For to See

i wove you a garland of poems before we met
which you cobwebbed like yesterday's mothballs

as if cotton had crawled inside the mouth of god
and died there
and its name was me

of course, your petty sidesteps only served to invoke
in me a greater fervor
a fever matched only by our very memes
and fleeting memories of a night and a day
shared in ecstasy
and spared the longevity of heartache.

i think…

I pour a drink despite
a shaking hand
and head full of brass tacks
and bliss

i kiss my future and she tastes of you
and a mourning of spent cigarettes
and second-hand emotions

I ocean over your body
the sea I see
eyes closed
against this torrent

my head bent in prayer and retrospection
ever since you deigned
to darken my door

lady, shade, scant dream

this seam I preen and prod
a road trod in reverse
like a novel lived back words
plots spiraling inward
to knots and scars and stories
we need bear witness

flit feathers like the birdsong in my mouth
when I touched you in my mind a year
before our fear
came realized
out a gate of our own making

a lust must longing for release
when no port is home
and our stars are the only map to heaven

9.5.13

No Nightmares, Please - Why is so much children's poetry full of sadism and doom?

A nice piece by my new internet buddy.

by Jeff Gordinier

One day it dawns on you that your kid has watched too many episodes of Dora the Explorer. Every time the Dora character known as “Map” shows up on screen and sings, “I’m the Map I’m the Map I’m the Map I’m the Map,” you entertain private fantasies of dousing him in lighter fluid, torching him with a match, and giggling uncontrollably while he flails in agony. If a cartoon inspires this much raw hatred before you catch the train to work, it’s probably not a good idea for your kid to watch a ton of it.

So maybe you want to expose your children to fine poetry instead. Which is great, except that you live in a country where some moron makes way more money than you do by writing lyrics like “I’m the Map I’m the Map I’m the Map I’m the Map,” so you’re sort of on your own. And when you come right down to it, reading poems to your adorable offspring is, like breastfeeding, much harder than you think.

When I first tried to introduce my daughter to the wonders of verse, I thought I would kick things off with a couple of haikus, mostly because they are super-short, so she wouldn’t have time to run away. I picked up a collection by Basho, the magnificent Japanese poet of the 17th century, opened the book at random, and flipped to this:

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die

Ummm. Gosh, I thought . . . impermanence, death, a melancholy beauty—couldn’t we wait until kindergarten before we got into all that? (Now, if only it was the Map who was about to croak . . . ) I flipped around, and up came this little gem:

Whore and monk, we sleep
under one roof together,
moon in a field of clover

Uh, no. Won’t be reading that one...Read More...

tilting at windmills on saint crispin's day

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this,
man's being unable to sit still in a room.

Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)

Breakfast alone at The Reef
a tossed green salad, italian
cottage cheese, light salt
cup of coffee, cream
water

Don’t know how to tell Stephanie
why I don’t want to see her and our daughters
today of all days,
something symbolic. (only period)
[insert change of pace here]
Purposefully don’t order a bloody mary. (never mind)

I swallow tiny ice cubes whose little sharp edges
tickle the inside of my throat,
melting all the way down
and never hitting bottom.

My hands tremble a bit
as I delicately manuever
a dollop of cream into my coffee cup,
it’s color the stock dusty reef brown.

A fly alights on my salad.

I am a solitary withdrawn man
behind a mask of sociability.

[you know, that pace thing, changing again]

Winston Churchill was born in a coat check room
at some bourgeois grand ball.

Mostly I just want to be left alone.

When he was older he rationed himself
to fifteen cigars a day.

But then I miss my closely distant friends.

Upon his death, the mortician saved
four hundred some odd dollars on embalming fluid
due to the levels of brandy in his blood.

Smile. Cough. Feel old beyond time.

[I made that last part up, by the way.
But it sounded good, huh?]

I wonder how large my aperture is
as I snap a shot of 4th ave,
in simple awe of this day
and what it does to people.

I guess I just wanted this experience:
A window into the world
of those who spend X-mas alone,
whether by choice or otherwise.

Last night at McCoy’s Doug and I met a very nice man
who asked if either of us had a little marijuana to sell.
We didn’t but chatted awhile; eventually he invited us up
to his nearby apartment for a little x-mas eve party for which
he obviously didn’t have anyone in attendance yet.
He boasted seventy some DVDs in his collection.
He was lonely.
We respectfully declined his invitation and continued
our exodus from the bar.
Down the street I felt guilt in my gut mixed with sadness.
He was black.
[leave open to interpretation with devious cackle]

I scrape my lack of appetite off my theeth with a dirty sleeve.
Mispell words ‘cause I write to try to match speed of mind sometimes,
always failing,
except when mind’s on empty.

And so I stumble back into breakfast slowly,
deliberately, resolving to read the newspaper today
and let it be a metaphor about new leaves
and turning them.
[this poem ends here]

then i curl into my little shell that no one knows, fall asleep for my only christmas date at the casino and reluctantly call it just another day.

