the id and my ego
There are times when I am
struck by the grace with
which I am able to write.
Words come pouring out of
me, with a force that is like
an exhortation of life.
My grasp of meter rivals
that of the world’s most skilled
musician. My line breaks would
make Dickinson blush, and my
command of rhyme is reserved such
that I may let Keats and his cronies
maintain their dignity.
If I had but world enough, and time,
I would think to erase Nietzsche’s
name from the annals of
history; such is the quality of my
prose. My talent is no mere craft, but
the attainment of the hand of
God almighty in my
own. My works are idiomatic
ingenuities, alms temporarily
bestowed upon the
idiocy of this world, comedy and
tragedy united in a circuitous
dance, humanity circumscribed in
scribbled doggerel.
In the time that Eliot has measured
out, I have composed volumes of verse
in my head, with the mere intent of
expelling Milton from the most private
of libraries. I almost hesitate to
write them, for I pale at the thought
of unleashing my leviathan
upon the Earth.
Dark rooms in the dead of night are
my storehouses, dust gathering on the
windowsill my muse. My bookshelf
is empty, for I will stack it myself with
the hefty tomes I am cursed to complete.
Universes await the touch
of the tip of my pen, and
all is true
because I write it.
22 November 2007
smudged fingers and beaten nails
Like so many people before
me, I am left wondering what
my legacy on this earth will
be. At once, I am both flattered and
horrified that mine is certain to be
these poems, insignificant droppings left
long behind.
I want them to see the faces of
people left with nowhere to
turn, sullied and brown. I want them
to hear voices swirling around and
down a draining toilet bowl. I want
them to taste the disgustingly sweet
taste of mockery floating across
sealed lips, derision dripping like
beads of sweat on a warm day, and I
want them to smell the desperation of
a man shot through the heart.
I want these poems to be a ticking
time bomb, set to splatter brains across
fresh pages of type.
Ginsberg, I am with you, still
howling at the moon.
26-27 November 2007
vegetables
His mind doesn't work
anymore.
The woman on the television
is speaking,
her tongue flicking
behind rows of
perfectly aligned, perfectly white
teeth.
He's a vegetable.
Her lipstick is too red.
How sad.
The man is shaking
his head.
He is wearing sunglasses.
Their hands touch.
The other man just
sits.
He is the vegetable.
The man slides
his hand around the
waist of the woman.
She is wearing a polka dotted
dress, and his hand touches
two of the dots.
The other man is looking
up, and the woman puts her
other hand on his shoulder.
It's a bright day, and the light
is pouring in the window;
The man plays with his
sunglasses.
I am not a vegetable
but I would be
cauliflower
18 November 2007
television
i've parked myself
in front of this box
for the night.
its safe
here.
these images fly
by,
cigarette burns
on a blank screen.
pass me
another beer,
friend.
let us wander.
yes,
let our minds wander.
it's enough to make you
sick,
really.
fading in,
fading out.
wash, rinse,
repeat.
it's a long day,
friend,
a long, tired day
i've been living.
and when you get home,
all you want to do
is be sick,
sickeningly funny.
18 November 2007
columbia
coasting
down a flat
highway
trancelike
the air
stale and
motionless
casual conversation
and
hollow song
lyrics
floating
past acres and
acres of corn
cows
billboards
the signs read
121 miles
to go
one hour and
34 minutes
i'm pushing
it
the odometer
sighs
and st. louis
looms
coming at us
on a tear
all these faceless
dead
moments
and still no
closer
to home
18 November 2007
drain
i can feel
myself
slipping away
This air is dead, hot and static, its slow and painful hanging interrupted only occasionally by the lightest hint of a current. It is a soft dance, slow and seductive, teasing the tips of hair strands already on full alert. They bow for a moment, grateful, and it's enough to make you wonder whether it was worth it at all.
i ve lost
myself
somewhere between TV waves and comic strips, that void where strained eyes ease into a dull blur. It's all a blur, vague impressions stamped on soiled, smeared nothingness. Everything's in focus, but nothings in focus. Each shape is every shape. Eyes get lost in the abyss, eyes that never want to come out again.
everything slides
away
I often used to wonder what happened to everything flushed down my toilet dead goldfish, used up tissue paper, and the like. It never was so much where it all went where it ended up, that is as much as how it got there, twisting down forgotten pipes, disappearing forever within a hidden labyrinth. I could picture that maze of pipes tangled, artless and I would watch that little trickle of water rush through. I never made it all the way through to the ending, whatever it may have been. The pipes were what interested me.
i feel myself
intangible
writhing away
sliding down
the drain
10 February 2007
the world and everything in it
I fear my mind is not right.
