Scoplaw

Poem

And who shall be touched by you?

Who shall break their habit?

Will it be the god of perhaps-miracles

ascending into certainty?

The unmoveable humans whose ears,

soft enough, hear only past wrongs?

Poem

Words are heaped like leaves
around our bed, on which
there is no verb for how we touch,
nor clever, ancient noun to name
the space which flows over
your shoulder, collarbone, throat.

Poem

Notes on Form

Our lives have form they allow.
Thus, the shape of a woman
walking toward us, but hazed
by light or time.  She
raises her hand, open. 
We might name her hope,
love, or wife, mother, future.

In my dream the dead boy
lives. He sits at a table,
his hair grown past his collar.
I watch as his form smokes
into nothingness.

In early winter light,
leafless trees allow eyes
to slip by them.  The lines
of the mysterious house
on the hill grow firm
and distant.

The language I speak
is flushed with the heat
of private meaning.  Someone's
mouth shapes "choice"
and "loss" while I hear "sparrow"
and "winter water."

Poem

One must argue for

something: beautiful: sunlight

flicks sparrow shadows in

clear air, along the prison wall.

Such argument is labor: work: to love,

to know what one loves,

is because of

that which can never be loved.

Defender Dipshittery

Today I interviewed with a PD which prides itself on the high quality of its work and I was completely annoyed and disappointed.  The interview went something like this:

Q: So, it looks like you’re in the Georgetown Criminal Justice Clinic.  That means you didn’t go to Harvard or Yale.

A: Um.  Yes.

Q: I see a lot of recent environmental interest on your resume.  You’re obviously not interested in Criminal Law.

A: Nonwithstanding the fact that the environmental “interest” as indicated by my “resume” is a) longstanding by any measure and b) shouldn’t be used to draw broad inferences about me, I was wondering if you’d consider that over half of my elective credits have a direct bearing on Criminal Law could –possibly- indicate some interest?

Q: No.

Q: You don’t have a lot of volunteer activities and I see you’ve taken a string of paying jobs in depressed areas of the country.  Exactly how large is your trust fund?

A: Mea Culpa.  I have indeed soiled my hands with labor to feed myself and those whom I care for.  And I can’t even play squash.

Q: So you have clients – what are they charged with?

A: I have one client at this time, and the charge is X.

Q: (interest sharpens) So you’ll press for a jury trial?

A: The decision is ultimately my client’s and I’d like to give him more than one option.

Q: You’re afraid!  I knew it, you’re afraid to go to trial!

A:  Um.  No. 

So on. So forth.  There were some particularly cute moments.  I said I was interested in the intersection between local legal culture and legal decisions (meaning that just because you *can* do something procedurally does not mean that it’s *wise* to do it procedurally given factors like the judge’s personality, the prosecutor’s approach, etc.), particularly in that we’d have to rely on the opinions of other attorneys to make that kind of analysis, and not on our own experiences.  To me that’s intriguing, potentially problematic.  To them, a sign I should get a job doing statistical analysis of court decisions instead of defending. 

**
Now, one would think there’s a way to demarcate “probing” questions from “stupid and pointless” questions.  Which there is.  And since I’m not really of the opinion that a trust fund or Ivy education lowers the IQ automatically, there’s probably a considered reason why PD offices try the swinging dick approach to interviewing candidates they know little or nothing about.  Perhaps it makes them feel like prosecutors and/or they get to externalize and thus “win” conversations they’ve previously “lost” with family, friends, and the ghost of Bill O’Reily.   Or it’s professional hazing.

Oh wait – there’s another reason.  In reality this is a clever tactic (one that really isn’t at all absolutely immediately transparent in the moment, really) designed to frustrate the usual conventions of polite discourse and elicit a response that indicates. . .that indicates. . .that indicates. . .

Yes – that’s where it breaks down.  That indicates what exactly?  It’s a selector – but what it is selecting for?   And does it actually do what it’s designed to do?

I doubt it.  Even not knowing the goal, I doubt it highly.  In reality the “conversation” isn’t about an exchange of factual information or an exploration of personhood so much as it just shows up the interview/interviewee power structure which is a mirror of the sadistic “Socratic method.”  You simply turn the conversation again and again from an insulated position of power, not for edification, but out of laziness.  You coerce the other participant into adopting a tone of emotional reaction that you, as the interviewer, think is appropriate.  All in all it’s pretty disgusting, lazy, demeaning to both parties, and embodies everything I hate about law school. 

The best part is imagining these people, who so obviously ate up the process with a spoon, as having the integrity to defend the very poor.  Which I've certainly been at points in my life.  Seriously.

**

Addendum - within the past 8 hours, I've been told 3 similar stories concerning this and other years.  Apparently this is part for the course there and generates a lot of resentment and bewilderment.

Poem

Mezzo Cammin

I am surrounded
by the beautiful
and willfully blind
curiosities of humans. 

Those I set free
will tomorrow be prisoned.
And no one
rises from the earth.

And consolation? -- some word
for the fierceness
which grows by,
which settles into,
each pain and loss?

How can I still
be entirely filled by rage,
and by love,
be filled entirely?

Poem

The Flower of the Grass

Is not the third movement or the crescendo,
where the skill of months, years, shows
itself, is translated to air, to ear,
where you know it's peaked, is passing.
Instead, as argued, often,
the first movement, or the last,
or the walk to the concert hall,
before even the frisson of each instrument
seeking to balance itself, despite others.  Even before that.
Or after.  Any day of well-health,
or if not that, any day, no matter
that you might have done something better,
more worthy of yourself.  No matter
that you’ve been foolish, confused, that
at any time, you could have said “no”
at any time, said “yes.”  Or even accepted.
Regardless, this is the flower of the grass,
the moment ignored on the way to elsewhere,
the face unseen, or looked through,
as you remember or dream another.
This is the flower of the grass, regardless; 
the easy breathing afternoon,
the day which falls and passes
as the day is.  As the day must do.

