So following Doctorow's lead--even though he wouldn't
have any idea who the hell I am--I figure if this is the party, I want in. So
I've created this online version of the first chapbook and it's being made available under the terms of a
Creative Commons license.
If you have previously read the physical version of the chapbook, there have been some very minor changes in some of the poems...mostly dealing with lineation. Working within the confines of the page sizes for the chapbook meant I had to compromise on a few lines just to get them to fit. Those have been restored.
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for my parents,
John & Nancy
Robinson.
Hello
Hello.
See, that wasn't so hard, was it?
Sometimes it can really be that simple.
But now that we are talking,
we must move on to more important things
more important questions, like
How have you been? and
How's the family? and
Who are you anyway? i don't know you
from Adam, Eve, or the Serpent, and
Who let you in here? and just
Who the hell do you think i am anyway?
Well, now that we've gotten those out of the way,
and obviously i can't frighten you off with my
questions,
we must now truly speak.
Are you aware that inside all of us is a
conundrum, and lovingly folded inside it is an
enigma,
and enclosed in an envelope inside it is a
paradox,
and when you dial the right combination you get a
quandary.
And when you pry open the quandary, you get
nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Because all of this is a ruse
to keep your attention away
from the second shelf down from there
next to the broken telephone
and the bowl of rose leaves
where sits the shoebox.
Inside the shoebox you would find
reams upon reams of letters you will never write.
You do not not write them for reasons of fear
that transcend
the haunting memory which is the written word, or
the liability which is flesh made verse.
You do not write them for fear that if you write
them
you will wish to send them, and
if you
wish to send them
you will either realize that you have no one to
send them to
or perhaps worse, that
you do.
If you have been at this for long,
you do not bother to meet these people
who you would write these letters to.
You simply file the pages in no particular order
in the shoebox for the moment
that will probably never arrive,
the moment in which you might need to skim over
lines which do not and should not exist.
And you take comfort in it.
You
will simply buy a cat.
And then another when the first gets lonely.
You'll
believe it.
Still,
the gnawing question remains--
if the blank after Dear... were to bear
fruit
would it be succulent and sweet
or a wax facsimile?
In the case of this emergency,
if someone where to actually walk up and say
Hello.
you would know exactly how to act.
you would know exactly what to say.
you have the moment mapped out in your head
down to your last exhalation of breath.
Still,
when you're standing there on aisle ten
with poison in cart and bag of corn chips in hand
and he or she asks if you're married
you'll say no, but not ask for his or her number.
You see, the shoebox's lid is closed.
And there are rubber bands holding it so.
The Nature of the Beast
The tile floor is cold under your bare feet.
The cold of the sink sinks up through your palms.
You pull down the bottom of one eyelid.
You accuse your reflection, saying
THIS
NEVER HAPPENED
as the woman you murdered
shifts in her sleep in the next room, smiling.
Angrily, you think
at least one of us can smile
at least one of us can sleep.
You have seen it all before.
You have heard it all before.
You have been here before.
But still, the exit is no easier to find.
What
never happened?
All the lies we promise ourselves
All the moments we honestly meant to mean
All the things unspoken yet better off unthought
What
never happened?
The constant drip drip drip
drip of anticipation
filling up a bathtub with days and ways
filling it up with hopes and dreams
leaning back and pretending to relax
but still pondering the possibilities
of that appliance near your toe.
THIS
NEVER HAPPENED
You could return to the next room.
You could lie down beside her,
and in the morning when you awoke
ten thousand cold miles of mattress
would separate your spent corpses.
Any emissaries sent to bridge this gulf
would lie bleaching in the mid-morning sun.
Then, bound by the schism which is clarity
there would be words, but their casings
would rattle noiselessly on the ground.
As was stated, you have been here before.
You know the terrain.
Or perhaps it will all pass away
in a few hours.
You can speak of it as the Grand Mistake,
and yes, perhaps even laugh about it.
Go back
Go back to the night before
to that moment before you appeared on her
doorstep
half out of your mind with a half-formed thought
in your head
and say
THIS
NEVER HAPPENED
You can think no more of it now.
You climb into bed and she shifts towards you.
Her head slips under
your chin.
You put one hand on her shoulder as if to push
her away.
You want no part of this for
THIS
NEVER HAPPENED...
but her breathing is so contentedly even
and as you close your eyes you think,
Damn...
if
only she weren't so warm.
12:03 am
Eyes unclose themselves
in the moments wet and mundane
after the passing of the previous day.
Silent stars wear black armbands
and peer down through solemnity
at your formerly sleeping form.
Once again,
you dreamed that you were having this
dream.
A
goddess had poured honey upon your lips
as
you dozed in an unspoiled garden,
free
of human longings, free of inhuman duplicity, and
wormwood.
You
opened your eyes,
but
before she could explain the vase and the rose,
before you could even cross the room,
before you could pose the question,
before she could compose the answer,
another
day slipped through the splintered hourglass, and
you awoke
with regret in your soul
and
sweetness on your lips.
Postcards From Galapagos
1.
Dream a little dream of suffocation.
Glance
in the direction of the indifferent snore
and
pray for a skipped beat.
It's
no longer amusing how he can use a sundial
to tell time
on overcast days.
The
ghosts of pleasantries eye us warily.
