It’s a Sunday night and I’m thinking about you like always.
I do not understand why I can’t just have everything I want.
What makes it so hard? I am pretty aren’t I? They say I am.
It’s hard to tell when you’re looking at yourself in the mirror.
You consume my season in a disconcertingly familiar way.
I thought this phase of my life was finished but it drags on.
Maybe I don’t even like you, you’re just a sweet distraction.
this poem is not original.
Familiar sensations:
dull blue window screen
rounded black keys
coffee wafting
are power enough to penetrate
physical sensors.
Gooey antibodies,
salves in wounds.
The self mirrored in brown eyes.
These are poetic dynamos.
The slink from bed
the work to pay the bill
beauty to thought to arm to hand to fingers to keys to screen
these the breezes to word sails.
To act or not to act,
is the real question.
Tasting the bitter rubber of eraser
hearing the scratch of lead on pulp
kills the tyrant,
punishes the betrayer.
Dare to die, Derrida.
Reading Auspices; or What it Means to Be a Poet
“observation by an augur especially of the flight
and feeding of birds to discover omens”
– Merriam Webster Dictionary
To be fair, my mother didn’t force me to be
a hopeless romantic; at 5, I would meet a girl
at the doors of our church, every Sunday,
to walk her to our classroom. Who knows what
birds flew the skies above my birth…
Even so, my mom adored a movie, and I adored
that movie, titled “The Thornbirds,” in which
the central theme circles New Zealand folklore
about a bird. A silent bird. Only in the moments
before its death, after impaling itself on the thorns
of a particular tree, would it sing. One superlative song,
existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen,
and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought
at the cost of great pain…” Or so says the legend.
This theme serves as metaphor for the characters,
their passions driving them, from the day they are born,
onto their own particular, and chosen, thorn.
I’m a grown man, now, and like the subject of a Blake transition:
I’ve learned the truth. The thornbird is a legend—but shrikes
could not be more real. Have you heard of the Loggerhead?
The Kentucky bird of prey without talons sufficient to kill?
How she thrives near the spikes of the Honey Locust Tree?
How she feeds on small snakes, lizards, and amphibians,
but only after carrying them to the tree, or a stretch of barbed wire,
casting them upon the spikes? How she feeds on them,
yet breathing, their blood washing over the instrument
of their deaths? This is the reality. This is the world
in which we live, and die, and dream. And yet I live,
and I dream, and I sing the folkloric songs of the dying.
there is the temptation
of the upper left hand corner
the ability to say no more
to quit if
well
for any reason, really
there is no accountability with that x,
marks the spot
where you can recede back
into yourself
away from whatever window
you no longer want to look into
the questions come after, though,
from internal dissatisfaction
for not leaving for dinner after
spending six hours on wikipedia
or not finding the right words
that haven’t been used before
to tell your friend happy birthday
on her wall or never sending
that paper to your professor because
you just couldn’t put it together
the gravity of that red dot
weighs heavy on the computations
of life, goads some primal fear
written into our code
and today I’ll press it
just after I hit submit
I keep going.
Watching her snooze on the half hour drive home
I forget for a moment about my blazing fears
a babe swaddled in all mandatory tethers
“Safety First” labels on her car seat
pink gingham pillow-y head rest surrounding her noggin
sleep as soft and tender as a daydream
not one eency weency care in the world
no worry about my mothering capabilities
This one frame show–a solid amen.
Then
Carrying this brand new baby inside our humble abode
I remember a paused To Do list
mounted high, purple majesty laundry
exponential multiplication of dust bunnies
the unfinished Precious Moments quilt
a starving fridge and pantry and wilted plant in the windowsill
an empty 35mm camera and weak batteries
other unchecked, gnashing-of-teeth list items
This picture frame of life–like a screaming gremlin.
What now?
In a dream-
I tell others
I warn them
about the dangerous
of you-
of sex.
I tell them
of how he consumed me
in the most disturbing way-
when my freckles look like blood stains.
My pale skin, paler.
My throat, hoarse.
I tell them, all of this
while still not telling
my parents
of the dangers-
of sex.
How can I write in one letter
the numberless ways and times
your face and your voice came to mind?
Woven through dreams, things half recalled-
we were young again together.
I have carried scuffed cards for months,
found perfect pens and photos.
The sense of what I want to say
seems so profound and pure I find
that I can say nothing at all.
What kind of Hell Hole do you reign from,
ridiculous in your vibrating megaphone rant of hate?
You stew in your own bravado,
words without weight
slithering from forked tongue
like dented tin and clashing symbols
on a hot summer’s day.
Our Pride remains unmarred
in our celebration of joy, yet
your mind continues to search sticky brain matter
for foul fecund
to smear our intelligence,
but we turn our backs to fecal interpretations
of what the Good book says,
and send you back, back, back,
you Evil One,
feeling sorry for you,
Because in this city of rainbows,
there is only room
for love here.
