soon enough, my love, shall your pretty little head rest

soon enough, my love, shall your pretty little head rest

to make a fool of me in strains of the heat

that pulls me from slumber into the depths of awake

where i see your pretty little head breathing softly

and your eyes closed lightly, your hair mussed

yet smooth, and your soft hands rest deeply

under your pretty little head, where your lips

stay flat and tell mine to back away, as just one kiss

would disturb your sleep and your pretty little head

(with its one-two rolls from my body) keep on

resting, forever pulling your pretty little head away

from my unpretty thing

my mother is a cathedral, pretty and tall

my mother is a cathedral, pretty and tall

as her feet stand firm as marble steps,

her voice rings with a churchbell's call

her arms are pews, with whom recept-

tion warms her congregation with song

of her fingers grazing of their hands

as they are lifted for the prayer, sweet and long

as a little priest within her soul commands

my mother's words are Communion, taken with praise

and her kisses upon their cheeks are the wine

from which they sip, and the little priest shall raise

the cup of my mother's lips to the divine

my mother is a cathedral, pretty and tall

and her son is an alter boy, nothing but small

my mother father and sisters (dear as they are)

my mother father and sisters (dear as they are)

are not those of making: they are ones of things made:

they are ones who know not of marking but of scars

from hammers and markings from yellow paints

they know not of Hamlet's plight or Gatsby's love -

instead they know only of 26 letters and no more

their son's and brother's are ones that reach and shove

the stains of unknowingness in their leaking pores

instead my mother and father and sisters live still

on the tile floors and torn-up carpets they've made

and though i find their learnings weak and shrill,

i pray they keep their hands molding in the shades

of maple trees where letters are so afar

from my mother father and sisters (dear as they are)

if there is love in thy city thy fingers shall sweetly bear down upon it,

if there is love in thy city thy fingers shall sweetly bear down upon it,

picking it up from cobblestones and twisting it in thy soft palms

until all of it crumbles down unto the streets where thee once pranced

dearly in dear spring dresses with thy hair once so very blonde

but now deep and rich like the trunks of the pines which parade

within thy city: i see thy face illuminated by glass bulbs and torn

by winds from the lakeshore - still swiftly i see thy hair flailing

itself through such harshness, a power taken down through thy home

that buries itself deeply within thy moist skin, firm like the concrete

on which you tread in your city: without this boy to kiss in the trees

A RESPONSE

it was never about taking from Mother Nature
in our fishing trips engulfed by July heat
(at least not in the sense of taking which you thought):

sure, we took and ate, but i would like to think
that my father and i discovered some island in the middle
of that lake - somewhere where we could live alone
away from smog and concrete, a place where we
could carve things from wood and live on our own
with the little birds and fish that came about -
only taking what we needed

and we took more than that:
together we took each other in that old aluminum boat
and he took me to God and to Man
in the middle of uncrisp muddy water -
he took my hand and placed it on maple oars
and took my muscles (then undertoned . . .
still undertoned) and made them row, made them
grow, made them a manifestation of his manliness and mine

i took my father in that lake and turned him 'round
to someone who thought that maybe his son could be a son
(perhaps a ballplayer instead of a poet)
and into someone who would someday shake my hand
after my sixteenth birthday -
although he never called me son
and somehow,
i'm okay with that

so it was never about taking from Nature,
taking from the lake and reaping it -
in fact we always stayed within our legal limit -

it was always about those days in the sunset
and that wind that we used to cool ourselves off -
it was about my first Swiss Army Knife
and his old pocket knife -
it was about our matching soda bottles
and our tub of worms (he always told me that they never felt a thing)

truth be told, i hate fishing
but he loves it, so what choice did i have?

i often wonder (when you close your eyes)

i often wonder (when you close your eyes)

if you can somehow still see the flickering

of the moon over our heads

and the glisten of the dew on the grass

when we frolicked long ago:

i wonder if you can see the stems of leaves

that buried us all in Autumn, the red

that took our feet and made them

crunch all the once-live covers of the trees

i wonder if you perceive the concrete

on which we danced and swooned awkwardly

until the stars told us that time was not ours

right now, i wonder if you at all caught with your eyes

the little pattern in my stanzas:

five;four;three;two;nowone (are your eyes listening?)

Gatsby

when i was young (17 or so)

i wanted to be Gatsby:

a man of mystery, devotion,

love, and of solemn nature

while the world around me crumbled

at the hands of flappers, wealth,

and bathtub gin

only i wanted to get the girl in the end

and i wanted not to die

oh, and i hate the color yellow -

my car would be black

Love Letters

i imagine that i (at some point) will write you love letters:

something not beaming on a screen but scribed down

over precariously frayed parchment

enclosed with a daisy (which i hope you love)

and spritzed with my mother's perfume

(as i have no fragrance other than the white speckles

from my anti-persperent) - a wax seal

of two loving elephants and a Latin motto:

Vivamus, Mea Lesbia, atque amemus!*

i wish i had a fountain pen or a 1926 Remington

to make my words seem (only slightly) more elegant -

doll them up and take them out on the town -

perhaps i can put flowers in their caps

through that language i know which makes you melt:

Marcus meo amori spd.**

i wonder how far my letters will travel

through grey and snow until they reach

your pale hands - how dearly your eyes

may jump across my words in my makings

from my country villa (cultivating only dead grass

and baby boys) to your columns in your city

Solitudo placet Muses; urbs inamica poetis est.***

Solitude tears me up inside -

the where my letters will be sent is so prosperous for you and i

*"Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love!" - from Catullus

**Literally, "Marcus speaks many greetings to my love" ("spd" stands for "salutes plures dicet").

***"Solitude pleases the Muses; the city is unfriendly to poets." - from Horace

When You're Angry at Me

somehow - still - you are stunning.

maybe there's a window

maybe there's a window
where the moon can be pretty
our coffee can cool off
as the sky turns to red
and somehow we don't know
why the stars are so gritty -
we are in this stand-off
for our battle in bed

in blowing our labors
we stood up in covers
of clouds led by contours
we slept on in night
the sky's what we savor
and the swirls are our lovers,
but somehow we're hunters
with our deep spears in fright

will i am this burning
that keeps your room blooming
which raptures the valor
that you hope to dream
your stomach is churning
from the blood we are dooming
to coffee and colors
of the white seeping beams

For My Youngest Nephew

oh Mark, my mother will forever
call you "Squeakers" in remembrance of
your infantile wailings for milk -

but as one Mark
whose name was mutilated
by adorableness and cutesy desires,
allow me
to pass a little piece of advice
onto you:

don't take a nickname -
it degrades us all (especially me)

(what's untruly true) three days have waned

(what's untruly true) three days have waned
and we ponder some fullness in something
we once thought barren

the clock strikes us with ticks
engulfed in aliveness of the small,
the death of the big in you and i

how steady this tight wrangling
of a thousand drops from youth spills
like snowflakes that melt in our eyes -

only warmer (like the black breaths
that you gasped swiftly while i spat up)
and much more holy

always we were prepared for what this season
could bear unto us: the unbearables and the barren
until you could inhale no more and i

had coughed up all i could muster
and we fell asleep; thinking of what now
must be untruly true (but who knows?)

buried under the snow (somewhere) is our October love:

buried under the snow (somewhere) is our October love:
the slim kisses upon our unpursed lips,
the shaking thrusts of my hips
and the strained motions of your head

somewhere in dead leaves my hands found
the inclinations of your breasts, the soft caress
of your mouth and its words,
the taming that your finger laced through my chest

before the worry staggered home and leaped
into my chest, there we were, tangled up
and beaten down by unsure love,
like the summer had been beaten down

by October, the month of something dead
yet so alive

A POEM REVISITED

i should be the only babe that rests upon you

my christmas roast now lay in the garbage
in a pool of potatoes and pasta and vegetables -
a slight hint of Pabst
and a huge helping of my nerves

lord knows how you are taking it your nerves:
if i have have the guts that you do
then maybe i could keep my dinner down

i can only imagine how your stomach churned
back when this was you

my sister's life seems almost too close to mine and yours right now:

you are not my sister, of course -
a mother too young, scared by babies
yet stern in her dealings with them,
as her belly is no longer soft like yours

the holidays are too much for us -
6 hours and one day
is far too long for me to wait
for me to be when i cannot rest my hands
upon you
and tell you that somehow things
will not grow within you

and pray for that brief candle
to go out

you have brothers - you don't really see
what i've seen with my sisters
and their bellies
until it happens to you

when you have to think of how your body
lies on anothers and what that does
to your youth and your drastic changings
you really start to wonder where things
went wrong

or maybe right

this should puff out our chests
and clenche our fists
and make us stand on firmer ground
in our bravery instilled upon ourselves
by our ignorant and hopeful love

maybe

right now i am lying in bed
the smell of tossed-up christmas in my mouth
and maybe
just maybe

it is for nothing

spd.