...I took the one less travelled by

I lounge behind my desk, utterly satisfied and exhausted, sipping wine and watching The Doors and reveling in simply being and being simply satisfied amidst these trees and rotting salmon stench which permeates all persons present. We who have hung our heads out windows, easy targets, waiting for a view of heaven or some star when we should be watching where we place each footfall and frail breath released into space to mingle with this ether we suppose elicits artwork.

I cast myself in a one-man play behind my eyelids, watching from afar, tucked away behind synapses and grey matter that really doesn't matter much at all. I spy the constituent pieces of myself, incongruous with the puzzles of others for the most part, parceled out over minutes and milestones, spread thin like an emaciated hooker tricking for a quick fix of lust or love. Alas, at times the lines in-between the lovers blur, a kaleidoscopic frenzy of frayed emotions, threads read and woven, binding our bodies into one.

I see each archetypal image of myself bound against reality's rendering of a lens. I see parent, bookie, poet, printer, drinker, dancer, loner, loser, lover, fighter, fucker, faithless fool, flop, sullen sucker, soulless savior of sad saints, glue that holds far hearts together across loss.

Where is the nobility in ego? Where does hate sleep in the house of love? Why do the stars blink when we look them in the eyes? When will we feast upon last year's harvest? When will our telephones laugh instead of ringing in our ears of corn?

stumbling towards profundity

When I am eighty I will live alone and smoke a pipe and read my news and books as the sun comes up. I will garden and split wood and walk to watch the salmon because there will, of course, be salmon nearby and wood in need of splitting and, I would imagine, we will still have weeds.

When I am eighty I will move slowly and think fast and never have to drive anywhere. I will write poems when the muse is upon me about old friends fallen by the wayside and drink red wine in my flower garden amidst the graves of a hundred cats.

When i am eighty i will hurl epithets at young hoodlums on street corners because it is my right and my duty and my retribution. My daughters and I will stroll and talk of things large and small and here and gone as my four-score worth of leaves swirl about our feet.

When I am eighty my girls will perhaps be grandparents, maybe twice over, and the world will be a realm unimaginable through today’s lens, a world we walk through with barely a thought thrown back to these days, these humble, lonely beginnings.

When I am eighty I will worry about everything and nothing all at once. I will live in an old lighthouse overlloking the Pacific somewhere and I will light lanterns to guide in wayward travellers and poets and princesses and dragons alike, to whisper to them the secret homes of rocks and danger.

When I am eighty I will play the piano each night while the sun burns down into the ocean. I will stretch up to pluck apples from the tired old tree, whose limbs are younger than my own. I will lie on my back in whatever yard I have to speak or write of and gaze up at the same stars I spy upon tonight, thinking some of the same thoughts, living parts of the same life I’ve always led

wondering
wondering
wandering

for spirit because she asked so nicely...

stolen from Heather

funny how things
rise to the surface over
time,
to be skimmed from the top
of my consciousness,
then saved in a glass bottle
to be examined later or
discarded
like so much
post-consumer waste or
organic matter.
decaying whether
in bottle
landfill or
worm-bin.
i suppose another option is to
see what is arising on the surface of my mind
and allow it
to float
or sink
as it will,
to be used or not as
S/He wills.

at the surface today:

...how my clothes prepare me to face the day
ready for battle
ready to dance
ready
for whatever i intuit.
sheer blouse/black bra
layers and lace
or
industrial fake leather
duct taped
boots
and militant fuck off
layers.
whimsy
or anarchy
soft or
hard as nails found in an alley & saved
for future hammering
pounding and
piercng
but really both
at the same
time...

...how intellectual
compatibility
is no indicator of
erotic
potential...

...how silly i was to think
i was through with
romance...

...how miles & geography have
nothing
to do with closeness...

...how numbers love telling
stories...

...how chivalry is not really
dead;
it is just being reborn
with breasts...

...how procrastination is perhaps the true
mother
of invention...

...how different and beautiful and crazy and sexy and fun and wounded
we are...

I keep pouring myself in but the vessel never fills up, or, this is my own goddamn etymology

designed to contain something
or hold an infused quality such as grace
or bear one across a body made of water
or convey and circulate that body's fluids through a vast complex network of tubes, canals, arteries, to an unknown destination

a cask, bottle, kettle, cup or a skull used for a bowl
a child of light, vessel of the lord
a hollow utensil used for pouring

from the ancient uas, root of vase
an empty vase made of light material will float, hence the ship connotation

dwelling on the sheer number of souls I fell in love with this week
the walk of one, talk of another troubles
but a few combine to steal my smittens
and now my hands grow cold
with the thought of wintering too many tables of contents

i try to write about my soul from the inside out but my skin keeps getting in the way, a vellum upon which my spleen conducts its orchestra of mirth, oh holy organ which never ceases to make noise! oh cacaphony of spirit, capricious sunrise! mine humble eyes repent, gaze penitent but persistant, fingers clutching pen, man, ship.

