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Fever Unto and
Like the Night-Quinn Tyler Jackson
The Regenerating Element for Genius by Dr. Greg A. Grove
Fever Unto and Like the
Night
by
Quinn Tyler Jackson
Copyright © 2001 by Quinn Tyler Jackson
As November night kissed the cool campus
grass of Bellmoor College, Lilith slid her thigh high stockings to their
apex, readying herself for another night of clubbing. Her short, velvet
skirt slipped on nicely over her smooth legs, past the lace tops of the
stockings, onto her lithe buttocks. She looked in the mirror. There were
no lines on the velvet, thanks to the thong. Soon, she was ready to go.
She didn't really want to go out, but she was bored, and the dancing would
take her down from the hours of espresso high and post-thesis jitters.
At the door of her dorm, she decided to
check her email one last time before heading out. She left the door open,
went to her computer, and leaned over the keyboard. There was a message
from one of her professors. "Last minute poetry reading. Thought you
might enjoy it. The Hall, tonight." Although it didn't say who would
be reading, Lilith decided on the spot to go to the reading and skip the
dancing, since she knew Professor Radler wouldn't have emailed her if he
didn't think the reading mattered to her. She was dressed to kill, not to
sit at a reading, but not wanting to miss something more interesting than
dancing, she continued straight out the door.
After a half-mile drive and a two minute
walk, she was at the Hall. She caught sight of Professor Radler and
approached him. She felt a bit awkward as Radler gave her a quick going
over with his eyes, but considering how she was dressed for the occasion,
she forgave him and just relaxed her body and her mind and decided to not
let that bother her. "I got your email just as I was heading out the
door," she told him. "Who's reading tonight?"
"Cohen Benjamin," he finally
replied. "You cited his novel in your thesis, actually."
"I thought you said it was a poetry
reading," Lilith returned, glancing around at the people to see if
there was anyone in the crowd she didn't recognize. She recognized most of
them, and the ones she didn't did not have the look of a guest.
"His poetry collection just came
out. He hasn't pigeonholed himself into post-modern fiction." Radler
opened his briefcase and handed her a thick book.
"Why the short notice? I don't
usually miss a beat with these readings." She flipped through the
pages of the book, but didn't read the pages.
"He just emailed me from his hotel a
few days ago, actually. I talked him into staying for a few more days so I
could set this up. It should be a quiet, impromptu reading. Nothing fancy,
no fanfare."
Lilith noticed that there were not as
many people about as there might have been had the event been more widely
announced. This made her a bit more comfortable than she might have been
otherwise, since she was dressed to dance, and a larger crowd would have
made her a bit self-conscious. She found a seat near the front, sat with
her legs crossed, and started to peruse the book Radler had given her a
little more closely. Before she could finish reading the first poem, she
turned to her right and saw, about ten feet away, a tall blonde man in a
red turtleneck and faded jeans was shaking hands and making the other
familiar gestures of small talk. His hair was out of place, hair flying
over his face as he nodded in agreement. He looked out of place enough to
be a guest.
Professor Radler, who was standing beside
this outsider, noticed Lilith was looking, and gestured for her to come
over. She uncrossed her legs, put the book down on the seat, and walked
over.
Without a word of introduction, the
scruffy blond gentleman offered his hand and said, "Pleased to meet
you, Lilith, I am Cohen." When her eyebrows lifted a bit, and he
immediately added, "Gordon told me your name, that's all, I
swear," with a smile.
"I was just mentioning to Cohen that
you cited Returning in your undergraduate thesis," Professor
Radler explained.
"Considering how recent the book
is," Cohen said, still smiling, "I'm honored to have gotten a
mention."
When their hands met, Lilith immediately
noticed how soft his touch was. He looked every bit a man, but his hands
were gentle and yielding.
Lilith knew that she had cited the novel
before having read it, but since she had read it afterwards, it didn't
really seem to matter, and she was at a loss for something to say. "I
keep returning to Returning," she then mumbled. Only once it
had left her lips did she realize what she had said and how awkward it
sounded.
"How's that for self-referential
small talk?" Cohen returned almost at once.
