LUX'S I TOLD YOU SOs

Thomas Lux fairly much defies description, combining the plain speak of dilligent journalism and the eloquence of an other wise taciturn poet who will use an word or a phrase that takes a contrary turn other than where you expect it to go. He is the Poet of Unintended Results, a story teller very much in the John Cheever mode where the omniscient narrator begins yarns of folks with ambitions, intentions, desires for all manner of things making their way through their routines, only to have them interrupted and , as a consequence, find themselves to the larger world ,with what were once nuances and pesky inconviences of fact now looming over them in a crazy state of I-Told-You-So.

RENDER, REND

Boil it down: feet, skin, gristle,

bones, vertebrae, heart muscle, boil

it down, skim, and boil

again, dreams, history, add them and boil

again, boil and skim

in closed cauldrons, boil your horse, his hooves,

the runned-over dog you loved, the girl

by the pencil sharpener

who looked at you, looked away,

boil that for hours, render it

down, take more from the top as more settles to the bottom,

the heavier, the denser, throw in ache

and sperm, and a bead

of sweat that slid from your armpit to your waist

as you sat stiff-backed before a test, turn up

the fire, boil and skim, boil

some more, add a fever

and the virus that blinded an eye, now’s the time

to add guilt and fear, throw

logs on the fire, coal, gasoline, throw

two goldfish in the pot (their swim bladders

used for “clearing”), boil and boil, render

it down and distill,

concentrate

that for which there is no

other use at all, boil it down, down,

then stir it with rosewater, that

which is now one dense, fatty, scented red essence

which you smear on your lips

and go forth

to plant as many kisses upon the world

as the world can bear!

This is a poet who witnesses human experience and of life itself as process that goes on regardless of the fine personal and community philosophies we've written for ourselves to abide by. Life is a raw force that will continue to pulse, change, destroy and create anew regardless of how well can describe it. We can describe life's circumstances, we cannot control them. But there is heart in Lux's work, a sympathy, that sense of the struggle of humanity trying to create meaning in a world that defies logic and yet remains a species that continues to dress the world in a wonderful cosmology of expectations. There is wit, dark humor, tenderness, a wonderfully terse lyricism in Lux's finest writing.