i lounge

read pablo by firelight

drink wine

sigh

and wait for life to wrap me up

in her ribbons, bows, patches affixed with safety pins

one pink rose on the table compliments the whiskey bottle
on its slender neck
like a kiss when work at last
ends
an ode to today only
a humble corkscrew
me the cork
life the bottle
death the neck
love the kiss
wind the sigh

throw around the word love

throw around the word love because it means so much to hear
especially by oneself with whiskey and chocolate
stood up by one's own dreams
and so left to wallow in the spontanaeity of unplanned solitude

flat beer accompanies this penultimate darkness, assuaging our costumed guilt
urging us to believe in the dangers of the animated stasis of social hearts
and making us believe in our however humble projects
for what else is there?

we judge our secret selves severe
attempting to climb ladders erected to a roofless blue open
an indistinct soul disregarded by heroines and victims
bragging broken dreams to dazzle themselves to death
retracted fantasies galloping full clip

hearts contradict heads
confusing in their mantles of protection
mere shells on this tremulous vague shoreline

make up a mask to efface that sharp furrowed brow designed by nightmares
and dreams like ostentatious capes with which we wrap our lonlinesses up
toss off a high bridge somewheres to drop and plop in the waters of the infinite Buddha
until we trust ourselves enough to encounter that defenseless nomad called night

mark my place with a beer coaster
wonder on trivial intentions
a meaningless malcontent
a satisfactory self-loathing

An awesome poem about condoms

Rubbers by jefferson carter

My eighteen-year-old asks if I'd be
uncomfortable buying him condoms.
No problem, my inner adult answers.
My inner jerk wants to add, as long
as you're not going to use them.
I'm face to face with the fruit
& flower of late capitalism, an entire wall
of prophylactics, Trojans, Avanti,
Durex, Inspiral, fifteen different brands,
red & silver & gold boxes. I forgot to ask
what kind he wants, Extended Pleasure,
Ultra-Sensitive Ribbed, Studded Texture,
Magnum Shared Sensation or, God forbid,
Lifestyle Luscious Flavors. I shut
my eyes & fumble a box off its hook
the way people used to shut their eyes
& open the Bible to a random passage.
How little I know about my son.
I remember sitting in bed beside my first love,
quaking, our hands like wood, waiting
for the call from the doctor's office.

A lovely poem from a close friend

And a woman held who a babe against
her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's
longing for itself.
They come through you but not from
you,
And though they are with you yet they
belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not
your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not
their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even
in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek
not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries
with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path
of the infinite, and He bends you with His
might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand
be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Addressing the almost over-powering yin of an abortion clinic waiting room while my partner gets a pap smear among other things...

from a male doctor for the first time.

The other man (a father?.. no) and I exchange a handful of eyes over the course of an hour and nearly a half and I want to shake his hand, speak openly and intimately here and now because he quite obviously seldom does and so do I and I think maybe here of all places would be a good place to start and maybe he feels something akin to that too and that’s why this is so awkward because we’ve never done it before or maybe he has but anyway we don’t and the rug is a hideously queasy pale blue and the curtains and cupboard doors are spackled and sponged a mix of teal and granite, very un-yin actually, and I think one of the plants may be real and Madonna of course looks nice atop the towers of shitty mothering magazines and it makes me really glad somewhere not very deep down at all and not really glad really that the date on the cheapo plasti-wood plaque from the better business bureau reads 2003 and the nurses here are so highly charged but somber, a mix of life and death and hope and loss and horror hovering over the place like a fog bank that you never really withdraw from but leave a little piece of yourself in for all the future patrons to perceive and when the nurse takes us in the back room and I try to wrap my mind around ’11 weeks’ while she says ‘less than a minute’ and I just blink, blink back confused tears or anger or a dust mote in the eyes of many gods and the blue rug and the mindless magazines we pore over anyways like ignorant savages must devour playboys, that strange hot cocktail of exceitement and revulsion that comes from being somewhere you’re not supposed to be but have to.

submitted by anonymous

forgiving our fathers

by dick lourie

maybe in a dream: he's in your power
you twist his arm but you're not sure it was
he that stole your money you feel calmer
and you decide to let him go free

or he's the one (as in a dream of mine)
I must pull from the water but I never
knew it or wouldn't have done it until
I saw the street-theater play so close up
I was moved to actions I'd never before taken

maybe for leaving us too often or
forever when we were little maybe
for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there seemed
never to be any rage there at all

for marrying or not marrying our mothers
for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers
and shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them

for pushing or leaning for shutting doors
for speaking only through layers of cloth
or never speaking or never being silent

in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it -
if we forgive our fathers what is left?

This powerful piece is excerpted at the end of Sherman Alexie's movie Smoke Signals.

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