"Who ever heard of a Cohen
Benjamin?" Lilith asked. "Blond Jew with a backwards name?"
She noticed Radler's expression when she said this, and the thought that
he didn't approve made her heart pound faster from glee, rather than
apprehension.
"Well, my mother named me after
Leonard," Cohen explained. "Since she thought Leonard Cohen
Benjamin sounded off, she settled for just Cohen. And the milkman must
have been blond, I guess."
"I think it's time to begin the
reading, Ms. Pflaumbaum," Radler interrupted.
As Lilith returned to her seat, her heart
continued to pound, but now in anger at Professor Radler's brush off. She
hadn't sensed that she was a bother to Cohen Benjamin, but Radler's
specialty was eighteenth century literature, so even if he hadn't
been born with the condition, he had acquired through study a rolled up
dissertation up his ass and knew when and how to administer the cold
shoulder. She crossed her legs again, placed the book on her lap, and
stared at a spot on the wall until her eyes almost hurt.
Cohen stood before the room, messing a
few papers about, as if he was about to begin reading, but then pushed the
papers aside. After a short self-introduction, he cracked his knuckles,
and began with the last poem in the book, without lowering his eyes to
read:
The alones hone my bone
as the tones atone the groan
and sweat sits sundry
on the drone of the moan
xylophone.
Pin and needle, sin and cradle,
lost the laugh ladle of the
made parade charade
of little Bone Peep
has lost her sleep,
and doesn't know
or grow or woe wear
and tear or bare stare
to find them, grind them,
unwind them, do the
unkind spine brine
when, and then the Zen
nothing koan zone,
all alone, hot off the phone,
trying to stitch the switch
of the crotch watch notch.
Byron, Byron, walking
in stalking talking of the
beauty of the mid-flight, of
clamor-less eyes and stare
starry skies of all the fall of
what the gut is all that's good
and should of dark mark of
dark stark remark and plight.
Aspect and her rise, probably
wise lies' surmise, looking to
a prize, and then comes
the Fever.
It's a fever lever, the soul cleaver
remover of the hover of angel tears,
fears, careers, fakirs, queer quiet
quixotic, erotic, symbiotic,
Pan stoic hydrophobic.
Rabid reality at the chill door,
no more in store from the Shelley
of ratskeller hell and the smell of the fell
well of tell.
I am the syncopated cup, filled up,
one half neat complete half beat incomplete,
with a lip at the tip of the whip, unable unstable
to sip the drop drip of the zip chip quip.
Don't get funky, junky, rhythm with 'em,
hocus focus the locust in the worm
dorm storm of the forlorn, bending the
pretending unending crescending.
Yau tau now, aleph me, not just some
humble drum sum of me, lambda limb at the
quim of me, swim in and of and above
and of love prove grove bereft cleft
of me.
Hey, vow! Hey, Jude! Tear tracks on
the
gram, backwards, inwards, outwards,
forwards, after words, in thirds, fourths
sex fifth's avenue of revue the chain
chew spew tattoo to you too.
Fever chills and spills on the broken
token smoking choking window sills
of stills, pictures, tinctures, punctures.
Don't be such a stupid mother
function without
unction at the junction.
Blow slow the crow know zeta beta pi
why
franchise eyes of scat cat that surprised
supplies supply me as you fly me and buy me
another fevered pitch snatch of the latch
of the inter dementia null hatch.
Wolf in the gulf of the glyph myth
with pith when Rimbaud knew the slew
of two and eternity was the heat of
sweat yet regret net.
Fever, damn it, feel her, laud it,
want it,
flaunt it and in the moth modicum modal total
of the yau yodel:
Lemma tell yau, lemma smell the stale
now of no escrow endow.
Tear into the flack of the crack of
what went of my bent unspent back
with the hail nail, don't be a dour
nail, Ismael, holy grail entail at the
whine spine undead bread of the
needle and the bed thread.
Geez the wheeze and please release,
the lease
on your loose no longer stronger obtuse of
caboose abuse.
It's smoking broken!
But the fever still's stoking.
