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