FIRST IN A SERIES OF CORRUPTED INSPIRATIONAL TEXTS
A heart is a wish your dream makes so be glad
I tell myself like old cartoons advise,
that I have one, that one out of three ain’t bad
in ponderous games like baseball
or emergency animal medicine. You don’t care
which summer it was, gilded then burning,
and maybe by this point, this juncture
in the blood of it all, maybe I no longer remember
if it really was that season
I say it was. Maybe it was winter
or November, whichever fell first—
I was obsessing in those days
about the mechanics of cruelty,
the engine in which I was always losing
a finger, or something crucial,
an item on which the hopes of everything hung,
heavy and obdurate and impossible to forget.
Except that with time I failed
to remember: miserable, unable to shop
for adequate produce, tangelos which pop
like little suns in your mouth,
like balloons loaded with syrup.
Unable to assess the sky.
Whether the clouds and all the living
which are in them somehow,
whether these things know
their purpose and if they feel like sharing,
opening up at last, inducting the rest of us
into the details of the joke.
The password, the secret handshake,
the confirmation that yes,
all that pain added up to something
more than the fudged sums of so many fragments,
though my word isn’t one
you should trust, you should trust me on that.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
2
ELEGY WITH NARRATIVE OF TRAGIC PASSING,
NOSTALGIA, AND PERFUNCTORY INVOCATION OF PEACE
There was the slip, the fall, the misstep and then
behind them all the cast-off banana peel
or slick of ice impossible at night to even see
or warm puddle of water issuing from
the refrigerator larded with how many years
of midnight oaths of final repair,
and the ankle turned years ago, lifetimes ago,
agos ago, it seems, so long it's been
cursing you, your stupidity, your drunkenness,
your inability to lift from the earth
one inch without truly dire consequence.
And then the bad knee, no, both,
plural in their congenital ache,
their first-thing-in-the-morning tale of woe--
but to go on is to belabor it,
your hypothetical end, your agnostic demise,
the groomed rows of data
on the actuarial table
which could have saved us all
this trouble, even if it couldn't save you from you.
Before this moment, and that,
in the other words of the past,
where you never really lived
nor in perfect truth did a single one of us,
the sun did your sweet bidding,
came when you called it,
and the clouds were strange, trained pets,
the good kinds, requiring no
effort on your part, no attention, nothing.
SINCERELY
Your rosy-fingered stevedore, your diligent crank,
your toxic asset, your uncle back in Malibu,
your aunt in Kittyhawk, your arcane symbol,
your broken clarinet, your lastborn, squirming
wildly in his swaddled birthright, your
instant message, your itemized brokenness,
your list of lost things, your forgotten abandonments,
your cast-offs, your too-small ring,
your finger bruised by the door,
your bruise in the night, which is not like
a bruise, though once this was
asserted, once this was written down,
sent to you, once this did seem right
to a lot of people, your aggrieved body mass index,
which scolds you in the dark
like a little dog, your papers, your imprint,
your forgeries, all of them in a row,
plain to children who have no gifts to speak of,
your naked sentiments, shining
like vegetables, rinsed then peeled
then served to people who appeared starved,
your pocket's pathetic cargo,
lint you cursed, change you hoarded,
your idiopathic dreams,
your mottle of skin, your rotten rot,
whatever that was in
the sink, all its improbable taxonomies,
your continued presence,
your philosophical cold case,
your evasions, your returns, your holographic scams,
your angelic coteries,
their hymns like an aftershock
in which there is only stillness,
stillness like a rock, your rock, your wound.
NOSTALGIA, AND PERFUNCTORY INVOCATION OF PEACE
There was the slip, the fall, the misstep and then
behind them all the cast-off banana peel
or slick of ice impossible at night to even see
or warm puddle of water issuing from
the refrigerator larded with how many years
of midnight oaths of final repair,
and the ankle turned years ago, lifetimes ago,
agos ago, it seems, so long it's been
cursing you, your stupidity, your drunkenness,
your inability to lift from the earth
one inch without truly dire consequence.
And then the bad knee, no, both,
plural in their congenital ache,
their first-thing-in-the-morning tale of woe--
but to go on is to belabor it,
your hypothetical end, your agnostic demise,
the groomed rows of data
on the actuarial table
which could have saved us all
this trouble, even if it couldn't save you from you.
Before this moment, and that,
in the other words of the past,
where you never really lived
nor in perfect truth did a single one of us,
the sun did your sweet bidding,
came when you called it,
and the clouds were strange, trained pets,
the good kinds, requiring no
effort on your part, no attention, nothing.
