De-titled

This one used to have a horrible title.  I kept reading the title in my file and I kept avoiding it.  Giving it a shot (I thought the situation similar enough to now to fit), but I won't include the previous title.  I do remember this time, this hilariously drunk time.  Now I hardly think about it and I'm hoping it's a pattern I'll be able to repeat.  Also, I think I thought of Heaven as some sort of once-nice company, a mom-and-pop deal that got taken over by a bunch of power-hungry Reaganauts.

 

Christ addicts purified in one

translation into the floating heaven clouds

like a group of lost cattle

eating the pagan farmer’s grass.

they believe that lightning bolts

are some old man’s way of disapproval.

they never saw a lightning bolt come

down for the sins they committed

in back alleys with women loose

and old with oil rag faces and lumpy

clay thighs and worn false smiles

and no hope of ever seeing their kids

maybe someday write a masterpiece,

because children born in the middle of

hot sex sweat and discarded semen

will never be able to live the right way

to breathe life into a hollow form

and make it dance with the beauty

of intelligent design.

the old boys club in heaven has a sign

above the door written in a dead language.

the saint with the keys reads it and hopes

that maybe the lost who found the

doorway will take to heart the message,

let it sift into their grainy sepia thoughts

so they will finally realize that they were

wrong, but lucky.

but Kensey, linguistics lady, it is a dead

language, right?

I was wrong and lucky, stumbling nervous

next to you as we talked colors and books

and I loaned you one from my shelf.

flash forward to final day

when I answered the door soaked

in an evening of light brown beer.

you handed over the book—

Maybe I will see you again, but you said

definitely after the stumble of words.

I got your message, but the sad sack

sect of bald-head business men

(they deal with the commodity of soul)

did not hear the immortal dead saint

for his words and instead enjoyed

the dense white fog scenery and admired

the gate for its finery and not for what

it represented.

Christ, they said, and patted each other

on their business suit backs.

I apologized for scaring you off, but I think

it was Hemingway and not the beer.

copyright

Why I've removed the newer pieces

Last night I had a discussion with a friend. She and I are both interested in getting work published in small magazines, that sort of thing. When discussing briefly this blog, she expressed concerns about whether or not publishing something in a personal blog would be considered publishing by those small periodicals. After doing some (hardly any) research, the answers I found were mixed. Some people claimed that it didn't really matter and, if a publisher has a problem, the simplest solution is to remove the piece from the blog. However, some suggested, quite simply, that publishing is publishing, no matter what. Magazines are interested in things that they can claim to have had first-- if something is available for free on the internet, no matter how good, they won't be interested in it.

Now, this doesn't mean that I'll only be posting stuff from 2007 and 2008. I also found that, after publication, most publishers don't seem to mind if something ends up on a blog, so long as it's a few months after publication. So, hopefully I'll be posting newer stuff in half a year or so. Until then, old stuff. And maybe very, very rough drafts of new stuff. Maybe (but probably not).


2007, I guess. Read on a bridge once into a bottle of whiskey, surrounded by friends.

A Porch, Summer Night

I've seen all seasons
Press the wood of this deck‒
First the fall,
With fading dead leaves
Swirling through the rails‒
The winter with its white piles
Coming, melting, coming again‒
Then spring with the terrible violence
Of reawakening storms
Second-hand through above‒
The summer with hotness and air
And oppressive water wall.
I've known the place
Through one full cycle‒
I'm transplanted here,
The age sloughed off
And left layered, dead skin
On the once-living boards,
An imprint, thumb-print, shadow of self.

An obscured view of city night,
Orange glow haze,
And the day-time-all-time-no-break brightness
Of parking structure,
People working on my shift.
Sleepless night.
Big building windows lit,
Arrow pointing towards
The last lingering lost,
Fellow travelers on concrete
Long past bar crowd‒
Those fake patrons of moon,
Regularly scheduled broadcasts of interaction,
Auto-pilot motion, Polo shirts and beer
And girls in skirts
Displaying all of their virtue at skin level
For weighing and consideration over bar stools,
A drunk squeeze test for ripeness.

They don't know the sky
Stays creamy like orange milk
As perfume fades from the sidewalks,
Or the true night people
Who squeeze sentences from empty footsteps,
Suck down the late night cigarettes
Held in fingers alone,
Listen to the unmanned hum of nocturnal machinery‒
The crickets, the power plants, the neon lights.

A city too bright for stars,
Constellations born from still-lit windows
In towering apartments,
Trace the shape
Of the lone hunter‒
Two lights and a line,
A belt and a bow,
The wind a star-lit quarry,
Kissing each summer leaf in its evasion.

deleted

removed some of the newer stuff. it'll be back by the end of next year, maybe.

last report

2008 was a good year of freedom. it should have been the last dedicated to such pursuits, though.

here's a notebook (the notebook?) entry in a polished form.