When Cohen was done the poem, Lilith
noticed that her knees were shaking. She also realized that for the entire
time he had been reciting "Fever," Cohen had been staring at
her, and she him. Somehow, she had lost track of this. When he was
finished the poem, however, she looked down at the ground and kicked away
an imaginary rock with her right foot. Why was her heart pounding?
After the reading was done, Cohen shook a
few more hands and went outside. Lilith followed him out, finding him in
the parking lot, smoking a cigarette.
"I sure wish smoking indoors were
allowed," he said to her upon seeing her.
"That poem sure smoked," she
replied, tapping her own pack. She placed the cigarette to her lips and
Cohen immediately produced a flaming lighter.
"Here, let me get that for you, if I
may," he said, waving the flame under the tip of her cigarette.
"So, Lilith, you say you liked 'Fever,' then?"
"It certainly jumped around a
lot," she replied, taking her first deep drag. "Caught a moment.
Several, actually."
"I wrote it in the throes of a
fever," he explained. He shook the ash from his cigarette by moving
his lips, rather than taking the cigarette from his mouth.
"Must have been some fever!"
Lilith wondered why she had followed him outside. "Say, why did you
run out of there so quickly after the reading? Need a smoke that
badly?"
"I'm not much of a hand shaker is
all," Cohen answered, rubbing his hands together as if they were
dirty. "Let's say we run before Radler arrives?" he suggested.
"Run where?"
"Wherever, just away from here a
while," Cohen returned.
It was then that Lilith realized how
Cohen had been speaking. "Do you always --"
"-- speak in blank iambic
pentameter?" he finished her question for her.
"It's absurd!" Lilith blurted
out.
"As is everything a poet
utters, when he is in one of those offbeat moods" Cohen Benjamin
replied, lighting another cigarette. He started to walk away, into the
night.
Lilith Pflaumbaum was not sure if she
should follow this madman into the night. She had, after all, only just
met him. Although she had cited his novel in her thesis, she hadn't read
it in its entirety, so she was not entirely sure she knew anything about
him or his art, let alone his character.
"Why should I follow you as you run
off to be away from the crowd?" she said loudly enough for him to
hear.
Cohen Benjamin did not turn around, but
simply continued walking. Soon, he had disappeared into the darkness.
Lilith's cigarette was finished, and when she checked her pack, she
realized that she had no more.
"Because my pack of smokes is still
half full," Cohen hollered back from the darkness, and then she knew
why she had to follow him.
Byron, Byron, walking
in stalking talking of the
beauty of the mid-flight, of
clamor-less eyes and stare
starry skies of all the fall of
what the gut is all that's good
and should of dark mark of
dark stark remark and plight.
The Regenerating Element for Genius
by Dr. Greg A. Grove
Whether at work or play most of us experience such frantic daily lives
that
something as simple as sitting still has become an alien, uncomfortable
experience. Even when attending church, silent moments last no
more than a
few seconds because that is all the worshippers can endure. The
regime of
our world has forced us to become strangers to ourselves in which we
spend
most of our lives trying to live outside ourselves.
Even a casual review of history reveals that silence was the
regenerating way
of life, a more natural way of living, for both saint and sage.
Hours were
spent by the fireplace or on a river bank. These were gentler life
rhythms
which have become lost to many of us, replaced by rush hour gridlock,
caffeine, and deadlines.
The demands on our minds require us to take responsibility for the
welfare of
our inner selves because no one else can do it for us. What is the
use of
caring for the outer self if the inner self has become dark, mildewed,
and
full of cobwebs? Furthermore it is through silence that we find
our true
service to humanity. Through silence we ignite imagination and
stir
creativity, ultimately finding our true humanity for significant service
to
the world around us. Without silence and its regenerating effects
we bring
no peace and no love to anyone else unless we have spent time finding
these
states within us.
Whether at work or play we are called to pause, to rest, to find inner
fulfillment in the silence that can be ours if we only seek it and
embrace
it. Time spent in silence--a renewed and revived spirit--is never
time
wasted. It is, as the old adage goes, "time well-spent."
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