The English Market

By Rickey LeeAnno MMVIII

7:00 am

...I couldn't sleep last night. And when the door slammed again, this morning, I couldn't win myself over to the thought of falling back into the sheepish struggle. Shortly after dawn, I took a walk. Summer light entered that brackish river, and for a long moment illuminated its aquatic third dimension. I stood captivated, watching soggy bread tugged to and fro by the current. A half an hour slid away, when boorish clouds waddled up, covered the sun, and showered down rain. Looking for cover, I ducked into the Market and took a seat at the café...

8:21 am – Systole

“Cup'a'tea, please.”

She hands me the tea. It rattles upon its saucer, silencing only as she places it upon the oak counter.

“Sugar?”

I watch the tea seep into the water. It twists and dances like exhaled smoke.

“No thanks”

From behind my left shoulder, a man approaches, his yellow T-shirt cradling his bulging stomach.

Watching her carefully, he begins, “Ah, what's the matter, Sugar? You look a bit under the—”

She looks up from the register with a sneer.

I take my first sip.

“Out again with the boys, eh Jane?” He continues.

“Yea', an' I've a head-ache”

Establishing eye-contact with me, he starts to chuckle, revealing a row of plaque-caked teeth; “An' probably a pain elsewhere too.”

“Freddy,” she says, “I—”

“I know darling, I'll leave ya' alone.”

She brings him a rattling tea, then turns away and wets

a hand towel in the sink. Watching me, instead, he asks, “what ya' jotting away at there?”

“Poetry...”

She interrupts, “he always needs someone to talk too; anybody, 'e don't care.”

My thoughts began to return to my pen, when coolly he asks, “What sort of poetry?”

9:42 am – Seamus

The politics of sex are on

my mind, but not my tongue.

Just scribbles instead out

onto long stripes of receipt paper.

Drawings of women with

electric eyes and phrases;

single word recordings of grace

spurned by a tingling, half-

drunken feeling: longing. And

churned, like the want

of the four o'clock encounter

with a friend, a drug, a liberator.

An Ideal approaches

from the mind's lower layers

Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön!

From her crown, an aureole,

the ring of fire, the noble

light of blessed desire.

Yes! It's a likeness of the her:

for my wayward mind a uniter.

Joan, she's a swan amongst

organic apples and beets,

freshly baked health bread,

flayed snapper, and sitting ducks.

Cubist reflections of cheddar:

pungent, creamy, rich and raw.

How love blends with these!

So loudly it rings; the joy,

the weeping of our polluted earth.

This lovely picture too, a sacrifice.

11:03 pm – The Swine's Head finds itself on sale in a glass case with green garnish and sale pie.

He speaks:

Eureka!

The cash,

the store,

the ore

of an idea!

Child of mind!

Cognitive symbol!

Pulse of emotion!

Refined with logos into a concept:

once,

will be,

present.

From equilibrium

comes quality

~

Split of mind, a duality,

ever-present dichotomy,

lesson of heroes and villains,

point and counter-point.

Cataloged and bound in endless

renditions reprints and editions:

“If a thing is new,

it is seldom good;

because if it is good,

it is only for a short time new.”

From triple prizes come

the proliferation

of ideas, the quantity

~

Paracelsus' diagram of three:

Salt, Sulfur, Mercury

The holy trinity:

Body. Ghost, Spirit

Square root of the nine worthies:

Three Pagans, three Jews,

three Christians. Mono-

theorists, kings of Ego

crowns of bronze, silver, and gold.

“The timelessness.”

Science

invented out of this

nothingness

a calendar –

forever ticking

four tripled; twelve

until consciousness.

“Time out of date.”

Hollywood

retells mythology.

Our prehistoric material

a production, a feat,

a summer flick,

new for a moment,

then obsolete.

“Time out of mind.”

Coupling the opposites,

squaring the circle.

Birth and death.

At my disconnect

I witnessed it, so divine,

the closing of the circle,

the precipice of the line.

4:57 pm – The Swine's Bodyhangs on a hook, gutted, its belly-

spliced open, relieving the open cavity of

its abdomen.

It speaks:

The shape of a pear

inspires, like an sniff of

an aphrodisiac, a sensational

tingling right below my ribcage.

This cavity, this gutted space

once carried a stomach

throne of that age old

desire to eat and snout

glorious truffles of the forest

The pleasure of my ancestral,

past times – replaced –

recently by waist... peels... shells

O! ...and coffee grinds!

The aroma of that earthy substance

gave me such great pleasure

to filter and waste and excrete!

Flayed here, on sale, a new cycle

awaits me, I assure you. Perhaps,

the following bowel movement

will return me to the mushroom-forest.

Drool. What pleasure. What

niceties there are in life;

take for instance a sneeze,

a scratch, and of our

love and attraction

the humming of bodies,

the alchemy of the bees

embryos and honey

Some would say the greatest

pleasure is uninterrupted sleep.