The
shelf is littered with their icons:
photographic proof of hollow smiles
behind, the tide repeating and eating at
the shore
and
sea shells which you won't hear the sea in anymore.
This
is not a life of quiet desperation,
it's
just that no one is listening.
2.
Here
is everything you ever wanted.
Here,
right here,
right there in front of you.
It
took years to stumble over it,
crouched
at your feet as it were,
but
you are forced to acknowledge it now.
They
fed you the desire and the dream,
but
instructed you no further.
Big as
life and
twice
as devastating,
it
waits for a response.
Close
your mouth.
We're
staring.
3.
Reason
cries out in the wilderness
and no
man pays it heed
Except--
for the Department of Transportation
Officials
in their Hardhats, who start putting down
Stakes.
Evolution
seeks footholds in the air like a capsized beetle
while
Charles spins and laughs
and spins
and
laughs
No one wants to grow fur anymore.
And When You Returned Home
You
brought the grocery bags in.
You sat them
down in the kitchen.
You said
they had distance on special,
so you picked up some extra.
You
said, hurry and help me,
we need to keep it cold
so it won't spoil.
i could
not move slowly enough.
Orpheus and Eurydice:
a love story
Son of Oneiros and Calliope he was,
grandson of Zeus the father,
and he was mine, almost completely,
as i was his, more than completely.
He sang of his love for me with
such passion, such incredible passion
that nature would still itself
and give breathless notice,
not allowing even the wind
to interfere with his song,
so that the trees themselves would need to bend
of their own accord to give an attentive ear.
He sang of his love for me with
such passion, such incredible passion
that the gods of Olympus
would give
pause from their petty rivalries
and seductions of mortals to be seduced
themselves
by my lover's song.
He sang of his love for me with
such passion, such incredible, empty passion
that it would make me sick to hear.
i fear the annals of history will show me
as nothing more than a name,
but since we are in Hell here together,
and none has ever returned alive from this depth,
i will tell you truthfully:
That even though in life i was woman,
i had a song of my own.
But compared to the brightness of my dearest one
what was my cheap inspiration?
A drop in an ocean,
a one among many--
still it was mine, but overshadowed by one
i had bound my life to.
And just as his song had easily managed
to make mine as notes unuttered,
so too did his love for art
make his love for me,
and moreover,
my love for him
into nothing more than a title
for one of his compositions.
Lovely though they were, and
loved for they were about me,
they seemed more against me
or perhaps more through me,
but never about myself.
Never about myself.
So you see, when my life ended abrupt,
i, at first, wept openly, tears falling silently
among the red rock of this place.
All of my comfort and familiar was gone--
gone with him, gone with his song.
But my lyre had fallen with me,
so i began to sing my lament
and demanded the deaf stone open itself to me.
The damned listened despite their suffering
and my song finally found purchase
in the darkness of this place,
this place where his melodies could not reach.
Better to have the ear of one disembodied soul
than all the inattentive living things of the
world.
So, content i was,
content i was to dream
that Lord Hades himself might
possibly hear my despair and give pause.
Content to dream i was.
But the crass fool would not leave well enough alone.
At first, i was happy--
happy for him,
happy that he
felt so in love with me
remembered me for a moment
that instead of his song
he had given my soul chase,
taken the time to descend
and win my hand again
by robbing Lord Hades of a single tear.
i was to return with him,
return to him,
return to the world above
and i was happy.
But i had the realization, one step from life:
That things would no doubt return to as they had
been,
that the song of this man
would coax the affection of men, women,
children, animals, winds and gods--
and then what of the song of poor Eurydice?
Be dumb, child, we have come for the song of
Orpheus.
But it was too late,
my hesitation upon the stair
had made him untrusting turn.
Then the damage was done,
for with the loss of Lord Hades' tear
we were torn from each other forever,
as i was torn from the ear of the monarch for
eternity.
My lover's song had invaded even my private
corner of Hell,
and the damned were even more the damned
for being denied the words of Orpheus.
Now and again,
i would catch a drift of the dirge,
his lament for my loss,
and could feel nature bending itself
to his sorrow.
So i must ask:
Was it all for me, love?
Or was it all for your song?
Did you go through the suffering
only to rape more inspiration
from your harlot muse?
How many epics did you wring
from my untimely demise?
But this is Hell, after all,
and they will not take my lyre from me.
i have tried to lose it many a time,
only to find it there in my hand once again.
i am a woman with a song to sing,
and not even the damned will listen.
For it seems no one will pay heed
to the notes and words of woman,
no, neither in Heaven, nor in Hell,
nor anywhere in between.
When i heard they had finally
rend you into pieces,
i felt no loss at all
but neither did i feel freedom.
This world has already been tainted with your
art,
leaving no room for mine.
So despite my love for you,
nay, because of my love for you,
i wished a handful of your flesh for my own.
i am sure that when your crown
drifted downstream
and was swept into the sea,
you were still singing,
Damn you.
Another Poem About Your Eyes
The
thing I hate most about being a poet.
I'd like
a poem about my eyes, you know,
For
once. Just for a change of pace.
No one's
ever written a poem about my eyes.
I
constantly draw inspiration from what I see
In the
eyes of others: the light, the spark in them.
There's
no spark in mine that I can find.
I can't
start kindling with it.
I can't
even find my way to bed with it.
Instead,
I keep tripping over your shoes.
Never and Always
Five and a half feet and still going down.
Sweat ripe for the picking from my brow.
Dirt under my fingernails, reminding me I'm
alive.
Frenetic with hesitant expectation.
Waiting for the sound of metal striking
wood.
Breathing hard, not as young as i used to
be.
You're out.
I've seen you.
Haunting me again.
Reading the ingredients off the backs of
mirrors.
Sculpting clouds out of dragons
and wishing all the seeds away.
Six feet.
Anytime now.
A nod to worms, trundling black things.
They will excite joy in my unmoistened
throat,
will bring life again from the dust, my
life,
and i can crawl from this hole reborn in
exchange for musky death,
relose filthy gills and inhale the moon.
Six and half feet and standards break down
on the subatomic
level.
There is nothing here.
Nothing here but dirt and more dirt and
myself, more dirt.
Where are you?
Seven paces from the tree at the fork,
these two words interred before,
this undergrowth a spearcarrier in all my
forgotten dreams.
Where are you?
Sharing
There's ink on my fingers--
enough to incriminate myself,
enough to mark you for life,
the scar, a letter, a circle,
fading and growing in the sedentary light.
Mine still itches when it's cold.
It's like a divine blessing.
Believe me.
You want to pass it on.
untitled
i
would weave you an untruth
if i spun for example that
i have this feeling.
Instead, this feeling has me.
i speak so and so
the precipice yawns and
feigns indifference
but will receive me once again.
It calls me by my secret names
and bids me fall.
The tumbling descent is familiar
but this time i have time
to count the trees as i go.
It is a delicious avalanche indeed
the tide of white washing clean the mountainside
erasing the slopes below
but never gaining speed.
Uncontrolled but submissive
it will die at the base
it will die at your feet.
What you might hear me say
is that i do not want this
that i do not want this at all.
Rest assured, i could promise you
if i still believed in promises
that this would be the only lie i share with you.
Get Well Soon
i
don't miss you.
i won't mince words or lie to you
for that would be too easy.
And you know me, always the difficult one.
You rise up now and then, and shake your
tiny fist
You'll try to convince me you know what you
want,
and that's as maybe,
but you don't know what you need.
You strap yourself to the mast and pour
wax in the portals of your ears.
You sing offkey at the top of your lungs.
You're trying to defend yourself against
singing siren or mermaid,
but they don't bother with either of us.
No, not anymore.
No, the only person here was me,
and wonder of wonders,
but that was the malady.
Here's your remedy.
Hesitant Love Letter
God pricked his finger
while spinning your hair
so an angel told me
i am afraid of you
because you are exactly who i would like to
meet
in a dark alleyway.
You see, in my dreaming hours
i gather kindling in the cold grey of the
valley
to keep such thoughts at bay.
i ponder your name, and roll it along my
fingers
not daring to let it pass my lips
for fear of invocation
for once in flesh, what then?
Those fingers,
one of yours brushed against one of mine
once and once only
but it was enough to set in motion
things which only desired to remain still.
In the darkness, the darkness of your eyes
opens wide and wide
almost inviting me to look inside
but i fear watching
more than being seen.
You see,
there are letters sealed,
i know.
But postcards are cheaper.
Here is one now,
read it,
it says Wish You Were Here.
Please sign it.
Habeus
The casualty lies casually still
and lets the plush carpet sponge that it
lies upon
soak up the humours that stream out.
If natural selection did not rob me of my
smile
then certainly it must have been you
for it looks so flimsy hanging there
beneath your nose.
No matter what happens between a you or an
i
it is always the third party involved, the
us
who sustains injury.
The words that are now shoved inwards
to the hilt, are illegible, partly due
to the stains which had burst forth from
our side
when the phrases were thrust there
and partly because my hand had stuttered
and shook so
while writing them in midair.
Before they could vanish like a smoke ring
a small thought brought them into solid
reality
and sent them home--
here between two ribs,
sheathed in our side.
They paused only long enough
to finish their own chalk outline,
which i had begun in a parking lot in
December
and which you finished months later in your
living room.
Friends, you said, and if we say it over
and over
it will make it be so.
It did not cross our lips often enough, it
seems,
for i walk down the street, my hand at my
side,
applying pressure.
Every night, i should have knelt and
murmured it
like a mantra, each repetition forcing it
to be so.
Every night, i should have gone to my home
and
suffered in relative silence.
Instead, i suffer the deafening,
that of no phones ringing,
of no words spoken,
of future selves stillborn.
Still Lives
zero
Stay, stay, stay, said the bird: Mankind
cannot bear too much mankind.
Comfort without comfort --
Stay. The
car will not arrive until four
this
you know as well as your name --
Stop.
Do not rise and peek through the blinds.
Do not let the barbed sunlight sting your
eyes.
Hide beneath this canopy.
Hide within your flesh.
Reside inside that which does not make you
what you are not.
Remain inside your remains.
Or,
if you
feel driven to action,
compelled to be compelling,
do not
wrap your head in a cloth,
let it
go naked up the stairs
to the
roof, throw open the door
if you
must, lean over the precipice
to the
world below you.
And, look at them.
Look at
them, all of them.
Pass
by each of their open caskets
and
remark that they look so much like ourselves.
Listen. Do
you hear it?
Listen to their desperation.
Listen to the spiritus mundi sigh.
Listen.
Listen.
one
She was dead.
She was dead, and she pronounced herself so
mere moments after she had opened the door
and entered into what was left of her fantasy
for the very last time.
On the table by the door
sat an ashtray into which
they would leave their keys.
When hers clattered down alone
it was the emptiest sound she had ever felt.
She would have called his name
in an attempt to bridge this gulf,
to shatter this silence self-imposed,
but it would do no good.
Much later, she would make the rounds and find
spaces in the closet,
under the bed,
in the bookcase, and elsewhere
not unlike
the ones in her stories,
locations and people that either were visited
and did not exist,
or the other way around.
So there in that moment of endings,
she thought about what it must have been like
at
the beginning, when she still had control,
when she was the one
arranging the fruit and the bowl,
and not the fruit itself.
She had a half-empty ashtray
a
half-full story about her tardiness
and the
knowledge
that she was dead
but with years left to live.
two
She meant no harm.
She truly meant no harm.
She would walk up to paintings
in museums, unthinking,
and place oily fingers on oiled canvas.
She only wanted to see what they felt like.
Years
before,
Keats tried
to convince me that it was better this way.
He was
muttering something about
the
beauty of unconsummated and unconsummating love
and pottery.
That one moment of
just before
for all eternity.
i
rebelled against this idea
stagnation
through ceramics
"Better to get to the point and get it over with,"
said i, "no man can teeter on the verge
forever.
"Gravity may or may not be a truth,
"but hearts and pots both break
when they fall from shelves."
"Or if they are pushed," he added.
"Or if they are pushed," i agreed.
"Just remember," he said,
"you were warned."
His words echoed in my head as i realized
she meant no harm.
She truly meant no harm.
She would walk up to people's lives
in the world, unthinking
and place tapered fingers on tapered lives.
She only wanted to see what they felt like.
three
Underneath the overpass
he takes another pull from the bottle
as
the cars ignore him and turn up the ramp
up Highway 15 and out of his life.
To
all things an ending, he thinks,
it's
just that some endings take longer than others...
so he spits out a vapory laugh to the fluorescent
sky.
He wrote their names together
in
the pavement.
That was long ago, in another lifetime.
Things were simpler.
There were still some things to believe in.
But last night,
he lost all of the misbelief
he had once held as true.
While seeking contentment in the flesh
of his latest soulmate,
he breathed out a name.
"Kori."
And that name belonged anywhere but
in his bed,
in the ear of the woman he feigned to love
and
who did him the same favor in return.
It belonged here in the sidewalk next to his
cut in the stone which
marked her bed
cut in the memory breathed
in the ear
of that long ago
lifetime
that long ago
bonding of souls.
So he pulls again from the bottle and smiles
grimly.
He thinks of endings, and then
he thinks of endings.
His thoughts are carved in stone,
and more than her name is encased within.
four
When she arrives home
it is long since dark.
It is exactly like it was when she left it.
The lock rattles as the door opens
to permit
entrance to this particular fantasy.
That of home,
and the smile of welcome
which she should have received
walking through the door.
Or so
she thought.
The ideas of home
of welcome
of welcome home,
she had dreamed of them since she was a child.
But
there is no smile here, heralding home.
Only a grimace given for the note
which is in its usual place on the kitchen table.
A promise of a time to
return
which is flexible
as all promises are.
She climbs into bed
and wraps herself in the blankets
reaching for some touch besides her own.
This was her today.
And this was her yesterday.
And if
the cold was not so comfortable
she could wish for a different tomorrow.
But instead, always wishes and words,
well-intentioned,
but never good
or made
good upon.
So she falls asleep and half-remembers
something Goethe said about being free.
She can never recall how the quotation goes,
but she will die with it on his lips.
five
The shower beats down upon her.
Her eyes closed she gives her unmoving body over
to the movement of the water
down, down along the sheath of her skin
descending a familiarity
though she cannot remember without checking
which direction
the spiral goes here north of the equator.
She faintly hears him whistling a tune in the
kitchen
punctuated once by the rebounding fall of a pan.
She smiles despite herself and runs her hands
back through her hair
letting the falling water encompass her form
as his thoughts of her encompass her mind
the way he would touch her cheek and sigh
the way she tried to shrink back inside herself
It was the potential of the moment that
frightened,
the realization that the actualization of one
moment
would either destroy her or make her whole once
more.
This thought was more compelling than the
fragmentation
of a lifetime
scattered and still, half-formed emotions
slipping as they walked through beaded pools
languishing on the faucet
She moves, and realizes the stopper is in place.
This whole time she has been wading through these
thoughts,
deep water shrouding her feet.
She pulls it free and calms herself
with the knowledge that all things rise and fall
all things return to the norm
whatever that norm might
or might not be
The water escaping through the hole
dropping out of sight decidedly clockwise
she frowns, i must have been wrong...
and it
drowns out the humble music from the kitchen.
six
The waves outside go in and out
nonchalantly erasing some child's forgotten
castle.
The sky is clear, and the bloated moon hung there
looks down with disinterest on the solitary man,
lying awake in the vacuum that is a sprawling
two a.m.
bedroom,
his wife pinned beneath heavy slumber beside him.
The moon knew for some time what this man has
experienced
in this moment of epiphany:
His entire life is a lie.
What the patriarch laid out for him,
he had done, just like his father before him.
The few paintings he had been proud of
relegated to a forgotten corner of a
rented storage room across town
like some guilty family secret.
The loving father who had uncapped
his dreams and squeezed them down the garage sink
was somewhere else, sleeping the sleep of the
just,
next to his own smiling trophy.
This is where most men would ask in that
shocked man voice, "My God, what have I
done?"
But this one knows his crime to the letter.
He goes to the glass door and looks out and up.
He would fly if he still could, but it would do
no good.
Not even moonlight could restore the wax he had
once worn
upon his arms.
seven
She goes to the lake to seek peace.
She hears the soft ripples of the water
calmly
making promises to the shore.
She feels the caress of the wind on her bare
arms,
she crosses them in front of her as she walks.
Dusk stands in the doorway, barring night's path,
and the reddish clouds resting on the horizon to the west
mark a place
not yet reached.
She looks back eastward, half-expecting
the light trailing her to be an overeager dawn,
but instead,
it is the bite of arc sodium,
and the
lines of windows,
lit only by the dull flicker of television screens within
giving her a gnawing flicker of recognition within
and that feeling comes again:
"I do not belong
there."
The water is clear enough during the daylight
hours
but twilight makes its depth an uncertainty.
She
bends and brushes the back of her hand
across its surface as one would a familiar cheek.
She thinks of descending, stepping forward
out of one gray shallow world into another,
embraced
by the comfort of cold escape.
But the circles caused by her hand stretch
outward
and the circles formed by her hand stretch inward
and that feeling comes again:
"I do not belong
there."
She stands and looks out across the lake,
seeking peace.
Her circumnavigation has run its course.
Canadian geese take to the sky,
but will never see Canada
again.
The breeze wraps its arms around her,
she
wraps her arms around herself,
taking comfort in the chill.
She smiles, and says aloud:
"I cannot
stay here."
A dog barks for her to awaken.
She thinks,
i will go after one moment more.
i can go given one moment more.
eight
Forty-five miles from his destination
all
four windows came down
the music came up
and the freezing cold came in
for he had slipped
and forgotten he was alive.
As the
flesh on his bare arms stood at attention
and the
joints in his fingers
gripping the wheel stiffened
he watched
abstractly
as the orange leaves on the trees
descended
into shades of grey
only half-convinced as he was
that it was due to nightfall.
And as an orange line was drawn
across the horizon
and the birds taking flight
reminded him that a body in motion
still has a tendency to feel emotion
his
eyes watered
only half-convinced as he was
that it was due to the cold.
And as
the dashes in the road
disappeared underneath his
headlights
he thought of them suddenly
as the perforation of the
world
waiting for the gleeful
hands of gods
to rend it into pieces.
He laughed then,
and watched, crying,
as
the laugh clouded his windshield.
For he was alive.
He was
alive.
Grey Spirit Yearning
A fin cuts a swath through the shallow pool
of memory.
She trod barefoot across a crowded room,
until the water
came up to her knees.
the oceans
of her eyes
too full of
doldrums, quadrapedal spectres.
Not enough rope to be bound to a mainmast,
neither any nails to consume the deed,
but no song learned passed fresh lips to
draw me deeper,
and for that,
thanks are on order.
I kissed her once
with undercurrents of raw
betrayal,
the only time we ever
shared skin.
A hysterical front moved rabid over the
surface of former calm
and washed the seeds of any
ghosts of growth
away.
Gratitude
for moments
past
because they are
past
and not lodged in the gears of
now.
Karma
or some other
blindness
has taken its
tithe and
Possibility
without enough for bus fare
must wade
the long
distance
home.
The Stygian Depths of You and I and All
We stand upon the shore and offer up mistletoe,
rumored to give safe passage across
the sea of empty space that makes up
everything and everything.
Our merest pieces exist on the fringes of
existence.
Particles with our signature have
touched the vast faces of forgotten worlds,
but the dog still has not been fed.
My patterns recognize yours each time
you step through that door,
for actions and reactions and counteractions
on any level higher than the invisible
give pause and precious moisture exhaled from
pores.
The leaves breathe in, the leaves breathe out,
and all of this and more mingles
with our remnants that you wipe
off the bookshelf.
Here is the hand i first
caressed you with,
on the endtable, and
here are the lips i first
kissed you with,
in the sofa, and
here are one hundred
thousand
vague and distant
memories
falling, as we walk through these halls
haunted by the waking dreams of our own dead
skin.
Give me seven years.
You shall change,
and i shall change,
but the patterns remain.
Exchanges on minute levels
bordering on the cosmic and cataclysmic fall then
each and each second.
Now...
now...
then now...
again now.
We are all empty space in the end.
All of it, all of us,
stuffed with fear and misgivings.
Alas.
Why Do Living Things
Bury Themselves?
You and i stand there
and hold mirrors up to reality,
searching for the confused fog
that lets us know it is alive.
Was that a diminutive sigh?
Did a nostril stir? No.
Then to the garden with it,
let it return in returning,
let the convocation of worms
commence.
Worst case, a little sleep
and not the entire pie
served on a platter with your
crown
and so transfigured, wash it down.
Children will skip around in a
ring
and an awakened hand will begin to
ring
the bell for the end of
everything--
Except for you and i.
If you wander toward the back of
this hall,
mind the signs there, they say
COME SEE THE EGRESS
and you should know the rest by
now.
Rats' alley beyond, and beyond
that--
we
forget.
Mankind can only bear so much
fantasy
and the little bird is dead.
Easter the cat grins chesire
and does not wish to repeat
herself.
The handle on the alley's side of
the door.
You recall it, i know you do.
You were crouched in a cardboard
box
the first time i stepped out
so long and long and long ago.
Purest silver, the handle it was,
and we could come and go as we
pleased.
They melted it into coinage
struck a manmade god into it
and rendered it in exchange for a
kiss.
The doer of the deed still mumbles
by occasionally.
He could not reconstruct it if he
tried.
Perhaps, instead ask
Why do buried things live still?
If our dead partner was to appear now
he would wear his chains and
rattle them,
yes, but they would not be forged
in sin.
Each link instead an amalgam of
broken promises, still held
together with regret,
words no longer echoing,
love letters unwritten to people
unmet.
Let them go, let them leave,
their feet are covered by the
sheet
and they can harm you no longer.
The dead can fend for themselves
and the living sometimes catch a
glimpse
of the little man behind the
curtain
of the acorn fallen on fertile,
unfriendly ground
of the leaves full of children
and the children full of straw.
The dog's nails are ragged.
He will not cannot find us down
here.
We fester too deeply for shallow
minds to go.
We decay so well so the infant
hand will grow.
When you have shed your outer shell,
i somehow still will know.
But i cannot find your hand in
this dank, musty place.
These roots they clutch at my
moral remains.
Sweets to the bittersweet, my
love, you say
as the pathway here loses the
memory of human feet
as the innocent ceremony is borne
down by its own dress
as is written an unauthorized
autobiography
of all of our sins disremembered.
God is in his world, and all is
right with heaven.
Ask the roses to sing you this
song when they bloom forth from me.
You will not hear your answer
inscribed in the air with a
vegetable tongue:
Some things cannot return to dust
fast enough.
Now leave me to Adam's blessed
curse, my love.
i am thirsty for my sleep
and the wind is shifting away from
the south.
Requiem:
a mass for the living in four movements
(translated from the original English text)
these ruins i have shored against my fragments
Requiem Aeternam
I.
The chosen have already left us
their
cars on the side of the roads
bumper stickers
and sheep's blood as sigils
to call
a rain of angels down upon them
lights
hazarding clues as to where they went from here
i do not know for sure
i only have an educated guess.
So here we sit the rest eternal
eternally at rest
eternally left behind
to suffer in blind ambivalence
denied the doorway
denied the steps into darkness
denied the pass through the dark mountains
to the other side
instead with each egress
we digress
and regress
and always come back out again at the beginning
and always then at the middle
this shore with no passage
no passage to the other side
only watching and waiting and watching
the
grains of continents drift away in the surf
and
perhaps sometimes drawing strength from
a
universal half-truth of erosion.
II.
So
roiling in the surf
(as i roiled on the shore)
a
tennis ball
which i plucked from the foam
and forced into metaphor.
or rather, the attempt was made:
The ball itself would not be so moved.
There it was, constantly reaching the shore
but rolling back again into
the sea
and i thought, yes,
it is the same but without
man or hill
and then, Ah!
What a happenstance rife with meaning!
"What portents do you bring?" i asked.
Nothing,
it replied.
"Impossible.
You must mean something."
Nothing,
again, nothing.
"But..." i screamed, "this is
madness!"
"When the larger, seemingly-significant
events in one's life lack even the
semblance of meaning, it is only natural to look to smaller occurrences
such as this for succor."
Such
are the births of religion, it said.
"But..." i continued, "the
universal truths,
"the universal
meanings,
"they all escape me.
"If i cannot piece together enough meaning to
impose it on such an
inconsequential moment as this..."
Such
are the deaths of faith, it said. Now we
are getting somewhere.
III.
So the rest is silence? If so,
how much rest can we achieve in this quiet
cacophony?
We swear we will speak only the truth
and therefore our mouths move without meaning
soundless and furious we attempt to force from
our lips
promises which no language can truly muster.
Therefore, we, the rest, are indeed silent.
Speak we eternal, but
eternal, we silent.
Donaeis Domine
I.
We were told to immerse ourselves
for
he was coming back home.
This fine patina of promises and prayer
will keep us safe from all manner
of disease destruction
despair
Forty years and more we have wandered
in this waste land, still never getting
the joke laid before us
that those who strike
rocks in anger
are punished
while those who throw rocks
in righteous fury
are granted
eternal life
But still how long must endurance stretch?
These nigh two millennia have come and gone
quickly
like a dream that upon
waking you realize
you never
really had.
Flickering images of false fire
gift us with assurance that all is well
Es un mundo pequeño despues de todo
so get some sleep and
try to feel better.
II.
So the rest is silence? No.
The sum
is silence.
Or is as it should be.
The endless mocking voices of five billion parrots
all echo as one large
quiet cacophony
and yet no words are
spoken.
Rather, the masters
the
maestros throw words at jet engine noise
and watch them splash against blank canvas
i ask for meaning, and in reply,
they cry
"Where were you little man, when we remade
the world?"
i answer with no more than a
shake of the head.
i know which way the wind
is blowing.
i know which hand you use.
i know that i do not what i
do not know.
Which is more than one can say of you.
I can see her now in my mind's eye, The Creator,
adjusting a pillow by her head and saying,
that that was not what she meant at all.
that that was not it at all.
