The First Days Were The Longest

First, it was the delusion of normalcy.

Repetition had leaked the moments of the greater

moments that they like a single bird looping an unknown

or forgotten language had

represented. Or undecipherable.

A wave understood by itself is a

catastrophe.

Enough of them will compose a sedative

you neither choose nor know the end of.

If this was not the most you could

expect – well, when the last days are creaking by

like everything creaking – bones, chairs, walls

struggling for breath – you can fill out

a survey of your satisfaction. You can be honest.

And yet creeping up along the borders

of even this was the ivy of a malaise so personal I

hid it from myself. The hint

of Chosenness was waiting underneath bathmats

and the curtains already drawn back.

What was it waiting for?

To itself be chosen.

To itself be the delusion of choice.

To itself be called abnormal.

And willed.

How To Believe

Throw out all these thick and coughing

Beliefs. Split your head down

The middle with a cleaver. Come outside.

There will be a wind

Tomorrow.

Dayenu.

Enough of this
delayed gratification
nonsense i want payoff
no more dutifully
placing pennies
writing thank you notes
waiting for drugs
to kick in
reading long things
brussel sprouts
second drafts
second dates
if the first wasn’t spectacular
economy shipping
winning people over
second chances
ok no more third chances
career planning
payment plans
weekend plans
plans beyond tomorrow
fellowship submissions
episodes of True Blood
movies without Diane Keaton
or Barbra
no more research
no more planting seeds
no more planting
i will just order delivery
no more fucking credits
in the karma bank
no more poem-a-day
i am tired.

At the Seams

Today, I feel like

I'm bursting.

I don't know with what.

It might be joy,

but that is unlikely.

I don't think it's laughter,

my sense of humor

has been on vacation of late.

It could be excitement,

after all

I'm throwing a big event

on Monday.

It's probably with food,

I gorged myself all month.

But I can't be sure.

Bursting with...

The choices sound so

positive.

But doesn't it really mean

that I'm being torn

apart?

Righteous

I have a long history of cheating.
Real cheating. Stacking the deck

in CandyLand at age four. Stealing
my brother’s stuffed pig and naming it

after him as if that were payment.
Borrowing lines from other poets

as if I could make them my own.
But ah, then it gets fuzzy: Writing

clever answers on tests because I couldn’t
grasp the real ones. Sleeping with other

men’s girlfriends. Do these things count?
I certainly got credit for them.

Am I proud? Perhaps. Of some. But
mostly I have never been a good

loser. Better to change the rules
than to throw the game, I say.

Tease

[part of the series]

There were days when we tested ourselves –

or if not ourselves, then the depths

of a neuroscience outside

of us. You laughed and repeated

whatever we saw until the bottom

of every noun fell out

from under it. We chanted Chair tree

laundromat until we

worshipped in ecstatic

tongues. I didn’t speak again until the night

so I could research our

holiness. Semantic satiation:

which means comprehension comes

from hunger.

You researched divining rods.

I reminded you of the city

around us.

F for Effort

Poems are supposed to be emotional,

or so I've been told.

Sitting down today,

I want to write a poem about anger.

But I already did that once this week,

and there's not much else

in the way of emotion

inside the tank.

So i'll just sit here

and eat pretzels. 

I want to melt cheese over them.

But that would take 

too 

much 

effort.

Obsolesence

In a world of closing doors and opening
Windows, one can safely assume the next
Vista will be different than the last,
But no less full of worms and viruses.

A poet once said, “Things fall apart.”
An entrepreneur says, you will pay
For this thing, which will fall apart
And then you will pay again.

How can we build a system that plays
By rules we can’t imagine? Cheating
Death should be the motto of the machine,
And yet, the rough beast urges Us to hack.

Short Selling

And didn't you too

bet against it years ago?

This pale art, years ago

already dead, too

withered and dusty to

have survived this long?

We are not

averse to the implications

of our age, we are

not averse to digging wells

into the shell that covers

nothing

anymore, we

are not averse to the profit

gained from

losing.

Sea Biscuit

Hi all, here's a poem from a fellow friend just to spice things up (since I can't do the same for your sex lives)

Sea biscuit:

taste

the sea

the biscuit

between the wave

in the bakery

MOTHER

mother’s best recipe

LOOK THERE’S A STARFISH

Golly!

Mother

She always knows best

so does

Sea

Biscuit.

- Sir Colin McGrath

Therapeutic

I love the clink

of freshly washed

dishes.

For each porcelain platter 

that I pile into

the pantry,

there are endless possible dishes

that it could hold

before the next time I lower it, 

blood stained,

back into the machine.

What a precarious piece of crumb cake that was!

What a precarious piece of crumb cake this is

Tottering on your nose.

It wobbles to, it wobbles fro

And you never know where it goes!

How precariously placed that crumb cake stands

Teetering on your head.

