Sometimes I lay in bed and try to feel my body pulsing.
I open my teeth very slightly so the blood
pushes them together in rhythmic muted clicks.
I count the time between the staccato drum in my chest
and the drum in my toes.
Playful interactions, minute reminders
that the body regulates and lives.
As though around us and with us,
out of sight.
Like lighting and stage prop crews just behind the curtain,
poised with tables and a wall on wheels,
integral to the next act, the inevitable kiss scene,
the tragic and inevitable death.
The body toiling and being biological while we take care of everything else.
The body thinking about itself in the dark
while it works on itself in the dark.
Apr 13, 2014
Apr 13, 2014 at 2:47 PM UTC
---
This will be the smallest, most insignificant, most trivial,
And most forgettable poetic parable anyone has ever written
Because for once I’ve been wrung of all my deep evocations
I’ve been whittled of my angular description of the commonplace
Of verbose, grandiose trajectories mapped out
By minds I will never exist alongside but I will sure emulate
I have sat down and asked myself, innumerable times,
“Okay, so how will I describe the sunrise now?”
And more importantly, perhaps more existentially:
“What about the sunset?”
What colors haven’t I used, what other comparable thing
Haven’t I eluded those colors to,
And what kind of uncharted, beautiful, spiritually-boggling human emotion
Hasn’t been tapped by this setting star until right now,
Right as I string together letters like they’ve
Never been strung before?
There’s the endless wellspring of my poetic—
Oh, look, there I go, visualizing thoughts and feelings
As a mystical, water-associated apparatus
(It’s my go-to)
For a time more innumerable than the sunrise.
I’m getting tired of it,
And I can’t imagine how mind-blowingly dull it must be for you
So I’m going to try it like this:
I see the sunset again, and tonight it’s very pretty.
But, poet, this kind of routine, boring description
Doesn’t do much for me.
I know what a sunset is, I’ve seen it
My three year old can probably
Get a pretty accurate crayon drawing penned out in a few seconds
And that will hardly distinguish itself from
What you’ve made the sunset out to be
But, poet, from all across the world, from their unique angles
All the aspiring poets gaze toward the same sun,
Whether in setting, whether rising, or hung there in the sky
And describe it as a tantalizing metaphor
And then relate that sun
To a deep, embedding, defining emotion or craving for human connection
As if to say,
Yes
I see the sun that way too
I feel that way too
And then those poets submit their poems to publishing
And watch the sunset as any normal person would
Once they’re out of the mode.
In fact, what’s on television? / Shut the blinds, Dylan,
There’s a glare on the screen.
“Okay”
This poem hasn’t brought itself out there, out to you
As a grand accomplishment of absolute detachment
As a way to try to break the barrier of poetry once again,
To define itself as a new genre, or an edgy statement the author
Very desperately intends his audience ‘gets’
Or even to prove an angle nobody has ever seen or attempted before
Because how I am supposed to know how you think?
Or what you see, and how you see it?
This poem is a message of the ordinary,
That it’s okay, it’s absolutely fine, to remove the mysticism from the mundane
And understand the world as a beauty in itself,
One that doesn’t need the aloof, grand, mystical verbosity of poetry
To be felt as something poetic
In fact, I won’t even leave you to ponder the greater meaning of it,
Of this line, or that line. I will say it here,
At the end, at the climactic and awesome point of emotional delivery
That all poetry intends:
I see the sunset again, and tonight it’s very pretty.
