Tag: joshua clark orkin

Listen, Please Listen — It’s In There With You

Oh little one, locked away
with such lovely distractions,
in the bone box you built
by yourself. You’re not safe
in there anymore, can’t you
understand that? You can’t
hide from the world inside
your own head, it doesn’t work
like that. There’s still time, love,
and light, love — Come outside
yourself, please.  It’s not safe.

“The devil said, ‘I’m a dream, and you’re alone…'”

0

A Sad Story That Isn’t About Death?

Yeah, I’ve got one.

We had only been in Tanzania for about a month. After her two-week, bare-bones project orientation in Dar es Salaam, we were driven down south and dropped in this village and left there to struggle. More often than not in those early days, we simply failed. Food, water, language, electricity, everything. It was wild, lurching back and forth across the delirious line between adventure and nightmare.

Now, we’ve only been here a month, but it’s about to be her birthday. I’m trying to get her this expensive jade ring to replace the one that broke, the one I got her when we first met. Problem is, I have to contact an old friend in Taiwan — who I haven’t kept in touch with — and have it bought at the jade market and mailed to me.

The birthday arrives, and no ring, and I’m at a loss. Everything here is crazy and difficult and completely overwhelming me. Everything. I spend the morning making a card on white paper with pencil while she’s at work, then cook a couple scrambled-egg-on-white-bread sandwiches, in a beaten-metal wok over a little portable gas range, on the floor of the empty kitchen, in our decrepit, furniture-less house.  It’s not much and I know it.

I start to walk to meet her, to have a picnic outside her building, but she’s already walking home and doesn’t want to go back. My lone plan is shot. So we go back to our crumbling house, eat the sandwiches and have a fight. I give her the card, mid-fight, and it’s whatever and forgotten. The whole thing is pretty indescribably awful; we both feel wronged, and angry, and everything is terrible.

Fast forward a year and a half. Much has happened. I went home and came back, a second time, to go on safari with her parents. We’re on Zanzibar fighting like cats in a bag, because that’s the obvious outcome for two co-dependent addicts living in isolation together. Drinking all day and all night, ending each night with a fight, but still sometimes curled up in each other, still sometimes sweet; still kissing, still fucking.

I now have the jade ring with me. My friend in Taiwan finally came through and it just showed up one day, a year later, at my parents’ house. I give it to her and in surprise she tells me she thought, way back then on her birthday, that I was going to propose. She thought I was going to propose, and then because of that fight, I just put the ring back in my pocket. She carried that inside her! She thought that in silence for a year!

Now she has the ring, on a chain, and it looks lovely there against her skin, but I can’t help myself. Everything is terrible and I have to ask: “If I had proposed back then, on your birthday, what would you have said?”

There is a pause.

“Yes,” she says.

“And now?”

“No,” she says, lying naked in my arms.

“No.”

I miss her every day.

I guess this story is about death after all.

1

sometimes life is a sad mess

she left him and met me
when i was trying it alone
freshly sober and healthy
badly needing a friend

she loved him but actions
told her he was addiction
and she needed to escape
what he was and she did

how could she have known
hard drugs and his cancer
as we kissed would agree
to at last stop his heart?

2

the undertow

Joshua Clark Orkin

it’s always there the signs were clear
there’s no lifeguard on duty here
my mother said you mustn’t fear
the ocean but respect it, dear
for if you swim you have to know
that some go down with the undertow

the fields are waiting gold and fair
they’d cradle my head and play with my hair
but i have got the longing stare
and what i seek is way out there
you’ll never reap if you don’t sow
though some go down with the undertow

i know it’s all some bright disease
the crazy lust for shining seas
i’ll miss your laughter in the trees
but i won’t miss begging from my knees
the skies will rend and a wind will blow
when i go down with the undertow

so if one day it comes for me
just let me go i’ll be fine you’ll see
the end at last will set me free
and peace compose me gracefully
the stars will shine and a wind will blow
when i go down with the undertow.

0

kasyapa and the flower sermon

“Alright, I’ll tell you one.  Just one, then you’ve gotta go to sleep.  Your mom’s already going to kill me for letting you stay up this late.  Deal?”

