Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Ron Padgett's Mortal Combat (Commonplace Book)

You can't tell yourself not to think
of the English muffin because that's what
you just did, and now the idea
of the English muffin has moved
to your salivary glands and caused
a ruckus. But I am more powerful
than you, salivary glands, stronger
than you, idea, and able to leap
over you, thoughts that keep coming
like an invading army trying to pull
me away from who I am. I am
a squinty old fool stooped over
his keyboard having an anxiety attack
over an English muffin! And
that's the way I like it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lovely piece of writing. I wonder why the Ultimate Lilandra belongs to some sort of cult when the Princess Leia analogy works well enough. It seems to me that Claremont outdoes Marv Wolfman when it comes to the level of investment in supporting characters.
Sometimes, however, those characters fall off the radar,like Stevie Hunter, Corsi and Friedlander.
Dougie

Anonymous said...

Yeah, around the time that John Romita Jr. takes over on art, Claremont seems to consider everyone in the X-universe, including the recurring villains, as supporting characters. The cast gets incredibly unwieldy at that point, which is when he starts losing track of folks. (Though Stevie, Corsi and Friedlander I think all showed up during Claremont's final year on Uncanny --1991-- before his long hiatus from the franchise.

Thanks for the compliment, unless the "lovely piece of writing" referred to the English muffin poem. (Which I think is pretty lovely, personally.)