Mark Z Danielewski

by House Of Leaves (pdf)

  Pelican's Pen

  A jinx of ink,

  Lo the star! All is chance, nothing planned—

  only the will these words command.

  — For Marek. Warsaw. July 7,1988

  Pelican's Juvenile Metempsychosis

  Will you steal from this blind man When I would give you all?

  I stumbled when I saw, but Gloucester was never this far gone.

  I see feelingly and at this height there is only so much fall.

  Alex brought him back with a light tap on the glass and then lighting a match,

  "Romeo or is it Lear tonight?"

  — Left at another Warsaw cafe. July 8,1988

  Pelican's Cocktail Mythology

  Three muse

  over an elegant ruse concerning a lingual wall which only I can pass

  over.

  Their eyes are beautiful

  and plans wild

  and laughter unconcerned.

  "You're at it again" "Yes, on a high sea wall, yes at it again."

  — For a beautiful three at a Warsaw hostel. July 8, 1988

  Pelican's Religious Ruminations

  One forgets that one is one.

  I must try to

  remember this.

  — [illegible] Warsaw. July 9,1988

  Pelican's Promontory Dance

  Hyperion curls

  have you consulted

  the plans for these whirls?

  We seldom know the pattern, though that never matters, not if you know the notes.

  I've forgotten. I can't hear.

  — On behalf of a Warsaw Lady who showed me I couldn't dance. July 10,1988

  Pelican Misunderstanding a Portentous Sign

  Future pens

  and wars with feathered knights, The drumming thunder, the azured lights, rising in these eyes.

  Do you hear?

  "It's Patter Sir. He's in the back, knocking at the gate."

  And the warlord's fatter (Pelican's cat) mewing for his milk, And all now is thunder for the lightning has passed.

  — For Anna. Krakow. July 10,1988

  Pelican's Worrisome Wake

  A semiotic Eliotic dream with Proust bumbling around unread —an intuitive guess commands awake.

  Sledgehammer harmony played deceptively right in this non cadence.

  "They've taken the beat away"

  And Patter and Quisling said she'd raise the union from the sea and be Hawthorne bread.

  This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but an alarm clock.

  The mewer lands with a comforting glance:

  There now you know this game.

  — For Zbyszek. Poland. July 15, 1988

  On the Lining Brim of Being Brow Shy

  In a rage of questions again

  this preponderance over a dumb show

  and Quisling and Easle peckering

  it out over their own

  running conversation,

  he found this at Petitgas 1857

  in the lock of a heart

  and a disabled cardboard box.

  There's the chance of the thing. There's the design.

  "Fashion I believe is only right when meant for the right time."

  — For the owner of the Petitgas hat store. Copenhagen. July 20, 1988

  The Still Concordance of a Summertime Memory or Gaze—Whatever You Will

  Easle, clairvoyant, intruding with rapacious gab harkens nevertheless with a pique ear

  on Pelican's semanteme arrangement:

  It's a colored chord

  (not necessarily a mauve word)

  "A flute piping on a Hamburg corner and tarnished slightly too."

  Pelican admires the gate of the idea

  and as Easle passes by he forwards a hand-

  There, it should be there." And he knows that that will hold for at least a little while.

  — For Katharina the flute player. Hamburg. July 22, 1988

  The Present 1815 Calamity of Conscience

  Rise the brobdingnag to the Lion's ballpawed fair where,

  if all accords to plan Warlord Waterloo will claw the hem with grace.

  "I trembled at the sound of footsteps, my conscience turned aghast:

  Melonbrick returning?"

  Stavishly amok running at the mouth: Pelican thinks

  ce champ sinistre ... la fuite des giants.

  Come now cats and mice will play

  (and scamper exceedingly loud down the hall)

  Infidels of thought

  blinder than, O yes much much blinder than bats.

  — For Said in Bruxelles. July 25, 1988

  Melonology On A Melon

  Is this melon right Pelican demanded of himself. Indeed it seems to hold the curve, seems right in the palm (How would Easle read?)

  It reminds me of sorry days in Spain.

  Funny they didn't have melons there.

  — Written on a melon. Paris. July 26, 1988

  When Unguarded Thoughts Returned Over Breakfast

  —He needs to eat and so opens the fridge to retrieve

  along with bread a brick of butter.

  — [illegible], Paris. July 26, 1988

  Pelican Transpires By His Cup of Tea and Decides to Try His Hand at Conjuring

  Is the ambiance of style elegant ambivalence?

  "There" sighed Patter and Pelican felt an easing away.

  He relished the thought He turned over the thought He gave it up,

  and in an evening dress she appeared behind his closing eyes.

  — For Lucy in Carcassonne. August 3, 1988

  An Elegant Prancing of an Indolent Pale Over Revision

  Ragged and towed in a misfortunate step,

  torn to a spindoll in returning a [illegible] [illegible] the alteration:

  "Grammatical metempsychosis" [illegible]

  though Pelican claims he saw more through that [illegible] behind the matador's cape.

  — For Becky after a bullfight in Madrid. August 7, 1988

  The Stave Principle in Regards to Pelican's Principles—Or Something Like That

  A criminal's attention is Stave's at hand gestures

  for intimidation when it comes to questions of personal and inter personal balance.

  "I've gone to the edge and found I could do more than just peer over."

  And he blinks like Waterloo (slowly now) while ahead of the game Pelican wonders if he could think that way.

  If he could relish closure. Does Stave stall?

  Is tomorrow's wonder

  only yesterday's remembrance? Pelican discovers himself annoyed.