“Deal.”

“I’ll tell it to you as it was told to me, but forgive me if the details aren’t perfect, this old brain has seen better days.  You remember Siddhartha?  From last time?”

“Yeah, the prince who gave up all his money.”

“Yeah, that guy.  Well, he had been on the road a long time now, and a group of people had taken to following him.  Each morning at dawn these folks who had abandoned their lives gathered to hear Siddhartha talk.  The talks weren’t religious, not in any organized sense, he was just thinking out loud, trying to figure out how to live.  One of these followers was a young man named Kasyapa.  He was new to all of this, Kasyapa.  He struggled with the teachings, and the others made fun of him for his difficulties.  But still each morning he came and sat before Siddhartha and tried to understand.

One morning the people gathered as usual, but instead of speaking, Siddhartha held up a white flower and sat looking at it. His students waited patiently for him to begin.  Minutes passed.  Then hours.  “What is it?” Someone asked. “What’s the lesson?” said another. Soon it was noon, and still Siddhartha simply sat in silence with the flower.  One by one the people, shaking their heads, some in confusion, some in disgust, rose and went about their daily chores.  There was still much to be done in a camp in those days, even for poor wanderers.  So they drifted away, until only Kasyapa was left, sitting alone before the portly sage.

He stared and he stared, this boy, with his brow scrunched and his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth.  He tried with all his power, straining until sweat beaded on his brow, but nothing changed, nothing became clear.  “I’m sorry, master, I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t understand.”  Siddhartha just sat, unchanged, looking at the flower.  Kasyapa let go a long breath, closed his eyes, and bowed his head.  He had chores to do.

Before he got to his feet, however, he looked one last time at the flower.  And this time, in a wordless stillness that stretched on forever, he looked and he saw.  And he smiled.  When he looked up, grinning, at Siddhartha, the Buddha was smiling back at him.”

“…”

“…I don’t get it.”

“Hush now, give it time.”

“But, why–”

“Shh, child.  Stop talking.”

“But–”

“Stop talking and you’ll see.”

0

i only ever dreamed of you

how would this world appear
if human sexuality were only
an annoying itch to scratch?
what would we aspire to?
what would our incentives be?
would we have ever built
the pyramids? notre dame?
rome? would we have had
an inquisition? a holocaust?
an apollo program? a mozart?
how are these things related
to sex? how is this shitty poem
related to sex? will you fuck me?
do you want me yet? wait don’t
pick him please i’ll do better
than this i promise here i will
distinguish myself here look!
fancy plumage! there! can i stop?
for fuck’s sake i never dreamed
of building pyramids anyways.

1

In Which Everything Happens Again, This Time at Chili’s

The man sat very still in the passenger seat, thinking on the sorry sequence of events that had led him here.  As rain pattered against the roof of the car, he felt a sort of removal from the whole thing, like he was watching a tired re-run.  Inside the Chili’s, the work party rolled on without them.  The little blonde in the driver’s seat continued to sob, and the Brian Jonestown Massacre continued over her speakers:

“You should be picking me up…”

“Hey now,” he reached out a hesitant hand and placed it on her shoulder.  “Come on now.”  She undid her seat belt and laid her head in his lap.

“Instead you’re dragging me down…”

Hm, he thought.  Not ideal.  “Shouldn’t we go inside?  The crying shuddered slowly to a stop.  She sniffled, then said something muffled into his crotch.  “What?” he asked.

“I don’t want to.”

“Then why did you come?”

There was a long silence down there, and some more sniffling and inaudible mumbling.  That would be quite a thing to explain if anybody asked, that raccoon face of wet across his front.  Finally it came, in a tiny mouse voice, just barely audible over the music, “I miss him.”

“Christ.”  He sighed.  “Fair enough.”

She sat up and smeared a hand across her face, wiping equal parts make-up and snot, before reaching again for the bottle.  He’d already said his piece about the bottle, there was nothing more to add.  She took a pull, used the back of her hand at the corner of each eye, then leaned against the window.

