tom-gunn
American
Tom Gunn changed his last name when he was 18 instead of getting a tattoo. He still has it. He believes that baseball is more than a game, that Jeeps are more than just cars, that Disneyland is more than just an amusement park, and that, like a good joke, a good poem should never have to be explained. While he recently graduated from the University of Washington, he's proud to be a graduate of a community college. He was shocked to discover early in 2013 that he wanted to make career in poetry. His first sale is about to be published on StrongVerse.org.
Searching eyes down, stepping on cracks
at the feet of the financial district,
silent boy-prophet dragged,
as with a cart rope, by the hand
under granite-clad shadows.
*Hurry up you little ****
And yesterday Mother's pressure cooker vaporized
someone else's boy, *God, eight years old.
I can't imagine. Can you imagine?*
Shoes too expensive for this sidewalk. Blonde
boy too camel-haired, grown out,
too distracted, too kinetic
dragged by mother, feet searching for purchase,
and there is no time. *No. Stop sulking.
Stop whining. Not now.*
Blame congress, or pray to the President. Declare
even the feeblest, dismembered
pronouncement of woe.
This can't happen. Not in America. Buses, working adults,
have places to go, places to be. We're late.
He is too expensive and
*don't you know the economy is **** And *you know,
his problem is that his Father
never listened to me either.*
One more decade-long game of kick-the-can. *What the hell
are you kicking now? He's always kicking something,*
always has something strange in his pants
pockets. So he eats *If-you-were-a-real-man-you'd-be-more
-like-your-sisters* and why the hell
should she feel guilty?
After all, the Nordstrom's card is paid down and *You'll never
get into college with that attitude anyway
and ********* keep up.*
A nice young man is late getting back to his desk on the sixteenth
floor in a tower above where the wind
shivers the weakening steel.
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 3:06 PM UTC
Wait your turn to piping tune
*Suncreen, scrunchie, ***** pack*
Un-birthday song by Hatter, mad
Wrought iron, mushrooms, storybook
Take the fastest spinning cup
Play-dough, crayons, apple sauce
Bring your playmate. Tag, you're it
Purple, maelstrom, pizza dough
Spin the sun and time away
Mushrooms, sunscreen, apple sauce
Ninety seconds: laughter, puke
Manners, madness, misery
Night falls under sleeping tree
Paper lantern, lightning bug
Hand-in-hand, stumble home
Twilight, popcorn, cinnamon
You've been drunk in drunken tea
Swing the gate,
Hurry on
Mar 26, 2013
Mar 26, 2013 at 2:44 AM UTC
The Hollywood I knew is a kingdom of lights inside
frosted glass, nestled in time and fashion
between the Pantheon and the World Trade Center;
Beautiful and ****** Mine, a slouching, wrinkled
hung-over pilgrimage. Consider this tale: Awakened as a young man
by the work of a master, I wrote a very fine novel—a pretty
bit of gibberish which I fancied to be as magic as Keats.
But criticism is as inevitable as breathing
Or drinking.
I know what it means to want
to escape these things. Pretty sparks danced on Hollywood Boulevard,
blonde little fairies whose clothes burned right off
to countless hours of music.
One drew near me—whispered in my ear:
“We want more plagiarism,” she said.
And I wrote scripts, turning hack,
back, and a thought floating, repeating
endlessly martyred—personality spent
I know what it means
To want to escape these things
So I drank
A little more
Just a little and in the other room we had a scene
And she burned me between the legs.
And so, a cultivated man of middle-age, and in harmony
With the best English style of the early Victorian period,
I expired.
endlessly martyred—personality spent
I know what it means to escape these things.
To go to the pictures on warm evenings in June
is to want to escape.
In the mushroom-growing darkness,
Sweet and silent--in its own way--
Everything presents itself as familiar.
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 2:38 AM UTC
You pass the flume. You pass the time.
Waiting in line, Reading signs by flickering light
Cozy and vaguely threatening
You may get wet!
A clatter, screams,
a flash out of the corner of your eye
like southern lightning (with no big thunder) down into the bottomless abyss.