---
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 11:29 AM UTC
It’s a simple, mundane day, yet busy with an absolute slew of schoolwork
I take up a table in the library, high up on the 4th floor, overlooking
The shapes below with different work in the same time and place
There’s a large model airplane, an early model,
Suspended by cables that attach themselves to the far walls,
Yielding the illusion of mid-flight
It appears I wasn’t the only one with the idea to seclude myself this high;
Around me are the detached murmurs of still more students, bent
On the conclusion of their labors, some more eager than I, some less so
And closer to me, on a juxtaposed table, is another student, about my age
Shuffling through what looks like math
But I don’t pride myself much on intrusion, so I let him be
For hours we all toiled, us in the 4th floor and us down below
The music of light concentration, fluttering pages, a utensil,
Swathing through those immobile wings and dwindling on the propeller
The time is rapidly becoming the enemy in all our bingo books
And of the books stacked in the cluster of cases, some of which will no doubt remind one
Of the timeless saying that ‘time waits for no one’
The student of the table next to me is still at work, and I’m still at work
And people file in and out of the door which leads downstairs,
Faces going in with indignance and a foreknowledge of what they’re to do
Faces leaving triumphant, secured in another day’s duty crossed off
I steal a look at the student close to me
I see him pass a tired hand over his eyes
(I agree with his plight)
By now we’ve been swarmed with a million like us
Jumping from table to table to seat to seat, in groups or in respectable solitude
A veritable mosaic of people, a timelapse in ironic real-time, elapsed second onto second
The darkness crowds the unlucky surfaces of the windows, tries to push in
And like lichen stuck to sea rocks amid a terrible tidal storm we remain
Jaded and mentally broken down, but finally we see each other
He looks at me dully, I return it with a shrug and the slightest smirk
And I think we both understand it
Though no words needed to pass through the air, nor signals of the eyebrows,
The hand, the heavy persistent sigh
We’ve seen the lapse, just us and the jetstream of the world unending
And he looks away, and I look away at the suspended plane, still as it ever was
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 10:48 PM UTC
Doubled back on Becks you serenade the *** and spit
A flash like love, the sternum above and puzzling the puzzle
To which ribs fit
And O to Adam, to the man who knew it first.
Then to plumb sleep between the purples
Where the counting is the worst
Oct 11, 2012
Oct 11, 2012 at 12:20 AM UTC
It's rounding three-forty in the morning
And my reason for sleep is tugging at me like
Gravity to everything
Or a late-night host absolutely convinced
His guest is wittier than himself
And pulling the curtains as if to say "I've failed you"
Really, the only continuity here is the drumming purr,
Outsourced by the shuffling footsteps opposite my door
Of which I am deathly afraid
If they knew what I really did in here
And at this time of night?
Can't even think about it
"Probably ************ they would chortle
Shaking their heads in disappointment over my
Weakness of mind and overall
Failure to hide the sound of skin
But there are better things to do, are being done
Like paper poetry, terrible fortune cookie words
Stitched blindly so to sound nice
To feign significance
But there are better things to do
Jun 2, 2012
Jun 2, 2012 at 3:04 PM UTC
She watered the fichus and festoons
And far away, they somewhat bloom
The leaves a breadth between, the air
Nested as I am, and stare
From the frond, below the wings
Watching humans, poignant things
Scaring birds to rustle trees
A lingered hand, those nails, the breeze
She looked to me and kill't the space
Which separates a race from race
To finger full a garnered seed
A palm that greets, a dying ****
Festoons awash from laden rain
Next day came, and there remains
My crumpled arm, less safe than torn
To watch again a careful storm
Outlined in clouds my brother call'd
I turn the arm, and yet it stall'd
This universe that clung here, floored
Cannot simply be ignored
If you keep calling when its clear
If you keep gathering them here
The subtle way you water fronds
Our subtle breath dilutes, absconds
Apr 30, 2012
Apr 30, 2012 at 6:38 PM UTC
We could stare out the window all day
Cradled into the socket of the mountain range
Shaped into a waiting line that never moves
We could tie strings to each other
(Cheat just a little) and
Fly stratosphere kites; watch an astronaut
Follow his own alien discovery to Asia
Could write letters
And the pens would still be chock-full
When finished
And one day we thought we could do it together
Seconds slanted sideways, an eleven begins to look like
The edge of the world
so Cross the universe with one breath
then Feed me an idea from the corners of your mouth
Then I can know it for sure.
Apr 2, 2012
Apr 2, 2012 at 2:39 AM UTC
I took out a pen and some paper, looseleaf,
Not worth the words I sponged onto it but it’ll do
I wrote down my feelings about everything
The silence of people on a subway ride to work
The closest star to us that isn’t the Sun
How the Bermuda Triangle got its shape and why the other ones
Weren’t cut out for it
Were it not for the clocks in my room, serving as reminders
That time still existed and would far outlive me
I swear I would have written forever
I swear I would have
Sometimes I would write letters to friends and never send them
Instead cram them into envelopes and into larger envelopes
And stack them in the fireplace, under the wood
And sometimes light it, other times just hold out my hands
And feel invisible warmth
The ones I did send, though, felt hollow
Words typed or written but not the words I needed
Or wanted
To say then. I’d rather ask you how your day was than to receive
A strange ****** expression because a question concerning
Cosmic dust and how it rushes together to create man
Doesn’t really serve as a good icebreaker.