“Listen,” he said, “I get it, trust me, I really do.  But this is terrible.  You need to either let me drive you home, or go inside.”  She rolled her eyes and groaned.  “Look, if you go in there and get what you want, it’ll happen immediately.  If you don’t, and you’re brave enough to see it, you’ll know that immediately as well.”

He reached across and pulled the handle of her car door.  “Well?” he asked, as the door swung open.  “Either I’m driving, or you’re going inside.  Gotta get out, one way or the other.”

She looked her chin down into her chest, then tilted her face to the side, then slowly up to look at him.  Her blue eyes, bleary with crying and drink, ringed with smeared mascara, half hidden behind the strands of blonde fringe, were surprisingly lucid.  “Alright.”  She screwed the lid on the bottle, tucked it under her seat, and dabbed at her makeup in the rear-view mirror.  “Alright,” she said again.  Then she took a deep breath.

He watched her walk across the parking lot, more poised on those black heels than he would have expected.  She stopped before the door, tossed her hair over her shoulder, and looked back at the car.  His heart hurt a little in his chest.  Good luck, he mouthed, knowing she couldn’t see him.  She went inside.  He got into the driver’s seat and turned up the music:

“Now that you’re not around…  Now that you’re not around…  Glad that you’re not around…”

And there she was again.  The door slammed shut behind her, and she went fishing under his seat for the bottle.  “You were right,” she said, “I could tell.”  She took a long, gulping drink.  “Let’s go.“  He pulled out of the parking lot.

“Which way is home?” he asked.  She pointed.  After a while they left the street lights behind, and the country road began meandering through alternating vistas of darkened forest, then corn fields, then forest again.  “There,” she said, as they entered another break in the trees.  He pulled up in front of a little one-story house with an over-grown lawn and some rusted junk out back.  The kind of house that looks like a trailer, but with a cement foundation.  Lights were on inside.

“I’ll take your car back to mine and leave it there.  You can get a ride in tomorrow?”  She nodded.  “You mind if I talk for a minute?”  She shook her head.

“What you’re feeling?  That sensation in your gut, like it’s about to split you open and spill out your intestines?  I don’t know what it is, specifically, but it’s not love.  Not anymore, not really.  It’s rejection, and it’s fear, and it’s self-loathing, and it’s loneliness, and more than anything it’s the loss of a savior.  But that pain isn’t love, and there are no saviors.  You have to save yourself.”

She looked at him for a long moment, those blood-shot eyes — rimmed by mascara, half-hidden by the fringe — older than they seemed.  “You’re wrong,” she said, “And what’s more, you’re kind of an asshole.  But thanks, I guess, for trying.”  She got out and let the door click shut behind her.

“I’ve got some pills, I’ve got a bottle of wine…  and I’m feeling fine…   I don’t miss you, no, I don’t miss you at all…”

He sat there parked by the road, listening, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin.  Rain drummed softly against the roof, and in the distance lightning lit the sky.  As he counted seconds and waited for the thunder, he suddenly felt very alone.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StV9lElcvAY?rel=0

0

for we are so clearly delicious

when the aliens land at last
to ask humanity honestly why
we deserve to exist here why
we shouldn’t just be removed
from our verdant kingdom why
we wouldn’t be better served
with wine for we are so clearly
delicious done correctly why
we shouldn’t be kept in cages
too small for bodies from birth
in darkness shot with steroids
genetically altered for growth
until we’re pressed to the walls
of our cages and our legs break
beneath great bulbous bodies
and we collapse but can’t fall
so we scream please release us
and pray waiting for the light
at last blinding then followed
by the slaughter sweet escape
into freedom from a life grown
worse than death when the aliens
land at last to ask honestly why?
what have we added to existence?
in our panic we’ll say compassion
and they’ll cross their squid arms
and we’ll show them efficiency
and they’ll eye the strip mine
we made of earth unimpressed
so in desperation we’ll come
to what’s beautiful and lacking
the means to explain it we’ll turn
to our artists help them up
brush the mud from their eyes
and say sorry we’re so sorry
and ask politely to be saved.

1

give it back

i remember my first question
at the eye doctor’s was,

“is there a chance
it could get better?”

and he looked at my mom
and they both looked at me

and then at 8 years old
they told me the truth.

