,
  think everything of traffic and rain,
  
  and meet in the same place
  at the same time
  each and every night,
  
  but I'll never tell you
  where this is.
  
  Korea Town - Los Angeles 3/31/06

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes