i often forget
the previous week
with my eyes wet
of tears so bleak

i often forget
who's there
who i met
the love we
used to share

i bet
there is no savior
only a debt
and my empty behavior

i remember
the debt of life
a burning ember
i hold no strife

forget the ember
forget the soul
forget the joy
forget the life
forget the will
i dont recall a hope

drag me on
painful obligations
drag me on
lost connections

i hold
no regret
just the weight
of every poor mistake

there will never
never be a day
where i make the wrongs
the rights
a day where i
where i ***** the mistakes

only a day
where i breathe the air
of an eventual
hope

hope is absent
as with a usual breath
the cycle continues
this sickness unto death

lack of hope
lack of hope
drag me down in
my lost self

drag me down
oh
drag me down
dead hopeless spirit

drag me down
my dear dead spirit
until hope comes

there is an elephant in the room.

it showed up about ten minutes ago,
just strolled on in as small talk
turned into big talk and the
elephant couldn’t find bigger talk anywhere else
so it stayed.
i offered it food, drink, a corner
in the garden, it laughed
and told me to stop trying
to be a good host
and just let it be, but i couldn’t just be,
trapped in the kitchen,
stuck between a rock and
a hard place, the hard
place being an elephant.
meanwhile the talk grew bigger
and it grew bigger,
there was an elephant
in all the rooms, we should have
built the ceilings higher,
made the thresholds wider,
if you’re going to invite
an elephant into your home,
it has to be able to fit.
otherwise, you’re looking at
tusks in the wall,
a tail in your face,
an elephant and no room.

the elephant swung its head
and our eyes met as the big talk turned
into small talk but the elephant
had heard smaller talk before
and i had offered it food, drink,
a corner in the garden.
i didn’t want to let the elephant
inside, but we had left the door wide
open, so who could blame
it for wandering in?
it stayed in the kitchen
and i stayed with it, it laughed
and told me it didn’t need
company, meanwhile the small talk
grew smaller and the elephant
grew bigger, i didn’t want company
but there was an elephant
in the room.
i didn’t know
how to take care of an elephant,
but that didn’t matter,
it already knew its way around
the house, knew how to small
talk even smaller
than our talk.

i asked the elephant
for its name. it laughed and
told me it didn’t matter,
it knew mine and that
was enough. meanwhile the
small talk stopped and i stopped
trying to talk smaller.
the elephant stayed
in the room.

In a strange mood - see/write art



in a strange way, disorganized but straight on,
light tinted magenta, issuing, in frothy large pours, from my mouth,
knowing what to say, and the meaning too,
I can more than walk, can write, on water,
where all can read weeping, Mary-miracles of seeing, living words,
themselves, on light waves lapping in a
shifting rotunda vision, color reorienting spatial senses.^

in a strange, strange stitch, seasonal spirits and witches,
Chagall, Baez, Dylan Thomas, Donovan, Richie Havens
doing their knitting in my brain, from Montmartre to the Midwest to Monterey,
painters and poets in lockstep head-messing with me,
imperfect clarity but still one voice,
see/write art,
so went and caught the wind, going gently into night
to banish the hodgepodge of uncertainty from inside out.

knowing well you don't understand fully, but jumbling tumbling
verses are sliding off my rusted tongue as fiddlers fly above,
roughened words, hewn from a paper cup, spilling diamonds uncut, imported from Sarajevo, Montparnasse, the Lower East Side.
wretched me, in the hour I first believed, this amalgamated conception conceded,
seceded from my mind into your palate for a tasting,
tho neither drugged, nor deaf and dumb, just slammed poetical-like, this write is
all I have to portend is your affections, your attentions, to yours, am beholden.

a *****, well respected man in daylight,
the hidden references accuse,
woke up to see Wednes-day Caesarian born,
askance glanced at the prior passages of the night before,
when my palate clefted,
when eyes chose not to distinguish
between right and lefted,
in the nightlight,
a ***** man disrespects language convection/convention,
and lays before you activating stanzas and his mind, prone,
but always the truth, speaking,
the visions, leaking, mind to eye,
recombinant, into our minds eye.




^ http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell


Rather than write extensive notes on the many references, inspirations in this poem, if there is a line that intrigues, ask me

kiss me in the storm and wipe the raindrops from my face,
you're more afraid to know my tears.

so that's what you meant, when you said "forever",
you meant "for now".

well i guessed that eternity was a fake
and the last page number would be even

but then i was wrong because you took more than i could give you
and the odds were never in my favor

french songs sung with the breath of cold ***
and dizzy dancing on the back porch with you

but it didn't mean enough to be remembered,
the photographs burned out with our love.

I learned to listen
By playing your
Words
On repeat

By lapping the taste
That your anger
Morphs into when
Under a sheet

Tonight, tonight,
This rumble won't
Take place in
The street

Rocket in your pocket,
Shark boy, little Jet,
Do you feel pretty?
Or have I not relieved
You yet?

Now something's coming,
Checkmate, game and set,
But maybe you'll indulge me
With one last cigarette?

Boy, Boy,
Crazy with regret,
Let's sing a song to conjure
The evening that we met

How suddenly my name
Became a sweet refrain
That you could not
Forget

It's only you,
Everything I'll ever be,
Don't matter if you're tired,
Come refresh yourself in
Me

Ever want to leave
hop a train and make your way
to towns with no names

                                         Kelly McManus