The Ghosts of Jay MillAr

by Jay Millar

  understands your poems, but thanks to you

  i now have more time

  to consider the artwork of the clouds.

  J.M.

  Prelude to a Perfectly Ordinary Dream

  lying in bed this morning

  light start wakes the window

  all present so it might hold the sight of the blood

  to see it pulse her neck is to see

  how the skin jumps

  absolutely alive in the memory

  these dreams

  every morning we stopped at the same restaurant for breakfast

  the same restaurant somewhere in the midwest

  until we knew we weren’t going anywhere

  driving a day at a time and arriving at the same place we left

  though the restaurant became a little more chaotic each morning

  not so it was uncomfortable, but so we could take the time to notice

  waitresses smashing into each other, flocks of dishes flying,

  one morning the cash register fell over and exploded

  random swizzle sticks from the bar shot randomly

  through the necks of people as they attempted to bite

  their raw bacon sandwiches

  we always ordered the same thing, ham and eggs,

  it was terrible, boring placenta and rubber tar,

  as though we were desperately hoping each day would move

  to a perfected level of chaos and since the world

  around us seemed destined to remain exactly the same

  but fall to pieces and us in the middle

  it was ridiculous, the calm bite on a fork that could not

  bother to complain about infinite possibilities

  but about food instead

  every day we left a smaller tip

  not because the service was bad

  we were growing more and more concerned

  about the monetary value of things

  where we were heading

  back in this light there comes a sigh

  a bodily shift to the blood a little faster

  Perfectly Ordinary Dream #o (March 19,1992)

  I met my wife in a photograph my father showed me.

  In it I am wearing full 1920s speakeasy regalia,

  complete with Doc Martens for the futuristic effect that was

  popular at the time, my trousers rolled up at the bottom,

  my hands in the pockets of my jacket

  and a green scarf around my neck.

  I face the camera with a broad grin.

  My wife is standing three or four feet away,

  turn’d sideways, (it is a landscape photo,

  taken on our trip to the mountains, none of which,

  amazingly, and thankfully, can be seen.

  The colours of the sky in the background are recognizable as clouds.

  The sun must be setting for the colours offer’d.)

  She is also wearing the aforementio’d uniform,

  however hers is more form-fitting, while mine, slightly oversiz’d

  makes me look broad shoulder’d and relaxed.

  She has a small elfin face and huge eyes, fawn-like

  in appearance, with a quick animation of the face

  hovering silently between a defiant pout and

  blonde blonde hair cut short against her skull

  bright enough to see by but not blinding.

  She had attitude and a beautiful ass.

  I recognized immediately how obviously in love we

  were obviously in love.

  My father showed me the photo because I had given it to him as a

  Christmas present a few years earlier when I had no money,

  could afford little else, and thought perhaps he would enjoy learning

  about his heritage. What better gift could there be?

  It’s sure funny how things come around.

  And I was soon to meet my wife in person at her mother’s house

  after the war. It was New Year’s Eve, I remember, and time

  was prepared to stand still. God, in retrospect it was beautiful

  when she came up the stairs from the sunken living room

  (all the rooms were in shifting panels of brown and accents of soft orange;

  the den contained curving plastic furniture against the wall

  on the shag carpeting, and the local tv station was on, flickering

  a news report about the little aliens). She looked about 14 and her

  hair was still golden, even after all that time. She was such a tiny creature,

  mayfly as in the photograph, and so happy to meet me, O! those eyes…

  How hopelessly in love we were, finally comfortable in the peace of

  one another’s iron grip after being forced apart for so many years.

  Let me tell you of how we were forced apart.

  During dinner we couldn’t stop casting glances across

  the table and laughing nervously. The duck was absolutely

  delicious, with an almost piscine appearance, and

  tasting of chocolate mousse. Afterward, on our way to the

  liquor store for provisions, from the back seat I heard

  her say a sad joke about the size of her breasts, but I

  didn’t mind. I knew in time I would come to love her self-

  destructive sense of humour. Picking her up at the

  passenger door I carried her across the parking lot. Wind

  blew all around us, shooting clouds back and forth, pushing the

  sun into a tiny ball of post-war boom and drinking songs.

  We didn’t even know each other, regardless of whether the air

  could actually disappear and dance menacingly across our

  line of sight. We were just looking at each other, there;

  and it was the happiest moment of our lives, all those eyes

  no more than a foot away from one another and looking in.

  Later we would come to realize (was it inside the liquor

  store, between the French reds and the cann’d beer?)

  that marriage is an art built on eye contact

  that cannot stop because the hold never does.

  Afterward we left the liquor store,

  walking through the automatic door as it slid open,

  bottles swinging and the presence of laughter, and on

  the other side of the door we were divorced by reality.

