Chapbook of Poems for Morton Feldman

Spell to Ward Off Copyright Infringement

Humming from the awning, some techno song
says nothing in French. The ash tree decays
and Mort's alive again—light splayed
across the narrow Jersey sunset, a long
strip of orange fragrant with what I'm on.
Lost at sea, birdlessly amazed,
I watch the sky for ships, as if the day
had not departed already into song—
Trail of Death Stars, drag my body through
the meadow till I'm full of daffodil,
re-frame my eyes to match his glasses,
leave me face-up, underneath the spill
of sky, clothes torn, shucked and defenseless,
sick from my heart beating my body senseless.

Instructions for the Cover

A Charlie Brown Christmas—red curtain, wooden stage, Shroeder at the piano—the rest dancing. Cut Shroeder, add Feldman—the herringbone jacket, bangs and moony spectacles surrounding the one black eye stuck in the skull like a death-coin. Cut Lucy, add Cage—purple pants and dress shirt, jabbering an acrostic poem with his elbows on the piano lid. Cut Pigpen and add Merce—head thrown back, feet elevated, arms spread, the cloud of dirt a fog of cologne. Cut Charlie Brown. Cut Christmas.
 
*
 
"I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing" — Sergeant Shultz, Hogan's Heroes.
 
Shultz, like Feldman, weighed over 300 pounds. He was the show's buffoon. Shultz was played by John Banner, an Austrian Jew who escaped to America. The rest of his family was killed in a concentration camp. Hogan's Heroes is a comedy set in a World War II prisoner-of-war camp. Shultz's superior, Colonel Klink, was played by Werner Klemperer, the son of Otto Klemperer, the famous conductor. One of the running gags of the show is that Klink plays violin badly. Hogan's Heroes was voted one of the worst shows in the history of television.
 
*
 
You're in love with a woman who is not your wife. The photo on the cover is a forest in upstate New York. All you can see is your wife.
 
*
 
Morton Feldman, woven into a Turkish carpet. Put your nose to the cover, unfocus your eyes, then slowly move the book away. You'll see the score of String Quartet II. Move the book farther. All the poems in the book appear. Move farther. There is no book.

Crown of Sonnets for Morton Feldman

—Generously commissioned by the Royal Crown Cola Company
Life. It rots. On its own tree
no less. False promises of love and worse—
Rape. Murder. Peace
a word for something besides peace—
a moment, a break, the cool flavor
of a natural salve poured across the tongue—
fresh raspberries and cinnamon wavering
beneath the surface—breath into the lungs.
Let it slowly fill your chest, Lost Soul,
fallen like the rest of us from the garden's
uppermost branches, left for dead, then
saved and given music, food and drink—
this is the tradition in which we are found.
This is Morton Feldman. This is Royal Crown.
 
 
This is Royal Crown. This is you
beside the roar of the family hearth,
feet stockinged and propped on an ottoman,
pipe shoved comfortably into your mouth,
a beautiful woman, her legs bare
between the woven skin of a Scottish blanket
and the complex patterns of a Turkish rug,
her arm linked with yours, shoulder to shoulder.
Satisfied? Not quite! Now throw on some
music: Morton Feldman's Piano
and String Quartet—79 minutes
of shimmering near silence and woe—
Relax. Feel your heart's armor melt down.
Listen to Feldman! Drink Royal Crown!
 
 
Drink Royal Crown! Listen to Feldman!
Be born with him between the tumid bricks
of Queens as a midwife yells at him
to pick up the pace of his head-first exit,
this pair of scissors, he already knows,
is not his mother—everything moves too quickly.
Even sound, which for the last nine months
was hushed and gentle, pricks his head
in ways that make him long for a return
to liquid's deafness, the comfort we seek
whenever, thirsty from the sun's eternal
scrape, we stop by our local pharmacy
for that pop-equivalent to Morton's sound—
The Feldman-cola: the one with the Crown.
 
