Two Poems

by Scott M. Bade

A Cold Drink of Water and Some Aspirin
After Léjeuner sur l'herbe - Eduoard Manet


To begin,
the spring night has charmed a cardinal
into a late supper, the light sharpened
as it cuts through the bare trees,
but his heart isn't it. Not the cardinal. No,
it's the He who's watching this scene,
not knowing where to begin. Framed
by the window is he, is the cardinal,
its dinner and the light. Like a postcard,
the scene carries with its message
a little art, a little story, a little saliva.
Squint some and now it's a tennis court,
a forest floor, a traffic scene, or a lunch
in the park. He hasn't seen the next course.
He hasn't seen his mate in two days.
It's always happened this way: the art
never swaying from it trusted refrain;
the appearance of a woman's face
in the windows of some endless train.
So to begin again is to fly off,
find another feeder with fresh seed
and a clean bath. To begin again is to speak
in a new voice. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
means a little more than a snack.
At one time he was scolded for placing
"a commonplace woman, as naked as can be,
between two dandies dressed to the teeth."
Once he was scolded for rubbing his eyes.
In the end clarity won out, wrestling the old-wives'
tale into quiet submission. To begin again
is to stop batting lids on the old blurry scene.
Arguably the most sensitive and delicate
of sensory organs, the eyes require little
in the way of hands-on maintenance. Alas,
can the same be said for most of what
they behold? After surrounding himself
with beauty and emotional energy,
what does he do? Dance until his socks fall off?
Does he paint all night with abandon,
quietly contemplating every stroke,
then in the morning request a cold drink
of water and some aspirin, and remind
himself never to hold a chicken leg
while waving with both hands? Little meat
there beyond memory of bone and flesh,
the subtle concoction of paint and dress.
So to begin to remember is to obey
the traffic cop in his head. Her weapon hips
signal drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians alike.
Because all ride in fear. And to begin
again is to remember the event almost
exactly as it was. He called her once
in college, before she was badged, and asked
for a date that turned out to be a double-date
with her twin sister. All night he and the other
boy wondered if they might be wondering
the same thing. Later that evening she lay
in the forest beneath him. He had passed out
on her breast, the breast that would hold her
badge and just a few other male mouths.
In the morning, before the first glass of ice water,
a space craft exploded upon liftoff,
and he watched it through the hardware cloth
of his headache, then slept through several
replays and the ensuing media frenzy. So
to begin again is to start with the smallest gasket
then move on to the wardrobe. His jacket
was missing and he remembered the sounds
of the leaves beneath her body. It's a story
he rarely tells, a story with a tennis player
who liked to play the ladies. He loved tennis too,
played on the team and this is no joke,
the team mascot was a cardinal.
As for the girl, he'd see her later in the hallways
with her arms full of knowledge, her hair
like Autumn Joy. And much later he saw her
in that famous painting and then in the face
of the figure on the back of the airplane crash
safety card on a red-eye from Detroit.
On the card she floated in always blue water,
her arms wrapped around a seat cushion,
her face clear and alert, almost contemplative.
No evidence of crash, save for the seat cushion.
Maybe it was the illustrator's subtle jab
at the masses. Maybe it was mélange.
Through the tiny windows of the airplane
he watched the lines and lights that defined
a man-made world below. The brain floats
in liquid inside a brittle shell.



The End


Already (even here) we're wondering how,
by what means and which or who will stand
in for it? How many blackbirds on the bough

before snap goes the limb? And the hourglass' sand,
might it become a monumental heap of opaque
memory or will it be liver than what we understand

most everything else to be? If so, we'll need a rake,
no? And in sweat's possession—it is plodding work;
it must be—we'll find some crown, or light's ray break

from a tunnel's dark vortex which is the husk
of familiar, a computer monitor, but not so rigid or geometric
that one can't make the leap to large lizard, tongue stuck

into what it hopes it can surmise: the air's trick
bag of proclamations and then a voice, sugar and bile-
loaded: "I thought you were a poet. Can't we just fuck

instead of fight?" So here it is, the heart's logistical
nightmare: to be front center on a sleeve at every second
and still to be taken seriously, not dry-iced and stabile

then shipped in a cooler, a cooler! only to buried
in the chest of another. When he'd said yes it didn't occur
to him that he'd agreed to be both farmer and field,

that the message inside the language of her candor
was just dry wind over sand and like most, the moment
was destined to become dust of a storm's bluster

of enjambment, possession and the lover's argument,
all of which have the effect of somewhat grounding us
even as it's blown all away. Still the mind beckons hunt:

the lizard no longer senses heat, whatever else
might be hidden inside it: an angel, some reminder
from the granary of promise; so its curiosity more or less

satisfied, but not its appetite, the beast lumbers
westward, following its tonguing light again;
who knows what it knows? Fetters? Numbers?

Does it know anything but the belly-full end?
See its limbs making walk of progression,
its tail swishing a furrow, a kind of wave in the sand.

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