So preachers in pulpits,
and friends on boxes
and lovers on bedsheets
in backstreets
and elsewhere
all of them
paint for me.
III.
i say there shall be no more promises.
Those promises made already may live.
All except one.
That one
is already buried with
the
tearful woe of ten-thousand imaginary brothers
piled on top of the pine box.
(There are two words in the box.)
i forgot the path to the gravesite.
(The first is NEVER.)
There were flowers growing there.
(The second is FOREVER.)
i forget what they were called.
You see,
i thought
i was in the middle of the path
she said i was in the middle of the path
but i was out of sight
out of mind
in the box
with two meaningless
words.
i hear the man in the plot next to mine.
He
says,
"At least your bell will ring."
"At least you have a rope to yours,"
i
reply,
unfazed.
IV.
We have
neither mastered reality nor fantasy,
yet seek to make them both obsolete.
Our souls, more precious than gold,
have been melted down for the fatted calf
to which we offer praise.
i will lay my hands upon it.
i will say that i believe.
But have pity, for pity's sake,
though
pity like patience
has worn thin.
So for heaven's sake,
and in heaven's name,
do not promise me anything.
Et Lux Perpetua
I.
We staked our claim on the shore.
These forces
these
small forces shaping this foot of coast
and
small forces elsewhere shaping their respective feet of coast
my own feet mired in infirmity here
my own feet sired in infinity here
buried in the wet remnants of memories
i feel those same forces lapping up and washing
away
my
own particular shore.
Standing in what used to be my...demarcation?
declaration?
Who knows?
i know
that
i was abandoned by my fellow scripters
i cannot keep repeating myself in impermanent bliss
for the tide always wins
and
washes
my words away.
And those scriveners who deserted my sinking
islands
they float
just out of reach
held aloft by delusions of mediocrity.
There is something to be said for writing in the
sand.
"Impermanence is better than nothing at
all."
i
wrote these words,
and even i do not believe them.
My fine floating friends,
they make letters in the water with gracious hands
they draw oaths in the foam with tapered fingers
they do not comprehend the short span of these promises.
At least i can offer this sand, which will
hold a word or two before it is consumed.
It
can hold three words quite well if you
write them over and
over.
And choose those three words carefully.
For you see,
even a fourteen-year-old girl knew better
than to accept a pledge sworn by the moon.
But yet,
her fate was no different.
II.
i am sitting on the steps and
writing this poem.
Four lifetimes stroll past, arm in arm with
fifteen pages.
When i look up again, a boy is there,
watching me write.
"Hello," i say.
"What
are you writing?" he asks.
"Words, words, words."
"Why?"
"It's all i was given," i say. "Some people get wealth,
some love
i words."
"I
would like to be given words," he says.
"i've never thought of it as a gift," i
say.
He
asks, "What is it, then?"
i tell
him about being a boy of his age,
of wearing a hat that was
too big
playing a violin that
was too big
and playing for a girl with a smile that was too big
a song that was
too small.
He did not understand.
i
spoke of having to write one's thoughts down
and having to pretend that you cared
about the things that troubled you.
of watching couples walk by
and remembering when i needed help to
make my hands as cold as they now are.
He did not understand.
i told
him that once you have drunk from your own imagination
no earthly drink will satisfy your thirst afterwards.
that once you have drunk from this well of truth
the lie that is life will not satisfy you again.
He did not understand.
He still wished for more than these words
and no collection of words i could gift him with
would satisfy him.
He left me there, bathed in frustration.
Can it be that life had undone even one so young
as this?
And
then that voice again--
"Now we're getting somewhere."
III.
Bring me an honest woman
and i will find you an honest man.
Though your search would last eternity
mine would stretch longer still.
i set out in the streets one night,
i
held a lamp aloft
my eyes squinting for the goal.
One better than i had quested thus before,
with much the same result.
For you see,
blacks and whites,
truths and lies,
loves and indifference
all converge into this dull
gray fog
that permeates our
existence,
and keeps us from
fulfilling our quest,
lamp or no.
This mist of belief disbelief and rebelief
that is around us even now.
Every word you misconstrue is another wisp of
smoke
confounding communication.
So breathe deep.
It cannot hurt you,
but
hope it will numb you
to the
unnatural shocks which are to come.
to your unnatural shocks which are to come.
We've seen
it all before.
We've heard it all before.
And anyone who accepts a smile and a solemn word,
merely has another lesson to be learned.
IV.
Rockabye
baby thy cradle is green,
Father's
a nobleman mother's a queen.
You
will be taught by the great god machine
The
great sacred lie which is nearly obscene.
For
groom bearing black and bride wearing white
Will
make grey the vows which color their night.
Luceat Eis
I.
i find i am choking on the coin
which
you left in my mouth
a premature and useless but appropriate gesture
for which i thank you.
Signs we have tried on this side--
Once a great golden bonfire we lit
all to gain a certain captain's attention
but my
embers died,
and returned as moths
only to
fly disgruntled
to find the effigy untouched and cold.
"But what reason do you have to complain
so?" she asks,
and
no more expects an answer
than she understands my pain.
And she could not withstand my pain
anymore than i could withstand hers.
Our torments are handtailored for the individual.
You see i see her chains, just as
i see she sees mine.
She has gone to the trouble of polishing hers,
and look
at how they shine!
