Apr 2014
and to the holy faces that surround me always (the artists)
To these rooms-
always in double-standard disarray
and bearing witness to my beginning of life crisis
with borders of brilliant rectangular windows, never left open,
captured closed by the boy with the stolen necklaces
(it’s a shame, but I’ve never known how to ask for light on my face or for help)
To the memory of Ginsberg until 4 in the morning,
poetry and Moloch eating our five warm and open minds
To the nail hole badges our walls wear in honor of creation, the abandonment and the constant new order of
art and art and clean art and bad art
and genius; my words are their brain children
To the conversely barren walls (they make me nauseous),
the daily scrubbings of the kitchen counters,
fears manifested in ***** bathrooms
and the oppressive blue and ‘Turbulent Indigo’
of the speakers in my bedroom
where I lay my head in contemplation of the boy I share a bed with,
watching him- reading the freckles on his back into novels,
thick with tear stains, I put my eyes right up to the pages
because who doesn’t love the smell of an old book?
(and so everything is grey and illegible now)
To the all-over ceramics:
ashtrays pregnant with vice and the relief of night,
that Jordan molded with her own two hands
and the endless owls in all our cupboards
that Caleb made before he crawled back,
tail between his legs,
to the porches and whiskey of South Georgia
This is for all I have come to know in the mad house:
that our love is as inconsistent as the arrangements of blankets in the living room,
that we should all be leery of the color blue
and computers and computers and, for that matter,
technology as a whole-
especially when we are together
I have come to know what it is to live in a commune of pitiful couches leaking ***** of sad cotton,
of concoctions of vegetables (never pure enough)
and dishes in the kitchen sink and white carpets thick with cat hair,
which is why we sing those words, absentmindedly,
when we fold clothes or put on our pajamas.
(The air in this house is stuffy with all that we don’t know how phrase just right)
And yet, the sun licks the morning off of Dallas
and all that carved a hole in my middle yesterday becomes irrelevant and untrue
as I toast the day in honor of these people and this shelter-
the glory of a canvass, a picture frame, a blanket from Colorado, and screws in dry wall
So, I write
because of the homemade pillows, because of marijuana, because all life is an attachment and I am glad to be attached to all of you
I write out of gratefulness, out of understanding
I write because I’m with you
(with all of you)
in Rockland.
To these rooms-
always in double-standard disarray
and bearing witness to my beginning of life crisis
with borders of brilliant rectangular windows, never left open,
captured closed by the boy with the stolen necklaces
(it’s a shame, but I’ve never known how to ask for light on my face or for help)
To the memory of Ginsberg until 4 in the morning,
poetry and Moloch eating our five warm and open minds
To the nail hole badges our walls wear in honor of creation, the abandonment and the constant new order of
art and art and clean art and bad art
and genius; my words are their brain children
To the conversely barren walls (they make me nauseous),
the daily scrubbings of the kitchen counters,
fears manifested in ***** bathrooms
and the oppressive blue and ‘Turbulent Indigo’
of the speakers in my bedroom
where I lay my head in contemplation of the boy I share a bed with,
watching him- reading the freckles on his back into novels,
thick with tear stains, I put my eyes right up to the pages
because who doesn’t love the smell of an old book?
(and so everything is grey and illegible now)
To the all-over ceramics:
ashtrays pregnant with vice and the relief of night,
that Jordan molded with her own two hands
and the endless owls in all our cupboards
that Caleb made before he crawled back,
tail between his legs,
to the porches and whiskey of South Georgia
This is for all I have come to know in the mad house:
that our love is as inconsistent as the arrangements of blankets in the living room,
that we should all be leery of the color blue
and computers and computers and, for that matter,
technology as a whole-
especially when we are together
I have come to know what it is to live in a commune of pitiful couches leaking ***** of sad cotton,
of concoctions of vegetables (never pure enough)
and dishes in the kitchen sink and white carpets thick with cat hair,
which is why we sing those words, absentmindedly,
when we fold clothes or put on our pajamas.
(The air in this house is stuffy with all that we don’t know how phrase just right)
And yet, the sun licks the morning off of Dallas
and all that carved a hole in my middle yesterday becomes irrelevant and untrue
as I toast the day in honor of these people and this shelter-
the glory of a canvass, a picture frame, a blanket from Colorado, and screws in dry wall
So, I write
because of the homemade pillows, because of marijuana, because all life is an attachment and I am glad to be attached to all of you
I write out of gratefulness, out of understanding
I write because I’m with you
(with all of you)
in Rockland.