Last Report

Presented here, the last report filed by our top agent before going to ground in Singapore. Turned up fifteen months later in a whorehouse in Tokyo wearing a kimono and a necktie, drinking sake out of the polished skull of a shogun—

There is no sunlight louder,
It burst big muscles through blinds.
She click-clack
At fury typewriter,
I, written, rewritten history,
Dosed five gallons white-out—
See it, smell the urine
Stain in green corner carpet,
The dog got tossed out.

She still make new truth,
The ribbon go wild now,
Afraid it will rip,
Sever each artery in
Thousand mile radius.
Anything for me turn out villain.
“It's important,” she say.
Lips wrapped tight round
Brown burning cigarette tip.
I believe her,
She knows score.

Hey! Gunshot!
Maybe water pop over stove.
We're losing face being so
Jumpy,
No reason to fear
anything it's important she
still typing I wrap
finger around bed post.
We should get
Going.
Me and her meander
Through dirty street.
Shadow like big stalker
Over shoulder, Physical
Build of paranoia.
I duck in alley.
She walk straight.
Maybe see her again.

Send post posthaste,
Forward to big top hat
Chief—
Much love.
Watch out for build up
Of red dust in the
Shining grey attic.

a strange one, but i think the fact i wrote it shortly after watching cronenberg's take on naked lunch may explain that. it's a bit faux-noir hokey.

the detailed devil

going back to 2007 again, i found another one. a long one, at least compared to what i seem to be writing now. i opened this because something i was writing today reminded me of it. it's interesting to me to look at the differences.

EDITED

now, the very long one (deep breath):

Walking Winter City Streets

Wandering the city soulless,
The titans drifted to home towns
And snow gently perching on
The paths, reclaiming the
Heated shuffle of the day
To layer white upon concrete uncontested.
Late night journey into the subtle
Emptiness.

I trudged a trail well knowing
Snow conquest would have
Her buried in moments of night.
I stole looks at pairings left
In quiet city, sitting on
Couches in their homes.
Their paths not yet buried,
Tiny prints and large,
First walking side by side
Then sliding, enjoying
The frictionless sidewalks
While thinking of friction in
Warm-sheeted beds.

I wished then that beside
Me on the winter nocturnal
That some starry-eyed reciprocator
Cast with delicate features
In night-light moon-binding
Would match my stride and,
In a moment of nostalgic
Love of childhood fun just
Slide.

But such gems of lovers
Vanished at the thought that
I was not lonely in my
Solitary wanderings.
The snowfall beauty was my
Mistress– Seeing her dancing
To settle was enough.
Her shadow cast as falling,
Black dim flakes rising from
The ground.

I imagined wandering in the woods
Of my home.
No longer afraid of the vicious
Fangs of darkness, having
Become so much a part of
The silent proceedings.
Etched upon my face the
Marks of many journeys through
Those different streets.
I could walk with the coyotes
Of my home, not waking
Them from slow talk pondering
Under the awnings of the brick
Churches.
I carried that hopeless musk
Of unfit yearning.
I was no longer an intruder
In their darkness, rituals of
Survival– an outsider, but
Knowing slightly, enough.

The target of the trip,
Laced with neon signs
Singing of “Lotto, Slush, Phone Cards” –
A quick stop masked by
The gravity of walking, a
Moment forgotten staring into
The mirror of concrete snowfall contemplation–
A root to reality.

My path burned with fragmented
Verse, pace quickened at the thought
Of scribbling down so madly, to
Capture the mind’s ejaculation.
To describe the beauty of those
Slide marks and the imagined
Lovely words and smiles on
The lips of that sweet, small-footed
Girl.
The snow had not masked her from me.
I cherished her–
Bent on distilling her minute in the snow
Into words, to bestow upon her love
She’ll never know.

Only the empty doors, opened into the
Metal shining elevator, know,
And maybe the bums hidden under
That brick church awning–
They are the silent watchers
Of the unreal night world,
Marking the paths and siphoning
Thoughts of the displaced day-time
Travelers.
Let them know of my love,
And note that I was not
Cold in that frozen world,
White under fresh fall.

what an unabashed romantic i was back then. that was written over spring break in ann arbor. everyone was gone. the laundry room had burned down. i had nothing to do. it was amazing.

different tastes

i was going to follow my rules and post an old something. looking back to 2007, i decided to open up the first poem i wrote for my first michigan creative writing course. i remember writing it vividly, having just left the first day of workshop in the course. one of my classmates had read a poem that, i believed, was pure spectacle. so i decided to write a poem about sex, too. a word of warning: it's not very good. it received initial praise from my teacher, but i believe he may have understood my intent and felt the same way despite it being a less-than-stellar effort.

Different Tastes

I was once asked to write a poem
About sex.

And so I wrote:

I swam across a mile-wide river
And drowned mid-way through

My patron was not amused.

“I want grunts!
And groans!
And flapping flesh!”
He said.

He wanted explosions,
Grand finale fireworks show,
But I gave him a pop,
Soft silky report,
He wanted more,
And so I told him:
“Write your own damn poem!”

My patron was not amused.