 
Drink Royal Crown! Listen to Feldman!
Walk with him through post-war Berlin;
fans asking for autographs on albums
as if he were that more recent Lennon
and not the Ringo Star of New York composers,
who cannot take a step in Germany
without feeling what kind of voices pool
beneath the paving stone. They scream at me
he says, and rides the tram staring at
the tracks, the wires tumescent with e-
lectricity, pine trees bleeding sap
and every guttural voice—though friendly—
calling up the faces of the drowned.
(This message brought to you respectfully.)
 
 
Buy Royal Crown! Listen to Feldman's
Projection I through V. Feel dumb? Confused?
No problem. If you have an extra grand,
our Feldman scholars will guide you through
all hundred and something compositions
in the privacy of your home with RC's
Feldman: It's Not an Inquisition! tapes.
Just call the number on your TV
and in four to six weeks we'll deliver
a PhD's worth of Feldman know-how
in fun, easy-to-listen-to slivers
that you can even time to your workouts.
Now who's aleatory music-bound?
You are, Feldman Expert! Thanks Royal Crown!
 
 
Thanks Royal Crown! And thanks Feldman
for all the moments on commuter trains
when Journey's Don't Stop Believing faded out
and nothingness seemed to take its place—
a cavernous auxiliary silence hidden
wondrously in your iPod, but no, the screen says
Rothko Chapel, downloaded last week
after reading a piece by some writer
from the New Yorker. The softness demands
you bend "like a hummingbird" to its flower,
the notes like words not written but embossed
on the heart's skin and flooded, though
you'd rather not work so hard for sound,
would rather eat, sleep, and drink Royal Crown.
 
 
Eat, drink, sleep under your own roof—
isn't that the dream the Feldmans had when
they sailed for Queens, fleeing the Soviets?
Their own brownstone, a factory for children's
clothes and all the hard-earned profits
under their mattress, not some party boss's?
The means to meet their grandson's demands
for private music lessons, his own grand
piano at twelve years old, a Steinway—
the name itself like Sinatra's mantra.
In America, we don't ask for help.
We sew our own pants; patent recipes
for delicious soft drinks fit for a king—
Feldman means freedom. We make freedom's drink.
 
 
So drink a Royal Crown for freedom's sake
and buy an album by Morton Feldman—
classical music from these United States
composed in defiant opposition
to left-wing, continental snobbery.
Music that embraces self-reliance,
self-invention, one God, indivisible
with justice and liberty for those souls
who crawl to His feet with a thirst to slake,
music that, like the Lord's, tolls quietly
needs no system, no puppet strings,
no two dollar words or avant-bureaucracy.
Just one man, obsessed with pure sound.
Listen to Morton Feldman. Drink Royal Crown.

Selected Discography of Morton Feldman

1945—Amateurishly boring
1950—Groundbreaking and boring
1951—Treacherously boring
1957—Strangely boring
1961—Hot and boring
1963—Melancholically boring
1964—Monumentally boring
1970—Sadly boring
1971—Almost not boring
1975—Technically boring
1976—Impressively boring
1977—Bleak and boring
1978—Intricately boring
1981—You can't be serious—it's really this boring?
1982—Career-making and boring
1983—Takes forever and it's boring
1985—Romantically boring
1986—I can't believe it's still boring
1986—Sensuously boring
1987—Has words but is boring

Poems about Concentration for People Who Can't Concentrate

Imagine a deer in headlights.
Loop that image.
Now imagine watching the loop.
 
 
You're at your desk.
You can't concentrate.
Imagine if not concentrating
was concentrating.
 
 
That time you took drugs
and thought a piece of tin foil stapled to the wall
was a fish tank. But why
was there a piece of tin foil stapled to the wall?
 
 
Two people, naked, in a gondola
suspended over Mt. Blanc.
Lightning strikes the tower, shorting the wires.
Wind and snow shake the gondola.
The two people are you
and your infant daughter.
 
 
You're trying to think about your child
but you keep thinking about yourself.
Imagine you're the child.
 
 
Imagine you're a gondola in a blizzard.
Imagine the blizzard is inside the gondola.
Let go of the wire.

Intro to Feldman

As if he had been dipped in sleep, upside-down.
 
As if sight were measured by the thickness of one's glasses and light
projected a different film inside his mind than the one we got on our flight.
 
