Poems by F Pollack

Nightbox

You enter. Heads turn; voices 
stop, then resume, lower. 
A clot of bikers looking to co-opt 
the premises cry delightedly, “A citizen! 
Let’s light him up and piss him out.” 
(I stole that from R. Crumb, so 
am no more virtuous than others here.) 

You sit at the bar. The barkeep, 
who appears a patient of Dr. Moreau, 
growls, “We don’t want no trouble.” 
“Are you sure?” you ask. “The dull psychotic 
eyes behind me suggest otherwise. 
It’s I who want peace, a pilgrim of 
the world’s night, seeking 

in holes like this the grace of survival. 
Note how my voice rises, as if quoting 
hysterics.” “That’s as may be,” says the beast. 
“But there are those who say that every 
nature must express itself, all 
punishment is condign, and that 
no good road leads to maturity.”

Head

It’s clear to you by now that I was 
the sort of chap who hangs around 
museums rather than 
bars, fights, or the track. 
But if it’s clear why say it? Why say it 
in any case? (See Sloterdijk 
on masochist profundity.) The only 
dignity it has, rather wan,  
is lent by the past tense. What does 
it profit a man to clarify his soul 
but lose any chance of popularity? 

What am I doing, thought the carved 
obsidian head, among these hulking brutes? 
It meant the totem poles,  
Vancouver’s prize holdings. Its eyes,  
half-closed, were turned away; 
a menace that would outlast 
Vancouver came 
from the cheekbones, the lips tightened 
against life. There are objects 
that go beyond sculpture into power. 
Of these you need no photo or postcard; 
once they have you they keep you.