0

this has something to do with capitalism

i was on your side so why weren’t you
on mine? oh we’re adversaries? fine
art will stay zero sum if there’s only
enough space in our people’s collective
wallet and attention for one i pick me
oh don’t give me that look that thing
to review that work of not-yet-rejected
-a-thousand-times freshness that gasp
for praise when what you need is bitter
medicine to swallow for me it’s a lose
lose either way if it’s terrible i become
the bad guy if it’s good i’ll resent you
your effort and dedication your talent
is a detriment really resting laurels
so often catch us staring it’s the doing
the failing and the doing and the dying
to do it until it happens there are zero
child prodigy writers get wise i worry
that we like being artists affecting art
more than actually making it markets
set our values ranking pieces against
pieces turning artists into rivals for
what? fame? praise? the prize is to live
this life like a dream like a fairy-tale
creature who’s not forced to concede
the summation of a life in market value
my value makes me eye all you assholes
with dreams with suspicion why is this
so complicated? why isn’t there space
in our people’s collective why don’t you
make your thing and i’ll make my thing
and then we’ll have two pretty things.

0

all my peers have careers

to be honest i’m terrified of life
slipping away while i’m hiding
from people the eyes the fear
the manic conversation my voice
saying love me! the same way
to new people love me!
projecting insecurity praying
that a life out here dying
on the front lines of refusal
to compromise with anxiety
is somehow worth it to try
to be great enough to make it
something more than a cycle
of base desires and fulfillments
to be more than a slave to a life
of least resistance frustration
becomes doubt becomes failure
to try–to be honest–i’m terrified.

0

demon host

“Oh reverend please, can I chew your ear?
I’ve become what I most fear–
and I know, there’s no such thing
as ghosts, but I have seen
the demon host.”

a Timber Timbre song

0

no children, twice

Twice, TWICE, she found a piece of scrap paper on which I’d scrawled the lyrics for “No Children,” and thought it was a poem I’d written about her.  The first time I was there and could explain that it was a Mountain Goats song, and that I was trying to figure out how to sing it.  The second time we were broken up, and I guess she’d forgotten the first time.  I tried again to tell her it wasn’t my work, but it didn’t matter — at that point, I was learning, nothing about us mattered.

The song is dark, and sad, and honest, and beautiful.  There’s something perfect about it being sung all together like this, all those people, all those relationships, all that love and lost love.  It succeeds where so much art fails: that sweet, sweet, cathartic release.

and I did end up singing and recording it, much later, in St. Louis.  It went on the early bindle, which nobody knew about, where nobody heard it, and that was all.  Now with a little readership, maybe it’s time to bring it back.  If this is a repeat for you, my friends, forgive me.  And if you and I lived the reality of this together, please, also, forgive me.

Credit Dr. J. Oseph for the tip on the blackout Mountain Goats version.  Further proof that scientists and artists are natural allies.

0

Running in the Rye

“Get a job, you lazy piece of shit,” said one poor man to another.
“I have reservations about this system,” said the second poor man, “and I’m mentally ill.”
“Too bad. If you don’t grow the GDP, you don’t get to see a doctor,” said the first poor man.
“No, that can’t be right,” said the second poor man.
“Yeah,” said the first poor man, “It is.  Put your head down and quit asking questions. Grind it out like a man.”
“Who benefits from my doing that?”
“You know,” said the first poor man, “I’m not sure. Probably some rich guy.”
“So why are you yelling at me?”
The first poor man wasn’t sure. He remembered someone on TV…

Running in the Rye:

we focus on the shiny things
your girl she needs a diamond ring
get a job the caged bird sings
if you work hard you can be king
(throw it all away)

go to work and punch the clock
swing your pick and break the rocks
beat your chest and grab your cock
don’t ask why the doors are locked
(throw it all away)

we based our lives on older men
who worked and drank and had us then
spent their days wondering when
life would finally come for them
(throw it all away)

it’s quitting time you’d better go
home you married her you know
pop a beer and watch the snow
you’ve already seen this TV show
(throw it all away)

joshua clark orkin

 

0

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