  — Left at the Peraz Hostel in Madrid. August 11.1988

  The Ploy That Put Syllabic Stress Differentiation Over art

  Pelican stuttered

  for stuttering is the

  hindrance of speech

  and Pelican stuttered on purpose

  because that's what he wanted to do

  —to hinder.

  "You're a wretch" Easle said, placing a hair on her palm.

  Stave felt completely annoyed by the intention.

  Pelican continued on and in between enjoyments he fragmented letters like he fragmented his friend's sense.

  — For Stefan in Toledo.

  August 11,1988

  October's Tapestry Sale

  Perhaps there's the stitch potential to consider —

  Quisling's adjournment (which follows) reflects his invariant gate

  —from Pelican's perspective you understand.

  "Get to the remount and head south and settle east."

  Quisling loses himself with a compass, a fault of antiquated polarities when he was young.

  Pelican shreds away at it all. But it's nothing new.

  Quisling is history's name.

  — For strangers met on a train to Nice. July 26, 1988

  The Wednesday Which Pelican Mistook to be a Sunday and Caused Easle to Lose her Cards

  Amuck in annular thoughts reminiscent
of mango tree roots—

  "Are these circular?" "They are from my angle"

  and mango tree roots sound—

  Pelican confounds his own imagination

  by trying transubstantiation on the evening sea tide

  rising inside his morning cup.

  Easle throws her tarots and with hanging men and a spotted moon up in the air

  commands a Taxi uptown. The driver grins a la St. John.

  "O Pelican

  (portentously or pre-replete) —the turning forms what, a bird, a plane, no... the paraclete?"

  — Sent to [illegible], August 1,1988

  Pelican's Ratiocination of Erring Recurrence in Correspondence He Just Left Behind

  With forgetful ease the forgotten tease of shapeless days pass by

  and I feel them hesitate sometimes

  and whisper their concordance of slight gestures in glass.

  They are mine

  and drift still with the irregularity of wine and doors in constructed mythologies of evening reflections long since gone by.

  — For Johanna in Rome.

  August 14, 1988

  A Singing Lesson When Beethoven Came to Stroll

  The colors steal a glimpse of praise and subdue orchestrated humor with tropes.

  "1 have forgotten to read."

  Easle is annoyed with the tricode stitching on a courtesan's hem—the outlay see.

  "And when I learned to read again what I read wasn't what I'd read before."

  Pelican's not listening, only watching the pastoral

  unfold in shades of plaid.

  — For a Dutch girl wearing a

  Fransican cross who spoke Italian with a southern accent. She gave me a sandwich on a train to Brindisi. August 15,1988

  When the Excavation Proffered up a Pause and at Twenty To the Angel Passed Right By

  Here in the scape of trumpeters poised before a curfew of miracles we collide into a communal tonic of words, of silence.

  "Well" and she said more than well, but this is the getting around, the circling Bacchanal in four time.

  The wine has dropped to the cloth:

  one season two seasons three reasons

  (There is not time enough to count

  all

  the

  way)

  sounds the chorus sounds Pelican

  sounds the notes that brought a wall of conversation tumbling down.

  — For Claire. Paxos, Greece. August 20, 1988

  The Parable (I)

  It's fortunate

  you laughed because I would have lost my way.

  These are the notes recorded These are the lines reflecting

  what one evening had to say to another.

  "I walk, see

  and 1 believe a gentleman passes by

  and what catches my eye are his cufflinks.

  He is my brother. He is my father." This, a Pelican inmate declared, is the way.

  — For a Captain. Greece. August 23, 1988

  The Reason (II)

  Your place is secured. So the promise. So Jacob's death. But the line hasn't decided your name.

  Skip. Skip. Dally-ho. Esau.

  "Sold" cried the blackfaced man with a tarnished gavel, and two men went forth to retrieve what Pelican deemed to be the ugliest phonograph he'd ever seen.

  "It's an Edison" And so it was.

  And so that name also had something to do with currents —right?

  — For the Captain's wife. Greece. August 23, 1988

  The Lie (III)

  Heavy, heavy blues are absinthe for me tonight.

  "It's the notes and the black and white photographs with tattered edges that go together so well —Don't you think so?— with brass."

  "You're lost."

  "I know."

  "Again."

  "Again."

  Putting out his hat Pelican catches a coin and delights in the fact that it's not brass but gold:

  could be turned into a cufflink or could be used to buy something.

  Though to tell you the truth there never really was any coin nor for that matter a hat.

  — For Spiros and Tatiana. Greece. August 23,1988

  Human light gone from Human light at dawn

  Does pain

  always human bolt the door, misunderstanding

  the difference between untouched nerves and hollowness?

  Perhaps, for instance, Pelican's afraid.

  (it happens)

  The matter he claims is that there's no one "for all to see no one"

  can't see can't hear can't find

  But I still can feel this, all of this,

  like an ulcer in the gut.

  — For a waitress in Athens. August 25, 1988

  The Price of the Tenement having to do with Previous Questions having to do with Residence.

  The complaint had to do with whether or not Pelican was a uxorious man.

  "As if that were a question that played by the rules of today."

  "And what," inquired a fiendish Stave, seeking perhaps to catch a contradiction. "What are those?"

  Yesterday's fools for historical fiction who rent my palms.

  But there is always renting and ravings

  and various degrees to saving and Pelican knows

  he never really rented. He just bought outright.

  — For a young French woman. Mycenae, Greece. August 28, 1988

  The Inner Whisper of Breezes Brushing over Fields of Color

  The catechism followed a violent protest which followed the innocent expression of a wandering idea.