Nay, it cannot be. Sleep like

death is a void. Authentic

Pleasure of a sleepy sort, we

find in the flux with the waking

state. A transitory pleasure,

a hypnotic blur, a sedative.

Exercise, mild pain, sweat,

message, warm water

cool breeze, sun bathing,

what's smooth, the joy of laying

Eating crackers on the hill

the body of the Lord; has

forgotten pleasure, repressed

en masse for a fear of death

Snouting around, in the forest

in the mud, in my pen on the farm,

at the moment of my blood letting,

I've respected what living gave.

6:12 pm – John

I see lovers caress

walking with memories

of morning love-making

I smile at my fortune,

why would I not theirs?

I fold cards in my hand

and deal out the destiny

of pleasure like a dietitian,

who inspects the grounds.

Big bellies and sticky fingers

rubbed on starchy-Jeans

lettuce teeth licked clean

A woman, Joan (I think)

tucks her hair behind her ears.

While across the way, he

jotting away, looks though a lens,

gazing upon her, his ideal, and

noting who she is, who she's not.

Who is he, to stare at her so?

I feel I've been him once before.

Mirrored, I know his religion of fear,

The market prepares to shut.

Curtains pulled closed on

flank stakes, eggs, and pears.

Milk and sweet scones

the stale to be thrown out

the fresh to be preserved.

Into silence we descend

until our numinous dawn

replenish our abundance and love.

7:39 pm – Diastole

“They're so many stars tonight...”

Their backs to the market, they look toward the sky hued by the reflection of twilight over the Atlantic. It glimmers like a sapphire.

His eyes fall back down to the wet city.

“I'm going to lock up.”

He exhales then steps up to the Market gate. Pressing against it with his shoulder, he pulls out his golden key, and slides into the keyhole.

“What do you think about stealing?” She asks aimlessly.

“What... do you mean in general?”

“Yeah”

“Never. Or perhaps, but only in desperate need.”

They begin walking down the street, close enough together for their hands to bump and, at moments, connect.

“Joan,” his voice returns slowly, “I think that kid Seamus is eying ya'.”

“How do you know?”

“I sat across from him at the cafe today and watched him, watch you.”

She remains silent.

“Awkward, isn't it?” He presses.

“No, it doesn't much matter to me. More to him, I suppose, winding himself up over someone he doesn't even know—.”

“He makes it too difficult. He's too heady, no stomach. He aught to jus' talk to ya'.”

“What about you? You're all stomach, eh?”

“What? No. I'm finding a balance, ya'know.”

She ignores his puff of laughter.

“Well,” she speaks frankly, “what are you doing tonight?”

“Probably a pint over on Pembroke Street, what to come?”

9:00 pm

If the earth could cry, her tears

would be potatoes.

What then of famine?

Would she not cry then?

But I answer, have you ever cried so much

that you've run out?

Notes

The English Market

A series of flash-narratives, dialogues and poetry, the English Market weaves together four poems then mirrors them to make eight. Thereby the two halves in juxtaposition form a dichotomy. The principle characters, Seamus and John, are mutually opposed in their observation of the Market and the barista, Jane. However they're linked by the voice of the Swine, which has been bisected to represent the age-old dualism of Mind and Body.

9:42 – Seamus

Line 15 Translation from the German - “O! This image of enchanted beauty!” Quoted from the libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder of Mozart's opera “The Magic Flute.”

11:03 pm – The Swine's Head

A series of 12 and 8-line parts. Lines numbering is inclusive, beginning with “Eureaka!” as line 1 and ending with “the

precipice of the line” as line 60.

Lines 21 – 24 Quoted from Arthur Schopenhauer's The Art of Literature

Lines 28 – 29 Paracelsus (1493-1541), a medieval Alchemist, established the tria prima of sulfur, mercury , and salt. These represent a dynamic of essence common to all things. Lining up, I would argue, with the Trinity: Father (mercury/spirit), Son (salt/body) and Holy Ghost (sulfur/soul).

Line 32 The Nine Worthies are a set of nine historical figures who embody the ideals of chivalry. These Worthies, first recorded by Jacques Longuyon in 1312, were split into three categories: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian. The Pagan Worthies were Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar; the Jewish were Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus; and the Christian were King Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon.

4:57 pm – The Swine's Body

Sensation without notation.

“der Weg nach Innen” 2009

The English Market :

Alpha Print

Plough and Feather (Publishing); 2009

Printed in San Francisco, California

by Copyedge

In collaboration with

Synergyzine.com

Type Font: Centaur

Special Thanks

Kirstin and Martin

and all my generous

hosts and hostesses

in Europe.

All material

composed by:

Rickey Lee

rickeylee@synergyzine.com

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