I am eggs served over easy and dripping off
the edge of my plate; I am
formless phrases rising from a nameless
Bukowski poem; I am foam fingers and
60-yard touchdown strikes.
I am in fear my mind isn't right.
I am Beatles posters and countless
albums listened to and un-listened to,
sorted and not piled high upon the edge
of the dresser; I am family dinners, all
eleven of us crowded around a long
thin table, a cousin at each elbow and another
staring headlong; I am
the smooth glide of a new pen over
a stack of new paper.
I am fearful my mind's not right.
I am naps in the afternoon under
the gentle caress of the softly tumbling
sunlight; I am band t-shirts, smelling of
smoke, and Mike McColgan's dripping
sweat and kids, their mohawks twisting in
the breeze, giving the finger to dirty walls
and dingy stalls; I am warm embraces
in the dead of night.
I fear my mind is not
right.
25 November 2007
god's overestimation
I've come into contact,
fortunately or not,
with those who claim their
greatest fear in life is
dying alone.
I'd like to say to them,
why so sure we aren't
alone right now?
25 November 2007
off making other plans
I'm hustling down the street,
late probably, and
the unnamed blobs of flesh and
indescribable taupe matter pass by
at ever increasing intervals. In no time,
they'll be out of the rain, their
umbrellas safely stowed in the
upright position, and all thought of
me and the rain and the streams
of water rushing down the sides of the
streets safely stowed away, too.
I generally take a shortcut near here,
a short traverse through a window-ridden
building and out the other side
again. Today, I'm nearing the first
door, to enter, and the person ahead lets
it close just beyond my grasp.
No matter. I skip around the edge of the
building, never going inside, and continue
my walk. I don't need them
either.
Skipping over a pothole in the
sidewalk, I cross a crowded
intersection, cars parked in every
direction. I catch the eye of a young
girl, coming my way, and I think to myself,
shes smiling at me. I don't know if she
is or not, but the headlight of a car catches her
lips in just such a way that I think it is
so. We don't need them either. All
the interesting people are out
in the rain.
25 November 2007
dressed to size
In the waking hours, the room hauntingly
static, when warm breath hangs on
air like coats on hangers, I'm overcome with
frustration at the death of our language.
Words falter and swing into contemplated
nothingness, a pre-meditated murder of
written communication.
From the moment I craft the first
syllable, the sentence is done. There's
nothing left to do but finish fitting the
missing puzzle pieces.
I start with a canary, sitting in a cage, and
all that's left is to tack on the verb, maybe
an object, a subordinate clause or two.
It's exasperating, writing by their
rules, toying with ideas that must be fit to
exacting specifications - just the right size,
length, tone, color.
For who's to say that a tortoise can't
scurry, two clouds elope, and me shrivel
inside myself at night?
I will write as I, and only I, see fit: electric
alarm shot crawling clambering silence
pull drop icy hot yielded up sympathetic
pathetic drug up and stepped
When the words fall away and there's
nothing left to say, that's when
I'll stop writing.
29 November 2007
chateau d'if
When I was young and I was
fond of reading Arthurian tales
of knights and dragons and dungeons and
the like, I sometimes dreamed of living
in a castle.
Fast-forward fifteen years or so, and
I've succeeded at just that.
I've built myself
a castle.
Instead of stones, this castle is
words, words heaped upon
words upon words. I've written myself
into the smallest keep in
the tallest tower, and I've to
hurtle down staircases and over
moats of dangling modifiers and passive
voices and comma splices, all long forgotten,
to escape.
It's terrible,
really, to live this way, locked
away, with no way out, and no one
at all to console me.
How funny I was, when
young, to think that castles and
words and speech and
people were all just harmless
fun.
Times like these, alone
in my castle, the fire dying
down and the cat off meowing
in some distant room, that I am
reminded there's only one thing
to do at a time like this, and that is
to write.
24 November 2007
air like coats on hangers, I'm overcome with
frustration at the death of our language.
Words falter and swing into contemplated
nothingness, a pre-meditated murder of
written communication.
From the moment I craft the first
syllable, the sentence is done. There's
nothing left to do but finish fitting the
missing puzzle pieces.
I start with a canary, sitting in a cage, and
all that's left is to tack on the verb, maybe
an object, a subordinate clause or two.
It's exasperating, writing by their
rules, toying with ideas that must be fit to
exacting specifications - just the right size,
length, tone, color.
For who's to say that a tortoise can't
scurry, two clouds elope, and me shrivel
inside myself at night?
I will write as I, and only I, see fit: electric
alarm shot crawling clambering silence
pull drop icy hot yielded up sympathetic
pathetic drug up and stepped
When the words fall away and there's
nothing left to say, that's when
I'll stop writing.
