Exhuming the Monster

Al Ferber

Description

A highly unlikely convergence of three pivotal points in this writers history that had remained unaddressed until now: the beginnings of this writer, first wife stricken by schizophrenia,
and her sudden death.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 16 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669856221
• Langue: English

Extrait

Exhuming the Monster
 
 
 
 
AL FERBER
 
Copyright © 2022 by Al Ferber.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-5631-3

eBook
978-1-6698-5622-1

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
All poems in this book previously appeared in Mangle/zine and Evolution of an Accidental Painting. They are reprinted here with my permission. Al Ferber - editor / publisher
 
Cover Photo by Al Ferber
Author Photo by Al Ferber
 
Introduction by Hop Wechsler published here with his permission
Preface by Al Ferber
 
 
Rev. date: 11/16/2022
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
848151
CONTENTS
Intro
Prologue
Exhuming The Monster
Winter Solstice
Other Shit
INTRO
by Hop Wechsler
William Carlos Williams, a fellow New Jersey poet (born, not transplanted), once wrote that he had “discovered that the thrill of first love passes! It even becomes the backbone of a sordid sort of religion if not assisted in passing.” He also wrote (two sentences later) that he had “never or seldom said” to his wife “my dear I love you, when I would rather say: My dear, I wish you were in Tierra del Fuego.”
William Carlos Williams was married once. He had multiple affairs, including a Baroness. How many times did he wish his wife were in Tierra del Fuego? How many times did he actually say it?
*
If most marriages don’t end when the thrill of love passes, most marriages that end don’t end because the thrill of love passes but for some other, weightier, more soul-deadening reason. Michael Ventura, the former L.A. Weekly columnist, once defined “the solace of marriage” as “the discovery of what is unbreakable among all that’s been broken.” Sometimes, there’s nothing that’s unbreakable and everything is broken. Sometimes, one person’s demons can’t support the weight of another’s. In a few cases, those demons are real.
*
Michael Ventura also wrote that “we are all, every one of us, full of horror. If you are getting married to try to make yours go away, you will only succeed in marrying your horror to someone else’s horror, your two horrors will have the marriage, you will bleed and call that love.”
This book is about the blood.
*
This book is about not only the blood that couldn’t save a marriage that couldn’t be saved but the horror that was brought to it, bled dry, abandoned, forgotten, and then uncovered, recovered, decades later in remnants, by revenants, by the profane Zen poet who knows that the person who wrote that it’s “worse to know who one wants to be” 50 years ago wasn’t that wrong after all and that whatever the answer is, it’s always worse than the alternative.
And that’s only the first two parts.
*
Spoiler alert #1: this book ends with other shit. No, I mean literally, Other Shit. Moreover, it ends.
Spoiler alert #2: At the end, one monster is exhumed and defeated, written out of existence (almost; you can never completely write the monster out of existence or there would be no writers); the other (of course there are two horrors so there must be two monsters) consumes and defeats; and the winter solstice is as dark as it fucking gets. But in the words of Simon & Garfunkel, when she goes, she’s gone.
What we’re left with—all we’re left with—is ourselves.
*
Meaning what, exactly?
I won’t tell you that there actually IS no Other Shit, and that it’s all the Same Shit. That’s obvious. You know from years of trying not to think about it that when you try not to think about it, you’re obsessing with it, whatever IT is.
But maybe your IT can relate to this IT, or that Shit, or his Id, and bleed something not unrelated to what IT bled, and read some variation of the poems-from-before-the-avalanche that IT read (or wrote, or heard, or dreamt), and share a moment of oneness, or existential dread at the fate of the world, with a fellow traveler.
Or, if not, there’s always Tierra del Fuego.
PROLOGUE
This book had its genesis in three different but interrelated points converging. 1 st . I came across some notebooks on my bookshelf that contained some writings from 1970-71. I was married in February 1970. I began the process of transcribing them. 2 nd after 36 years I decided to write about the16 years of my first marriage, the last nine years with my wife experiencing the onset and florid state of schizophrenia. A significant chunk my life that I had failed to address previously. 3 rd While in the process of doing this, I got a call from my ex-wife’s sister telling me that she had died suddenly. Unnerving events all the way around and caused more even closer reflection.
Exhuming The Monster
De Sade
was a
chronicler
of
American
dreams
i wonder
if
coke
bottles
will
ever
change
i hope to regain
some things
that slipped by me
unnoticed
or suppressed
because they were
difficult
or unpleasant
i would choose
to taste them now
and find
the flavor of myself
you are collage
you live inside
kaleidoscope
your eyes are
prisms of glass
you are daughter
to the earth
rain clouds kiss
your forehead
evening stars
settle in your hair
i followed
the big
white bird
of what
i believe
and he has
been eaten
by the mob
of
black birds
sitting on
the fence
as we
drove by
compiled:
portions of
“My Post
Marital
Rela-
tionships”
*4 months
after wed
its getting to be
that time again
to retreat
implode
to do something
important
right or wrong
my madness
is simple
i must write
and cannot
be constrained
i only
actually
write
when i just
talk
on
paper
roses fall
petals wilt
seasons
change
in
thundering
silence
i watch a hundred
starlings
scatter
in frantic flight
like men
overtaken by history
my chronology
is off
can’t remember
which came first
Thursday
or the Wednesday
before
there is little more
disappointment
left
in the universe
than to look
directly into
a freshly cleaned
mirror
and see nothing
how strange
the two of us
sitting at
a lunch
counter
with nothing
to say
to each other
we depend
on the
idle chatter
of waitresses
to fill the air
a classroom
filled
with children
on a
sunny day
is the emptiest
place
in the world
a death
in
spring
is
twice
as
horrible
jelly assed and
shaking
naked
as a bird’s eye
the world
shivers constantly
in the
poverty
of its own fat
spoke to
a young man
told me
he was Catholic
told him
i used to be
a Catholic
he sold me
15 pounds
a grace
for 30 cents
a worrisome
queen
of sea weed
a real pain
in the ass
always babbling
on
about astrology
or
some other
mind numbing shit
like that
ad nauseam
ad infinitum
i could hear the
smell of flesh
of perspiration
salt and sand
crashing against
the concrete
city sidewalk
red brick houses
and traffic lights
lay silent
and still
and listen
to the night
my tenure of teaching
4 th graders
was a short lived
unqualified disaster
1 st because
i had never seen a
4 th grader before
2 nd let alone
a classroom full of them
3