[an explanation of my next manuscript of poetry]

Poeta omnibus spd.

s = salutes: "greetings"

noun: accusative, F, plural - direct object of "dicet"

the object comes first,

how it all begins with ink scarred upon a white page

so that you can know what my mind wishes

to greet with my lips, my hands,

my eyes and my allthelikes:

before i know what i will strive for

i have to greet it, introduce myself

so that all of them know who i am

and what i dream

p = plures: "many"

adjective: accusative, F, plural - adjectival modifier modifying "salutes"

what my mind has in store,

stored in solid and wobbly wonderings

as it sits idle, waiting still for a motive

or a likeness to keep it flowing,

pumping, moving on through my hand

to have etchings engraved through space

and onto white happenings from the pit of my belly

through the cramping of my loins

and back down through my swift hands

for the sake of Making

d = dicet: "he/she/it speaks" (in this case, "he speaks")

verb: 3rd person, singular, present imperfective active indicative - main verb with "Poeta" as its subject

finally a speaking:

not a speech but a speaking -

a constant waving of the self through mindful mindlessness

still this speaking is not on high,

on a lofty column from which my voice

resonates through valleys and over streams -

instead my voice in unheard of,

but my words are strangely enough made

for them, for this speaking for them

. = period: "end of statement"

punctuation: end-stop - end of thought

finally still, this end

that makes one draw farther and farther

from my inherent unseen pondering -

from where did it come from?

only spd can say for sure,

only three can conjure up a four -

there must be three before four

Valete.

steadfast as my stepping winter bore a final son -

steadfast as my stepping winter bore a final son -

a fierce babe, a thick wailing beast

nurtured by this piercing wind, the milk

from his mother's breast - his suckling exchanges

one thing white and pure for another white and wretched

i imagine the birth must have been brutal, as the babe

continues its weeping and his mother seems not worried

of her son's cruel nature - a post-partum apathy

that wrecks our eyes and face and feet and hands

so many times g-d have i begged you

so many times g-d have i begged you

to keep my days the same:

but now, as snow returns to earth

and all the little saplings i saw yesterday

are now buried, i ask you god why?

why again must the achings of nature burn

my love and i in frigid exploits, its motive

to keep us here, buried in snow

like such dead saplings?

no man would ever wish this for his love.

so g-d for once i ask you to make a change:

make the earth once again full of blood

and vigor so that my love and i

can walk around without worry and care.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO REJECT MY POEMS

FOR KEN MIKOLOWSKI:

This is a poem,

This is art.

Sorry

(Not really).

PRELUDE

that night -

lying on her bed

with welling eyes she asked me

what was my purpose

after i asked her

what was the point

in lustrous city, one was i

and claimed i to have found my voice

once lost in keys strewn across time

from 1923 until 1962*

in those years, somehow

before i even breathed

i asked those Muses to keep this

boy a poet, to keep this poet

a poet

still begging, through tears of loss

and jealousy

in years of shaking

i felt the sting of triumph

from someone else's hand

the Muses sang that day -

or at least they pounded drums of war

i told her four:

LOVE

BEAUTY

ATTENTION

I AM i

then from Ken i remembered

swiftly

so many others

and from those who took my poems,

wrought them until their letters

spilled off of my page,

i dreamed dearly of how

i would show them

that light

i have seen

so many times before

no thoughts here,

just writings

to abandon that thing which i

spent what seems like eternity

building

nurturing

coddling until he

could walk on his own

in order to make something

stronger, forte

was too much

to resist

so i told the Muses

and my Muse

that i would take them on

for myself

for them

for the sake of my poems

i would take their eyes

and make them look upon what this

little poet could do

even without their dollars

and their little slips of paper

with my name in script font on them

a poem that is a poem but is not a poem

a poem that is a magnum opum

before i am truly dead

a poem that take the world’s eyes

with its eight little hands -

BEAUTY

ATTENTION

LOVE

RESTRAINT

THY/THEE/THOU/THINE/DOST/DOTH/MINE/'ST/'OUS

&

_______________________

I AM i -

and rings its words

until all of its letters

fell on the ground

now Muses & Muse,

take these hands

see them alone

see them as one

see them as purpose

as all

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO REJECT MY POEMS:

here.

BEAUTY

the vulgars that fall from these brutal lips

are not those of mine – these are dry from the heat

that pours off of their poems that sting

my face when read aloud

by god, someone told me that because things

were soaked in plagues and hounded by friars

carrying gold underneath their rags

people needed something to let their minds wander

from the depths: beauty

now that the plagues have gone their separate ways

and the friars have gone back to their temples

to count their gold,

now that the flowers are blooming for once,

the grass is once again stiff on our bare backs

that we have had too much succulentness

and it is time to take it out on words

with words

any man who looks out his window knows

that sweetness does not return, never:

the beggars are no longer the ones who take away

from what other men give to appease the LORD

and sometimes the children who should kiss the green

(as Blake said so many times)

instead lie somewhere in sand or in concrete

waiting for something that looks green or brown

or red or anything to put in their mouths

and taste for once -

now i pray that that man, looking out his window,

seeing,

will turn back to his work and find

a book

of my poems

and pick them up and see the world

with something that i will never let willingly die

(beauty)

then go out

into the briskness of the season

and make something for the others

from the self

from the love

from the beauty

ATTENTION

take my poems and let them live

but not as teeth marks on your flesh-

stinging, widening your sad eyes as my verbs

make you cringe and my nouns send shivers

pulsing through your chilling bones

strangely of death i write but strangely more

not of my own

i have seen my funeral before:

my mother weeping and my father already dead

and three little boys and a little girl wishing

for something more from their fallen uncle than

"you are not my own"

but that is for my own mind to ponder

none of your concern

i have spent nights stooping hard

from far too much of too much

and the hair of the dog which bit me

because i bit him first

but that is for my own stomach to churn over

none of your concern

to you i will not shift thoughts to my veiny wrists

or my neck too far bony

or anything that seems to steal my breath from the depths

of my lungs or take my blood

in its pulsing smoothness

because if i wished solely to pull a Plath

or a thing of the like it is

none of your concern

still my harkings are subtle next to those

which speak of such things

or take pride in what vulgarness one can put

on a page

what one can do to make another spill out sounds

and cries of disgust

the self is one these pages

and vulgar is not my self

i wish my poems to be whispers in the corner of the brain

where you can draw upon them in times

of something good&pure

or notsogood&notsopure

my self wants to keep your eyes on the poem

for the poem

for my self

but not my self that steeps in darkness

and hides behind functions of the unholy body

or death by means of death of the self

or the pills or liquors or smokes that make so many

write nothings

(for what are things if not from the self unaltered?

nothings)

let my poems grab you and let them hold you

but not for a thing gaudy and loveless –

attention -

let my tears be tears

my body be a body

my soul a soul

my poem a poem

not a cry

not a seizing thing

not for you:

it’s none of you concern

LOVE

the state of the human condition is shattered

when we see the blood of men and women and children

(o god the children!) on television nowadays -

blood makes me squirm, i don't know why:

perhaps the idea of the body being open

makes me wish to hold my own body together

with staples and twine, anything to keep it

from spilling itself onto the ground

but i think i squirm because the thought of human life

in a red gelatinous form pouring from its body

makes me wonder what in fact made it so

that this essence can escape, taking a life with it

some come from accidents: a slick winter road

here in the Midwest, yet to be salted and tires

just can't hold on for dear life and then life

comes out and covers a tree or pole or the ground that caused all this

(or something of that sort)

but the blood flowing by the means of hands

LORD, how have you forsaken them!

