Jody's Notes
Sometime early in my adolescence, I decided never to utter a cliché; always put it fresh (or not say it at all). I hadn't read Pound then; it was some view I'd picked up somehow or cobbled together that saying old stuff was bad for the brain. Years later, something else hit me as possibly fun to do, as something I wanted to try in poems. Use clichés deliberately, but twist them up in some way. It always caused trouble, my poems that did stuff like that. That's a cliché, someone would point out to me. (Which was puzzling: why didn't this person realize I knew this?) Yes? I'd say in response. And? I'd add. To signal that there had to be more to say about this. But most poets didn't think they had to say anything more, like using a cliché was by definition bad. Like you can't use certain materials in jewelry. No matter what. Or say that in front of certain people. Some poets even think certain words should always be avoided in poetry. Like "Grandma," or "supercilious," or "whatever."
Why isn't this as silly as saying?: certain colors. That color. It's never to be used in a painting. In art. Never never never.
Blueprints, by the way. There are no such things anymore, architects tell me. Some of them miss the blueprints they used to work with. So do I.
I republished this poem in The Lust for Blueprints, and took the title of the collection from that line in this poem. It wasn't my idea. I wanted to use "squashed winter in a box," a line from a different poem in that collection. But a friend of mine jumped up and down and castigated me (really! castigated me. Of all things) for thinking such a line would work as a title. He suggested The Lust for Blueprints instead. So I did. And up until this day (and tomorrow too, I bet) I have no idea if that was the right move.
Sex, the helpful grope, the lust for blueprints
exchanged in the heat of the moment.
Then a cigarette, leg dangling over the edge,
something new deep inside
whispering divide and conquer.
Fertility has its moments, it’s true.
Once we thought it necessary to cut
someone’s throat in a field,
leave the carcass for gods to eat.
No more such crude solutions: if
worse comes to worst, cloning is in,
the cell, sparked unnaturally,
the small litany of commands:
You be liver, you brain, drawing straws.
Admittedly, regardless of how
it gets started, they sometimes get it
wrong: a two-headed child, thoughtless to boot;
anyway, modesty forbids the yell of triumph ;
better, the unexpected gargle of shock,
the small realization that one
is being passed over while
simultaneously
there’s the dawn of oneself
inherited again from space
and time, reincarnated as
blend of image and pattern,
oneself there as river
in ocean, all of it flesh,
with its movement serene through time.
© 1997, 2001 Jody Azzouni