Most of the unsent letters were to you
You and the clouds that guide you around, shifting rain
Back toward the sky
I wrote how are you today?
And meant I want you to keep auditioning for dance because you’re wonderful
I wrote doesn’t this weather feel strange?
And meant get a bigger umbrella so I can be under it too
We should try to go for dinner
We need to have an excuse to be together
Are tattoos a bad thing?
Look, topics to occupy us
My house is empty tonight
Where are you so late and what do you think about?
I miss the vase we sold
I miss you
I feel like today is longer than yesterday and will be shorter than tomorrow
I miss you
And they stacked, one upon the other
The spaces between each squeezed under the weight of the next
The weight of the words compounded more than the previous
Filling the spaces of my apartment to the point where
I could not see out the windows
“Today is Monday the 16th. To whom it may concern, I’ve contemplated the ideas laid before me and can finally take confidence that I’ve chosen the right one. Many people say that virtuosity is next to solace and I believe that. Many people also claim that it takes a life to learn how to live, and I believe that too. I’ve so many things to say to everyone, even the people I’ve only met once or twice. But those people are just as important.
I can hear echoing between the televisions between the open rooms. The same words delayed by seconds but still audible and clear. The reactions aren’t echoed, they’re different, variant on the person and how they feel about it. To make sense of my claim, I guess it’s just a matter of perspective, and now my perspective is clear, and now I want it to echo between the people to whom I send these letters. Whether the variation between reactions will be the same or not I am all-around unclear, but I know the reactions may have enough weight to keep me held to the ground, or even a bit lower than that. Either way, I’ve spent my life reacting to things as if acting on an echo. I want to change the channel now. I want to close my door so the sound can fill the room and make the stacks of unsent letters shudder. I want to keep it there and turn the air the color of the closest star to us other than the Sun. I want to-“
I wanted a lot of things, to do and to say
But that letter and those that followed joined the others in the quiet spaces
Spaces which kept the frays of this life muffled and still
Like an ocean scooped into a bucket
Or the world’s smallest word
Backspaced by one letter
Jan 17, 2012
Jan 17, 2012 at 10:20 PM UTC
-
Dismiss my wandering eyes
They’re catching a drape, not you
They’re creeping along a cobblestone sidewalk
Not you
Dismiss my clamping cough
It’s there because the Spring is not good to me
It’s not there because you are good to me
Which, you always are, have I mentioned
It will not stop here
In, of all places, a little side-street pub
Where we both always seem to be
At the same time
It will not just stop
Like a chamber orchestra after a
Long night of tuning and unreal sound
Where outside it’ll flow
Ignore the tone of my voice
When it shifts up, it stays up
I won’t drop it for you, not until
You drop it first
And you get closer to where I am
One less stool between us every day
And nobody notices
But the people who sat in them, those air people
And I’m certainly not kidding when
I beg you to tell me things
Like the ghosts between us
Are only shapes of us
Tell me we’re all the same
Little lobsters in a tank
Clawing at water
We’re the same
Tell me I was always too nice
To confront a total stranger
And ask
The greatest question of all
-
Sep 30, 2011
Sep 30, 2011 at 11:48 PM UTC
-
I could imagine reacting to life on other worlds the way a
Tribal sponge cleaner would react to a washing machine
As he reluctantly prods it with one of his burnt-out torches
He’d made for his wife for their anniversary
All the scientists gather around the looking glass, scribbling gargantuan words
And pushing up their glasses, speculating whether or not
The language they spoke had been the correct one at all
I could visualize them as they stepped out of their spaceship
Wandering around a grassy patch, careful to keep a safe distance
A wisp of clouds inch overhead,
To us a common thing, to them a phenomena they’d been told
Around a fireplace made of stars, stories counted and recounted
About the clouds and the strange way they danced on the opposite side of the galaxy
Stacking papers on their desks, the scientists retire home and
Dream of how they’d tell the public about what they had found
As Times Square flickers to a still of the alien’s face
The people below suddenly feel much less significant
-
Sep 28, 2011
Sep 28, 2011 at 10:55 PM UTC