Based on a movie (not available in the gift shop)-- a retelling by whites
of a story written down by whites
told by black
slaves born South
You're a brare, like Rabbit
Prey to Brare Fox
Under the darkness you pass under dim lights that take you back to a time that was, but never way,
Logs that were never trees
Moving through the canal like a slave, sluicing through the swirling sluice
Prettygoodsureasyerborn Prettygoodsureasyerborn
No interaction here in the dark outside-inside
Nobody borne dry, bone dry, unbloodied
By water or unclaimed by the canal full of logs which were never trees
Moving like a slave on display for white birds who, smiling blinking singing, extend
their white wings to show you off to their cartoon friends—a conversation
which you can never be in on
though they look at you.
And then you dip into dark and doom
Quivering rabbit children cower
--clatter, flash, scream--
You begin to suspect your time is coming
And your log, now defying gravity, leaves you without doubt
So, you're trying to find your lauighin place. If only you could. We've
got your laughin place right here.
The mouth opens wide for you
A mouth with briar teeth
A flash like southern lightning
And big thunder fills your ears
Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-ay
Your pain will stick to you like wet clothes as you float, swim in the clear swirls
and back into the dark where there's light and singing alligators.
Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-ay
They look at you with mechanically blinking eyes
that cannot see you, another guest—another stand-in
for Braer Rabbit, a character who looks nothing like you but who sings
for you and speaks for you.
Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-ay
His voice is high and cloying with a Huck Finn twang and a Shirley Temple cry.
He's relaxing at home and you are wet and he is warm in home's golden light.
Yet he speaks for you, sings for you, but he does not see you.
A cast member made of person who has no lines to speak will pull you from your log.
You will laugh as puddles form at your feet and as you find your
photo—your moment of unbridled, child's
horror now passed, past
You'll pass the flume on your way home—clatter, flash, scream--
You're dripping, drying, the salt of the day now washed away
But there's brine in your sensible shoes, squishing between your insensible toes
And making your feet heavy as you leave.
Braer Rabbit is home and cares not for your troubles.
Zippadee-do-dah, Zippadee-Ay
Magic words, shrill, laughing tragic words
You will remember when you look at your souvenir photo
And smile.
Jul 9, 2012
Jul 9, 2012 at 2:30 PM UTC
To all who come to
this happy placenta, welcome.
Disneyland is your lane.
Here, agency relives fond menageries
of the pastiche,
and here yo-yos may savor
the chamber and promoter
of the fuzz.
Disneyland is dedicated to the identification,
the dregs,
and the hard factors
that have created America... with hope that it will be a source of jubilation
and installment
to all the wormhole.
Jul 7, 2012
Jul 7, 2012 at 7:48 PM UTC
Man and mouse holding hands, beholding
what they have done together.
A magic Marcelline, MO:
a portal to lands that beckon, but never compel.
Trees, silent water, castle walls dividing
off magic gardens and sacred
spaces.Tiki torches leading in
to a real rainforest with fake animals,
fedora'd adventurers and no dust
or hunger or poison. A whilring, infernal
rocket sprung from the mind
of Jules Verne, raisng your hopes that
one day you'll own that jetpack,
flying car, ticket to the moon.
A fairytale castle, draw-bridge down—
a glittering carousel inviting from behind forbidding walls.
A fort with wide open doors that fear only animatronic
Indians and where every frontiersman is a hero to be
emulated by your children.
You need not choose right away.
No need to be hasty. If you wish, you may
choose to stay here, to linger, the aroma of the popcorn
cart competing with the fragrance
of the popcorn blossoms on the sheltering trees
and the flowerbeds decorating, protecting
Walt's silent, inanimate memorial,
until the stars come out and
the crickets chirp in the voice of a
conscience content, and popcorn
lights form haunting outlines, constellations
telling whispered stories and seductively
suggesting that tomorrow you stand
in line for a new ride: falling in
love, signing the papers, applying
for that loan, giving it just
one more chance. Here, you cannot
sleep, but you will dream.
