Neptune

(As read at the Gazebo in Oceanside -- August 19, 2013)

The name of this poem is

Neptune

I

They call me Neptune

And I knew, just by the nature of who “They” were

That they meant something else by it.

They weren’t referring to me as any mighty King of the Sea.

I wasn’t a strong swimmer back then.

They weren’t referring to any skill I may have with tridents and other forked weapons.

I make no disclosures as to why I know that.

Finally, I was told.

We call you Neptune. 

You’re on the team. 

But you’re a long way from the center of things around here.

It’s true

I’m on the team.

The whiffle ball team

The Mets

The team that drank in the basement, and any place else they’d let us

The group that despised the government, and knew our history well enough to tell you why.

The group that made stages ring alive

The guys who would drive in anything, so long as we were moving forward

The guys who could make it sound that we were more in touch with our feelings than the girls were, but rarely knew what to do with the information. 

The guys who didn’t own a boat amongst the lot of us, but could always find someone to take us out for a sail or give us the wheel going out of the canal.

I’m on the team.

They call me Neptune

II

We all float and let the tide take us out

One guy sees something worth holding onto,

A woman,

The right amount of light on the water,

A task,

He swims towards it, and secures his place around it. 

Now, a new satellite in orbit; a new buoy in the water.

And another guy sees something, and another,

And soon I realize that I am floating alone out there. 

Everyone else saw something and swam for it. 

Nothing seemed worth grabbing.

Or maybe my senses are too dull.

I didn’t see what I was looking at. 

I didn’t know that things would be harder to find.

I kept drifting out on the sea

So  --- That

Although I was never the best swimmer, floater, boater, fisher,

I find myself

Just from the mere passage of time and distance, the most experienced person out there,

the one who has been the furthest, and seen the most, of whatever there is to see. 

The one who could provide the most help out there to the people who need it. 

I have become Neptune the protector of the sea.

They call me Neptune

III

No God I. 

It was the fellas that named me Neptune.

Discard any notion that there was a grand design in mind

To the great notoriety we achieved

Individually and collectively,

Or that my presence at the end of the world had any impact on the entire unlikely enterprise

Perhaps it was one of the group

Or luck

Or cosmic disturbances way beyond anyone’s control.

 

Because

I

Could

Never determine if I was being praised or criticized,

Never determine if I even thought these things

Made me

Worthy of praise or

Worthy of all the benefits that I never considered,

But were bestowed upon me by virtue of my being somewhere else at the time.

Neptune. 

My enormous beard and my small feet responsible for great expanses. 

At the edge of the sea

At the furthest outpost of the solar system.

IV

They said anyone could do it.

That the set-up was tailor made.

And it’s possible that anyone could have done it.

But I was the one who did do it.

All those miles and years away from home

***

All the times some guy floated up to me

And said, “Is there anything else?”

And I said, “This is as far as I go.”

And each one would say,

“Well, I did what I came to do, and now I’m heading back, do you want to join me, I could use the Company?”

And I said, “No”. 

Time after time, year after year. 

Sometimes, I’d slip and say, “I can’t”,

As though I was still the same boy I was when I was floating out

As though I was unable to master my body against the tide.

They’d say other things too. 

Sometimes I would get some news,

But mostly they had the same requests and

I had the same responses.

Until I could barely remember why I’d say what I said,

Or whether what I said still was helpful,

Still made sense.

And I came to believe that my greatest accomplishment

Was

That

I was able to spare some other poor soul the drudgery of doing what I had done.

And more time passed, and I was finally able to carry all the things I saw,

And all the ways I reacted to it, all in my body and all at the same time.

I, Neptune, finally felt hydrated again.

And the next time someone swam up to me and told me that he was heading back.

Do I want to join him?

I said sure.

I, Neptune, was heading towards land.

 

V

When the announcement was made several years ago,

I was so glad that I was Neptune, that they didn’t call me Pluto. 

 

Pluto -- it was explained to me,

As we did one last pour to celebrate everyone’s long journey home –

A time where we were finally forced to understand the meaning of yet another cliché

Pluto is the name of a dog.  

Obamacare and the end of Medicare

 

Since I am a bundle of pre-existing conditions, I feel like I have a great big stake in the success of Obamacare. What scares me is that the Supreme Court will declare Obamacare unconstitutional because it places too much of a burden on state governments trying to administer Medicaid. I fear that the Supreme Court will find large parts of both Obamacare and Medicare unconstitutional, as an overreach of enumerated powers and the Commerce Clause.