If you must wear it, i guess you can be proud of
it.
i
suppose i will go to sleep
and try to feel better.
II.
The chosen ones have left their cars by the side
of the roads
and the authorities tow them away before
we can find the universal half-truth
perhaps in the glovebox,
perhaps in the floorboard, under the tracts
and
the empty beer bottles:
Life
is the only true sacrifice
the only true martyrdom left to
us.
The only true saints are those who hurl themselves
upon the knowledge before it could destroy us all.
The weak carve apologies for their weakness
in their own skin.
The scars of my own
petty pleas for forgiveness, though faded
still spell out their
truth to me:
The true death is life
and the true life is death,
which, of course, will lead us to life yet again.
So the
world sleeps,
and tries to feel better.
For
nothing has anything to do with everything.
And though this is not a rock to build a church
upon,
it
will do for a place to stand alone.
So i
daydream of sleep,
and cannot feel better.
i have
been here before,
and you have been here before,
and no amount of gold on our eyelids
or tongue
will bribe us from returning.
For we are not blessed.
Merely eternal.
III.
It is nearly dawn when i see the shore again.
It is always nearly dawn on this shore.
It is always on this shore.
This is the sum and bane of our liminal
existence:
one
cloud, one horizon,
one
moment too early or too late
one light and one hope, both just out of
view
they linger beyond this vast moving yet stagnant
pool
and the sun is caught in the ebb and flow of the tide.
Instead of sunlight we are washed up
things to amuse
ourselves with:
balls and boys and
bombs and metaphor
hope and hate and want and need
faith hope and love
and the greatest of these is
indifference.
This grey stillness showed me once
a girl
in black sitting
knees drawn up to her chin
staring outwards to the everalmost dawn.
"May i sit with you a moment?" i asked.
"A
moment is all you will have," she said.
"I
won't stay long."
"You never do."
"No,
I never do."
Silence.
"They
said that we were getting somewhere," she said.
"Yes," i said. "That's what they said."
"I
think...I think that they lied."
Silence.
i offered to take her hand, but she refused,
excusing herself that her hands were too cold.
Her hands were always too
cold.
i took her word on it, though.
i found it the easiest thing at the time to
believe.
Silence.
IV.
What has here been joined in the name of God
let no man tear asunder.
So it
is written,
so it
is done.
Requiem aeternam donaeis domine
Et lux perpetua luceat eis
eternal
restless light perpetuating
grayness dimness
shining forever
Silence Silence Silence
Per Dolorem Ad Astra
Civilization is in the wound of the
beholder.
The pinfeathers of an angel are mounted on
the wall
next to the broken barometer and the
vibrantly dead fish.
Even the rain here feels dry--
it beats itself to a steaming death on the
blistered asphalt.
The old men on the front porch sigh
and take comfort in the fact that something
is making an attempt to ascend.
Our feet are nailed to the stars but
our eyes are drawn to the ground,
to the odd billboard and the even
cold-blooded stare
of stony women toppled from pedestals
and the muddy tracks where webbed feet
tried impatiently, impotently to bestow
godhood.
Where are the treats we were promised?
Where is more than mere tarnished
copulations?
Where is the line? The new line?
Drowning in the wine.
There is a beast that knows the hundredth
name,
but the most important thing to know
is that the name is not yours.
Between the conversion and the omission
Between the stigmata and the regalia
Between the consecration and the decoration
Falls the self.
Only that, and nothing more.
Highway 15, Heading
North
I missed
my exit
because I
was thinking of you.
This did
not give me more
than a
moment's hesitation
and a
fifteen minute detour
but all
was well
for the
sights were worth seeing and
I was in
no hurry.
Later, on
my path again,
I
remembered something that I had left unsaid
forgotten
in the casual flow of conversation
from the
night before.
I had a
grasp on it now,
and turned
to your place in the passenger seat
to relate
it to you.
But, of
course, you were not there
you were
seventy miles to the south instead
and the
distance growing.
This gave
me pause,
but still
it was no cause for alarm.
I kept
moving.
Later
still, still on the path,
I passed
the waterfall
you know
the one
the
little one just beyond the county line?
It is
very small,
not more
than a notion really,
but still
a beautiful memory of rainfall
descending
the mountain.
Still,
the thought struck me:
That there
was no one
I would
rather see it with than you.
That's
when I knew:
That I am
lost.
I am
truly lost.
Gratitude:
In addition to my
parents, to whom this book is dedicated, I would also like to thank my wife and
partner, Maegan, for her support during this undertaking. As well, thanks upon Jenna Leith, who is a
most splendid writing partner.
Special thanks to Grant
Tatum, graphic designer extraordinaire, for his assistance and advice in
creating the look of the book you now hold.
I would like to thank
the poets e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, Dwight Humphries, Ezra Pound, and Gary
Snyder for being guiding influences, though I only had the honor of meeting one
in the flesh.
Also, the
artists and writers: Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Henry
Rollins, Tom Waits, and Robert Anton Wilson--all of whom have served as
inspiration and life preservers in various forms over the years.
Being my
first book, there are a score of people who deserve to be acknowledged and
thanked. Many have not been mentioned
here, but I would ask that it be attributed to space restrictions and my
easily-addled mind, rather than a lack of affection. For that is certainly the case.
John
Robinson
Atlanta
July 2001