them is those who trusted you in order to make them

alive, filled with life - blood

with this spilling and aching i wonder why

my brethren write poems showing us such rage -

the same rage that makes blood pour from the bodies

of those undeserving

why in this world of blood on concrete and desert sand

do poets wish to keep another blood (anger)

pumping not only through their coarse veins

but also in their verses and words and voices?

is there not enough? the cacophony of the matter

lies in rage, lies in ugliness

ugliness in ideas and sickness of the mind

that gets its kicks from watching life pour swiftly (and slowly) from bodies

this poet, this "incurable romantic"

(thanks Lolita) lives for euphony - the idea

of beauty of prettiness and (most importantly)

of love

to keep our minds thinking, churning themselves over

so that when we see that blood seeping from wounds

given by the hands of men

one has to wonder "why?"

all of love - my poems are all of love because dammit

love just makes the world the world -

even those who cause strain in my verse

do so from lack of amorous things:

the love of humanity is what i fight for

and those that threaten that sacred love

that faith that i have striven so hard to retain in myself and man

will be at the hands of my verse

not out of anger, but out of love

what is it i love? beauty

simply beauty in the world that i can taste

and feel and smell and see and hear

and make love to every now and again

remember that every word comes with a little drop

of amor in my poems, and you should drink it in

because it will warm your cold bellies

and make you remember things you love

RESTRAINT

the ideal human condition in society is to be free -

the ideal human condition in nature is to be free -

the ideal human condition is to be free in the ideal human condition

i grew up loving freedom: the notion that i could color

outside of the lines and that i could try to put a square peg

in a round hole all i wanted because i got to be myself

the self is so true, through freedom we see truly how

we can pump our arms in attempts to reach something

up above us all, above the notion of man, above ideal human condition

so many times i have seen poets go upupup

and think that they could touch the sun, but remember Icarus?

like so many times the freedom can lead to the ocean below

then there are those who think solely in chains

of ideals presented in books of old, the ideas of poetics

passed down to them in a desk etched with hearts and curse words

balance is the mother that bears true creation:

how one can restrain oneself just enough to wring every last drop

of creation from one's mind unto the page

yet freedom, allowing all words and letters to bear something

wonderful, fleeting, bouncing around like radio waves in the air

unto something that is as free as radio free

i can write like that (hell, i am doing it now, right?)

and i love freedom, after all, i live in one nation under all,

so how i love to skew things up and around and over

skewed rhymes in a "sonnet?" sure.

tetrameter instead of English pentameter? absolutely.

i love it all, i take it all, i breathe it all

but sometimes it is fun to put myself in chains

of perfect rhyme and meter and restraint such as

fixed-width font or only so many letters

after all, it is when humans become trapped that

they become ingenious - ready to take on everything

with nothing but a few words and a way to go

i cannot think that the sonnet is all that there is

but sometimes, dammit, i want to be Shakespeare!

i want to woo women (now a) with meter like rose petals

to pluck and pluck and pluck and pluck and pluck

(kerplunk kerplunk kerplunk kerplunk kerplunk)

dammit all if i didn't just use a slant!

when i become Shakespeare, but oh, i cannot become Shakespeare:

i become me only forming like Shakespeare

because Shakespeare plus me equals newness from oldness

restraint is the mother of invention, not necessity, for the poet

because i cannot live without water

but poetry is not water - poetry is wine

and like all good drinks it is best

to exercise a little restraint here and there

because dammit sometimes it just makes it taste better

THY/THEE/THOU/THINE/DOST/DOTH/MINE/'ST/'OUS

someone by the name of Ken grabbed me by my throat

one day

and burned me with a cigarette,

(right on my pretty little forehead)

told me to SPEAK ENGLISH, DAMMIT!

because they would never say "thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous"

in Detroit

and we live in the 21st century

so no one says such things anymore

unless they want to be archaic

perhaps Ken had a point:

maybe i have outgrown thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous,

perhaps the world has outgrown thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous

and just maybe no one wants to remember when they were called thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous

remember when you were called thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous?

remember when you were compared to flowers and summer's days?

remember when you were treated as a queen because you were in the light of one's heart?

remember when the poems of the world made it so that

the nonpoems of the world seemed like nothings

if only for fourteen lines orso?

why take us back to those days? some will ask me

why, my good friends, the chance to remember when i could have been a man -

believe it or not an apple is still an apple if you call it something more splendid -

if thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous are too old

then maybe i am an old soul

but i can't be old because i am young

too young

twenty-1 (like our century)

to remember those days

remember when we were young and we pretended to be kings

and queens and knights and damsels?

sometimes i just never grow up -

sometimes i just speak as such because i wish to save someone

(not with a sword but with some poetry)

we were taught that thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous are only used

when slipping into love with our tongues

but remember LOVE?

i write for LOVE

so if i write for LOVE why not speak of LOVE?

in days of old LOVE meant thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous

in days of today, in days of this boy,

who still dreams

to save

and woo

love still means thy/thee/thou/thine/dost/doth/mine/'st/'ous

&

i was told that and is a nothing,

that a nothing is like filler

fillers are only brutal because fillers

leave less room

you shouldn't have eaten that extra cracker

before dinner

because dinner is now ruined

why would you drink so much water

when there is beer on tap?

but sometimes the fillers are what get left behind

shameful thing, really,

because i love crackers

water is good for you

so maybe fillers are too

maybe and is not a filler:

remember when you were young?

everything was "and then...and then...and then..."

why can't it be that way now?

maybe i just have too damn many things to say

maybe my mind just moves too fast for my pen's own good

more than that:

and is not filler -

and is a connector

it is all about connection:

to the reader

from the writer

thoughts, ideas, words, lines

again, all of one

filler, i think not

connector, i think so

perhaps something will become of and

in someone else's poems

remember LOVE, BEAUTY?

connection is LOVE, connection is BEAUTY

let us connect

be one

and one

and one

and one

and one....

_______________________

the human eye

barely

holds attention

and seeks only what it

wants

you

look on

lists, tables of contents,

menus

directories

all of these things

looking only for what

you

want

if i use the word

"fuck"

(see, you jumped a little!)

you jump a little

and flip to it

to read about

fuck

why my poems

will never lead you on

i promise

with big bold letters

on the top

of the page

or in the middle of a page

or across from some dots

with a number by its side

i've always wanted

to write a book

of poems

where the page numbers

on the TABLE OF CONTENTS

were off

so when you flip to

that poem

you will read another

that had nothing

to do

with the title

that you read

i would title a poem

"SEX WITH A HOOKER"

and make it about

my first Communion

just to tease you

but instead

i let the poems

speak

for themselves

unless, of course

i can tie them up

in a little red box

(i wish i had a little red box

to put the devils in...)

with a bow

in BIG

BOLD

LETTERS

to make you think

about what it all is

then i will do so

or if

the title means

something

to

me

then it happens

to be

like my poems -

if they make sense

then the happen to be

as is

without a silly little hat

on top

just because someone wears a cowboy hat

doesn't make them a cowboy

I AM i

Eliot told me that to be personal

was to bleed on a page;

to make a poem an entrapping for

those who wish to steal away from itall

Fritz told me to never assume

that the "I" is one

because when you assume,

the one gets stared at in awe

Gillian told me that to be personal

was the ultimate form -

but to be the "I"

is something we cannot risk

Lolita told me that to be personal

was more than okay

and she will ask me how or why

a poem came to be an "i"

so now i will say it

i remember once i drew elephants

on my love's back

i told her "this one is you

and this one is me"

but someone told me once

that elephants are the only creatures

(other than man)

that can feel love of some kind

i am not an elephant

and nor is she

but i am an elephant

and so is she:

but maybe we are elephants

because we can feel love

of some kind

but we are not elephants

if i were an elephant

an elephant would be "i"