I find it hard to believe that the Supreme Court is going to strike down Obamacare simply on the basis of the individual mandate. I can't believe the Supreme Court would do all that work on striking down Obamacare only to leave the door open for true "single payer" socialized medicine the next time the Democrats controls Congress and the Presidency.

My wishful thinking is that the Supreme Court will rest on this politically unpopular, but Constitutionally defensible argument (from a conservative standpoint) --- Romneycare good -- Obamacare bad.

My biggest fear is that this Supreme Court will throw themselves in the political thicket in a major way. The Court would say that Obamacare and Medicare and Medicaid are basically unconstituional. They would then go on to say that the only way to wind down the government's involvement in health insurance is to adopt the Ryan Plan, which grandfathers in healthcare for the older, whiter population, and leaves the younger hispanic and asian populations to pay for something that they will never get. I feel so cynical writing all this. But I just wanted to be on the record that the possibility exists that the Supreme Court will issue another Dred Scott like decision on Monday, and blow away decades and decades of how we think things work.

From what I am reading other people engaged in wishful thinking hope that either (a) Justice Kennedy will uphold Obamacare rather than blow up all the prior precedent, or (b) Chief Justice Roberts will uphold Obamacare under the more cynical calculation that at the end of the day no one in Washington really wants more power to go to the states. Chief Justice Roberts may also surprise us and admit that Obamacare is a political question, best left for the political branches to decide.

Saturday -- the Day before Hurricane Irene

That whole day Saturday
I felt like the second little pig.

I knew there was something else I had to do.
But I didn’t quite know what it was.
And I don’t think I would have had the time to do it anyway.

I worked very hard to live in a secure home.
But had I really done it?
Or did I have a house of wood?
Like the second little pig.

My favorite American –
I even live in a building called the “Abraham Lincoln” –
Was born in a log cabin – a small house of wood.
But of course, by the time the President was my age, he was living in a slightly fancier place in Washington.
Maybe I should seek out another place to live.
A little late for that now.

*****

I was already out of town. On Thursday, we left Cape May --- a few hours before the Governor gave the evacuation order. In case of a hurricane, I told my 5-year old daughter, I’d rather that we be at home amongst our own toys. We heard the Governor on the radio after we were over the Outerbridge Crossing and while we were stuck on the 440. “Don’t just react,” he told us, in the same tone taken by countless gym teachers I had ignored, “Don’t just react. Think.”

A little late for that now.

I was already back in the City that Never Sleeps.

By the time I thought. By the time I realized that the Third Little Pig had probably gone off to Cleveland to sit out the hurricane, Amtrak was sold out. Or maybe he had gone off to the Riviera. The Riviera was a little expensive, but perhaps I could get to London. Or even Chicago.

A little late for that now.

The City that Never Sleeps had shut everything down and turned off the lights.

So here I am, the Second Little Pig, in his wood house, wondering just how big the Big Bad Wolf might turn out to be.

*****

I did everything the Office of Emergency Management told me I should do:

(I’ll skip most of these details, you’ve been through all this yourselves.)

We made “go bags” – in case the wind blew in the windows, the rain flooded the building (as it has before) or the lights went out. We made “go” bags in case we had to go -- quickly in the middle of the night. Like Grandpa leaving Russia in the middle of the First World War.

Instead of feeling adult and heroic for preparing so well, it feels as if the very act of preparation is an admission of defeat. As if I am creating the circumstances that will lead to losing my home.

*****

Maybe if I do nothing.
Maybe if I tempt fate to come and get me.
Maybe fate will get shy and huff and puff
And blow down something else.


But first I fill the bathtub.

The Civil War Must Be Fought In Every Generation --- 14th Amendment Edition

My friends at the exciting new blog American-Rattlesnake want us to stay open to the idea of repealing the 14th Amendment.

That just raises the hair on my neck.

I responded:

The reason the 14th Amendment had to be enacted was because the United States had already experienced a situation where there was no birthright citizenship. That situation was called slavery.

The purpose of the 14th Amendment is to avoid the creation of a permanent underclass in this country that would have no ability to exercise their freedom. Over time, this permanent underclass would depress wages, depress rights, and drag everyone else's wages and freedoms down the drain as well.

