Eric Paul Shaffer

October 29, 2014

“Valediction, on Arriving in a Distant Land” by Eric Paul ShafferPosted by

Eric Paul Shaffer

VALEDICTION, ON ARRIVING IN A DISTANT LAND

I am not one to travel with no destination. No city or continent
charms me with the vague glee of flight. Nor would I go alone,
for every day, we wake warmth to warmth, your breath in my ear,

my hand on your thigh. Yesterday, the planet bowed before us,
and cool distance clarified a curve measurable in miles, in feet
pacing dutifully through the world. I’ve crossed deserts and seas,

rivers and peaks from which the waters flow, the sun westering
and a moon pierced by sky while morning melts into noon. All
space intensifies, blue, absolute, definite and dismal, magnified

by our finite human measures when we mark our roads with signs
and lines and lights that regulate. Even now, with old mountains
at my back and a thin river lost in a valley of dust, I am with you.

The rays from stars cascade through darkness limitless and lit
too little. Light is slow beside the speed with which my thoughts
turn to you. And no world is large enough to come between us.

—from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems

[download audio]

__________

Eric Paul Shaffer: “I love love poems, yet my theory is that the more love poems composed, the fewer good love poems there are. So I watch for and seek good ones. To no one’s surprise, the English Renaissance is a great place to look. I particularly admire Sir John Suckling, who had the courage to rhyme ‘heart’ with ‘fart’ (surely a telling match) and John Donne, a great master, whose compass in ‘A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning’ is magical. My poem is about arriving in my beloved town of Albuquerque without my beloved.”

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January 10, 2014

“The Word-Swallower” by Eric Paul ShafferPosted by

Eric Paul Shaffer

THE WORD-SWALLOWER

There is no charge for admission to the green, mildewed tent
staked slackly in an alley of the midway between a cotton candy
cart and ping-pong toss. Billed an attraction, the word-swallower

is not. Few come to observe him, seated on a steel, folding chair,
beneath a single spot in a vacant, shadowed, curtained room,
enshrined in silence. He swallows words. His silence is golden.

No matter how keen the verbiage rising to his tongue, no matter
how many edges on each unspoken word that comes to mind,

his tent is hushed but for the whispers of visitors who mark well
his silent line of lips. He answers no questions, retorts to no quip,
responds to no riposte, and his attendant dog-faced boy at the door

tells every dusty bumpkin a grim, dismal tale. Says the boy,
“If there were a king of the carnival, a lord of the boardwalk,

the word-swallower is not he. He hasn’t spoken since he learned
to talk. With no words for his wisdom, he speaks none.
Philosophers divide our sullen species from the other chimpanzees

          by the power of speech, but the word-swallower knows finer
and says naught on this or any other subject.” The word-swallower

denies nothing. He fears no loss in lack of speech. He keeps peace
battened like a castle under siege and guards an armory of lustrous
weapons best left beyond reach. From imaginary battlements, each

word slips behind the tongue, lies sunk in the gullet, plummets
to the gut. Lips sealed, tongue unbitten, his thought hardens

beneath the red fist beating the bars of his chest and the bellows
burning breath into a world soundless and pointless without words.
At dusk, the word-swallower and dog-faced boy stroll into the hills

          of a trim town noisy with streetlit night. The boy barks.
The word-swallower strokes the curly fur on the boy’s ears,
creeping through charged darkness and the grandiloquence of stars.

—from Rattle #40, Summer 2013

[download audio]

__________

Eric Paul Shaffer: “I’m a great lover of carnivals, and my eye gravitates to stories about them. In one, as I read a list of performers, I misread ‘the sword-swallower,’ and the complete central image for the poem appeared full-blown before me. Luckily, the dog-faced boy arrived when I—understandably—needed someone to speak for the word-swallower. I’m a fan of serendipity, too.”

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November 1, 2010

“Officer, I Saw the Whole Thing” by Eric Paul ShafferPosted by

Eric Paul Shaffer

OFFICER, I SAW THE WHOLE THING

a rant for Lawrence and Albert and Lew

Officer, I saw the whole thing. I was standing there minding my own business, when the sky cracked open like a blue Easter egg, and suddenly, I saw it all
was made of atoms and molecules and elements bouncing around like the tiniest, infinitesimal, electron-microscopic drunks in the universe. Yes!

Officer, I saw the whole thing. I saw how every one of the six billion plus of us is just another one, not a carbon or a clone or a happy homogenized double half
of Mom and Dad, not another daughter or son in a long, boring line descending—and I do mean descending—from Adam and Eve.

No, Officer, I saw the whole thing. I saw every one of us as a miracle, each yet another one lovers groaning or giggling in the dark somewhere thought
they wanted, but nobody anywhere could have wanted or guessed or anticipated. Everybody is somebody nobody ever expected.

Officer, I saw the whole thing. Humans are just one little part of a big, blue watery world we call Earth—yes, 76% water, and we call it Earth!—and we’re the only ones
who snarl at every other living creature, “Hey, move over! You were here first, but we can think! We’re rational, you dumb animal! You can’t think! You don’t even count!”

Officer, I saw the whole thing. All the stars are suns, and light is a dream of darkness that touches nothing and goes nowhere, no matter how fast it travels through
icy emptiness, and I saw all of us made mostly of emptiness, more space than time, no matter how many watches I wear.