I am i

whenever a solitary i is present

remember that a solitary me

is on that page

For Eliot:

let my i be your escape

think that you want to live

this life that i see

through rose-colored eyes,

drenched in sunlight

and bathed in moonlight

where i can once again love

For Fritz: you were told never to assume

because when you assume

the poet gets jammed into

a life you want him to live

but don't you want me to live this life?

the life of love and beauty?

a life of incurable wonder?

a life where i can look down at children's

smiling faces and smile myself?

i want to live that life

i

want to live

that life

For Gilian: remember when you told me

that Plath couldn't be Plath on that page

even though there is proof that Plath is that Plath

on that page?

i will give you all of the proof that i can

that i

am the i

on that page

For Lolita: why I am i

is because i

am such

a small thing

but a small thing

with such large great wishings

dreamings, lovings,

and things desired

when you reject my poems,

you are rejecting i

i

will be good

i

will remain

i

will conquer

i

will be the one you look to when the darkness comes

and you need a little light

and all

i

can tell you

is that i

am i

to be thy love is an unholy thing

to be thy love is an unholy thing

for how, in any sense of a thinking of "love"

can one find it worthy to be loved

by thee and all thy wonders?

black are the hopes of those who wish

to keep thee at bay with three soft words,

those who wish to keep thy loving fingers

from picking up thy wondrous makings

still thou art known to be at ease

when thou see'st the strains of boys

continuing their wishings, as thou dost smile

seeing them ponder their dreary heads

to make thee open up thy wonders

and make these boys thy undead

the stars became convex as we looked up

the stars became convex as we looked up

as the sky was beginning its syncing to our eyes,

its lunar declination beginning to explore

our faces, your face no more lighter

than the moon itself - through chimes of the

stars' gleaming, your ears perked up

just as the sky grew into different shades

of violet and red, orange in spots and grey

but never blue and the depths of the pulsing clouds

drifting overhead entrapped our gazes,

this night, still blooming, was ours

Te laudo, Puella, quam vir Dominum laudet -

Te laudo, Puella, quam vir Dominum laudet -

sed femina Domini non es.

in somno, dices ut Juppiter est tuus pater,

Juno est tua mater, et luna soror tua est.

credo ut omnes res tu es,

et mundo conjunx es -

ut carpes vitam ex mundo

bibere dulcem rem -

simul amor viri Domino.

Translation:

Girl, i praise you as man praises the Lord -

but you are not a woman of the Lord.

in sleep, you say that Jupiter is your father,

Venus is your mother, and the moon is your sister.

i believe that you are all things,

and that you are a wife to the earth -

as you pluck life form the earth

to drink the sweet thing -

like the love of man for God.

finally! a force of nature to keep us sane!

finally! a force of nature to keep us sane!

no longer shall we be victims of the madness

instilled by heavy snow - how we were trapped

becoming senile, losing it as we lost all

of our contact and our ration and rationale

and no longer do we have to look to the news

to see her force, to see her blowhard face

within the tears of the poor, no more do i

have to turn a channel to see her wrath

lo! a turn of the dial so that i can see

dryness, parchedness, still thinking of how

the heat can make one think things

that are unruly, unright, unstill, unthinking

now nature has given us something to think about -

let's thank her for finally trying to keep my sane

by driving us crazy with every waking day

the moon sprints

the moon sprints

across the sky, treading over

heaps of snowflakes

until it pants and moans

as it is out of breath

and falls down in the west

where he begins to lay his head

in slumber

the moon and i

are racing -

trying to see which one

can first make

a beautiful day

for you

i thought we told this story before:

i thought we told this story before:

how once i thought of you waiting for slim markings

that showed something called "fate," which we don't believe in -

how once you shared the creeping dire seams of your love

before me, what became of that boy (not a man) who

cried upon your shoulders too many times

how blood once made you weep but then became a sign

(which we also don't believe in) that everything was empty

how the rapture of our bodies form a thinking

that keeps this one somehow awake after hours

of crashing and waining that leaves his eyes strained

how with some soft kisses you eased my breathing

and my eyes could somehow softly still fall asleep

i thought we told this story before

and the ending was so pleasant then -

let us only pray now,

but we don't believe in prayer, either

(as a church bell) today Spring is ringing

(as a church bell) today Spring is ringing

as the Sun pulls on the cord in the steeple

of the trees - once again we can hear

the leaves singing hymns of forgiveness,

begging god to let them resurrect themselves

upon the boughs of things once dead.

all the little children pile into the pews

strewn over the grass and they sit

to hear the prayers of the birds whistle,

raise their voices to solemn Heaven

they offer up their sacrifices in the form

of laughter, jumping, running, & play

after this steep and solemn mass

the candles that the Sun lit still go out too early

alex&er

& still i dreamt of you alex&er,

my son

flesh & blood,

a molding from mine

& your mother's h&s,

waiting for that day

when you could

st&

on your own

& walk

upon the ice

upon the ice

SLIP!

CRASH!

her feet taunted

tampered and struck

with surprise

her hips sore

and her hands

bruised

her breath thick

with wine

and sleep

her eyes welled

with tears of pain

and shame

the ice black

like her eyes -

once blue and bright

last ni( love you)ght

last ni( love you)ght
we awoke
an(ticipating)d
lied
to( feel our makin)gether
in our(selves)
to feel our
b(odies)reath
mo(an)ve through
our c(reeping finge)resting eyes
unt(ying all of our limbs)il the sun
r(eaped our soft bodies)ose

i remember when death was something

i remember when death was something
that scared me dearly - every little screech
of my brakes and every slip of my shoes
on black ice tore me away from whatever
i was doing, making me think that every breath
could have been my last

now death is not nearly as frightening
as the prospect of life -
mine or something else's

Leaving

leaving is not a problem -
the problem comes when you're gone

Alarm

the strangeness of light
coming along the inside
of the room we make
to burn our hides

my neurosis in your hair
and the deep window glare
from this sun that burns
our loving air

all that we will drink
comes on in to make us sink
just as fast as our weary eyes
can blink

this part of fingers in the flesh
take up the dreams of rest
that lay upon your head as i
sight your chest

the temperature's as 63 -
still a little warm for me -
my breath is something that
i would love to see

i can be the one to brave you
the one that can maybe save you
from the chill you're facing
in breathing tunes

the water laced in blood and sand
coming down to soak our hands
as the stains on the bed rise up
from 'round the bends

now we're back to life again
beaming up with awkward grins
as i'm walking down the street -
our evening's end

if you're hands don't shake then you're not alive.

if you're hands don't shake then you're not alive.

when you look down that hallway and see the sheen
of your roommate's poster - the teeny-bopper flick
that makes them think they know what love is -
if your hands don't curl up and shake
as angry clenching fists then
something is wrong with your pulse.

