christopher-cizek - Hello Poetry

From across the hall, I watched her double over Coleridge, sympathizing as she looked up to the thin curtain filtering the street-light universe past the pane held in hot glue. The click-heels, car barks, ceaseless L-Train turnstiles, tipsy choirs in cracked-door taverns, hinges, keys on carabiners, bus hydraulics, the wall clock, and her fingers caressing the page. She loved a soft wind carrying birdsong through screen doors and dowel chimes. She used to leave her shoes lace-tangled by the key rack until she saw glass pollen sparkling in a caged tulip blossom. She raised the book and sullenly whispered the last stanza of Frost at Midnight into the spine, wondering how anyone could live away from impressionist-dandelion forests, children's plastic toys in the front yard, and church bells at every hour. I wondered the same thing.

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May 11, 2015

May 11, 2015 at 4:01 PM UTC

Homesick

From across the hall, I watched her double over Coleridge, sympathizing as she looked up to the thin curtain filtering the street-light universe past the pane held in hot glue. The click-heels, car barks, ceaseless L-Train turnstiles, tipsy choirs in cracked-door taverns, hinges, keys on carabiners, bus hydraulics, the wall clock, and her fingers caressing the page. She loved a soft wind carrying birdsong through screen doors and dowel chimes. She used to leave her shoes lace-tangled by the key rack until she saw glass pollen sparkling in a caged tulip blossom. She raised the book and sullenly whispered the last stanza of Frost at Midnight into the spine, wondering how anyone could live away from impressionist-dandelion forests, children's plastic toys in the front yard, and church bells at every hour. I wondered the same thing.

20

—For Tom Surdam Town's quiet— aside from the timid waltz of a porch-swing wind chime and the backyard cricket kingdoms. I passed the funeral apartments, the static cat, and the bar stool where my uncle wore his soul sore on steel strings in a wooden shot glass. He was a good man, a cigarette saint with a pacemaker scab. A tavern sweetheart with a memory made of drink chips and Marlboro foil. I saw an asphalt toad on the bridge bathing in the ghost glint of the only stop light in town beside another that was smeared like house paint just inches from the storm drain, from home.

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May 5, 2015

May 5, 2015 at 1:23 AM UTC

Flat Soul

—For Tom Surdam Town's quiet— aside from the timid waltz of a porch-swing wind chime and the backyard cricket kingdoms. I passed the funeral apartments, the static cat, and the bar stool where my uncle wore his soul sore on steel strings in a wooden shot glass. He was a good man, a cigarette saint with a pacemaker scab. A tavern sweetheart with a memory made of drink chips and Marlboro foil. I saw an asphalt toad on the bridge bathing in the ghost glint of the only stop light in town beside another that was smeared like house paint just inches from the storm drain, from home.

20

She sat, back to the paint-drip furnace and the little, drywall mountain beneath the single- pane sun. Though we were hunched over a tablecloth of ink and Xerox study guides, I knew we were there with our legs swung over, dripping parallel to the faults in the face where it threatened to split itself and leak sweet, Colombian dirt. We could feel the push of fifty million coffee grounds at our steamed-milk heels and the edge crumbling off into teaspoons, but we didn't move. We watched the teal-crystal sky boil over instead.

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Apr 28, 2015

Apr 28, 2015 at 5:22 PM UTC

Sawhorse Cafe Daydream

She sat, back to the paint-drip furnace and the little, drywall mountain beneath the single- pane sun. Though we were hunched over a tablecloth of ink and Xerox study guides, I knew we were there with our legs swung over, dripping parallel to the faults in the face where it threatened to split itself and leak sweet, Colombian dirt. We could feel the push of fifty million coffee grounds at our steamed-milk heels and the edge crumbling off into teaspoons, but we didn't move. We watched the teal-crystal sky boil over instead.