As if he didn't believe in sentences
arrived at except by magnified study in low light, on piano lids,
after multiple false guesses and trips to Turkey for metaphors,
after he'd already questioned the pre-conditions for before
 
and found them preposterous, hanging thinly
like the last thread of pastrami on rye.
 
Can we take a break for pastrami on rye?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
He weighed 300 pounds.
He wrote music, wore wrinkled suits—fedoras and jackets
pressed into service by the gravity of his puissance—
 
an atom of a man, orbited by long strands of attention
he's forever combing back into place.
He's my El Dorado, my Pee Wee's bicycle.
 
His face is the roadside billboard my mind constructs each morning above my desk,
mouth looming like a fossilized crack in the Western Wall of his head,
the short prayer I roll up and slip into a minute's quick measure
whenever I want the seconds to be counted, to matter.

Feldman at the Sock Hop

I'm a New Yorker, it's impossible for a New Yorker to be an elitist.
—Morton Feldman
          In all things, Arleen,
the rendition's what matters, paper lanterns
strung too low, a too-spiked punch bowl,
the threesome of freshman singing
The Orioles' "It's Too Soon to Know,"
my arm as it circumnavigates half-
way across your back and pulls you closer,
the view of the gold cross around your neck,
the moon asking permission from the gym
to glow, that Greek vacation your parents took,
their bedroom forbidden and cavernous,
the sound of buttons as they lose their grip,
how your tongue says, "You can't stay,"
          then seems to forget,
 
          how the sun arrives
with nowhere else to go, how carefully we strip
and wash the linen, sit naked on the balcony,
me smoking, you declaiming on the history
of the park, how the designer's death between
the plan's completion and the city's review
allowed his vision to pass untinkered with,
hence the view, hence why I remember how
the mulberries were planted to frame the lake
and shade the bathers resting on its edge,
hence why I remember how the berries tasted—
I picked a few on the way to the train—
like every hour of their making measured
          and compressed.

O, 1987

How you nested in the bones of '86
and ate your way out
with a fork and knife and a napkin
tucked into your Oxford,
not spilling a single day.
How you remarked on the service.
How you waited from the end
of the dock, the long, narrow dock
with boards missing and the wedding
party standing around under
the sun in linen suits with dead
flowers in their lapels, heads
upright and still, ingesting each
word from the priest's mouth like a petal.
How you came frozen and wrapped
in newspaper with one eye
locked on the moon on the morning
of New Year's Day. How you stunk
until the rain came, how you swam
into the air when the rain came
and left early through a hole in the sky
on the 4th of September
and for four months we sat year-less
on the beach, waiting.
But nothing came. Just 1988.

Haiku Inspired by the 46th Annual International Summer Courses in New Music, Darmstadt Germany

Blah blah blah blah blah
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Blah blah blah blah blah

Jesus Saves…Rebound…Brian Eno Scores!

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(Incomplete) Biography of Morton Feldman by John Cage

