OK. Today was nothing. A big, wobbly, quivering 0.
I am thinking about a poem, a poem about the smells from 1B.
First came the dead body smell. Then came the ludicrous flowerly poof poof that filled the building with roses and lilacs (and invisible butterflies and birdies and twinkling horsies) but that failed to strangle the dead body smell.
The dead body stink stayed for 2 weeks until the police removed the green sticker from the apartment and The Service was called. The Service delivered days of arch bleach scent, more days of bleach and then more days of who-knows-what. There is a reason you call The Service and you can have no idea but to appreciate what they did to get the rotted stink of human carcass out of that tiny apartment.
I remember how the landlord held court the day J. died last month. He preached arbitrary gospel from the front step of this building as the police called in the incident. The landlord seemed to own the moment, reminding me as I exited and entered this building that “LIFE IS A PENANCE, MARK. ENJOY IT WHILE YOU ARE YOUNG. RUN.”
Then I heard the police, referring to the dead man, tell their radio “We think he has a sister in Maine.”
They never found a sister or a brother or a friend.
After The Service did its work the place came to smell of caulk, clay, and craftsman’s material. As with all those smells the odors filled my kitchen. I shut the window.
Today the smell was of paint, the final coat of forget that seals in the memory.
This is the poem I am thinking about, but what if I never write it? Would that not make it the perfect poem? Unuttered? Unrecorded? A stuff not of critical complaint or paperwork but of braggadocio and mental adrenaline?
Yes. That poem.
Oh fuck you Jack Spicer, fuck you with your poetry about poets thinking about poems about other poets’ remarks about their own poetry. Yes. Fuck you, Jack Spicer.