29 November 2007
chateau d'if
When I was young and I was
fond of reading Arthurian tales
of knights and dragons and dungeons and
the like, I sometimes dreamed of living
in a castle.
Fast-forward fifteen years or so, and
I've succeeded at just that.
I've built myself
a castle.
Instead of stones, this castle is
words, words heaped upon
words upon words. I've written myself
into the smallest keep in
the tallest tower, and I've to
hurtle down staircases and over
moats of dangling modifiers and passive
voices and comma splices, all long forgotten,
to escape.
It's terrible,
really, to live this way, locked
away, with no way out, and no one
at all to console me.
How funny I was, when
young, to think that castles and
words and speech and
people were all just harmless
fun.
Times like these, alone
in my castle, the fire dying
down and the cat off meowing
in some distant room, that I am
reminded there's only one thing
to do at a time like this, and that is
to write.
24 November 2007
just saying
I'd like to tear out my vocal cords.
I say it with the utmost seriousness:
cool, my head a perfectly tranquil
state of utter serenity, almost aloof,
even. It's just that I when I sit to thinking,
I think, I'd like my vocal cords torn out.
Speech is a vice, and speaking giving in
to temptation. I find that I never
say exactly what I mean
to say and that I constantly walk the line
of hurting someone I love.
It would be all so much easier if
I simply could not
speak. Please,
please, tear these damn vocal cords from my throat.
Then these words and this
problem would all simply soar
away, and nothing would be left but
to sit with them and enjoy these
moments, the moments of which words
just get in the way.
This, mind you, is for the ones
that I love.
To those I don't love,
24 November 2007
up all night
They don't
read
anymore,
she said,
slamming
her book of
Frost verse
in disgust.
Who doesn't?
Who does.
Oh, everyone.
Anyone.
Her eyes
roll.
It's all so
filthy.
Filthy things for
filthy people.
Dirty pages
touched by dirty,
dirty old men.
James?
Filthy people in
soiled clothes on
grimy streets.
Planted and
supplanted in the earth.
James,
are you listening
to me?
Does anyone?
20 November 2007
biting cynicism doesn't come cheap
funny papers in the
morning and a glass of
wine before bed. apples
are for invalids.
traffic lies bumper to
bumper, cars alternatively
procreating in the
rear. the red lights
flash, alarm clocks to
a wasted afternoon.
gap-toothed grins and
misplaced spittle are my
appetizer to false
conversation and
false breasts.
a cup of orange
juice in the morning (I
don't drink coffee) and
a bagel on the way
out. this isn't
easy.
17 December 2007
nowhere and no place
i stepped on the train with
nowhere to go.
lurching forward, door slamming
shut, mind sliding off
into the nether regions of
the rain-slicked tracks. head
drifting off into that disembodied
abyss where five million other
heads go every day. i'm five
million and one.
it's curious. standing on the
platform, sitting on a torn
up seat, reading the back pages
of unseen newspapers and
long exhalations.
bumping along in the
shapeless darkness and a
woman, aged, staring out the
windows at dingy walls. a
clatter of metal on
metal and a wince.
the light above has no
shade, and with each passing
bump, the shadows dance,
long and slow.
i step off the train, still
with nowhere to go.
17 December 2007
rome in a day
An empty park bench at night is
man's real best friend.
The city lights are streaked
and melting. The skyscrapers
tumble slowly toward the sea.
And the moonlight just catches
the edge of the passing car, plummeting
into quick ruin just beyond the
curve. Ruins, these nights, ruins,
all of them.
17 December 2007
quod erat demonstrandum
I was once told that
everyone has something
to prove.
So what am I doing
here, sprawled across
my bed in the wee hours
of night, pants half off,
the fan hanging dead above?
What is it, exactly,
I'm proving?
There's a man on the
street, the sun in his eyes,
squinting. He's in love
with a man who's in
a woman. She walks
her dog every morning
and every night, past
the grocery store and the
bank and the barber shop
where I get my hair cut.
Once I went out with the
girl who sweeps up
the clipped hair.
All this proving, and only
this dirtied floor to show
for it.
19 December 2007
Theodyssey (a 10-minute poem dare)
Tell me, all-endowed one, molded
of earth – for what do we strive
to unearth those beautifully
seductive gifts? For
curiosity’s sake, for a prying
temptation that not even the
gods can temper? Or for some
malevolent purpose, self-destruction
self-contained in a neat
box? In this house of sorrow, where
a fire still flickers, do we dare
risk iniquity for apathy? Dare to
enter the dark so we may then see
the light? In tearing down all
walls, can we begin to build anew?
Perhaps, perhaps, but there
is gardening left to do.
20 September 2009
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