In 1926, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1927, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1928, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1929, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1930, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1931, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1932, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1933, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1934, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1935, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1936, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1937, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1938, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1939, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1940, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1941, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1942, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1943, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1944, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1945, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1946, I spoke to Feldman for .025 hours.
In 1947, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1948, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1949, I spoke to Feldman for .068 hours.
In 1950, I spoke to Feldman for 1,886 hours.
In 1951, I spoke to Feldman for 2,011 hours.
In 1952, I spoke to Feldman for 1,181 hours.
In 1953, I spoke to Feldman for 752 hours.
In 1954, I spoke to Feldman for 109 hours.
In 1955, I spoke to Feldman for 91 hours.
In 1956, I spoke to Feldman for 102 hours.
In 1957, I spoke to Feldman for 86 hours.
In 1958, I spoke to Feldman for 77 hours.
In 1959, I spoke to Feldman for 75 hours.
In 1960, I spoke to Feldman for 66 hours.
In 1961, I spoke to Feldman for 67 hours.
In 1962, I spoke to Feldman for 78 hours.
In 1963, I spoke to Feldman for 81 hours.
In 1964, I spoke to Feldman for 47 hours.
In 1965, I spoke to Feldman for 39 hours.
In 1966, I spoke to Feldman for 55 hours.
In 1967, I spoke to Feldman for 31 hours.
In 1968, I spoke to Feldman for 29 hours.
In 1969, I spoke to Feldman for 21 hours.
In 1970, I spoke to Feldman for 54 hours.
In 1971, I spoke to Feldman for 44 hours.
In 1972, I spoke to Feldman for 17 hours.
In 1973, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1974, I spoke to Feldman for 1 hour.
In 1975, I spoke to Feldman for 9 hours.
In 1976, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1977, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1978, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1979, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1980, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1981, I spoke to Feldman for 5 hours.
In 1982, I spoke to Feldman for 28 hours.
In 1983, I spoke to Feldman for 39 hours.
In 1984, I spoke to Feldman for 31 hours.
In 1985, I spoke to Feldman for 26 hours.
In 1986, I spoke to Feldman for 44 hours.
In 1987, I spoke to Feldman for 87 hours.
In 1988, I spoke to Feldman for 8,765 hours.
In 1989, I spoke to Feldman for 8,765 hours.
In 1990, I spoke to Feldman for 8,765 hours.
In 1991, I spoke to Feldman for 8,765 hours.
In 1992, I spoke to Feldman for 5,396 hours.
In 1993, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1994, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1995, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1996, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1997, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1998, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 1999, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2000, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2001, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2002, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2003, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2004, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2005, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2006, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2007, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2008, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2009, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.
In 2010, I spoke to Feldman for zero hours.

In the Future

All entrance exams contain four Morton Feldman questions:
 
1) List from most accessible to least accessible all 181 of Feldman's compositions
2) Name three people Feldman made love to
3) Hum Rothko Chapel
4) What does sound mean?
 
In the future,
  • All corporate jingles derive from Feldman
  • The beat of the human heart has been proven to be atonal
  • Before dinner, it is customary to read a Morton Feldman essay or two
  • The word "boredom" now means "a state of liminal ecstacy," as in "This sex that we're having on the edge of an Aegean cliff, Turkish heroin electrocuting our veins, is boring"
  • To express excitement or approval for the home team at sporting events, the crowd goes silent
  • Jazz has been declared silly
  • The French are derided as hopelessly narrow-minded
  • Density of conversation, as in talking too much when one is talking, and then making no sounds at all when one is not talking, is considered a hallmark of genius
  • Anecdotes are traded on the stock exchange, where Feldman anecdotes remain the most valuable. Like this one,
 
Feldman was dying in the hospital in Buffalo. The cancer had spread too quickly. Barbara was with him, and he was ready, he'd lived a full life, had no regrets. Only one thing was bothering him, the beep of the EKG machine. It sounds like something I would have written, he said. Can we turn it off? Play a record? But the record only brought greater attention. What if I hook one up to all my friends? But that was too expensive. By now, snow was falling into the window's dusk. Feldman took Barbara's hand. I know how to stop the beeping, he said. Then he did.

P. Scott Cunningham is the founder of the University of Wynwood, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing contemporary literature in Miami, and the director of O, Miami, a poetry project with the goal of every single person in Miami-Dade County encountering a poem during the month of April 2011. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Harvard Review, Court Green, Pool, Pure Francis, PANK, Abe’s Penny, Northville Review, Roanoke Review, Redivider, and elsewhere. A satirical piece of his appears in The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes (Vintage, 2009). A 2009 United States Artist Grant nominee, he co-created the zine factory Workshop Workshop at Design Miami 2009 with artists Jim Drain, Graham Hudson, and Keith McColluch and is the founding editor of Jai-Alai Magazine, an archive of Miami literature between the years 2011 and 2015. Cunningham has a B.A. in Religious Studies from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Florida International University. He lives in Miami, FL.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the following journals for previously publishing some of the poems in this chapbook.

PANK Magazine, "Poems About Concentration for People Who Can’t Concentrate"
Pure Francis, "Feldman at the Sock Hop"
Roanoke Review, "Intro to Feldman"

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Chapbook of Poems for Morton Feldman P. Scott Cunningham