That understanding is a big reason why so many Northerners willingly died during the Civil War to give freedom to a certain group of people, despite the fact that hardly any Northerners in the 1860s considered that group of people to be their true equals.

The 14th Amendment, as finally written into the Constitution, has nothing to do with immigration. I don't know how people can say that the Constitution is really about the things that got voted down during debate. I don't know how so many people (not necessarily your particular post, but certainly great swatches of the Tea Party movement, purported spokesmen for the Republican Party, and even the current Chief Justice) can act as if America's story is only about what the Revolutionary founders wanted, or how the Revolutionary founders might have reacted to events in the 21st Century. Equal attention, and perhaps greater attention has to be given to Abraham Lincoln, what happened during the Civil War, and what it continues to mean today.

Obviously I cannot prove this, but it seems to me that repealing the 14th Amendment or even implementing laws enforcing a strong guest worker program, would ultimately lead to the reintroduction of some form of slavery into the United States. That result is far worse than any immigration problem we have currently or will ever have.

Reading At The Gazebo in Oceanside -- July 30, 2007

Thanks Tony for arranging my reading last night at the Gazebo in Oceanside . It's a great place to be on a summer night.

I read lead-off, which is fine when your number 2 hitter is a published novelist, your number three hitter is a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and your clean-up hitter was a Poet Laureate of Suffolk County (for you non-New Yorkers, Fire Island and the Hamptons are in Suffolk County)

I read Talking Endocarditis Blues and Heart In My Hand, below.

I sang Cow Valve Blues, and accompanied myself on the harp. I've never played the harmonica before. No one was fooled.

I skipped "Hyperlink on the Footnote on Prayer", but I include it here.

*****

TALKING ENDOCARDITIS BLUES

WE LIVE AT THE BOTTOM OFTHE FOREST HILL
ON WEEKDAY MORNINGS
I WALK UP IT TILL
I GET TO THE BOULEVARD OF DEATH ON TOP

WHERE THERE’S A SUBWAY STOP

LATELY THE WALK FEELS MORE LIKE A CLIMB
I LEAVE THE CO-OP SOONER;
CAUSE I NEED MORE TIME
TO STOP EN ROUTE --
STRIKE UP CHATS WITH THE SENIORS
BETWEEN EACH WHEEZE
AND SOMETIMES GRABBING MY KNEES

I MUST BE GETTING FAT
IF I WATCHED MY DIET
IF I TOOK A PILL
IF I COULD LOSE THAT WEIGHT
I’D GET UP FOREST HILL

IN THE MEANTIME,
I TAKE THE EXPRESS BUS

DOOR TO DOOR SERVICE
JUST THE DRIVER AND ME

ITS MUCH MORE PRICEY
AND ITS SLOWER TOO

***


SOMETIMES IT FEELS LIKE THE WORLD IS SPINNING
ROTATING CLOCKWISE
AT THE BEGINNING
LIKE AN ELECTRON’S SWOOPING PATH AROUND

I MUST BE SOLID ON THE GROUND

SOME DAYS I CAN STAND HARD ON MY FEET
OR HOLD UP A CON ED POLE
IF I NEED TO TAKE A SEAT
I FIND A SEAT
ON THE FLOOR OF THE F TRAIN
IT’S NOT THE GIN
I’M JUST WAITING FOR THE SPIN

TO GO COUNTER CLOCKWISE

I FIND A SPOT ON WHICH
TO FIX MY GAZE
WHEN I CAN HOLD MY FOCUS
I CAN SLOW IT DOWN
NEXT TIME I’LL TAKE THE BUS

IN THE MEANTIME,
SLOW RIDE PHILOSOPHY

9 TO 5 ONLY
BUT IT COULD GET VERY LONELY

WHEN THE JONES ARE HOT
AND I AM NOT

THE BIGGER PAYCHECK
ALSO STRESSES ME OUT

***

IT’S MORE FUN WHEN YOU ARE A HYPOCHONDRIAC
WITH PHANTOM AILMENTS
THE ROOM IS MOVING
AT LEAST I’M NOT DRIVING ANYWHERE

I’M PLANTED IN MY OFFICE CHAIR

QUICK! MY BELLY’S AN OLD FRANKLIN STOVE
MY TORSO’S SWELLING
ORANGE ORANGE RED RED
RED RED RED RED
THE FLAMES JUMP BEHIND MY EYES
SPINNING CEASES
THE PAIN IN MY HEAD INCREASES