Dear German Girl

a response to this article from The New Yorker

dear German girl: i am someone who tries to take
the ugliness of the language from yours
and make it something that my Roman tongue
can properly recite.

still how can my tongue be something that you claim
was lapped up long ago?

dear German girl, who told you that i was not
original? i was made the same way as you (perhaps
with just a hint more Romance) and yet i am not the same way
that you are.

since i was made from similar pushings as you
does that make you and i the same?

so am i you, dear German girl?
am i just a spitting image like those pages
you took from the little guy? or am i
the little guy and you are just a big mean frau?

let's not remember Teutoburg Forest -
instead remember who you're talking to.

while sleeping i felt the queer inhalations

while sleeping i felt the queer inhalations

of your breath, a stern drawing in of thick air,

while i lie breathless in my moist bed -

i felt your lungs leaping in your body,

a still sadness manifested through

soft sighs, unfinished dreams, and forgotten apparitions

that bid you farewell as you close your eyes:

the strangeness of your chest pushing up and down

to bold and soft filling - i can hear groans

buried in your arm from my pillow -

the fig leaf where you hide some womanly shame

i wait for your breathing and your groans

to awaken and take up their leaping

upon my chest to beat me with thick air

Sidewalks

an inmitation of "Treetops" by Beat Radio
lyrics by Brian Sendrowitz

Original

A million inhabitants sink in the sea
The bells in the evening ring out for me
My hands are shaking like the leaves in September
I think I'm alright but I don't remember
I know I'm alone but with you I'm better
So I'm sending you flowers, I'm writing you letters
Summer is starting to feel like forever
Burn down our love and we swallow the embers

In the treetops of my mind and you are hard to keep in time
In the basement of my head I remember what you said
On the jukebox in our bar I heard the sound of old guitars
Changed something in my brain and I've never been the same

Tried to keep an open heart and everything falls apart
There are things you want to say, but you're so many miles away

Adaptation

A thousand snowflakes stirred in the street
Alarms in the morning stir up our feet
My face is solid, like the ice in December
Yours is so good, free of your temper
I feel we're our own, together in fetters
So we're stepping on sidewalks, we're late-winter treaders
Winter has started to feel like a never
Unlike our love, a beatiful tether

On the sidewalks left behind, left in time to be refined
As we wake up in your bed after last night's fall to dead
Like the driving in my car slid into the tree afar
In winter's little game to try to place our blame

Listen to the sounds of starts, the way the rings empart
The state of child's play on the concrete cold today

Screenplay Idea Ten

a boy (sixteen or so) and his father
(now unadmired) drive cross-country
to bury their mother and wife (respectivly) -
they are forced to speak
(god forbid)

SETTING: A Car
TIME: 1990's
SONG: Galaxie 500 - "Walking Song"

Screenplay Idea Nine

a farce: black and white films
(perhaps in French) with a close-up
of a young woman's crying face
as her lover kisses her goodbye
forever
as a man in a giant pink bunny suit
walks by nonchalantly

SETTING: Paris
TIME: 1930's
SONG: Faure - "Le Contique de Jean Racine"

Screenplay Idea Eight

tensions in a basement studio
blanketed in radio waves:
tensions of power, tensions of lust,
tensions of the notes in the air through
the dank darkness
as the popping of the record player echoes

SETTING: Ann Arbor
TIME: Now
SONG: All of Them

Screenplay Idea Seven

something in Eden, perhaps here too
but there is nothing naked:
a tale of two lovers and temptations
beyond that love - flashbacks
maybe but what would be the Fruit
in the Garden of Concrete?

SETTING: Real and Unreal
TIME: Now and Then
SONG: None (?)

Ode to my Yellow Legal Pad

on its final page

this is it, my good friend:
your last throughs, yet i am still fighting -
scribbles are my fists and letters are the blood
that drums up

i wonder if you will be like
Keats's Grecian Urn: a telling of history
from an unknown poet (my name does not appear
on your pages, as jaundiced as tulips)
that is found under the rubble if my house
were to collapse on me - someone will write newspaper articles
about you! - of if that blood that harbours itself
in your pages drips out from me in wounds
from other (perhaps myself, though highly doubtful)

would you say such nice things about me?
and, moreso, would they believe them?

your leaves are filled with blackness
which began solely 17 days ago:
60 pages (or so) filled, your life cut short
by my ramblings, my scribbles -
if you had entrails they would be strewn
across hard desks and covered in black ink

i feel as if i murdered you for the sake
of my history, some fantacized "legacy"
in the form of indecipherable script

so for you, my dear friend, i weep
for i will miss your brightness
because without it, i would have to kill
something far less bright

Little Black Dress

your little black polka-dotted dress
fit me snugly, my arms traped in sleeveless sleeves
and my squeezed by the flail,
the shape of your breasts leave my flat chest
untouched, the peaks of your bosom
found in the tightness of the dress:
what is long and flowing on you
seems constraining to me.
i am motionless, afraid of tearing
the stiff fabric and the look
on your disturbed face -
yet you were laughing, giggling
as i became your little big doll
(with a suspicious buldge, however)
you speke of braiding my hair
and giving me a pretty little pearl necklace,
peraps piercing my ears (if i were not
utterly terrified of needles) and i gave you
a courtsey, my face red with shame,
yours red with laughter -
from 40 miles away i can hear my father groan
but it is muffled by your laughter;
i think of myself on a stage dancing
and singing, but then my body remembers
the soft constraint, and the laughter ceases
as i turn around and implore you with my shame:
"unzip me"

Screenplay Idea Six

based on a true story - almost my own (but not quite)

a poet, middle-aged, end of the line,
living for nothing: wife gone, children with her
across town, meets a younger woman, she lets him
write again, a miracle, though completely
misdirected (as all poets are
with pretty girls)

SETTING: NYC
TIME: Now
SONG: Beat Radio - "Treetops"

Screenplay Idea Five

two men (there were no boys back then)
walk through the Yard, one is
murdered; the other remains broken,
near-dead, dead in the eyes of those
still in the Yard

SETTING: Harvard
TIME: 1926
SONG: Camille Saint-Saens - "Prelude" from Oratorio de Noel

Screenplay Idea Four

a couple, young (not much older than myself)
on the road to their wedding,
her father dies, wedding delayed
by a funeral, delayed by her questions
on death and purpose

SETTING: The Midwest
TIME: Now
SONG: Slowdive - "When the Sun Hits"

Screenplay Idea Three

a man with two loves: women
& men, meeting two loves:
a woman & a man, hiding
his loves (a woman & a man)
from each other (a woman &
a man) and himself

SETTING: Seattle
TIME: Now
SONG: Neutral Milk Hotel - "Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 1"

Screenplay Idea Two

something of the age of twelve:
a boy finds that first girl,
his first suffering, his first sickness
and for 120 minutes adults ask him
"are you okay?"

SETTING: The Midwest
TIME: Then (20 years ago or so)
SONG: The White Stripes - "The Same Boy You've Always Known"

Screenplay Idea One

something about an artist lost
in redwoods of skyscrapers and
some too-deep caverns of creative psyche,
drowning in order to stir his music or fiction
or poetry or painting or anything with cigarettes and burbon

SETTING: NYC
TIME: Now
SONG: R.E.M. - "Bittersweet Me"

Wall Stains

somewhere down your deep black hallway
i saw drippings of blood on the wall:
a concoction of overmixed paint
and pumping from your thin blue veins

white walls seem to hold on to everything -
the stains of childhood dreams
and youthful lusting,
all of which still lingers on your walls

there is a spot of blue on mine
from when you crashed into it
within my sheets and the fabric
bleed from the sickness on my bed

but that will come out with some elbow grease
whereas yours will take some back rubs
and many more kisses
before i can clean up this mess i left on your walls

you are intricate in your dealings

you are intricate in your dealings
with words (far more than myself):
your tiptoping through verbs and nouns
keeps me guessing, your delicate laying
of adjectives keeps my mind jumping
and my eyes swaying - my heart hoping
that any and all harshness comes not
from my words (far less intricate
than yours)

i reap madness from your silence -

i reap madness from your silence -
solitude pleases the Muses but it leaves me aching
for what you and i could make with words

and the city is supposedly unfriendly to poets
but since you were brought to me
in a sea of concrete and through allyway winds
i would say the city has been good to us

so why are you silent
and why do you drag me deeper
into madness with your lack of words?

now twice have i felt the stinging of your teenage love:

now twice have i felt the stinging of your teenage love:

those times when you told me that no one knew any better
i was unknowing of everything, i was sitting alone on a too-big bed
waiting for someone to sneak through my basement window
and make some form of mishap with me

when you told me that you had to make choices i had already chosen
not to force myself to make choices, i had already told myself
that myself was for myself and not for others, not for the old
and especially not for the new

then when you said how you had to find things out i knew
what i had been told by my mother and father - i had seen
my sisters (who were told nothing) find things out as you did:
unknowingly, unwillingly

how you somehow dealt with a death not a death but a ceasing -
as much as my mother would hate such ceasing
i have to think that at least one of her rosary beads would know
that god would want me to live

most of all you tell me about leaving - it's all about the leaving
and i thought not about leaving but about grasping when i was young,
i thought of grasping someone with whom i could leave
and move on, move up, move forward

but somehow after hearing the sting of your teenage love
i wish to move on
up
forward
with you and your sting

this candy laced on your lips

this candy laced on your lips
tastes like something my mother gave me
when i was a boy -

an overindulgence of cane sugar
from smuggled from somewhere South,

still it does not compare
to the granuales the drip slowly
from your tongue
and down to your breasts
as i wish to taste

