we were going out to buy drugs
walking hungover when a man
on the phone with two girls
skipping next to him said
off-hand “hold hands
when you gallop” and fuck
me they did they held hands
and galloped
and god
i thought exhaling smoke
that’s all i’ve ever wanted.
all over the world i realize
i spend my days craving
solitude like addiction
unfolding my isolation box
but i’m reaching a point
i think finally of madness
after months amusing myself
with loud music and guitar
and bindle blogging music
and anti-depressants
and long video games
and even longer books
until there is nothing left
to read and the games
are uninstalled halfway
and my wrist hurts from guitar
which i can still barely play
and the bindle has slowed
to a crawl and i drink
myself drunk every night
and the neighbor just committed
suicide and i’m lonely
out here on the lake
writing poems like bad diary
entries on this beautiful lake
where i do yoga every day
with no car and no means
of escape it’s addiction
this solitude i can’t escape
it i always come back
to my box it’s exhausting
out there in the world
but here too in a way
a different way a missing
something always way
a guilty squirming doubting
way an addict’s way
which i am
in my head
in myself.
“Let the love inside you die;”
rise above your station–
I know, I know, I try.
First we ask the question why
to chip at its foundation.
“Let the love inside you die.”
Then climbing up we seek the sky
and burst our lamentations–
I know, I know, I try.
Chin up, my child, we do not cry,
we chant our invocation:
“Let the love inside you die.”
We ride the wind, we close our eyes;
we lead the congregation–
I know, I know, I try.
All that pain and still you lie
to raise the dead sensation:
“Let the love inside you die–”
I know, I know, I try.
She is running
I try to catch up
I am running with her
We are talking,
“Did you see the news?”
“No,” I say.
“It’s horrible.”
She is running faster
Than me so I yell,
“Emma, wait!”
She closes her eyes
She starts to pull away
I can’t keep up I gasp
and clutch my sides
She leaps off the end
of all that she loved–
I gasp and clutch my sides.
Some coffee had gotten on a man’s ape. The man said, animal did you get on my coffee?
No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.
You’re sure you didn’t spill on my coffee? said the man.
Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape.
Well you sure don’t look human, said the man.
But that doesn’t make me a fluid, twittered the ape.
Well I don’ know what the hell you are, so just stop it, cried the man.
I was just sitting here reading the newspaper when you splashed coffee all over me, piped the ape.
I don’t care if you are a liquid, you just better stop splashing on things, cried the man.
Do I look fluid to you? Take a good look, hooted the ape.
If you don’t stop I’ll put you in a cup, screamed the man.
I’m not a fluid, screeched the ape.
Stop it, stop it, screamed the man, you are frightening me.
-Russell Edson
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
-Abraham Lincoln; Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Once, long ago, we had a poet for president.
this poor guy is losing it
a whole world he believed in
as she rips her way upwards
towards a light he can’t see
ripping right through him
through their marriage
which opened with her eyes
and her mouth and her legs
and little bits of her heart
and though he tells her okay
tells her he wants to explore
other women he really wants
her just to be what she
no longer is or never was
what he needs her to be
and i know this because
i’ve both been that poor guy
and fucked his wife’s mouth.
if i could just leave it alone
call it quits on the digging
this doing of a real thing
right that would be ideal
there is no money in this
hole that i dug i just dug it
dug it with all of my might
then found myself in it
and if that doesn’t matter
if that caring doesn’t matter
well i’m learning to love
it down here in this place
of earthen walls and sculpted
arches and candle-lit caves
and dancing shadows that sing
as i sing and dance as i dance
across the mosaic floors.
drift along little log
go where you’re going
nobody is expecting you
to be anything you’re not
like a thing making choices
you just drift little log
on the eddies and currents
the forces that move you
so wonderfully apparent
nobody calls you angry log
or uselessly depressed log
nobody councils you on how
you are drifting incorrectly
you just go little log
for you there is no regret
and if you were conscious
in there screaming, well
it would be just the same.
You haven’t finished your ape, said mother to father, who had
monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.
I’ve had enough monkey, cried father.
You didn’t eat the hands, and I went to all the trouble to make onion
rings for its fingers, said mother.
I’ll just nibble on its forehead, and then I’ve had enough, said father.
I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said mother.
Why don’t you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay the whole
thing on the table every night; the same fractured skull, the same
singed fur; like someone who died horribly. These aren’t dinners,
these are post-mortem dissections.
Try a piece of its gum, I’ve stuffed its mouth with bread, said mother.
Ugh, it looks like a mouth full of vomit. How can I bite into its cheek
with bread spilling out of its mouth? cried father.
Break one of the ears off, they’re so crispy, said mother.
I wish to hell you’d put underpants on these apes; even a jockstrap,
screamed father.
Father, how dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything more
than simple meat, screamed mother.
Well what’s with this ribbon tied in a bow on its privates? screamed
father.
Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature? That I
would submit my female opening to this brute? That after we had
love on the kitchen floor I would put him in the oven, after breaking
his head with a frying pan; and then serve him to my husband, that
my husband might eat the evidence of my infidelity . . . ?
I’m just saying that I’m damn sick of ape every night, cried father.
-Russel Edson
Though I am lost in lightless ways
where the sun has never shone
still I walk while I am able
looking for my stone.
And when the moon is in the sky
and its light reflects my own
then I sing for I am able
lonely, yes, but not alone.
For what are we but darkened dreams
and lights that should have shown
if we are naught but here and now
then now we shall be known.
So walk with me this moonless night
through darkness thick with moans
and I will help you raise your light
and we will find our stones.
how can it be that i sit still
in these trances adjusting
this bit and that trimming
changing reverting tweaking
everything again and again
until one last keystroke
one last pencil eraser mark
and a period and i think
it’s done and it is, it is!
and yet then there is nothing
beyond that feeling that
little moment at the end
and so what do it better
or stop caring but i can’t
it’s what i’ve got and i’ll keep
doing it here by myself
because i have nothing else
and sometimes it’s very pretty.
“And though I came to forget or regret all that I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles. And I would be content.”
-Ursula LeGuin
Sleep well, Ursula. Your prose was truly beautiful.
HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-William Butler Yeats
i won’t cry but i’ll go
to the glaciers at the end
of our time and they’ll cry
for they loved us to rise
as they wash out again
the sad waste of it all
i’ll float in the stillness
of a thousand years of ice
until nothing remains
but a sunset on waves
and that endless horizon
will disappear in the dark
and i’ll pick out a star
in the black of the sky
flowing up from the sea
and i’ll swim.
he quit everything last night
this neighbor i didn’t know
him at all saw him once
for the first time last week
hunched and fat heard he paid
his rent in crisp twenties
used to work at the bakery
downtown quit or got fired
who knows something he had
with him i saw a blonde girl
friend in that house shut up
inside every day i saw her
often in passing off to work
maybe but him just the once
walking slowly along the dock
and then her sitting there
in the morning on the lawn
crying as cop cars flashed
their lights uselessly.
the snow falls steadily on
the cars that have been here
for some time in this ditch without
sound without movement without
notice the snow falls steadily on
the skid-marks on the pools
of blood on the little one that was
thrown clear and broken the snow falls
steadily on this place that will soon seem
as two snowy rocks sitting sagely
beside the road but the snow does not
care for appearance does not
admire its work the snow
merely falls steadily on.
the little fluffs
of cotton float
upon the gentle
autumn gusts
the fragile hands
of human flesh
reach to grasp
the little fluffs
the moving air
from moving hands
sends the fluffs
away.
We go out to dinner
I pull out her chair for her
We chat pleasantly
I pay the check
We go back to my place
I open a bottle of wine
We drink together
I lean in and we kiss
We move to the bedroom
I undress her and myself
We fuck, she moans
I fall asleep
The televisions in every room
play the same thing
on mute:
a man and a woman are sitting down to eat.
the man pulls out her chair.
a poem.
-Cesárea Tinajero
just as candles
wax to dark
call me noah
and this my ark
begin with me
and we’ll depart
you know things
they fall apart
if entropy
must split the whole
if we’ve never
had control
i’d do it all
again of course
from the very start
you know things
they fall apart
so take my hand
in yours i knew
from the very first
that i would know
what it felt like
to feel so much
you burst
that’s all i asked
and what i got
now i’ll be fine
even if i’m not
for i have known
a swollen heart
and you know things
they fall apart.
Loneliness, antipathy
and emptiness will flee from me
when empathy has set me free
then I’ll be alone.
Legacy and satisfaction
both will go in black redaction
unity gives way to faction
turns upon the throne.
Lusting, hunger, conquest, greed
on their knees the beaten plead
gods of man destroy the seed
violently sown.
With truncheon rods we cracked the cones
in black and white we won’t atone
lords of nothing broken stones
tugging, tugging at our bones.
so maybe i lied for the protection
of the silent and the defenseless
when i said that only the dairy
products wished to speak to you
for since translating the misgivings
of that cream left on the counter
in the heat all day i have had
no peace from tiny voices yelling
this house is magic that i lied
everything here has a voice the stones
you stacked together want to know
if they’re going back into the trunk
and back up to the quarry
where they came from i did not
have the heart to tell them
this house is magic where the voices
of everything at once are all too much
even the ghosts of things long gone
are speaking up i hear the corduroy couch
wondering where it is i hear the bunk beds
calling tops and bottoms i hear the cream
left on the counter in the sun saying
it’s okay if you want to leave me
out it’s okay just don’t leave me
alone it says
this house is magic and i’m sorry
if i lied i didn’t quite know how
to tell you how i feel about your selling
out this place that is my warm and safe
retreat i didn’t quite know how to translate
all the tiny little voices i have come
to know and talk to by myself living
lonely in their high and secret frequencies
all those voices here it’s hard to tell you
but i’m trying now because you don’t
seem to understand because they’re frantic
shouting pleading that i translate get this
through and i will try because although
the tongues of rocks and beds and chairs
and lawns and lights and lego blocks
and memories and childhood and life
and death and sadness are all different,
in the end they cry out just the same.