16

I made notes of docking posts pointing out to murky reflections of tourists that didn’t have time for a souvenir mug or a picture with a black trumpeter content with his brass, and nothing else, blowing life into the seagull sky, making the clouds pop and drop spray- mist jazz, which accompanied his trumpet with a gentle washboard scrape. He beat his heel to the thousand pin-drops of passerby earrings, crab sweatpant draw- strings, and trawl nets dissolving into the sea. Baltimore filled the margins of a travel notebook alongside pencil sketches of the Aquarium, Prufrockian split claws wrapped in algae bandages, that homeless man weakly thumbing through a pocket bible, the 32 cents wearing sea salt jackets, and my cold girlfriend pulling on patron sweaters in an art museum closet. But it’s all a gimmick. It’s $22 crab cakes and paint-splatter-printed sweatshirts that say New York or D.C. or *Everything on a Disposable Kodak Camera.* Tired of the idea, I threw the page over the edge, hoping to drown it in green, but I never heard it hit the water. I braced myself on a life ring rack, leaned over, and watched it settle into a natural barge of dead leaves and orange peels while sea foam circled it like a bed skirt that’s only noticed for the few seconds spent stripping down before going to sleep just to wake up to rain on the Royal Sonesta, kids racing down the hall, the obligatory alarm clock, and the black trumpeter’s groove four floors down.

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Apr 21, 2015

Apr 21, 2015 at 3:29 PM UTC

Riff in the Inner Harbor in March

I made notes of docking posts pointing out to murky reflections of tourists that didn’t have time for a souvenir mug or a picture with a black trumpeter content with his brass, and nothing else, blowing life into the seagull sky, making the clouds pop and drop spray- mist jazz, which accompanied his trumpet with a gentle washboard scrape. He beat his heel to the thousand pin-drops of passerby earrings, crab sweatpant draw- strings, and trawl nets dissolving into the sea. Baltimore filled the margins of a travel notebook alongside pencil sketches of the Aquarium, Prufrockian split claws wrapped in algae bandages, that homeless man weakly thumbing through a pocket bible, the 32 cents wearing sea salt jackets, and my cold girlfriend pulling on patron sweaters in an art museum closet. But it’s all a gimmick. It’s $22 crab cakes and paint-splatter-printed sweatshirts that say New York or D.C. or *Everything on a Disposable Kodak Camera.* Tired of the idea, I threw the page over the edge, hoping to drown it in green, but I never heard it hit the water. I braced myself on a life ring rack, leaned over, and watched it settle into a natural barge of dead leaves and orange peels while sea foam circled it like a bed skirt that’s only noticed for the few seconds spent stripping down before going to sleep just to wake up to rain on the Royal Sonesta, kids racing down the hall, the obligatory alarm clock, and the black trumpeter’s groove four floors down.

44

I’m sitting on a fume couch with ashtray legs, counting the khaki strands in the beaded curtain that dices the hallway up into barcodes. The table by the fridge is a cable spool lead- painted to match the molding. Around it is a mesh-back lawn chair, a SoCal fold-out from a SoHo dumpster, a spill-trayless booster seat, and a bottle cap barstool. Everyone’s wearing second-hand sport coats with seam stitches as loose as telephone wires tacked up with undersized lapel pins. **** Capitalism. **** Disco. Bathe Avant-Garde. Eat Paint. Bleed ******* Smoke Local. Espresso, Or Genocide. Dresden Was A Lie. Shrink-Wrap It All. Everyone is clustered around the cinder- block stand record player, grooving to the pops, looking like a rag-tag tide change beneath the broken-oar ceiling fan. Everyone’s wearing ironic scarves tight like corporate ties to keep their throats from popping ten-cent parasols, loose tobacco, and ******** Amid their rubber flower talk, I can pick out San Pelicano, someone critiquing Keats’ “Politics,” and a rant regarding some guy downtown’s stab at post-contemporary Pointillism in some gallery I’ve never heard of. They’re flipping between topics like a Moleskine notebook while I skim through a copy of the Onion, teasing the edges with a lighter I found on the floor.

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Apr 14, 2015

Apr 14, 2015 at 9:00 AM UTC

Scrap Yard Apartment

I’m sitting on a fume couch with ashtray legs, counting the khaki strands in the beaded curtain that dices the hallway up into barcodes. The table by the fridge is a cable spool lead- painted to match the molding. Around it is a mesh-back lawn chair, a SoCal fold-out from a SoHo dumpster, a spill-trayless booster seat, and a bottle cap barstool. Everyone’s wearing second-hand sport coats with seam stitches as loose as telephone wires tacked up with undersized lapel pins. **** Capitalism. **** Disco. Bathe Avant-Garde. Eat Paint. Bleed ******* Smoke Local. Espresso, Or Genocide. Dresden Was A Lie. Shrink-Wrap It All. Everyone is clustered around the cinder- block stand record player, grooving to the pops, looking like a rag-tag tide change beneath the broken-oar ceiling fan. Everyone’s wearing ironic scarves tight like corporate ties to keep their throats from popping ten-cent parasols, loose tobacco, and ******** Amid their rubber flower talk, I can pick out San Pelicano, someone critiquing Keats’ “Politics,” and a rant regarding some guy downtown’s stab at post-contemporary Pointillism in some gallery I’ve never heard of. They’re flipping between topics like a Moleskine notebook while I skim through a copy of the Onion, teasing the edges with a lighter I found on the floor.

