December 16: Alone Time, Alice Fulton, "Where Are the Stars Pristine"

Yes, it's creeping closer and closer to the holy night and day of church and presents and family and food.  I am trying not to get caught up in the normal Christmas crush, trying to enjoy some quiet moments.  It's not really working for me at the moment.

I will eventually find that space in my mind.  Not today.

Saint Marty is thankful today for a few minutes of quiet, alone time.  In the bathroom.

Where Are the Stars Pristine

by:  Alice Fulton

Everyone's spending Christmas Eve adrift

in the corporal skirmish, mixing

up the darks with the lights, fending

with elbows and dirty

looks. Wet wool and down

crowd the air. Where are the stars, pristine

as great ideas? Behind clouds

the heavens saturate

with luminous dust, shuttles wearing halos

of earthdirt, light pollution

from jets fired to keep things

on course. Boys rickrack a ball off

floor and ceiling past the table

tree bubbling with giveaway

ornaments from Burger King and lights

that manage an occasional

lackadaisical flash. Showstoppers: everyone

looks every time and keeps looking

to make sure it happened.

The double frontloaders are going

like abstract TVs. And the program is important:

all about the boggling sullied

lives we'd like to hide.

But this is no place

to do so, where known

and unknown perverts come

to pirate underpants and the innocent

clutch their Cheer and Shout.

The rules are posted: only the toughest

habiliments, the superego

of raiment can take such agitation.

And only the poor are invited to endure

the sneezy powders and clean resentment.

Imagine a museum installation—

200 hypnotic washers stuffed with somersaulting

cloth. Critics could rise to the challenge,

their statements settling like coats

of gold and silver

chain mail over each machine:

"These Speed Queen pieces thrust ahead of art-

for-art's sake to confront us

with a realism of socio-political

magnitude. The vortex-like movement

of pattern, color, and texture infuses

these works with an abundance of unconscious

bliss. The soft forms

circulate with vigor

across the screens. The viewer

is not privy

to the cause of dirt

though one is witness to the dirt's

ablutions. The point is

we are not impeccable."

Everyone would be happy

to know that! And so we're forced to

scoop and pour

a fine white empathy over

the hairy flannels, snaggy nylons,

the glass front that gives

forth this light

industry, the silly tree

and jingles about blue and white

Christmases, chestnuts, sleighbells,

just as snow settles

on every unsequestered thing:

from blistered gum -

ball machines, clumsy bumpers,

crepuscular theaters with sticky floors,

to ramshackle mansions

choked with smiling

china animals where light shakes itself out

from TVs and old women

frail as walking sticks

sweep their stoops at eight a.m.

Just as snow makes the less than impeccable

classical, stroking the merely

drab or passing, quickly or slowly,

so we can count only on its

leaving, teaching

liquidity

to what seems solid.