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

No comments:

Post a Comment