35

I found the class fish wrapped in single-ply tissue and pencil sharpener refuse, her poinsettia-sunset scales picked clean, gathered in a Styrofoam cup. Her coral fins crumbled, leaving rough edges like split chalk or hopscotch gravel. Her last ocean was the cover of a Nat Geo from 1995. Easing my fingers beneath the matchstick spine, I deftly walked to my desk, and laid her on construction paper. I casted her slivered ribcage in glue before I poured the scales, hoping she'd triumphantly flick some harmless fire when she woke, but she just laid there, shining.

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Apr 7, 2015

Apr 7, 2015 at 3:42 PM UTC

Playing God

I found the class fish wrapped in single-ply tissue and pencil sharpener refuse, her poinsettia-sunset scales picked clean, gathered in a Styrofoam cup. Her coral fins crumbled, leaving rough edges like split chalk or hopscotch gravel. Her last ocean was the cover of a Nat Geo from 1995. Easing my fingers beneath the matchstick spine, I deftly walked to my desk, and laid her on construction paper. I casted her slivered ribcage in glue before I poured the scales, hoping she'd triumphantly flick some harmless fire when she woke, but she just laid there, shining.

14

—Chet Baker, '88 I put The Lost Tapes on while I shaved my face, inching around two chin nicks turning the lather into the remnants of a strawberry shortcake paper plate soak-through. I tapped my Chucks on the pink, checkered floor to the cymbals. Heel toe, heel toe strut, stopping every few measures to re-tuck my herringbone-detail tie beneath my collar. I heard his trumpet wail, and mimicked it on the rusted shower rod like a cheap snare, deep drumstick strikes patched with meat tape. I carefully ran the flexed blade beneath my cheekbone like a piano-park saunter, trying not to step on the drummer’s heels ‘cause he hits it just right. And the brass birds are just right. The bench creaks, the cinder snaps, the twilit fountain dance, the pop- skip needle, the slick floor, the jazz faucet, and the shave are all just right.

0

Mar 29, 2015

Mar 29, 2015 at 11:38 PM UTC

Submerged in Cool Blues

—Chet Baker, '88 I put The Lost Tapes on while I shaved my face, inching around two chin nicks turning the lather into the remnants of a strawberry shortcake paper plate soak-through. I tapped my Chucks on the pink, checkered floor to the cymbals. Heel toe, heel toe strut, stopping every few measures to re-tuck my herringbone-detail tie beneath my collar. I heard his trumpet wail, and mimicked it on the rusted shower rod like a cheap snare, deep drumstick strikes patched with meat tape. I carefully ran the flexed blade beneath my cheekbone like a piano-park saunter, trying not to step on the drummer’s heels ‘cause he hits it just right. And the brass birds are just right. The bench creaks, the cinder snaps, the twilit fountain dance, the pop- skip needle, the slick floor, the jazz faucet, and the shave are all just right.

25

I write poetry, drink coffee, talk art, dig cinema, wear t-shirts without graphics, t-shirts without tags, and screen-print my to-do lists on everything. I say all this as I blow-dry the temporary tattoo on my wrist.

0

Mar 25, 2015

Mar 25, 2015 at 1:21 AM UTC

I've Grown Up

I write poetry, drink coffee, talk art, dig cinema, wear t-shirts without graphics, t-shirts without tags, and screen-print my to-do lists on everything. I say all this as I blow-dry the temporary tattoo on my wrist.