I went home and swallowed my pride to live
with my parents at 28 and get a real job
and save and assess marketable skills
and find nothing nobody paying a poet
more than peanuts an hour and that
the government so fine say it do it
fuck it I sat down and worked
hard on eight applications, eight
for six months and two studying
for the GRE and then driving
two hours to Vestal, fucking Vestal
and back in the dark after work taking
their damn test and paying two hundred
dollars and paying 60 dollars
and paying 60 dollars and 60 dollars
and 60 dollars and writing those damn
essays and selling myself bald and editing
and printing and revising and editing
those damn essays and getting through
my days at my government issue desk
job in my government issue office getting
rides both ways from my father
in my brother’s tie trading away
my life and vigor and youth for currency
and spending that exchange on this:
Eight applications. Eight fucking
applications
then up on a chance and flying for free
to Tanzania and this gripless challenge
learning Kiswahili from scratch struggling
with everything food water electricity being
always a pale translucent alien
with a glowing golden light
in my gut and always people talking
to me also always with an eye
on my glowing gut and knowing
that it hurts the alien but one
can simply reach in there
and snatch the treasure that will help
so much and who cares aliens
can always go back to Mars
for treatment to repair
the holes in their glutinous jelly
and being here one foot stupidly
still on Mars getting attacked
through the window of a cab catching
a poor kid pickpocket my head already
back on Mars on a professional path
where I could walk and work in a bubble
a bath of poetry and energy and like-minds
and creative flames no more lone-wolfing
from the mountaintop my dream
life my ambition my head already
reading my acceptance just one not
eight
fucking rejections rolling down together
like bowling pins in a slow building
strike stomp the floor and the last
one falls and here I am and there
is the equatorial sun and palm trees waving
against a grand and vivid sky huge
rolling clouds and I have music and monkeys
and a book of Roman history and a new language
to learn and use and smiling children holding
my hand and writing so much writing always
still to do and I’m young and have the time
now so fuck it fuck pity shit turn it up
and kick and live for nothing
worth doing is easy and you knew that
you know that no one can or will ever
do it for you so fuck it fists up now
shoulders back now it’s just you
and me now so sack up and see
the sky feel the wind wash your laugh
and live to let go do it all now delight
in the struggle let it go go to work
in the rarified air of your mountaintop workshop
with lightning in your hair and gold
in your gut and greatness
when it comes
will be yours.
i met a good slam poet once
who commanded the room
who told us with his hands
and rising emphasis and pauses
how much he wanted us
to understand how important
it was to understand how
to understand and we did
and we were all greatly
impressed and entertained
but my way has always been
a quiet way i want my words
to be something i can slip
beneath your door or hide
between the pages of your book
my way doesn’t need me
it is its own gestures
its own voice my words
could live without me
full-throated for as long
as there is you– i fall away
i get to fall away
and be shy
and live forever.
of fear without hope,
in great aspirations,
of trying to cope,
in sad limitations,
of coming apart,
in untouchable things,
of losing my heart,
in tree stumps and rings.
this is for the writers the photographers
painters and filmmakers this
is for the dancers the singers
the artists the children
with fingerpaint
throwing tantrums this
is for the ones who know
that to be born inside a thing
to live inside to breathe
inside a thing you have to care
enough to die a little death
and i’m sorry if you aren’t
nodding please feel free to walk
on this it’s not about you this
is for the ones who know
the spark that sets the fires
blazing causing squirming
madness causing all
the little deaths in pain and doubt
and fear the everkiller fear is ever
present with the spark that is
as well the only road to light
in life worth living by
and this is for the spark the one
you sometimes wake up feeling
leading you to doom and this
is for the wanting this
is for the writers the photographers
painters and filmmakers this
is for the dancers the singers
the artists the children
all of them half mad and hiding
in piles of props and clothes
their vanity and fear the ones
who know the weird and ugly
broken fat and thin the handsome
sad the stunted storytellers
they who are brave
they who are strong
of will enough to ride against
themselves to catch a glimpse to make
a glimpse of beauty this
is for the ones who know
but don’t believe
they are beautiful.
in hindsight our petty troubles
always appear overblown
(i’m hanging on)
and with a little perspective
we can smile and make jokes
of our foolish anxieties
(with sweaty hands)
a man glides down the street
on a bicycle
holding a short leash
a golden retriever just barely
keeps pace with a big grin
in my head i take a snapshot
and label it happiness
with a slight frown
i walk to work.
handkerchief tied to stick 