today's poetry
Maybe we can jump in the ocean today
maybe we can brave pearlescent waves
no longer large as hurricanes
but pounding nonetheless, to wash away
the tequila and the hamburgers
in the shape of hot dogs, wrapped
in bacon. I don't believe
the blue day will concern us
any longer than today, we'll forget it
as soon as it's over so let's splash
our way through it as hungover kids
should do. There's more wine waiting
on the other side, I bought a case
last night
and it is leaning in our direction.
**
I'm no longer the empty person
with a fifth in one hand
and a beer in the other. I've
given all that up, I've judged
myself inconsolable, the dreams
I have are darker than I otherwise
allowed––in the past,
but that's all different now,
I've given up on God, I've gilded
the grossest lily, I lean in every
direction but the one that leads
me home––I have no
home, I'm heating up, first
heating up for the longest
journey. I'm going to a kind
of jail, this carcass/coffin/rec room
of a globe has granted me the keys,
I'm to play the warden in a version
of my own newly valuable life,
my ego is now the one to keep
the other parts of me at bay––
punitively. The planet leans
and lessens the level of light
that strikes its flank.
**
Only silent
opportunities are available to us,
the loud ones have grown
too expensive, the silver
turns of phrase we watch
in the drought-stricken trees
are enough for us.
This is our pride,
that romance can be reduced
to a climbing feeling, a pause
in the throat when 'Never mind'
is all you want to say––how
beautiful the disruptive sap
falling onto the picnic table,
dropping with untamed rhythm
on its brethren wood
shaved by us down to use.
I never feel like shaving
anymore, I situate myself, with
you, beyond some Pale
I can't bring myself to discuss.
I'm one with my Polish ancestors.
**
The man in the moon
with his collapsible Floridian eccentricities,
his travails in the shape of old cheese,
his growling acquiescence to the cycles
his mother has bequeathed him,
his bloodlessness in the face of exaltation
(just when you thought he would give in
to the fascinations of power, he putters
around his brooding townhouse like a
sullen implement),
his deep commitment to figuration,
his entirely unreasonable way of
speaking to the sun, his father, his mirror,
even, one could argue, his memory––
sometimes I just want to tell him
to snap the fuck out of it, his faith in
me be damned.
But then I begin to countenance his sorrow,
I sing him the lullabies he used to sing me
when the two of us were younger and his
youth was what made all the poets
twinkle in a bereaved firmament around
him like momentary arcs of fire and prejudice,
I soften his self-inflicted blows,
I bleed him into balsamic vegetation
like a medieval doctor who has cured
himself of Black Death.
**
Oh yeah
I'm in one of those moods
bordering on the self-destructive
when I want to give everything
away, it's a win-win
negotiation with my own death
expensive books for friends
who will never read them,
uneven promises made
to those who won't expect me to keep them,
entire years' salaries
lost, if you can call it that, let us say
executed, over the course
of a frivolous weekend of yachts
and yes-men and young lovers diving
off the bow together
into a sea that saves from from each
other. It doesn't
matter, I tell myself, memories of this
period won't last,
I've drank too much to tell myself
anything else.
**
often on those
murderous days
when my best
intentions are
few I look to
poets to rescue
me from daydreams
but their own
drudgery intrudes
and I find
myself interred
in absolutes
so I whisk
away such fetters
and feel out
another barn
with bigger
windows and wine
free for the
asking and clouds
that rain pretty
drops to wash
away not knowing
**
When these runes are lost,
but mine,
will their isolation go?
Will there be
another news, a spell, a shape
fanatical
enough? a news like spires
reaching up,
a birth like tropical avenues?
I don't
have time to tell you all, I don't
expect the world
to change, to challenge off the frown
I craft.
But can't there be a force to play,
a fuse
too short or breast to kiss,
your breast?
**
The fifth race
was won by the fourth horse
and after the race
all the horses huddled together
to congratulate him
the fifth horse especially
whose race it was supposed to
have been
nuzzled up to the fourth horse
in so friendly a manner
all horses love each other
and the track
causes them no trouble
when they are together
in the winner's circle
whether or not
they have won
**
What happens when
the hellish room of
one's self-survival
helps others to find
the humor in nothingness?
**
Well that's goodbye for now and never
said the sapling to the hose
a hundred years of history fell
in the lap of one who was in love
and he heeded them and noon
called him out of his little house
into the brackish dreams he laid aside
the darkening the demeaning the true
all of these were there for him in the
proclamations he uttered as a way
of wiping his windshield clean
the fluid had been gone for weeks
and he had begun to worship the
empty reservoir as a symbol of his
isolation his fame his dismissal of logic
the long day was replaced the river
stuttered its path down dreary sunsets
the river was alive with thoughts with
trees that leaned their cups together
that talked the language of rats
you can hear them too if you listen close
enough if you put your ears together
and impregnate glass with your discovery
the drama of the individual has been
breached fatherhood has been outlawed
loans are available at the lowest rates
in centuries so say the kings
who have been sentenced to clean up
the bleached horizon never go back
they moan to each other sounds like sex
somebody has to do it they scream