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In memoriam Tom Clark (pictured here), 1941–2018

. . . mere excursions don't suffice on visits

To dead cities—excavation too's required,

Cries out the hungry unborn poem

Within us, demanding to exist as

If alive

—Tom Clark, "Fidelity"

I never listen to the news!

They say Vitellius is emperor now.

I slept with his daughter Vitellia.

That was before she married Libo Frugi.

Mozart put her in an opera, you know,

Called La Clemenza di Tito—

Something about Yugoslav partisans

In World War Two.

Funny isn't it how we say “slept with”

When we really mean fucked.

In fact, I hardly slept with her. She snores.

And Libo Frugi, what a dick!

I hear Vespasian is emperor now.

Don't ever listen to the news.

Envoi

On a summer evening in 2018,

the poet Tom Clark, who loved baseball,

was struck by a car while crossing a street

in Berkeley; he died the next day.

Good night, sweet prince, and flights of shortstops sing thee to thy rest.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Allhallowtide

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets

—Hamlet, act 1, scene 1

Although the dead so seldom drink,

We serve them as we do ourselves,

Those fading proxies for our fears,

Necessary to the revels

Celebrated at Halloween.

My neighbors put out plastic bones,

Which grow in whimsy with the years.

PVC skeletons abound—

Just over there, a polyvinyl

Hound's bones bay at a missing moon!

This Halloween, the shaky ground

Trembles beneath our pricey homes,

And on our phones, the shit-faced dead

Squeak and gibber beside each bed.

Monday, October 6, 2025

Amor fati

"So why? . . . 'Because you can't say better than that.' I have at last said all that I have to say."*

—translated from Romain Gary's suicide note, December 2, 1980

Drained of the curse he valued most,

He blew his brains out. War hero,

Twice winner of the Prix Goncourt,

Now “insanely rich,” he'd reached

His terminus ad quem, the end

Point. But I, who long ago passed

My own terminus a quo,

Can see he fibs, enslaved when young

By Testosterone, then sold down

The River to Old Age. Nietzsche

Advises amor fati—love

Your fates, but a little further on—

Quite near—Big Terminus awaits.

No excuses, at last; a sounding gong.

*« Alors, pourquoi ? Peut-être faut-il chercher la réponse dans le titre de mon ouvrage autobiographique, La nuit sera calme, et dans les derniers mots de mon dernier roman: "Car on ne saurait mieux dire".

Je me suis enfin exprimé entièrement. »

Cover image: Thomas Moran, Moonlit Shipwreck at Sea (ca. 1901). Private collection.

Friday, October 3, 2025