TANKA V

the furnace blows cold

air into your darkened room

but still in our sweat -

in fingers piercing over skin,

warm, but still somehow, shivers

TANKA IV

i heard one clicking

of your keyboard (the "F" key)

and with that i looked

to you, knowing that you were

about to write a poem

TANKA III

you inhaled

as i kissed your nose

that was cold

and you exhaled just as i

pulled away

TANKA II

the cold drip of the

icicles on your window

falls deeply to Earth

and makes that little pocket

for our gaze to hide in snow

TANKA I

the hiss of the heat

pulsing through your auburn hair

kisses your face as

you look down not knowing that

i'm watching you heatedly

though dually temped by slumber and bodies

though dually temped by slumber and bodies

you close your eyes and parted your rose lips

until my hands fell deeply upon the pale

and stepped gleaming in the cold of your room -

we rose as the sun rose in winter

still this sterling beam trickles down

still this sterling beam trickles down

from your hips and down over your thighs

where my natures (unpious) are still held -

the bitter warmth seeps through your skin

and onto the sidewalk where we tread,

the liberties of lust have taken you

by the wrists and thrust themselves through the wind

the drips of lewd icicles from your body

and the squirming of your face begs me to beg you

sorry

A Beer with My Father

together we raise our bottles -

yours a product of years of trial and error,

mine an unknown homage to my mother's father -

and we will let the bubbles pop on the fullest lips

that you (of all people) gave to me

part of me wishes you've been hoping for this moment

since my birth; the altering consciousness of the watery brew

and the laughter that ensues as you

pat me on the head - "attaboy" -

like a stiff breeze from the lake where we caught so many fish

your hand comes beating my shoulder gently

my twenty-one years, your forty-five - when you were my age

you dreamed of having a son with whom to have a beer -

perhaps a smoke too if my sisters had not

made you quit so soon

we can sink our teeth into animal flesh

and overindulge ourselves, as you taught me to

to be merry, to reward a hard-day's work

i often wonder what you would be like

if you drank brandy or cognac or wine instead

of the thin deluded brew we now share -

then i wonder what i and my sisters would be like

if you drank brandy or cognac or wine instead

(somehow i think that we would be

so utterly boring) - bottled lagers are so Midwest

and i know you wouldn't have t any other way:

wine is too west for you and stouts are far too east

but this brew, brown like that old lake water,

reminds of you those days with your grandfather

who died as i was conceived - your aunt told me

that i was sent to replace him

but you guffawed as such pressures:

not that i could not keep up with the dead

but i am your son, not your grandfather,

and you remind me daily as i bear your name

i am always your son upon introduction,

but no one can tell as we hold our bottles -

they can see it in our eyes and lips

and hear and beards, our laughter and our rages

you like Bud and i like Pabst

but sometimes beer is just beer, Dad.

the molding of two lovers over the ocean's wake

a response to Max Pechstein's "At the Water (Am Wasser)"

the molding of two lovers over the ocean's wake

forms a body firm and one softly aching through eyes -

in what dire sands shall these two finally move

closer to the sea where passions flow?

she leans over as he picks up a stone - a token for himself,

something from the water, he inspects and thinks not

of her smooth body, worn with time, worn with everything

but the firm pumpings of his body's love

he looks down and she looks down, she at him,

he at the sands, the waters, thinking not of her

and her potential love, but instead of himself as man

begging the ocean and sands for something dear

yet just by turning and seeing her eyes he would see

something much more grand than the ocean and sand

Valentine's Day 2010

this day (somehow) is of god

yet it is ours:

your bed (the one in which i fell

in love with you) remains unmade

and all those little things to be done

remain undone

the useless shuffle of your papers

and shifting of some many things

that are not your body

seems so much less than our nothings

of today - our nothings of lying

softly beside

that bitter coffee that you left behind

is still warm - like this spot here

on your bed where i sit and wait for you

to return from your somethings

so that you and i can once again have

our nothings

the whiteness glow;

the whiteness glow;

the one that you know drapes over

your breasts, your naked torso

as it sits contemplating upon your dear dear bed

your delicate little fingers brush through

the redwood forest that is your hair:

truly your eyes can meet the screen

which you ponder softly within your head

still you naked and i naked makes so many things

that take us out of that whiteness glow:

the day gone, but our night still infantile

as it lays down pressed against a pillow of oak

and i am pressed against the pillow of your redwood hair—

the splendors heightened sweetly by the whiteness glow

this (or any other thing of love or equal matter)

this (or any other thing of love or equal matter)
is not something pure - instead it drips with murky waters
under the night sky traversing the inhalations
of mourning over our dead loving bodies

sometimes our love is not a wonderful splendorous thing:
instead it seems to brood under the clouds crashing
like waves upon rocky shores, tidal waves that burst
through the sea to bury all those sailing

still this rough thing is our love and still it is reaping
of our mouths, of our notions of those things that
keep our fingers shaking like winter's boughs
about to shatter in the frigid moaning of our love

now we rest and reflect upon that darkness
that somehow molds and forms into our love

Wikipedia

i get my news from Wikipedia now

rather than CNN or Fox or anything else

because i can edit Wikipedia

and sometimes i like it when

i can give a story a happy ending

poetry is a victim of the blogosphere

poetry is a victim of the blogosphere

as this poem will tell you -

i have seen a poem shot down

by unlimited bandwidth

and a YouTube video

i remember when a poem was a poem:

not an accompaniment

not a soundtrack

not a caption to a Photoshopped image

of Megan Fox on a dude's Facebook page

ODE TO TWITTER

@me you still remember when every little thing

was unimportant

and now you haunt me still

but i can't get away

like a lover come crawling ba[...]

The Two Navarros

the two Navarros that i am

are one and One, and they both bear

their burdens, both small and big:

though different in their means of death

the smaller one, the poet's man

who takes the world within his palm

and wrings it, drinks its juices sweet

to let the poisons through his veins

the bigger One, the fighter's son

the swinging brooding plight of man

who burns with passions, stern and born

to never budge, to always drink

the two Navarros that i am

are one and One, and they both are

the drinkers of the poisoned Earth

but only one can never die

18th-Century Coffee Houses

the heightened sense of being drips with brews

like bitter beans that taste of roasting fires

that take upon demise of earthly hues

that within within the soul as Knowing Pyres

the cry to make the art as common praise

in forms of clinking cups and stirring spoons -

thy cry to take the arts in mortal days

as London's best and brightest sing their croons

SONNET FOR THE SOUNDTRACK TO "LILITH"

1. the awkward state of trying to impress

2. the silent moans of early morning lust

3. the riffs of morning after's bleak distress

4. the reassurance of their nature's trust

5. the doubt and stares of naked body's form

6. the rush abandons crowd to be alone

7. the frolics in the sun, so swift and warm

8. the haunting of the truth, now being known

9. the roughness sworn in bottles flowing deep

10. the hard decision made, through still unsure

11. the travel to a land in seeming sleep

12. the photo of the growing, small and pure

13. the realization of the form of love

14. the great farewell to growing from above

Today's Poems

i have to let you know about my scheme:

my poems for today have a metered theme.