And rest in the heart, in the womb.
Jun 28, 2012
Jun 28, 2012 at 9:56 PM UTC
I saw you across a great distance
(Thirty or forty feet away) a long time ago
on a paved lot, enclosed by trees
And I saw you, a girl--
A space princess in metal bikini,
Riding a tricycle with lost boys
In furious BigWheel circles
(And pardon me if I'm selfish for saying)
But I imagined that I was the only one of the
Lost
Boys who saw what I saw.
We were safe, enclosed
By oaks, maple, rhodedendron,
In a galactic garden
Of outragous child delights
We embraced before you left
But never understood touch--
Never guessed at the
Seeds: cells
All asleep in our little selves
The day you left the old neighborhood
You turned to me and waved, smiling
And vanished beyond the trees
And became more powerful than I
Could possibly imagine.
Try as my mother may
No explanation could dry my skinned-knee tears
Or draw you back from the invisible force
That brought you to me
Then took you away
In the morning
A long time ago in a paved lot
Enclosed by trees
Far, far, and very near . . .
Jun 8, 2012
Jun 8, 2012 at 3:59 PM UTC
You'll find yourself here,
not sure how you arrived.
But you won't question it.
The mayor is home: his apartment in the fire house.
His lamp is lit, and he is here to welcome you
Though you cannot see him
But you do not question it.
And you'll hear bells and the clopping of hooves ahead
of an old-style streetcar in the age
of the internal combustion engine,
infernal, before the world could burn.
But you won't question it,
No, it's all perfectly natural
As though you grew up here
And here you do grow up as you walk the street,
The buildings pressing ever closer together, merging
And you somehow grow taller.
As a fairytale castle looms ahead of you
As though it were in the sky.
It's color is a pink that
smells of cotton candy
and popcorn
and perhaps, a hotdog
It passes out of your view
Like a mirage or a whiff of cloud
As you smell the food
The advertising of smells
Seducing you away
You stop, and you look
And you don't see the tourists in shorts
And tennis-shoes, dressed slobby-chic for an expensive vacation
Or smell their sunscreen or see any sign
Any sign of change since that time, no
No, you don't see anything
Which you don't wish to see
You don't see a police station
Or cigarette butts on the pavement
Or a war memorial
Or a boarded-up building, closed.
All have been scooped up
Swept up, kept up by
white-uniformed sanitation officers
with little bow ties, discretely
cleaning up the world
But you will scarcely miss these things, nor
notice their absence and
You will not question it.
For this street is a wish,
A longing,
A child's prayers
Answered
For this is a place where no person,
No thing is old, but all is new
and useful and present:
As immediate as the trail of ice cream
making its osmotic way along
the edge of your sugar cone in the sun
And down to your sticky fingers.
The castle is there, you see now, but it's so
very far away.
There is no rush.
Step inside a shop—take your pick--and you will find
plush carpets, cooled rooms, parkay tile
Above the souvenirs and tchotchkes you will
Notice heart-stopping detail
In a light fixture
In a cherry wood crown molding
In Tiffany glass and marble counter-tops
Exquisite agony of
nostalgia for the half-remembered
And you're puzzled because you can't buy, here,
An old-fashioned ice-cream soda
With which your great-greats wooed each other
And fed each other, never considering, even
conceiving scandalous sensual jokes with whipped cream
And for this, today, you love them.
Your feet will amble you back and back again on themselves,
turned around (in spite of unmistakeable
castle-mountain-rocketship landmarks.)
There, Just behind these buildings, you're certain, there
should be a baseball diamond, alight with the noise
of boys playing with a stick and a ball
There, a neat row of stately, sabbatical victorians
There, a haphazard school yard with a tire swing
and a red schoolhouse, reliable as a sunrise
keeping protective watch behind it.
And you forget
racism
You forget
any war
You forget
your own
many sins
Like
vanished
cigarette
butts
And you smile, giving the uniformed man
peddling mouse-shaped balloons
a little more of your money
than he is asking for
Jun 7, 2012
Jun 7, 2012 at 3:35 AM UTC