are you dreaming, Frederick?

"The difference between light and art is that art is more bearable."
--Charles Bukowski


"Sometimes life seems like a dream, especially when I look down and see that I forgot to put on my pants."
--Jack Handey


"If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them."
--Jack Handey


"Art serves to rinse out our eyes."
--Karl Kraus


"Southbound on the Freeway"

A tourist came in from Orbitville,
parked in the air, and said:

The creatures of this star
are made of metal and glass.

Through the transparent parts
you can see their guts.

Their feet are round and roll
on diagrams--or long

measuring tapes--dark
with white lines.

They have four eyes.
The two in the back are red.

Sometimes you can see a five-eyed
one, with a red eye turning

on the top of his head.
He must be special--

the others respect him,
and go slow,

when he passes, winding
among them from behind.

They all hiss as they glide,
like inches, down the marked

tapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy inside

the hard bodies--are they
their guts or their brains?
--May Swenson


"Phantom Haiku/Silent Film"

Friends part
forever--wild geese
lost in cloud
--Basho

I don't write haiku. I'm no good at silence,
Which may be why I crave those movies so much.
Though someone told me it's the silver nitrate,
The way it so luxuriates in light
That anything relinquished to its lunar reach
Becomes a kind of parable of incandescence.
Take a scene in a nightclub in war-torn France:
The smoke, the silverware, the sequined dress,
The bubbles orbiting a long-stemmed glass--

Who would interrupt them with a voice?
And then there's what happens to a face.
I wonder if I could get some silver nitrate
To take what I have to say and give it back
With a little of that luminescent silence...
Not that I'd show a close-up of my face
Or anything that might be used as evidence;
There's not a single thing I wouldn't leave out.
But in silent movies when the screen goes black

It still feels as if there's something there.
Maybe it's the pervading threat of fire.
That's why they don't use silver nitrate anymore,
It's so flammable--that, and the cost of silver--
But in this case, I'd want it to explode.
In fact, clumsy as it is, it's my metaphor.
I admire Basho, but I just can't buy
That bit about the wild geese and the cloud.
Unless he meant to float the possibility

That, after a season or two, the geese return.
It might even be implicit in the Japanese,
Which names a graceful but predictable species
Famous for going back to the same location.
You get to invent a poem in translation;
Only what isn't said is accurate.
For my haiku about friends that part,
I'd need the Japanese for silver nitrate,
A catchall character for luminous and burn.
--Jacqueline Osherow