I'M 43, have only a few hairs, almost no teeth, and I'm writing this in a bright, pleasant hospital where they're treating this pneumonia of mine," wrote Max Jacob, a French poet, if you haven't heard of him, and you probably haven't. He lived in abject poverty, is there another? Ah, yes, genteel.
Max was a Jew, but he saw a vision of Christ on his wall and converted to Catholicism.
He was also a debauching homosexual, but he never saw a vision of a straight man on his wall, so he never converted.
He died of pneumonia (a second one) while being transported to a death camp by the Germans. Picasso, his close friend and ex-roommate, refused to sign Cocteau's petition protesting his arrest. Oh, well. What are friends for?
I'm a Jew, too, but I've never seen a vision of Bejesus, as Homer Simpson calls him, on my wall. Too bad. I could use the excitement, something new. Have never seen a vision of any kind, for that matter. Nor am I homosexual, more like asexual, like grass. Just sort of stay in one place and let the weather do me. Or maybe a cow.
"Pity our errors pity our sins," wrote Apollinaire. I've made plenty of errors, but I've never sinned. Don't believe in sin. Original or otherwise. Not my bag. So don't pity me. Don't forgive me. Only the pious commit sins anyway, usually with their wang. Forgive them their wang.
Summer, the violent season, it's over, thank whatever. Gives one a false sense of hope. Hope is over, thank whatever. Gives one a false sense of summer.
I speak no foreign languages, and I'm not much traveled. A dull person. Not worth hanging around. I write poetry, using subjects no one's concerned with. Never a word about chipmunks. Nor azaleas. Nor sausages. No stories. No descriptions. Nothing about my grandmother's rhubarb pie. Just small things. Occasionally war. Corruption. A lot about death. Nothing commending cops, firemen, or soldiers—certainly not politicos.
I like language. Hard stuff. Rhythmic. Memorable. Lines that rumble in my skull, like the New Jersey Transit trains that run a few hundred feet from my apartment. I loathe neutrality, loath despicable humans, like passion, like decency. I envy action, although I'm totally inactive.
Like Orwell, Like Sartre, Think Beckett.
I still have most of my hair and enough teeth. I was married to une jolie rousse, a pretty redhead, but she assumed no noble form, was no metaphor, no sun, just a person like me, but I miss her—"her" meaning my "vision," not of Bejesus, but of a rousse, une jolie rousse, in actuality, a potter . . . turned lawyer . . . . Gone forever.
I'm quite lonely nowadays, no metaphor for that. I struggle, but I'm not poverty-stricken, and there are no Germans around, no Picasso, just me, here.
I have so much to say, but it's safer to keep quiet. Besides, where would I say it? And to whom? On the street? In a letter? I might end up on a list, I might end up like Max. Scary.
Don't pity me, though. I'm a man of good sense, and I don't believe in mysteries, only confusion, evolution. I'm convinced nothing is solvable, not now, not yet, maybe never.
The front lines are in one's head, I believe that, too, and that the battle is never terminated, is not meant to be terminated, that indeed there are a "thousand imponderable phantasms," but that you reach a point in your life when it occurs to you you needn't try any longer, and you smile, feel relieved, walk on.
Pity me not, although I'm definitely your enemy (loosely speaking), as Apollinaire insists he is not. But I have no army. Just me, just Max. And he's dead.
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