If you were an elephant, they’d congratulate you

But sadly, you’re a man.

In Case of Emergency

there is
(high voltage at track level) so
Listen 
(for instructions)
from above
for steel on steel
for a song, a screech
of faith, a show of trust
or sparks hissing at track level
Remain on Train 
(do not open side doors) do not strain
to see beyond or back, only
sidelong like a crab walking
Move to another car 
(if your immediate safety is threatened)
a wheezing, midnight Taurus
an emerald Beetle
any other glistening city escape
move away
move to some other wheeled wagon
for transporting people, burdens
Exit
(as instructed)
wary of the sparks, the
Danger

[courtesy of the CTA]

At this very moment,

you stand at the coordinates (x0, 0), your future influence extending to the coordinates (x+ct), (x-ct) as this graph of the principle of causality for the wave equation clearly explains:

Meditation at Halsted and Van Buren

I must have been the same to her. - Robert Hass, Meditation at Lagunitas

After after after a a a while while while I I I understood understood understood that that that
and after I understood that that that then then then I I I understood that
under under under the stairs stood myself myself my self self self and her
her her and we,
talking talking talking
this way, dissolved into the eternal afternoon, solved the eternal and after
noon noon noon everything thing
thing thing thing thing thing thing
dissolves
solves
:
justice, pine, pine pine pine, hair,
blackberry – just just just
just pine for her again and
in the after after afternoon pine under
the stairs and after after a while while her hair
like black black
berries dissolves into the black black everything,
blackberry blackberry blackberry.

Comments

One of Madden's recent comments made me think I should mention 'comment subscribing.' For all posts that you are interested in - whether it's a poem you've written or one you've commented on or if you just want to subscribe to every post that is made - you can receive every comment by email by clicking the 'subscribe by email' link next to the 'post a comment' box. This is a helpful way to stay involved in the conversations on each poem.

Also, remember to add a label to your poems. Before you publish the post, type your name in the box next to "labels for this post" at the bottom of the post screen. I have made labels for each author by first name, so be sure to add one when you are publishing (makes sorting out whose are whose much easier).

Truer Words...

Fish gotta swim
And birds gotta fly
Poets gotta scheme
Or else they won’t eat.

Gordian.net

A nest

of

jumbled

wire

cased 

in blue plastic

sits 

before me.

I pull

at one end,

watching 

it snake

inch

by inch,

across the floor;

hoping

to unspool

the mess

at my feet.

Yet after hours

of pulling,

the woven

ball of

ethernet cable

seems only

to have grown.

Thinking [Of You] Under Water

At night I know the sea, riddled with boats,
Trusts the sand to stay beneath, the fish
To float into the mouths of bigger fish. Not fathoming its depth
Or edge, the particles of glass, clean bones
Caught up in water always foaming,
Crawling, turning shells to stone,
Holding lightly all the peopled boats
Cradled in the black cold,
Or drowning.
The sea trusts, as I trust that you,
Within my thoughts, are safe, though far,
And floating, or alone observing mobs of orange fish
Disordering the sea
In the deep part light won’t dive. The fate of swimmers,
The invisible salt, the inconstant colors
Waves inherit from the sky’s reservoir of blues
Are none of them the ocean’s province.
Like a great love it only loves,
Pours itself back in itself, not shifting
The sleeping line of the horizon.

If a cup of tea were loneliness

I spent today drinking
tea with my brother.
We shared Darjeeling,
black, and Stichomythic
conversation. You see,
he prefers to believe
in the American. For him,
anything conceivable
is possible. How fitting
this is for a young
physicist. He tells me that
we all have an effect
upon this universe.
If only I thought
in mathematical abstractions
such a view would be
just as simple. Instead,
I stare into the black
bottom of my cup and
hope that it is a witch’s
brew that will take me
back to you.

A Delicious Afternoon

Today was scrumdiddlyumptious in a mad hatter sort of way.
Weaving through the streets were trees on the move.
Flowers full in bloom thrust up on their branches
like the phalanges of a giant octopus
or a basketful of dildos. Both the same I guess
if Hokusai had anything to say about it.
Spring brings with it the delicious prospect of carnal delight.

Five Resolutions in the Name of Stress Relief

1.
No more reading news
unless you think you can do
something about it.

2.
Next time you "live chat"
with a librarian, do
not discuss late fees.

3.
Be more like Weston.
He is a cat. Cats do not
put up with this shit.

4.
For God’s sake Dinah,
there’s no reason to assume
someone is pregnant.

5.
Start trusting your friends
to catch when you’ve gone crazy.
You’re a rotten judge.

When I'm Angry

I'll be stroking my chin,

or so it will seem 

to you.

In actuality, 

I'm holding my jaw

shut

tight,

to stop myself

from doing something

regrettable.