SONNET [V]

i heard in Iceland, it is more acceptable

to have a child out of wedlock:

low-cost child care ensures that all

are cared for, a nation of mothers and fathers

i was raised with a hint of Mexico:

it's not okay but what else can we do?

remember the Vijen had her child

so now we must have ours

you were raised on lakes where

homes blend into one another -

there babies are things that ruin

until they are buried secretly

i've heard that Iceland

is very pretty in the summer

SONNET [IV]

we are (of course) not animals

but at some point (5:51am, to be

exact) we balloon into heat -

still in something there is love

but love can be carnal

love can be the product of ancient making -

the dripping and writing, the same making

of beasts, though we are none.

such love is unpure, unfeeling,

laced with dire drippings of my boyhood

how softly i love to think our love

is no such thing

how truly i know that we

mean what we say as we love

SONNET [III]

a black sock with argyle patterns
is missing his partner:
lost in a sea of blankets, jeans,
t-shirts and sweaters -

a sea that smells muskly

of love - moonlit hazy love

you gave me a long black plain sock

to coffin in which my lost sock is returned

it is like my sock

but is not my sock

i sill miss my dear sock

but i know it's warm and drifting

in the sea of our love -

the coffin fits my foot well

THE DAY AFTER SONNETS

[an unserious poem]

all poems from today
shall forever be known as
THE DAY AFTER SONNETS;
for all i remember is what
i don't remember

SONNET [II]

go on: the hands of the rogues
will burn you as they stroll their knuckles
over your flesh, how tenderly they will speak
until their tongues begin to bleed

their mouths gap and draw in
deep breaths full of apparitions of their
"i love you"s, a spirit dealt a raw deal
as their hips and thighs will show you

what simply can three or four
or five little words do to one who felt
the sting of more than so, more than this,
more than all the waning of the moon?

still i wonder as i wrap your hands
with white cloths

SONNET

over you
this morning -
i felt the heat and eruption
of your womanly moans
under my hard body
where all i did
was keep pushing
as you pulled
the deepness from your back

"here - here -
why not here?"

"because i want
to kiss you"

but i think the three of us know why

UNREMEMBERED POEM

[from last night]

my love the days felt smooth
as you ride down the plains
through bouncing hills:
how long have you danced
upon the grass of this garden
before you dreamed of the softness
of my chest?

i saw drawings on pages
of two lovers in embrace
and i thought of you:
how i wish to be the charcoal
that keeps you drifting
over to me
where i dream

For Allison

on your birthday

i will not call to attention

the fact that i am a fuck-up:

11:45

the bars are beginning to close

how the hell was i

supposed to know?

i spent weeks thinking

of how i could make this day

perfect

how i thought you were

perfect

and still do.

through your slumbery eyes

i saw a woman stolen in time:

you were always older than i was

despite what the calendar said.

i went from dreaming of perfection

to just trying not to make

you cry.

you don't deserve my vulgar words.

this poem is not nearly enough for you.

i am not nearly enough for you.

i will abandon my heightened

flowery language

just one more time

for you:

i love you

and i thank God (whoever he/she is)

that you are here

with me.

CASUS NOSTER [VII]

TEMPTATION

Your tilling done, my hands

on your back, sweat-laced

drenched in stinging warmness

of your hard day's work.

I asked you to rest

under that Tree

as you buried your face

in our Earth -

your eyes drifted off

down

to closing.

Then the force of your breathing

left me alone.

I took my hands off of your back

and wiped them in the grass:

its greenness was something strange -

the greenness that I had seen before

only more lush

and not as dead-looking.

You were drifting, I was stagnant

through the Sun's creeping hours.

Then I lied down next to you,

my arms gently grazing your back

(now dry):

My eyes were dry.

My eyes were tired.

My eyes were now closed.

The startling came, that noise -

that hiss - of a narrow tongue;

a smoothness that sways through my ears

bolting.

My eyes jolting,

my arms stiffening

solely until I arose

with sweat of my own.

All I saw was green.

I looked over, see you

(on your stomach still)

in deep

heavy

breath.

You did not even jostle.

I looked around - no beasts -

only the rush of the river

which lulled me before.

My eyes shifting,

my arms shaking,

solely until I heard

the sounds of his own.

A look down at my feet caked in earth

and he was crawling

up

up

over me,

taking my feet in his coils,

taking my calves in his sheerness.

I was left squirming.

He was there taking.

His eyes met mine -

red can do so many things.

He took the tip of his tail

and his mouth hissed –

his belly was smooth

over my pale thighs. –

then slowly

gently

touched it

on me –

nearly in me –

as you had done

before.

One touch.

My voice wanted

to shriek,

my eyes wanted to

cry out in tears,

yet my body liked the feeling

of being wrapped up

as it liked being wrapped up

in you.

With my body stiff,

he slowly moved up,

grazing my belly with his scales

(strange how he moved so well

with no limbs in which

to entangle me)

and moving up toward

my soft

pale

stiff breasts

(my teeth clenched

and my jaw stiffened

as my breath drew in deeper

deeper).

I arched my head back

as his belly slithered over my neck,

tense and strewn

with veins

and blood rushing through

the pillar of my throat.

I saw him daringly move up

to my mouth, his fangs dripping

and his eyes widening –

his tongue slipping in and out

of his thin, hard mouth,

pulsing.

His body became more taught.

My body became more tense.

I pined to shriek,

to wake you from your slumber,

but I could not move,

I could not speak.

He grasped tighter

tighter

tighter

tighter –

then let go.

I was left breathless.

I was left speechless.

I was left.

He slithered off of me

and arose (again, so strangely)

and stood over me;

his eyes softened

and his fangs stopped dripping.

I crept up, looking to you

(still sleeping),

my body sitting up in the grass,

now wet from my sweat.

My throat was parched.

“What do you want?”

He moved your head slowly around

and opened his wide mouth -

his voice was soft, yet harsh:

“My dear, I think not

of what I want, for I know what

you want.”

He laid those charmings on me again.

I was trembling, puzzled.

“How do you mean?”

He strode up to the Tree

and began to grasp it tightly

(as he did me)

and he slithered up

up

up

over to a thick branch

(as he did me).

“Sadly, I see you here,

taking in all those wishes

from God, Adam;

and sadly I must say that

I know that you

cannot take it.”

My forehead crinkled

and my heart raced –

more than when he grasped me

and stuck his tail within me.

He continued:

“Dear, your time has come

and I know how you can grasp

all that they have.

“They have more than you –

you are a product, a making,

the result of their need

for subordination.”

My voice came back to me.

“You lie!”

I bolted my head over to see

if you had awoken.

Nothing.

“I adore Adam, I praise God

and I do not obey Adam –

I am his equal,

his wife.”

He slithered over that branch

and came upon one piece

of the Fruit.

With his thick tail

he reached over

and

plucked

it

from the branch,

its ripping seeming to

echo throughout the Garden.

Still, you did not even jostle.

‘You adore Adam,

but do

you

love

him?”

CASUS NOSTER [Prelude]

PRELUDE

Long before this poet sang
the words of Israel rang through
to the West, where they were met
with praises -
how men would know the plight
of their wives came from Israel,
its stories, its strains,
its native tongue
telling them that wives were always
at fault, since that fateful day.

Long before this poet sang
a man across the Pond cried to make
something that no one's eyes read before -
a chance to tell the world
the story behind the story
of Israel,
a chance to tell the world
that in fact he (blinded) could see
the Muses of Homer, of Virgil,
and make them his own
in a language much more vulgar -
vulgar so that he could
faithfully blame (yet again)
the wives.

Long before this poet sang
a woman rose from the slumbering
body of a man,
a master who kept her body
under his, who kept his arms taught
around her moist body,
keeping her down in body
and mind.

This woman is hailed
as the mother of all;
this woman is condemned
as the damnation of us all –
though what man
in all his right mind
could damn his mother
for eternity?

When man wrote of man
and woman
he made the cunning of the Tempter
something
that was soft,
weak,
dying to be bolted down
by the hands of man.

Though she had not been given a voice.

This poet – a man – now sings
of such harshness,
of such ease of temptation
through any sort –
especially that of
demonic notions.

The unfair trial of Eve
breeds remorse for fallen woman.

But woman is very much alive.

But woman is very much here.

But man takes woman and makes her
temptress in our fall –
when woman only did it
for love,
for being,
for man.

You would have eaten the Fruit from her hands.