  Perfectly Ordinary Dream #1620 (August 17, 1925)

  The imagination could thrive in worse places of the world. It had become this particular newlywed couple’s best interest to spend whole days hiding in the most expensive bookstores in town. No one ever bothered them there, and they were free to hug and kiss in the most exciting ways between the shelves. Occasionally they would browse through a poetry volume or two, but they found them dull and vile. They preferred returning to each other’s company, perhaps foolishly over a blueberry muffin and apple juice at the snack counter. They were in love at each moment in the bookstore, happy to be holding hands and smiling, ignoring all the literature of the world. On one occasion, they both noticed Edward De Vere standing at one of the shelves, admiring one of his more recently published books. They exchanged a glance of concern. Both were wondering, as young couples might, why such a man would appear in this bookstore. Surely he was entirely out of place. In a room filled with characters dressed in the traditional neon colour’d garments of that country he seemed a parody of history wearing his sixteenth-century wool knickers and vest, the long ruffled Elizabethan coat and a pair of thin black leather shoes. Even his hairstyle added to his ridiculous costume. Somewhat longish, as though he were wearing a wig. It was tied at the back of his head with a velvet ribbon showing the weariness of age. The couple suddenly remembered the five dollars. They began to drift towards the door, shielding their faces as best they could with any available pamphlets, sticks, or newspapers. De Vere spotted them, however, and intercep
ted them in front of the store. He immediately demanded the return of his five dollars, exclaiming ‘how is one to eat if everyone is constantly removing his money from his person!? A man has to eat, or poetry is nothing!’ And he began slapping the young man about the face, though without any real violence, for when one is dealing with magic, violence can only be erotic. Despite this, the young man did in fact find himself growing somewhat annoyed, for De Vere squealed ‘Five Dollars!’ very loudly in a high-pitched voice for almost half an hour as he continued his assault. In a fit of exasperation, the young man suddenly tackled Edward De Vere about the waist and lifted him (he was so light, the young man thought) upon his shoulders. And much to the rage and hollering of the great poet, (‘five dollars! five dollars,..!’) the young man began to spin around and around on the sidewalk in front of the book-store. The scene is very quiet. It is only the young man and Edward De Vere. No one else dares to enter the picture. At last the constant spinning became too much for the young man, and De Vere was ejected from his shoulders, landing in a crumpled heap in the gutter of the street where he lay for some time, until a smile surfaced on his ragged face. Standing, he straightened his collar (for he wore no tie) gave many thanks to the young man for his hospitality, and bid him good-day.

  Perfectly Ordinary Dream #254 (February 20,1981)

  How sad the depression was. Yet, throughout it all, the 1930s were the light sparks of excitement rattling in his bones. All those decades riding the rails he never saw the poverty leave this world, and it was his conclusion that no one could survive it. He spent much of his time alone, speakeasy style, slipping from shadow to shadow along the night. His mind ready for anything, distracted by nothing, he was wearing the skirts of the past. The night so black it couldn’t possibly exist. On the other side of the alley there is an invisible wearing a brown down fill’d jacket and tie scrawling childlike words across a wall: ‘Mr P. Cob_ / BEWARE’. The word BEWARE written in such a delicate calligraphy that it looks indecipherable, but our hero is ready to imagine it says any-thing, anything at all. How sad it is, he thinks, that throughout this dark hull of a city people are covering up each other’s tracks. Painting over every artifact they can find in a quick attempt to claim it, to make it new and suitable to their own states of being. It all layers itself naturally, without any effort, and origin has no voice here. It is 1934 (it has been here for so long) and everyone is deep in the heart of a depression. Why does the rest of the world insist on becoming invisible at moments like these? Shaking his head at the invisible who is still writing, he cannot believe the mind could shut down on itself, cannot believe there is anything worth saying about meeting exactly where our darkness covers up the tracks. In an instant he is ten feet back, and the invisible has sketched a square which is, he decides, the same size as the building on which it has been drawn. It is all very shocking. In an instant he is thirty feet back and the building is the same size as the sketch it is drawn on. And inside the square, he has noticed, is says nothing at all. In an instant he is seventy feet back and the man, still writing, is gone. And nothing happened.

  Perfectly Ordinary Dream #18601 (July 9,1969)

  We might as well be dead, and happy, and alive. It was the greatest reading he would ever give and as a blessing she was present. O the beauty of a single red head! This, too, would come to be an historic occasion, for it was the only time she would see William Blake read to an audience. At least she thought it was him up there on the stage. It was hard to tell, the way he hunched over himself, not even bothering to face the audience (of which she was the only member), his long wispy hair falling like curtains over his face, as though they might rise at any moment and the play would begin again. A single table, centre stage, at which a man sits. A waitress appears (as though from nowhere) and takes the man’s order. When she turns, the man watches her hum swaying away to the bar, and smiles to himself (for there is no one else in the bar). He pulls a revolver from his coat pocket. At the exact moment she begins to pull his beer, he shoots himself in the head. The curtain falls. And William Blake remains hunch’d over his beer on the stage, reading his poems in the most clear, booming voice imaginable. It echoes around the empty room. There is not even a microphone. It is almost as though he does not wish his body to be present, only his voice. And she slowly begins to realize a most amazing sadness, she feels it bubbling up around the front of her skull: What sadness to have something to say, and no one who will listen. How sad and how beautiful the persistence, the sheer will to believe absolutely in what your mind can do. Another frothy beer appears on the table before her. No matter what brand she orders this same milky broth appears. Soap. Soap Milk. How strange, she thinks. Drunk out of her mind in the middle of the afternoon.

