There are not enough words in the dictionary to get across those areas of emotion that, while lacking the full force and heat of feelings that have bubbled up like lava from some formerly dormant crater none the less make your week a series of textured anxieties. The magazine stands you pass in the drug store remind you of a lover from college who has since found her own life and lost herself in the process, the prescription you're picking up in the pharmacy has a trace of your mother's voice instructing to close the kitchen door, the daylight you walk back into, the parking lot you enter, the car alarms that are sounding off in a variety of tandem duets all make you feeling that something is missing, as if lost. Or perhaps it's more like that there was nothing there to start with, merely a rumor of what this existence is worth, a poetry disguised as metaphysical certainty. There is no one word in the dictionary to tell you what that is, as everything is slowly revealed to be a fabric of definitions, each word and concept in the definition crystallized by yet another set of definitions. Yes, all the cars in the parking lot look alike, and the skyline resembles the profile of every other decent and deteriorating city you've ever been to, craggy cement and brick skyscrapers being hustled by sleek glass spheres and spires, each edifice and building material holding as story about the builder's preference, apologies of choices made for the general good and the attempt to bring something back to the cities that commerce , eroded tradition and ugly names for bath oils and fruit salad rolls ushered from our consideration, the only demonstrable reason being the only word that requires no concordance, no explanation beyond a hand gesture toward a back pocket, it is money, it is that thing we occasionally call currency in our more precious moments , it is current, it is right now, it is what can be used in transactions that will change the landscape, the language, the neighborhoods at the present moment. History is useless deadwood and the future never arrives. You put the medicine in your pocket, you look for car keys, you look at people at the bus stop nearby discussing something heatedly, with large, over sized gestures, movements of arms and hands to illustrate explosions and a fist to an invisible jaw. It is the conversations you can't hear that are the loudest ones you remember.
Some remarks about some things
notes, investigations, digressions galore
Ted Burke
- Location
- San Diego, California,
- Birthday
- July 15
- Title
- Bookseller, writer, musician
- Bio
- Bookseller, musician, writer and poet living and working in San Diego, California. His writing has appeared in the San Diego Reader, Kicks, San Diego Door, Roadwork, Revolt in Style,and City Works.His poems have been included in the anthologies Small Rain: 8 poets from San Diego (1996,DG Wills Books),Ocean Hiway: eight poets in San Diego (1981,Wild Mustard Press) , and is the author of many chapbooks, including Hand Grenade, Open Every Window,No One Home and City Times,limited editions published by his own Old House Press.
MY RECENT POSTS
- Dolly wants to kill you
May 29, 2012 11:15PM - Fuhgeddaboutit - Oy vey! -
Salon.com
May 28, 2012 06:29PM - You can say that again, but
louder
May 27, 2012 10:35AM - On Longwindness
May 25, 2012 10:07PM - A poem about baseball in
Detroit, yay!
May 25, 2012 10:39AM
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Rand was smitten by
Monroe's persona no less than
any other
star struck kid and
p…”
March 08, 2012 06:46PM - “@George Hoffman:
Actually, Mailer didn't refer
to himself
as
"Aquarius"…”
January 01, 2012 07:12PM - “Mailer's meditation on
violence and evil will not be
every
one's idea of a good
n…”
January 01, 2012 07:07PM - “@Miguella: His
contradictions were what made
his brilliance
exasperating; I
sup…”
December 17, 2011 10:40AM - “Thanks wendy. It's not
that I'm against subjecting a
work to
critical
examination…”
August 14, 2011 06:44PM
Ted Burke's Links
- New list
- Salon
- New York Times
- Slate.com
- The Nation
- Like it or not

Salon.com
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