IT CAN NOT GO AWAY

I FIND A SPOT ON WHICH
TO FIX MY GAZE
THE ROOM’S STOPPED SPINNING
IT CAN NOT GO AWAY
I’M WET AS A SWIMMER
IT CAN NOT GO AWAY

IN THE MEANTIME,
LUCKY WHEN HAILING A CAB

WHERE ARE YOU GOING
SOMEWHERE OVER THE BRIDGE

IF I FALL ASLEEP ON YOU
PLEASE TAKE ME TO

DON’T KNOW WHAT I SAID*
BUT I WOKE UP IN MY BED

IT CAN NOT GO AWAY

(c)Bruce G. Grossberg. All rights reserved.


*Hyperlink to the Footnote on Prayer

It was at this point that I sat in the back of the cab and prayed.

There is a version of these Endocarditis Blues where I say the prayer out for you.

The prayer rhymed in the original, in the back of the cab. I think. I’d like to think.

And it would rhyme for you if I said it out loud here and now.

It rhymed like a Hallmark Card.
And the phrasing may give you insulin shock.

I would never have said the prayer had I not been exposed to the Jesus Prayer, which I will not repeat here either.

I am not a Christian, but I like just about everything in the Jesus Prayer.

I am not a Christian, so I do not know of the Jesus Prayer because of anything having to do with Christianity.

I know of the Jesus Prayer because it is one of the subjects of Franny and Zooey -- the J.D. Salinger book.

I used to do the end of Zooey as an audition piece, Act for God, Zooey tells Franny, what can be prettier?

Don’t you wish you related to your siblings like Franny and Zooey do?

Aren’t you glad that there are people in the world who understand you who are not your siblings?

And Psalm 115 as well.
And Psalm 115.
The prayer in the back of the cab would have been impossible without Psalm 115.
I didn’t realize that until the next Seder, some months later. After my hospital stay.

I knew that something in the Hallel was calling me.
I knew that while I was in the hospital I would discuss Psalm 120 with the people, the reverends, the priests and the rabbis who would come to do the bikkur cholim. Not in droves, but often enough.

But in the cab. In my own personal limbo, it was that mixture of the sentiment of the Jesus Prayer and Prayer 115 that I used.

God, hasn’t everyone around me suffered enough?

And besides, think of how bad You would look if someone as talented and pretty as me was allowed to slip away?

Only I didn’t say it like that. I was not writing on the computer at the time.

And I have not prayed that much since

(c) Bruce G. Grossberg. All rights reserved

******

Heart In My Hand

Pieces of vegetation
Broke off my heart valve

As if my heart was a fence between me and the world

As if my heart valve was the gate by which I let people in

As if the gage opened so rarely that vegetation

Like so many heavy wet leaves

Had settled on the valves

As if the force of seeing you

Seeing you every time as if I had never seen you before

As if I had never experienced seeing you in your straw hat and your summer dress

Walking into coffee shop on that busy busy Continental Avenue on that Friday that August

Instantly turning the whole storefront into a sunny April afternoon in the cherry blossoms.

As if my heart was not already open after all this time with you.
Still

There had to be

More

The times we are engaged in requires

More

Open

More

Open

As if the force of that extra open sesame against that last set of

Heaviest

Soggiest

Mustiest

Leaves and mushrooms caused everything surrounding the valve to

EXPLODE

Vegetation to go into my blood stream
Vegetation to lodge in my brain
Vegetation to cloud my vision
Vegetation to corrode my valves

Can they stabilize the deterioration of my valve so that it does not splinter into my brain like the vegetation?

Could I survive that?

Can they get me to have the operation Now?

In my semi-blind state
Can’t I see
What might happen to me
If I don’t act Now?

But then,
In the hospital ward
In the semi-public hospital room
Lying next to the coughing stage manager.
Sunday morning.
Early February.
Skeletal staff.
Those who draw the short straw.

I feel a bump in my hand.

This, I say, is not vegetation
This, I say, is an actual piece of
My heart coming into my hand.

My heart in my hand
So that you come to see me

I can touch you with a piece of my heart.