  Perfectly Ordinary Dream # 1867 (January 21,1932)

  Rimbaud was not only surprised that the man standing before him wanted to publish his writing so adamantly, but that he didn’t even recognize him as the author. ‘This is the finest writing I have EVER laid my eyes upon’, the man was saying (although he was of course speaking in French which is difficult to translate offhandedly). ‘I have arrived as quickly as I could in order to publish it’And he handed Rimbaud his favorite pieces of writing, one sheet at a time. Such were the many twists of fate he had experienced since he began working at the photocopy shop, and it was not the last. The author noticed that his publisher’s tastes did not exactly coincide with his own, as he chose to publish work that was more flowery and wigged-out (as he had referred to it in his journal) than the outrageously violent pieces Rimbaud preferred. ‘I wish to give copies of these to each one of my friends’said the man. ‘Please, if you are to help me’Rimbaud placed the pages into the machine and printed fifteen thousand copies on recycled paper, each one stapled at the top left hand corner, as the man requested. He did not bother to say anything, but thought to himself how ridiculous it is to print fifteen thousand copies of anything, let alone some rambling scraps of writing done in fits of loneliness or exultation. But it was all in a day’s work, he thought, and one must earn one’s living at the expense of ’les feux de la monde’. He wasn’t even pissed off that he had never given his consent to this man (was it a man? he wondered) to make free copies of his work to give to just anybody (’who knows who will read it?’ said his excited publisher several times over the hum of the machine) but then again, Rimbaud hadn’t bothered to get permission to write them either. At last the razor-sharp sound of the photocopier came to an end. In the dead silence that followed, Rimbaud handed the man his printing, took his money, and accepted one copy of his new book, for, as the man said, since they had done business together, they were now friends.

  Perfectly Ordinary Dream #1922 (December 12,1954)

  As a young man, Cravan worked in the hippest libraries

  in town, both serving drinks and as a kind of mental

  co-ordinator. He was quite there in the sense that he

  had become accustomed to his own happiness, content

  to be earning a living doing something he rather enjoyed

  for a change. Hiding in the dark corners of rooms fill’d

  with books and journals, he could read telepathically

  what and as he pleased, his feet resting upon a shelf, a

  pen scrawling leisurely across one page or another. It all

  depended upon who he felt like BEING at any given moment,

  Miles Davis or Ezra Pound, Patrick Cobain or Drum Nick

  the sailor. Just then, the fat man sitting behind a large

  wooden desk began to complain loudly. Cravan was

  apparently not doing his job satisfactorily, and, well,

  admitted the clerk with a certain flabbiness, was simply

  not very good at doing anything at all. ‘Fine!’ shouted

  Cravan at the top of his bowel’d lungs, at first thinking he

  would simply quit the job altogether, then thought the

  better of it, for what else could there be to do with one’
s

  life? ‘Here, sir, are your Maps!’ He slammed the rolls of

  paper onto the sweating man’s desk, scattering his charts

  and graphs, his pages and pages of accounted figures,

  everything flying into the air like so much dust. Throwing

  the lightest blow of his life to the man’s face. Not even

  capable of denting the grin, Cravan turned on his heel

  and disappeared into the darkness forever.

  Perfectly Ordinary Dream #1962 (September 17, 1985)

  The fall couldn’t even wake him up. Luckily,

  the movie followed him down… in Slow

  Motion. Easiest thing he ever done, ever.

  Imagine waking up so deep in the gut, cover’d with

  snow from the inside out but finding it warm. Then [JOHN

  imagine not waking up at all. There were so BERRYMAN…]

  many windows in the place when we moved there

  it was no wonder that he fell, no wonder he couldn’t

  revive at that last possible second. And they say if you

  die in a dream…

  The dull angles of that

  particular city were only dull, and grey, though

  often bright and tempting at that time of the year.

  We knew it as the slow motion of Hollywood and

  football games what wore them out. I mean everyone,

  not just the addicts. We could quite easily live in

  this room forever now. There is such a nice view.

  Only a little blood on the ankle, sticking out of the

  broken windshield. And that’s downstairs. It’s so

  fucking wonderful to follow the angels through an

  open window, man, you float about three feet above them

  all the way down. Facing the dopey expression

  on these poets’ faces can only be a parody of the great

  literature of the world; it’s just a little joke. Just

  look at the great literature of the world. And at his hair

  rustling in the wind, so vain in its attempt to be the air.

  And the stillness of which is the world’s greatest