Wednesday

i fell in love with you on a Wednesday:

you always told me that you hated Wednesdays,

that you were born on a Wednesday.

i was born on a Tuesday,

2:33am.

whereas you were born in the rays

and beaming of the West Coast,

i emerged here, a child of aluminum

smokestacks

and premature love

that only the Midwest can harbor so well

in all fairness i probably should have

been born on a Wednesday:

that Thanksgiving my mother whined

as my father and his uncles enjoyed

a beer in the name of his son-to-be,

my mother there, aching, hot and straining

to push me out

Wednesdays always had a strain on me:

P.E. at 8 in the morning,

that day i hit my teacher's car,

that terrible stomach flu the day of dress rehearsal

i was born on the cusp of winter:

in Adrian the snow is not white

but gray

and laced with pebbles,

bricks,

and dead autumn grass

i remember that it was the cusp of winter

when i fell in love with you:

it was before it got too cold to sleep naked

and we would roll in your big bed

making ourselves sweat

because you always had the heat on too high

if there is a such thing as

a good Wednesday

that one

and the one on which you were born

are

Corrinia's Baby

i can feel the strain of my sister's belly

as my little niece curls up inside -

from 40 miles away i can see my sister's face

writhing, yet beaming

as she feels that little body brooding inside her

(to call it brooding seems unfair

yet what more can one do when bound

to the soft warmness of that belly?)

my sister's hands jump and her face beams

as that little wonder shifts inside -

her little fingers curling and grasping

all that she can

all that she will

in the arms of my sister

Dead Leaves

dead leaves tell the tales of reaping nature:
that night we walked, i never knew -
never would have guessed -
that your floor was once covered
with dead leaves, branches
and a season - the summer is so cruel
sometimes, the heat and anticipation
really takes a toll on the idle mind

still i never thought of you, walking,
writing and pushing, pulling and holding
on to something soft, something yet-to-firm-
up within, something that you perhaps miss
but something to whom you bid good riddance;

though what is good if not built to better?

Beaches

i did not grow up on beaches
like you did:

i felt not the crinkling of lake sand
in my brittle feet,
nor have waves ever been
my childhood dreams

i was raised on a mixture
of concrete and corn:
a cultivation fertilized by
smoke stacks and scrap metal

my waves were gray
and my poetic discovery came in the form
of pink slips and "CLOSED" signs

unlike your clear blue washings
my baths were brown-murky
and taken from runoff from the makings
of the lower-middle class

i had no lake effect snow -
instead my angels were made
to look tan from the asphalt scrapings
from speeding cars
and broken shards of beer bottles
in the ditch in front of my yard

whereas you were blue, i was gray

while you were West i was here
thinking of crisp clear waves

anything but the gray

The Last Time

this is the last time

you will get my nonsense:

once again

i promise

i vow

that my poems will be

good

planned

things that are the product of

Making

not doing

four days of nothings

leaves me with nothing

now i need something

Making

is what i need

Crying

i promise you that i won't cry

ever again

because that would mean that i

am not a man

and you deserve a man

(though i was the first you ever had)

can i cry please?

CONFESSIONAL POEM

[for alp]

i am not

mad at you

just at everyone else

i should go back to therapy

A RESPONSE [not for alp]

i fucking hate

all of these goddamed

post-modernist mother fuckers

who think that they can take over

the beauty that i fucking make

from my good fucking life

and i hate it when

they use the word fuck

in poems

because fuck (as fun

as it is) is not beautiful

if i do not win,

God have mercy on my soul

Last Night

All

i

son

i thin

k we

DRanK t0

0

much

sy-DAR!

the tragedy of control scrapes the skin

the tragedy of control scrapes the skin

of my teeth, like i am clinching

the fleshy skin, of your poets

for control - how tragic

Red Shoes

you asked me to wear red shoes

with my tuxedo at our wedding -

you in your off-white single-strap

with the removable lace flower

and i with sneakers

you get to be stunning

and i get to be bright

but i cannot outbright you

on that lovely day

Photo of My Grandfather

i saw a photo of my grandfather

last night:

he held two babies at his knees, aching

from bending over too much

while plucking sweetnesses

for alabaster mouths

he face was burned, manipulated

by the sun, haggard, his jowls

sinking lowly, his moist lips laced

with his firm grey mustache

his hair is concrete, wet with oils

that pour from my skin, he gave them

to me so that God could

anoint me

Crazy Feminist

i wonder deeply if

it is at all possible

to hold a feminist ideal

truly

when i have a penis

On the Bus

to look down

redefines

the notion

of your ob

livious

ness to how

i reach for

your strunning

bleeding palms

SONNET

this cunning time greets the day

as our kisses greet us as the sun

takes his place over our earth,

this opening screen of day:

exactly as open as our bodies

concealed simply by our selves -

mine on yours

yours on mine -

the continuous cunning warmness

seeping down below your curling hands

your eyes wandering as the nibbling cantor

of your moans, the false speech from your mouth

such a dream

unreal, yet cunning

A RESPONSE

i brought you coffee

only because i did not have

wine

and flowers

and candles

so until i have those things

coffee will have to do

and the only metal that you will get

is the hot thermos

until i can buy you

something silver

i love you more than i ever have

because i always love you more

a whirlpool

a whirlpool

in counter-clockwise cones

drags this body against time

but the soul moves

rapidly forward

In Modo Tuo

Back off!

My stage keeps the whispers of my life

behind the curtains from your eyes.

I will put duct tape over my mouth

so you can't decipher my muffling -

My ramblings are incoherent to you

and I am glad!

I'd rather you'd be blind

than to read my verses!

I'd rather you'd be dead

than to hear my weepings

on the page!

I love you too much

to make you know -

ignorance is bliss

I am your bliss

so now look away

while I get naked.

Krazy Kat

i (ambiguous)

await the

BRICK

that you (smaller

than i)

chuck

at my

head

in love

The Missing 9

the face on my watch is missing its 9

i was banging the links to get them to stick

and the 9 popped off - the outline is there

and the 9 is logged by the 2,

upside-down and twisted

i wonder of my watch things

that time stands still:

26 times a day (once every hour

and once between 8 and 10)

the time (according to my watch)

does not exist

i figured out the secret to stopping time

though my watch still ticks

LOST - The Final Season

[for alp]

please don't write a poem about anyone

but Sayid

because he (with his arms spread out)

is Christ, and i (with my long

thick hair and thin beard)

am Sayid

if-so-fact-o

For Don Cellini

you (an Italian) told me

to be more Mexican

i chuckled as my grandmother does

when i try to speak Spanish

you told me my heros

were Paz, Alagon, Aragon, Soto,

all of whom wrote of their Aztec fathers

hate to break it to you, Don,

but my mother said we are Mayan

and my father said we are Spanish

which means one killed the other

so i'm dead, i guess

guess i can't speak Spanish when i'm dead

Stone Wall

i had dreams of a stone wall

where you and i let our lips fall

into one another's, as we sat

upon the ground, backs against the wall

our hands licked in fingers that lay

on your hips - under my hips

my body is sore; my knees are cracking

and my feet tingle in bloodless slumber

tapping my toes upon the stiff grass

to prick and poke my feet awake

The Cross in the Frost

the blaze of white puffy winds

over the bricks of our Ann

keeps those afraid of purity at bay

until Spring, when (like Christ)

greeness resurrects itself after three

months (not days) - Autumn is Judas

for those who Summer seduces

with its Gospel of Sun and Rain,

that all those of Earth can betray

Spring though means of its death, each

snowflake a nail on the wrists

(the boughs) of Spring - now those

afraid of death (of resurrection)

are themselves Judas

Real Men Cry

real men cry

despite what my father told me

at age twelve

at age twenty-one i've cried

more in two months than i have

in six years

cries over

love

jealousy

fury

guilt

my father warned me of spilt milk;

though he has only cried over spilt bodies

(when i was twelve, oddly enough)

there's something enlightening in tears

there's something warming in bringing my head

into stiff shoulders and leaking

i feel like a man

really