syntax, unbetrayed

there is neither a shuffling nor a memory here
the rain is in spain or the basement
the narrowness of my vision doesn't funnel truth
no one keeps track but the women speak
in the next room of forms, or format, or the formula
that requires everything to fall into its place

the grass whispers of the betrayal
sometimes romance is a dark plot
the bodies kept in the basement are
disinterred for my humiliation
I see no rules that govern, no sentences
with syntax unbetrayed. no plan for this
survival. we are falling from place

where are my angels?
I see your angels, but where are
my angels this day? where is my peace?
where is the snow that replaces the acid-eating rain?
where is the angel in the yard
her arms swinging into wings
her chicken legs spread wide in welcome
where is the love I fell into
the book claims
no rules. no blame.


As in the previous poem there is a sense working here that is pretty much outside the boundaries of rational discourse. Particularly in this one I can see the emotional elements at work. At war, really. With the intellectual portion of the program. Of course the betrayals spoken of are both Alison's promises to me and my promises to myself. The bodies in the basement refers to the story element in Strange Sins, my reincarnation novel, of finding the mummified corpse of the main character's previous incarnation, Miranda, under the front porch of a house that had been covered with sand at the dunes in Saugatuck, Michigan. I had numerous recurring dreams about Randy's body in the sand and I became frightened of the basement at Scarritt and at Washington, associating them with acts of criminal violence. I believe this poem was written during the period I worked at SIU School of Medicine in the early 1980s, in the records room. Of course the women speaking is always in western literature something of an echo of Eliot in Prufrock. "Fall into place" refers specifically to Ann Beattie's novel, Falling Into Place and once again places the poem in the early 1980s. Becky Bradway brought Beattie to read at the literary festival the year she was grad asst. in literature. I was also a grad asst., but jumped ship after the terrible betrayals and destruction that took place in that department primarily at the behest of Norman Hinton, but with the help of Mike Lennon and Rich Shereikis. Nothing was ever the same after that. I believe they succeeded in totally ruining John Knoepfle, but that is a personal theory which I have no interest in arguing for or against.