BY JAN HAAG
POETRY
+
ESSAYS + MUSIC
+
TRAVEL +
FICTION
+
TEXTILE
ART
INTRODUCTION
+
HAAG'S BIO
CENTURY Xs FOR THE 2001 POEMS
#01
03-04-01 and
10-09-01 commentary*
X
Today is my Brother's birthday. Art thou thy brother's keeper?
He is
70, a vegetable, a slow, still animated vegetable. He can say "Yes,"
he
can say "No." He eats, sleeps, watches television.
He had a stroke
when he was younger than I
am now. Happy Birthday,
Brother.
Today, in addition, begins a new Poem Series -- rather, a Dual
Poem
Series, maybe more than one Dual
Series.
Today, I start the Z People Biographies.
But they take NET
research,
which I cannot do at home.
So each Z Person may take several days
--
maybe longer.
*(Through a mistake, I never got to the second Z
person.
The mistake was so amusing, who needed to go on?)
To preserve my sanity,
I need to write at least
one poem each
day.
Simultaneously with the Biographical
Z people sketches,
I'll
do
the Xs. Do them all.
All, that is, that inhabit my
Century
Dictionary. However, it's hard to
tell
how many all is.
*(I never got started)
Skipping X, itself,
and Xantippe,
the other eleven topping the
alphabetical X s are derived
from Greek "yellow. " The question is:
Are they the same -- belonging in one poem?
Or are they
different? That was the great question
when I was picking
foraminifera: Are they the same or different?
Sameness/difference may be the magna/summa
along the obstacle course
of the human race.
Yellow is appropriate for my brother.
Of
three, I was
the youngest and pink, my sister was middle
and
blue,
so there was only yellow left for Con, the eldest. How
they got
assigned in reverse chronology I do not know.
*(Pink is the most
choosable of all colors.
Blue and yellow are facts of life.)
Con
was
always a little out of it,
odder than me,
and certainly a whole magnitude different
than my normal sister --
who
now
tends him devotedly.
So the stroke may have been a
blessing.
He got to stop trying to fit into a world that has no place for him.
Anyway, the Xs:
It's the 24th letter of the English alphabet.
It denotes an unknown quantity, person or thing.
It's an
electromagnetic disturbance.
You see people, the Xs, strolling the streets
of Seattle or (by now)
any other town or country lane, talking
-- maybe to Kuala Lampur,
Paris, Urumqui, Angkor Wat -- surely distributing
atmospheric
electricity of some kind
-- a student radiating from UW's Red Square
to a student in Moscow's
Red Square beside the Kremlin.
It was always difficult to be present in one's own life.
Now it's
possible for "friends" to walk along,
one talking to Peru, the other
to Afghanistan.
When they part they say:
"See ya!"
With ears occupied elsewhere, they "See ya."
They do not speak to
each
other.
One wonders if they wonder where they are.
X
also
means ten. But the Romans couldn't do it --
math and higher
technology
-- with their cumbersome, elegantly
carvable, complex numerals. So,
along with a bit of Islam,
the West adopted Arabic numerals.
Look
where it's got us!
Also, it tells right there, under X2 , how
Christmas got
to
be Xmas, and Christian (though I
have never seen this one) got to be
Xtian.
Guess!
Via the Greek, of course, from their X which
was
Chi,
rendered in English as Ch.
So here we begin running with the Chi's
with an introduction longer
than any poem will be
-- except maybe X number 2
which will
deal
with eleven jaundiced Xs
*(it never got written),
including
xanthopsia, which means seeing everything tinged
yellow.
More of The 2001 Poems
Copyright © 2002 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jjhaag@gmail.com
BY JAN HAAG
POETRY
+
MUSIC +
ESSAYS
+ TRAVEL +
FICTION
+
TEXTILE
ART
INTRODUCTION
+
HAAG'S BIO