And when I do

unclench my teeth,

my voice will quietly

waver,

because my jaw

is trembling,

trying to stay

clamped

despite my minds insistence

to do otherwise.

And if I pull it off,

you might just think

I have a cold,

and not realize that I'm

fumbling

to reinsert the pin

that you so foolishly

removed.

How I Try to Rewrite the Past and It Doesn't Work

Look, I'm just not used to writing
something straight and having enough
trust in language as an arrow rather than
as a deep pool that you happen upon
in the woods, the kind of woods you can
use the words "crystal" and "diamond"
with, maybe "shimmering," and the kind
of pool that kings throw their swords
into. The kind with an opaque surface
which may hide passageways to the center
of the earth. The kind where it's always
night. I'm not good at it. And this is all
why I've got to apologize, for the fight I picked
over a board game, or for the note I gave
in a cafe, or for everything that just hasn't added
up lately. I'm sorry: you aren't anything
more important than an experiment - less
actually: you are a variable, and I am
the hypothesis. Really, I am trying to get at
something real and weighty that you can
put in your pocket and remember when
you pull your jeans out of the washer because there
it is, crumbled and ugly. I'm trying to say
that if existence the way we know it is a kind of
qualifier, then we can predicate everything
by it, like the color of your hair or the nose
that you hate or the brotherhood you've
bound me by, even if who you are is confused.
And what I'm trying to say is that If X, Then
Y just may not apply, or in a twisted way,
the most meaningful pool may not ever be
discovered. I'm saying that I'm sorry for using
you to test this world, and that however often
I am wound around by something so simple as
hunger or exhaustion, I don't know if
it's real, or perhaps worse, if it's worth
throwing oneself over cliffs for. So you've got
to understand that that note - look, I know you
thought it would be something else, maybe
short and beautiful - but you've got to understand
that the important part of the note isn't what's
on it. It's that I gave it to you. It's that saying something
has to be worth it being given an existence of crumpling
and being thrown away, even if it's nothing.

Sweet Hallucination

A sugar cookie's soft and sweet,
A gingerbread's got bite;
Chocolate chip is the original
Post-entree delight.

Oatmeal raisin has a claim to health,
Snickerdoodle has the best name;
But the one that takes the cake's
The Thin Mint of Girl Scout fame.

It's brisk; it's bold; it's toothsome,
It's more than what it seems.
The Thin Mint dissolves on my tongue
And dances in my dreams.

Such love

The preacher on the train says
he loves God's creatures so much
he loves all people so much
he loves me so much
he'd hate to see me burn in hell.

I want to love that way.
I want my love to be a threat.
I want to say, I love you so much
love you so hard and deep,
I'd hate to see you cross me.

My mirror face

Hi there you sexy devil you.
You're a fox. A cat. A saucy
cat, a cougar perhaps? Ah,
not yet. You'll have to wait
for that. You are what you
are. You is what you are.
You are what you is you
feathered minx. You're a
walk-about wanderer
looking for some love. Who
wouldn't want a taste of
those bovine lips? A drink
of those flamenco eyes? A
sniff of that elken musk, a
view of those molars?
Botticelli would be oh so
very proud of you. Shakespeare,
Dante, and Donne, Beckett,
Klimt, and Van Gogh, Woolf
and O'Keefe, Calvino and Dali
and perhaps your mother and father too.

Lust

Greek yogurt dreams
covered in bacon grease.
If only these hips
hadn't aged so widely,
this mind would be able to bend too.

These Waters

These waters rustle like the leaves.
Spring is coming -
but an acorn drops.
Quick, bury it in the sand
before someone sees.

Sunday

Is it the first

or last

day of the week?

Either way,

tomorrow's

Monday,

so I'll call it 

lose-lose.

Masterpiece

Shut your

eyes. Stop

your ears

with wax.

They dis-

appear,

the ghosts

whom you

know not

whether

to fear

or be-

come one

of. Shh.

Listen

by not

listen-

ing. Slow

the pulse

of the

world. You

can, real-

ly. Sharp-

en your

focus

on a

leaf in

the rain.

Cover

yourself

beneath

it. The

only

true art

is blood

thirsty.

Become

the change

you want

to see

in your

self. Call

it art.

Destroy

it when

it’s no

longer

timely.

Then your

eyes can

open.

Chew

Gnashing jaws clenched in pause
consider teeth as seas: incisor waves,
the swell and crest of white-caps,
the ebb and chomp of molar tides

atomizing rock and atomizing grain
into grains suspended
in an enzymatic salivation
ground down beyond round,

ground to flow swirling in a maw
agape and settle on the tongue-soft
stomach floor of salted, shifting soil.

A slow acidic, saline massage
curls it all into the digestive
primed swill of ages; gluish knots
unbound once again, or broken to rebuild
a crystalline world in sucrose and in sand.