SINCERELY
Your rosy-fingered stevedore, your diligent crank,
your toxic asset, your uncle back in Malibu,
your aunt in Kittyhawk, your arcane symbol,
your broken clarinet, your lastborn, squirming
wildly in his swaddled birthright, your
instant message, your itemized brokenness,
your list of lost things, your forgotten abandonments,
your cast-offs, your too-small ring,
your finger bruised by the door,
your bruise in the night, which is not like
a bruise, though once this was
asserted, once this was written down,
sent to you, once this did seem right
to a lot of people, your aggrieved body mass index,
which scolds you in the dark
like a little dog, your papers, your imprint,
your forgeries, all of them in a row,
plain to children who have no gifts to speak of,
your naked sentiments, shining
like vegetables, rinsed then peeled
then served to people who appeared starved,
your pocket's pathetic cargo,
lint you cursed, change you hoarded,
your idiopathic dreams,
your mottle of skin, your rotten rot,
whatever that was in
the sink, all its improbable taxonomies,
your continued presence,
your philosophical cold case,
your evasions, your returns, your holographic scams,
your angelic coteries,
their hymns like an aftershock
in which there is only stillness,
stillness like a rock, your rock, your wound.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
At least for now, I'm mostly goofing around over at Twitter. Follow me there if you like for updates as I revise my memoir.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Radio, Radio
About a month or so ago, I was interviewed by Dick Gordon, host of The Story, a public radio program produced by American Public Media, who also do Garrison Keillor's show. I'm not sure I can stand listening to myself, but the interview airs today. Check your local listings, or listen to the stream here.
I had a great time and thanks to everyone.
I had a great time and thanks to everyone.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Lassitude
I'm reading tomorrow night, along with poet Megan Volpert, at the Georgia Center for the Book. Be there by 7:15 p.m. when the fun begins. I read there last fall with Thomas Lux and won't repeat a single poem. Or I'll try not. Definitely some new work.
***
I've been absorbed with finishing the memoir. In the last week or so, I've added approximately 10,000 words to the book. The end is near, not exactly mirage-like. But the middle is. What to say about those dull, largely forgettable late teen age years? Dunno. Must figure all that out. Later, rewrite everything.
***
I have 6 weeks.
***
I want it to matter.
***
See you tomorrow night?
***
I've been absorbed with finishing the memoir. In the last week or so, I've added approximately 10,000 words to the book. The end is near, not exactly mirage-like. But the middle is. What to say about those dull, largely forgettable late teen age years? Dunno. Must figure all that out. Later, rewrite everything.
***
I have 6 weeks.
***
I want it to matter.
***
See you tomorrow night?
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Cuz we belong together, yeah
Were I to peek through the blinds just now, outside everything would be spring: flood of sun and warmth and the (not uber-hyped-up social networking site) twitter of lean little birds and an ur-sky, blue, without end, Amen. I never can adequately express how glad of spring's onset that I am. A parole from winter, my rickety body.
And how silent has it been here? Cobwebbed, even. I haven't had much I wanted to say. At some point a blog becomes a chore and then it's best to step away from the blasted thing. But, with the return of clement weather, I fell less interior, less of a layered mind. Let's see what happens.
***
So much has gone on these last few months, some of it good, some bad, some fleetingly infuriating.
***
Today word from Ecco on My Index's sales numbers, which were wildly beyond what I would have predicted. Thank you to everyone who has purchased it.
The cost of that success is that Ecco/HarperCollins wants to push up the release of my memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, to May 2010, to coincide with the release of the paperback edition of Index. This was always a possibility, discussed, even, shortly after signing with Ecco. Now it's the real deal, sho nuff, and it's all great, except now I have to very seriously finish the darn thing. No sleep till Brooklyn, I guess. I'm not sure what I mean, except: holy crap, time to buckle down, y'all.
To that end, I've been working on a chapter about the time I got mugged.
And how silent has it been here? Cobwebbed, even. I haven't had much I wanted to say. At some point a blog becomes a chore and then it's best to step away from the blasted thing. But, with the return of clement weather, I fell less interior, less of a layered mind. Let's see what happens.
***
So much has gone on these last few months, some of it good, some bad, some fleetingly infuriating.
***
Today word from Ecco on My Index's sales numbers, which were wildly beyond what I would have predicted. Thank you to everyone who has purchased it.
The cost of that success is that Ecco/HarperCollins wants to push up the release of my memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, to May 2010, to coincide with the release of the paperback edition of Index. This was always a possibility, discussed, even, shortly after signing with Ecco. Now it's the real deal, sho nuff, and it's all great, except now I have to very seriously finish the darn thing. No sleep till Brooklyn, I guess. I'm not sure what I mean, except: holy crap, time to buckle down, y'all.
To that end, I've been working on a chapter about the time I got mugged.
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