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.

Books

Books make my mother feel wealthy.
She's an attorney, mind you, graduate
of The Yale Law School (which you'd know
if you'd ever seen her try to chop
a zucchini or read a poem, she'll
tell you they didn't teach her that
at The Yale Law School as she botches
the dice and mangles a metaphor), so by most
measures she really is wealthy.
Nice house, three well-fed kids, four
cats presently (maxed out at seven),
but it's the books, she says, that really
make her feel she's made it. So the house,
that nice house, is filled with them.
Many unread, most never again to be
opened, but every room has a shelf
and I found some good stuff boxed
in the attic too, secret treasure troves.

My books are my burden. Books make my mother
feel wealthy, and I have inherited
her habit of accumulating them, mostly
from discount bins and friends'
giveaway piles. I will never have
a giveaway pile. As any New Yorker
will tell you, this is madness: we move
constantly, and moving my books is not
entirely unlike moving mountains. My recent
use of the library gives me nightmares:
what if I am writing a love letter, the letter
that will determine the fate of my
well my everything, and all I need is
one quote, one quote from the perfect book
which I returned the library two days before.
I thought books were permanent. These new rules
unsettle me. So I buy more dollar paperbacks
for their title or tagline or because I think
I've read about the author before, and the books
accumulate and I try to keep up but the library
keeps sending books too, and if I don't finish
them fast there's a fee, and all told it's very
overwhelming. My books, my burden, my inheritance
is very overwhelming. I'm unclear on its permanence.

Wauwinet, 1953

Wiggle your fingers 

into the thick rubber

gloves.

Slide your feet

into the thick-soled

boots.

You will require help 

with the laces --

your newly chubby fingers

lack the dexterity

needed to tie a knot.

Attach the hose

to the security-seal

bracket.

Tighten the helmet

and feel secure beneath the

brass.

You will see differently

through the circular glass pane --

learn to swivel your shoulders

to compensate for a new

lack of peripheral vision.

Step off the dock

and try to wave goodbye --

the suit will make it difficult.

Turn on your headlamp quickly

or you will get lonely

in the dark.

2:30am on Saturday morning

Chicken pot pie
and I don't care.

Chaos begets Chaos

Fully acknowledging cop-out. Will do better tomorrow.

This week's left me feeling quite sore;
It's been heartache and let-downs galore.
At the end of this bedlam
I'd give two limbs and then some
to just catch a glimpse of my floor.

Veg

When sinking 

lower,

and lower 

into quicksand,

the mush envelops me;

swaddling my stretched

muscles, and lifting

the weight from my soles.

In a way, 

it's so relaxing,

I'd rather grab

a remote control

than a lifeline. 

TVs I grew up with

Tell me the first:

two nobs hand tuned

to fourteen channels

antennae like late station wagons

perfect

fake wood siding

for a Saturday morning

where remotes are still remote

like island life or HBO.

Tell me the second:

wobbling cathodes

lifted from a basement

of liquidated rental tapes

the firm grip of business 

dissolution wobbling 

on powder-painted black steel tripod

legs 

a silver box midair

at a great distance

the six button oblong brain

detachable

from the couch control

for the AA price

of batteries.

Tell me the third:

big glass black bulge

wider than my stubby arms

more buttons than the alphabet.

The end of trading up.

Each ever-bigger filter

for those signals

shielded in the plush

metallic hug of tangled cables

and cartoons and news

stretches to fill a slightly dusty world

with its powerless and distant vision.

Eyjafjallajokull

[This is likely part of my Documenting the End of the World series.]

Weeks ago smoke filed
out in billowing
columns. Airports closed
across Europe as the ash hung like shredded
curtains. Somewhere
a great bowl was overturned
and in a café in Chicago I watched
planes of light unsettle
the dust.
We slept uneasily,
buffeted by clouds of our
inconveniences.

-Bad air, you said, and we all
breathe it. -So, I said,
a conspiracy?
We didn't laugh.

The unpronounceable bowels of the Earth
scattered slowly
over the ruins
of our

civilization.
As if trying to
forget us.

Introduction

And this is your great
grandma, Mima.
No that's not her, she's
the next one over. Can't
you tell, she has
the family chin.
She was born in Oklahoma
Territory, before it became
a state.
She was born in a dugout.
Yes, a dugout.
Her father tattooed
all the children, in case
of an Indian attack.
The skin of her forearm was inked
with her initials.
No, her name.
Her family name?
I don't know.
Anyway.
Mima had a twin
sister. She was lazy,
let Mima do all the work.
Her life was unhappy,
but Mima married
a boxer nicknamed Big Six.
Six what?
Don't ask me...
Big Six died
of a head injury,
they say.
Mima became a
widow, gave food
to the poor, said her
prayers, raised
her children.
She grew old
watching baseball on TV;
planting flowers;
and playing practical
jokes on her daughter.
Like that one time, she dressed
as a witch.
It was a character
from the Bible.
No, a witch.
A Bible witch?
She came down to tea
with her daughter's friends
the pointy hat,
the warty nose,
the scraggly hair. Who
am I, she cackled
until someone
finally
guessed correctly.

