Poem-A-Day #363 : 36

36

6 years pass
& you seem to remember the cake
from the party

There were faces then
instead of paper bags thinking themselves
into humanity

At the corner of bakery
& Waldorf School was the same feeling
you always have about relationships

What the fuck

& then what the fucking fuck

The impulse to speed away
is so strong that the blur lines come in packs of 100
for $.99 at Party City

They run the gamut from black
to neon anime hair
& even then they all seem too realistic

Looming near the Barclay's Center
the Nets seem to want to play water polo instead
of basketball

And the apartment you sat in
for 7 years melts
into a pool of metallic Studebaker gold

Here is a door frame
it goes to the roof
& manages to deposit you in Bed-Stuy

Don't look back
it wants you to feel fear it can blood let

Instead stare into the ocean & feel its boil

Poem-A-Day #110 : The Most Gentle of Destructions

The Most Gentle of Destructions

Smoke fills lungs - water - a sort of pool

You are a cave system

The roots of trees reach through the topsoil of your skin - there is not a violence in this it is the most gentle of destructions

Like a tree falling in a silent wood without a set of eyes on it - it is the crumbling face of the buildings resurrected in Pompeii

You are a three thousand year old visage - weathering

These languages against you are salts splitting their ways into your strata - they leave a snail trail behind them - they want you to follow their journey

The cracked open mountain - broken by dynamite and willpower - reveals a strange cake-like interior

Your layers are less complicated for sure - there were fewer lives involved - but they are just as interesting

What is this red thing your finger is on - where was it supposed to go -

A relief from the ancient city of Nimrud - a site destroyed by ISIS in 2015

Poem-A-Day #109 : Pastoral

Pastoral

the knuckle of the grass is a black doorknob - a shine to it - so many hands - like the nose on the tomb of Elizabeth I in Westminster - the particles of these hands mingling with that metal edifice - a sort of smelting

the knuckle is bending and that is why it is a knuckle - the grass thickly bends in the wind off the mountains - the Sandias are not pink today today there is a creamy haze over them - there is a fire pushing out the smell of burning piñon - a factory of smoke piling on the horizon - the cotton batting from a quilt spilling out after being torn open by a child or dog

it is shiny because it is grass and the joints of plants are always shiny - like the flesh is stretched just to the point of tearing - it is a swollen knuckle - an old woman knitting knuckle - you can hear the cartilage pull

Poem-A-Day #71 : Drunk Poem

Drunk Poem

The dog is slobbering again - and the night is cold
it's May why is the night cold

I am an adult I feel like I'm 16 - I have never felt older

I recount the story of going to the concert
of the mosh pit and the elbows and how I retreated to the balcony

And there are nods - someone says 'but your hair is purple'
and there are more nods

And I remember the article about purple-haired poets
ow they were an example of the pseudo-liberal
not really woke white person - and - I - am unsure -

And the cat drags the baby bunny into the living room
and does not devour it

It fucks with the thing - until it is saved or dead
either way the night will repeat - because martinis

Other People's Poems

I have always had a fondness for poems about death. About the aging process. I wrote an entire thesis on entropy built around the work of A. R. Ammons' Garbage.

What I'm trying to say, is that I have a love of decay. The beauty in the moment of no longer being.

The USS Guardian stuck on the Tubbataha Reef being cut into four sections so it could be safely removed. It is stark. Poetic.

I have also always been fascinated by the image of a cut out tongue. The muting of a person. From Titus Andronicus to this:


I'm Charles

Swaying handcuffed
On an invisible scaffold,
Hung by the unsayable
Little something
Night and day take turns
Paring down further.
My mind's a ghost house
Open to the starlight.
My back's covered with graffiti
Like an elevated train.
Snowflakes swarm
Around my bare head
Choking with laughter
At my last-minute contortions
To write something on my chest
With my already bitten,
Already bleeding tongue.

-Charles Simic

Wiser

Wiser 2/15

What I don't know
I place on the shelf
Stare as it mutates and
Experiences light shifts &
Rises like bread.

Chaser

Chaser 8/15

Was literature never enough – it seemed like a rib removed
Sitting in plain sight on the top shelf
            – was it keeping its dust well?

Bones become air-filled as they age
Lighter and lighter they become kindling

In your room – late at night – watching this part of you
It never seemed important enough to keep inside

You scratch up the walls trying to locate a femur of emotion

Does the formaldehyde smell of the funeral home lock night terror
A jarred finger-bone – a puce of some dead saint even
            – do these things make you more?

I know that you wanted to be a serious writer – your face tells
That you thought it would be romantic and pious

Romantic piety looks like shimmering frustration
            – how could you know that?

Vivacity

Vivacity 6/20

Aperitif in small doses

Cool slinging to the skin - a love affair in old age

I walk through the botanic gardens in Brooklyn as slowly as possible
Stand beneath the weeping cherry tree for the same measure every time
There I count to thirty and rub against the black wrought iron boughs

Steady rain - creeping over the hillsides

Tawny port fills glass