Officer, I saw the whole thing. I was standing on the corner of Busy and Pointless, and I was waiting for the light to change, when, as I said before, the sky split
like ovum cracked by a single sperm banging his head on the wall, and suddenly, there was everything hanging out for anyone to see.

And, Officer, I saw the whole thing. There were no fat doves to mistake for angels, and no white light, and no heavenly vox humana, and no streets paved
with solid gold, and no pearly gates, and no tunnel full of loco-motives charging me with one blind and blinding eye. No, there was nothing there at all.

Officer, I saw the whole thing, and yes, nothing was there! The universe as we know it is not known at all. It’s a candy shell of red or green or brown or darker brown
or yellow or even blue—What’s that missing color? Where’s the new hue?—with nothing inside but our broken, little hope that something might be in there.

Officer, I saw the whole thing. When a guy turned to me and said, “Everything happens for a reason,” I nearly screamed. My ears rang like school bells,
like church bells, like cow bells, like bicycle bells, like alarm bells, like somebody somewhere was talking stink about me.

Officer, I saw the whole thing right then, and I said “No!” to that fool and to the orange hand holding me back and the ceaseless flow of traffic and the starry sun
and the moony moon and the weeping stars and the grand cast of emptiness in all directions. “No,” I said, “everything does not happen for a reason!”

Officer, I saw the whole thing—I mean everything at once!—and I yelled, “No, everything happens because it can, and it does, and you just can’t stand it, can you?
Hell, you certainly can’t understand it! Nobody can. Reasons are for rear-view mirrors, and ‘Objects in mirror are SMALLER than they appear!’ A reason? Screw that!”

Officer, I saw the whole thing, and I shouted, “Keep your eyes on the road, you fool, and watch where the hell you’re going!” The universe is just an accident
waiting to happen. Wait! Waiting? No, it’s happening right now—as constant as the speed of light times arbitrary squared.

Officer, I saw the whole thing, and if light travels 186,282 miles a second, I see at the same speed, and I see every last person is a spectacular cloud of molecules
like a rainbow nebula, like BB’s in a box, and it’s a wonder every wonderful one of us doesn’t flash with lightning, boom with thunder, and burst with rain.

Officer, I saw the whole thing, and you were there, and I was there, and she was there, and he was there, and they were there, and everyone was there, and we were
all there, and we were all actually a real “we,” yet not one of us knew what anyone keeping an eye on the whole thing could easily see.

Officer, I saw the whole thing. Life is a live-music beer blast we all crashed wearing only our birthday suits. Life is a twenty-billion-year pile-up in thick fog
and darkness on a bridge over troubled nada—and not a tow-truck in sight. Life is only what we imagine, and why is that not enough?

Officer, I saw the whole thing. For one moment, the thing was whole, and then, it was gone. The concrete was beneath my feet, my head was still at the bottom
of the sky, and the exhaust was hot in my face. Horns were blaring, the sun was shining, and the rest of my life hung before me in the shape of my own breath.

Officer, I saw the whole thing, and it’s all over. Nothing to see here, folks; it’s all over now. Go about your business, people. Move along, move along now. Yes,
move along now because all I can see now is now. I came, I saw, I communicated. Yes, everything’s all over, and here I am again, and I’m here to say:

Officer, I saw the whole thing, and it was one sweet, intimate glance at the ultimate. Now, I’m back, and I’m glad I’m back, and I’m going straight to my house.
I’ll throw the front door open wide, walk in, and say, “Hello, sweetheart. Yes, it’s me. I’m home. Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you. Let me tell you about my day.”

—from Rattle #24, Winter 2005

__________

Eric Paul Shaffer: “‘Officer’ is the centerpiece of Lahaina Noon, poems written during my seven years on Maui. Living on a volcano two thousand miles from everywhere else demands an illusionless examination of how large and how small our world actually is. The island proves an appropriate place to employ the insights of second-millennium physics, chemistry, astronomy, and ecology in forging a more accurate perspective on our lives and the planet in the third millennium.”

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August 23, 2009

“Telephone Lines” by Eric Paul ShafferPosted by

Eric Paul Shaffer

TELEPHONE LINES

When the telephone first came to our upcountry farm in Kula,
there was only one wire. The numbers were a digit different,

but it was the same line. When anybody’s rang, ours rang
in the kitchen, and so rang the receivers in every other house.
No matter what somebody said, anybody could be listening,

and everybody knew it, so nobody ever said anything important
or personal on the phone. Phones were public, like a restroom

or a library is public. If the words were private, they were taken
outside or penned. Nobody ever called anybody for no reason,

and conversations were short. Before the telephone, we lived
alone where we couldn’t even see the neighbors’ lights at night,
but the wires shrunk the world. No longer was there anywhere

you knew anybody you couldn’t call anymore. So we called.
Whenever we picked up the phone, there were voices in the line.

—from Rattle #30, Winter 2008

__________

Eric Paul Shaffer:“Poetry is made best with the ear and the tongue, so everywhere I go, I listen for good lines. ‘Telephone Lines’ originated in overhearing two men discuss the good old days at an upcountry Maui hardware store. Instead of saying ‘voices on the line,’ one said, ‘voices in the line.’ Everything they said from that moment applied equally to telephones and poems. I plucked their words from the air, tossed in some of mine, and, leaning on the hood of my car, scrawled the poem on the back of an advertisement for gardening tools.”

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