Poem

Love Poem Absent the Beloved

who is, of course, not in the poem,
despite the poet writing:
hands and hair, lips kiss collarbone,
fingers press against back arch
and shoulder plane.  These are
the most inconsequential of orders
or arguments.   Powerless against 
that which causes the loss of hands:
the die stamper (class ring
didn’t save fingers), car-crash,
the plain-old not-getting-it-done-anymore.

Powerless to stop the loss of hair: from the field
of the poem, the poet’s mouth – so let hair
signify nothing, the empty set, or worse,
the lessened-nearly-but-not-beyond-itself: hapless
as cut tufts underfoot, or so incrementally thinned
only time or distance lets one see, lapsed,
how awfully fast it is all passing into shadow,
nothingness – it, also not in the poem, which is
what the sum meaning of your saying
grows toward, most fully fleshed and realized,
the arc bounding.  Be it, then, enough? 
Enough to say? – beloved, Be Loved 
by the small ministries of spring air
on your skin, no matter what the skin encloses,
no matter what crowns you,
no matter the answer to the worst riddle:

Cut hair and live, pierce or bleed or bend or break
and live, lose digits, limbs,
lose sex, eyes, forget dates and names,
family, history, future, love, forget all
but pain, then forget pain,
and live as yourself, still, how? 

And yes your fine hair
on my shoulder, and yes your hand
delicately curled around the spring-sprung sprigs,
the smallest of visible greens. And yes your mouth
quirking full with language. And yes,
and yes, beloved, even absent, even absent these. 
Absent these and more.

Coda - I asked Seth Abramson to post some poetry on his blog, new and recent work specifically, since neither of us have had many poems recently.  He responded with this promising poem, so I, in turn, post up my draft of this poem, having run into my artificial posting deadline, and after leaving my ususal kind of foul-mouthed homage on his blog. 

This one is totally in process right now - so any thoughts/comments/explications by the curious are very welcome (Although I stress I am not fishing for comments!!)

I will now attempt to get my sound card working, which might result in my computer becoming an inert lump of plastic.  We'll see.  Grr.  Static demons + Laptop = Silence. 

Poem

After the Epiphany

Of course, you must
go on; the door closes behind you,
you grab the mail, stuff it in your bag, continue
the walk to work which has not changed.
And then. There
is the perfect composition – a tangle
of winter-browned kudzu, a child’s lost doll,
and the sparrow, amid her sheltering leaves,
head tilted inquiringly at you. 
Very much like. 
And then.
The world puts her complex arms about you,
her slight weight and pressure,
and, of course, you must go on.

Poem

The Long Ride

So the feet drive the crank which winds the chain
which stirs the wheel to motion, the wheel shaped
by mind, the feet heart-driven, for mile and mile
of slow looping toe roll, of heel-jerk, jag-sprint,
of weight through chest into arms, back holding
neck and head which is pounds of skull and wet gray
subordinate to eye, to the hand’s grip and shift,
to the not-thought of the body’s throb and breath,
to the cycle and crank and creak of knee and shoulder,
the tears deep within tissue opening or closing – who knows
until one or the other happens, on any tenth revolution
forgotten by the eleventh, or looking forward, how impossible
to imagine counting each stroke-to-be, one to ten thousand,
or as sprint and plod and glide and crest and descend,
such motion, over and over, across day into night,
folded into one why-less ride that your body might tire
as tires your thought, excepting that which drives you,
excepting life, excepting whatever keeps you sharp across
the hurtling metal bodies, each stamped death, each
slick turn marked burn which cannot be seen
until you’re inside it, each thing which says, “see me
wrong and I’ll break you, numb you,” which is
cautious fear, which says time ticks down,
and not everything fits in, in here: the esoterica
of philosophy as science, as driving the mind
to question ever more abstrusely; whatever rhetoric
divorced from power (with which it might tremble nations,
tumble regime onto regime); question by presence
the drive of the ride itself, by presence question
the why, the furious fueling of the body, its join
and split of cells, until the power of moving through
the world seems unable to change it, and here,
this is the first turning, when the wheel quavers
beneath you, shifting toward home, close, the known, or
further on, on further, through the glorious system of motion,
too complex to hold at once in head; each spinning part,
each particle passed over, each stress and force
which measures, is measurable, and which is,
like all things in fullest, necessarily thought
in abeyance, save that which comes on you suddenly,
the scent of your sweat’s salts, the complex chemicals
of garlic working through you, the touch of the breath of air
on your lashes, the crease of the glove into the skin
of your wrist – that these be powerful, the truth
in things, of things, and for them you live, for them,
the pole-stars, the guides toward the deeper whole
understanding, the promised main which is against
death and forgetting and simple not-caring, against that
which might lull you, drift you into what you are not,
as said, as expressed by doing, by the turn and turn,
by whatever internalized forces, whichever memories,
too numerous to list, to hold in mind, the deaths
of a thousand beings to fuel you, grimly on,
on into your passage, which you must dismiss,
saying, yes the heart, your heart, my heart had, has,
is, flat broke, and still, still, still - there is whatever hope
that keeps you on, whatever turn keeps you upright
going, forward turning, on and outward, beyond.