(c) Bruce G. Grossberg. All rights reserved.

COW VALVE BLUES

I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
MY HEART JUST AIN’T THE SAME
I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
I’M BACK IN THE GAME
I’M A BIONIC SUPERHERO
I’M TAKING DOWN NAMES

I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
I CRAVE GRASS MORE AND MORE
I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
IS THERE A FARM WHERE I CAN SCORE?
MY BODY’S PRIME
BUT IT’S NOW HUNGRY
LIKE ITS NEVER BEEN BEFORE

I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
I’M ADJUSTING TO THE CHANGE
I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
LEGAL DRUGS ALL THROUGH MY VEINS
I GOT MORE VICODEN THAN RITE AID
AND EVERYBODY KNOWS MY NAME

THE LORD HAS PUNISHED ME SO
BUT HE DID NOT LEAVE ME TO DIE
THE LORD HAS PUNISHED ME SO
BUT HE DID NOT LEAVE ME TO DIE
THIS IS THE DAY THAT THE LORD’S MADE
REJOICE
BE GLAD
DON’T CRY

I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
AND A SCAR TO MARK THE SPOT
I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
MY LIFE KEEPS MOO-VING IN AND OUT
I’M A BIONIC SUPERHERO
D’YA WANNA KNOW WHAT THAT’S ABOUT?

I HAD AN ACHIN IN MY CHEST
THOUGHT IT WAS ALL BECAUSE OF YOU
I HAD AN ACHIN IN MY CHEST
CAUSE OF THE PETTY THINGS WE DO
ME AND YOU
WHEN DOC SAID
“THE HEART IS BROKEN”
YOU CAME AROUND TO SEE ME THROUGH

I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
MY HEART JUST AIN’T THE SAME
I GOT A COW VALVE IN MY CHEST
MY HEART JUST AIN’T THE SAME
I’M A BIONIC SUPERHERO
I’M BACK IN THE GAME

(c) Bruce G. Grossberg. All rights reserved.

"That Points Clearly To A Political Career"

I hate to kill David Brooks , but he can be so disappointing.

He tries to bash Al Gore as a "Vulcan", apparently for spending 200 pages in his new book, saying essentially, the "medium is the message."

Brooks complains:

"Some great philosopher should write a book about people — and there are many of them — who flee from discussions of substance and try to turn them into discussions of process. Utterly at a loss when asked to talk about virtue and justice, they try to shift attention to technology and methods of communication. They imagine that by altering machines they can alter the fundamentals of behavior, or at least avoid the dark thickets of human nature."

David --- asked and answered

George Bernard Shaw -- Major Barbara


UNDERSHAFT. It is settled that you do not ask for the succession to the cannon business.

STEPHEN. I hope it is settled that I repudiate the cannon business.

UNDERSHAFT. Come, come! dont be so devilishly sulky: it's boyish. Freedom should be generous. Besides, I owe you a fair start in life in exchange for disinheriting you ... Well, come! is there anything you know or care for?

STEPHEN (rising and looking at him steadily). I know the difference between right and wrong.

UNDERSHAFT (hugely tickled). You dont say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, youre a genius, a master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

STEPHEN (keeping his temper with difficulty). You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright (he sits down angrily).

UNDERSHAFT. Oh, thats everybody's birthright. Look at poor little Jenny Hill, the Salvation lassie! she would think you were laughing at her if you asked her to stand up in the street and teach grammar or geography or mathematics or even drawingroom dancing; but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people. You cant tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You darent handle high explosives; but youre all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! what a world!

LADY BRITOMART (uneasily). What do you think he had better do, Andrew?

UNDERSHAFT. Oh, just what he wants to do. He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

"Those Who Would Give Up Essential Liberty To Purchase A Little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

I didn't get to my Harvard Law School Reunion, but I did want to add my support to my classmates' An Open Letter To Alberto Gonzales in today's Washington Post.

"As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this Administration’s consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear. Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when faced with a President who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down
a dangerous path."

"Your country and your President are in dire need of an attorney who will do the tough job of providing independent counsel, especially when the advice runs counter to political expediency. Now more than ever, our country needs a President, and an Attorney General, who remember the apt observation attributed to Benjamin Franklin:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

We call on you and the President to relent from this reckless path,and begin to restore respect for the rule of law we all learned to love many years ago."