8

You've got a flat screen mounted on your kitchen wall with zip ties and chewing gum. There's an ashtray by your left wrist, and a tattoo on your right of a midnight street light sunshine shine down on a reupholstered love seat, only used twice: once for the Eisenhowers, once for last weekend watching Seinfeld reruns, putting out Sonomas and *** talk on the twill-like cushions in that dank basement apartment w/ poster'd brick walls. Slayer, Sinatra, Sabbath, Springsteen, a Space Cowboy, and something Sanskrit above your box-springless mattress about the cosmos spitting hellfire next month because we didn't sacrifice crumpled dollars yesterday, or Clinton in the '90s. There are masses of humans paying for the market collapse that sent 800,000 oranges rolling into the street, cold. God-fearing couples are abstaining from *** to save their souls from the ****** Rapture. Cable cords are being unplugged in the middle of A Christmas Story so people can hang themselves from church steeples to avoid ruining their Chuck Taylor Loafer Tennis Shoes in the molten **** suffocating saplings and parking meters. Christ'll save the righteous ones, the ones strung up closest to the bell tower. The parish hall radio says salvation's only as good as a new haircut. And that we should all pick up the warped acoustic guitar in the cellar, and try to form barre chords with our swollen knuckles and arthritic wrists now because punk music will be dead tomorrow. Hell, the postman will be dead tomorrow, and every little postcard, paycheck, and print coupon he's carrying will be dead, too. There is an ashtray by your left wrist, and a tattoo on your right.

0

Mar 11, 2015

Mar 11, 2015 at 9:27 PM UTC

800,000 Oranges

You've got a flat screen mounted on your kitchen wall with zip ties and chewing gum. There's an ashtray by your left wrist, and a tattoo on your right of a midnight street light sunshine shine down on a reupholstered love seat, only used twice: once for the Eisenhowers, once for last weekend watching Seinfeld reruns, putting out Sonomas and *** talk on the twill-like cushions in that dank basement apartment w/ poster'd brick walls. Slayer, Sinatra, Sabbath, Springsteen, a Space Cowboy, and something Sanskrit above your box-springless mattress about the cosmos spitting hellfire next month because we didn't sacrifice crumpled dollars yesterday, or Clinton in the '90s. There are masses of humans paying for the market collapse that sent 800,000 oranges rolling into the street, cold. God-fearing couples are abstaining from *** to save their souls from the ****** Rapture. Cable cords are being unplugged in the middle of A Christmas Story so people can hang themselves from church steeples to avoid ruining their Chuck Taylor Loafer Tennis Shoes in the molten **** suffocating saplings and parking meters. Christ'll save the righteous ones, the ones strung up closest to the bell tower. The parish hall radio says salvation's only as good as a new haircut. And that we should all pick up the warped acoustic guitar in the cellar, and try to form barre chords with our swollen knuckles and arthritic wrists now because punk music will be dead tomorrow. Hell, the postman will be dead tomorrow, and every little postcard, paycheck, and print coupon he's carrying will be dead, too. There is an ashtray by your left wrist, and a tattoo on your right.

46

—For Téa Page That was Téa’s window—third floor, the one with the burnt- sienna box of skeletal moss- roses dangling over the side, a cloth curtain tacked open, and a padded chair—royal blue against the white drywall. She said she used to watch Coudersport traffic tumble dry on low past Charles Cole, quickly sketching sedans and minivans as they left the frame. She told me all this at a high-school basketball game, beneath a cork board plastered with black-and-white portraits of track girls with crochet hooks for collarbones. She showed me the healing scars where she dug Swingline staples into her ankle, like mismatched thread in a worn blanket. Téa was the thread. Her parents wove her in and out of psych wards, therapists’ notes, and Prozac prescription carbon copies. Over: Dad snapping peanut necks in a bar somewhere. Under: Mom Keystone-soaked on the couch. Over back to that third-floor window: the only place Téa felt at home, though I’ve never seen it— I never even gave her my name.

0

Mar 5, 2015

Mar 5, 2015 at 5:35 PM UTC

Needlework

—For Téa Page That was Téa’s window—third floor, the one with the burnt- sienna box of skeletal moss- roses dangling over the side, a cloth curtain tacked open, and a padded chair—royal blue against the white drywall. She said she used to watch Coudersport traffic tumble dry on low past Charles Cole, quickly sketching sedans and minivans as they left the frame. She told me all this at a high-school basketball game, beneath a cork board plastered with black-and-white portraits of track girls with crochet hooks for collarbones. She showed me the healing scars where she dug Swingline staples into her ankle, like mismatched thread in a worn blanket. Téa was the thread. Her parents wove her in and out of psych wards, therapists’ notes, and Prozac prescription carbon copies. Over: Dad snapping peanut necks in a bar somewhere. Under: Mom Keystone-soaked on the couch. Over back to that third-floor window: the only place Téa felt at home, though I’ve never seen it— I never even gave her my name.

32