Is it Foucault?

People don’t care about boxes anymore
Said my brother. Think of the Census.
Now you can be both
Rather than one or the other.

Windows

These white windows were never so open since the time I saw you last.

Advice

I’m not one to tell you when
to take it, or from whom, advice
being so specific to
its situation, recipient,
and giver, since the right
advice from the wrong person
or for the wrong reason is
just as right and the converse
just as harmful except when
it isn’t, really no advice
about advice can be said
to be universally applicable
since there is a universe
of moralities and another
of relationships but nevertheless
if I may offer one piece of
my own, it is the following:
Never take advice from a person
who tells you to be selfish.

Looking forward to Mediterranean food day at a lunch-provided staff meeting

Falafel.

Delicious,

beautiful,

brown

orbs

of fried

legumes.

Gently caressed,

by silky

ribbons

of liquid 

sesame seeds.

I long for thee.

How is it,

that on Fridays,

your name is

inexplicably typed

on my screen,

six hundred times

before lunch?

politics

[in keeping with today's oddly national theme]

politics is

rhetoric tactics and syntax
repetition strategy and anthrax

stroke my caucus
pull my lever
release my figures
from the polls
go and go
and go until

it is morning in america
and there is a low-strung star
spangle not what your country can for you
let freedom swing or try
(it's tricky with this slippery liquid handle)
draw surveils across the huddled masses
tap on liberty to see if she's hollow
but bate your rust-green
breath

save it for the crowd
because Auntie Sam
is cooking in drag
again
and it stinks in here

problem is
it makes you tactical and gassy
Auntie's abiotic wholesome eats

her meals proliferate
nuclear gatherings
causing a bawdy global belly swell
in the body politic

whoever took it out of the fridge
drizzled her melting salad
in the bowlpot and forgot
to plug the damn thing in
whoever never activated an appliance
whoever should know better by now

that the sockets of democracy
are not proprietary or to be shorted and burnt
as black as crocket's coon skin cap
tilting back to watch the night sky
and one last expedition crusoe with the eye electric

Uncle Sam is off this week
and busy with a tumbler
proselytizing some jazzy combination
of peanut butter and voting rights
while he stumbles on his long journey through the night
into the graveyard of empires

Workplace Rules

1.
Be safe, and
conscientious.
Keep your hands at your
sides and hum the National
Anthem.

2.
Remember:
the future of the office
and your coworkers
and the world
has climbed upon you.
Smile,
and stock your desk with snacks
and sedatives.

3.
Imagine everything as a Greek Myth.

4.
Work Hard.
Accept Defeat.

5.
Be a player in the dominant office
atmosphere.
Respect others and finish
nothing,
politely.

6.
Upon dying ask your wife
to drag your naked body
into the middle of the town square
to test her love.

Lament of a Fair Weather Biker

Blowing from the north northeast,
I cannot feel my ears,
This wind's so hard I barely move
In spite of shifting gears.

The lactic acid's building,
Tears and sweat are in my eyes,
I hate these fit, fast cyclists,
I hate their spandexed thighs.

Young again

She said:

I like your vibes. They sizzle my insides. And now that you’re gone I realize that my whole outlook for the last year has been outlined by failure. I don’t know if I lost 9 months or crossed the equator. I want to be beautiful for you, but the world is so open. Like a big sunroof. So this place…this doesn’t feel like home…and I need a place that feels like home, because I think I might be someone who deals with mild depression on-again off-again my whole life, but then again, maybe everyone has this problem. Our world…it likes to tell us we have problems. These large gizmos in the front of our heads have gotten us to the point that even empathy now can be sliced up so that it isn’t empathy anymore but something totally different…totally insignificant.

He replied:

We will have a home. And I like your vibes too.

Chocolate Vanilla Swirl

A true meeting of the minds
tit for tat
ying yang yogurt
pours out in an ever
narrowing gyre

Icke

Your corporations and your new

world order and your takeovers

and your thick skinned

bloodthirsty reptilian genomes:

the world failed to cough up all its

malfeasance in its hurricanes

earthquakes and volcanic ash

that drifts like snow

to cover us all

until we cannot see

how it ended.