Tuesday, October 26, 2010

more bones

Scatter my bones into the sea,
across the table --
into the cracks of the dinner table --
between your fingers.
Scatter my bones onto the crisping pages that hold together your manifestos,
your treaties,
your guidebooks,
your classic literature.
Toss my bones into your sweating beverages;
let the dust sweeten the bitter kick.
Toss my bones into the closet where they become
the playthings of ancient history.
Let my bones burn in the sunshine,
melt them and bake them and freeze --
Let them loose in the air so that they form some
mystic message;
they are cold and will need some warmth.
Gather the dust and wear it as a warm bath --
itching and scathing and trickling.
Recreate me in the warm light, in the soft light,
in the snow.
Carve me anew to the fingertips, to the dusty inside,
then touch me, scatter me, pinch me apart
and I'll become what I once was --

Friday, October 22, 2010

absolutely beautiful amazing heartbreaking poem

(about his gay lover who died of aids)

"Here" by Paul Monette:

everything extraneous has burned away
this is how burning feels in the fall
of the final year not like leaves in a blue
October but as if the skin were a paper lantern
full of trapped moths beating their fired wings
and yet i can lie on this hill just above you
a foot beside where I will lie myself
soon soon and for all the wrack and blubber
feel still how we were warriors when the
merest morning sun in the garden was a
kingdom after Room 1010 war is not all
death it turns out war is what little
thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home
oh sweetie will you please forgive me this
that every time I opened a box of anything
Glad Bags One-A-Days KINGSIZE was
the worst I'd think will you still be here
when the box is empty Rog Rog who will
play boy with me now that I bucket with tears
through it all when i'd cling beside you sobbing
you'd shurg it off with the quietest I'm still
here I have your watch in the top drawer
which I don't dare wear yet help me please
the boxes grocery home day after day
the junk that keeps men spotless but it doesn't
matter now how long they last or I
the day has taken you with it and all
there is now is burning dark that only green
is up by the grave and this little thing
of telling the hill I'm here oh I'm here

Thursday, October 21, 2010

To the Man who gave Her candy

I don't especially love writing sonnets, because I feel way too forced. For my class this week, however, I had to write one. It was difficult enough to stick to iambic pentameter, so there's no rhyme scheme. I thought the subject matter was appropriate for a sonnet [it's a true experience, too] but I still feel it would be better to allow it to breathe more, to add more sensory descriptions because the senses are extremely significant in this experience. Anyway, here it is:


The jellybeans have hardened in the jar;
My grandma in the kitchen, soaking flowers
by bowls of sweets that burst when you bit in,
so gently wrapped in golden crinkled plastic
that sounded like the rumbling of trains
that took the victims to their final stop.
Her mother said to send the nasty thoughts
across the stream, a new messiah born.
Every day the silent tears of Auschwitz,
the smells of burning, of dirty factory work;
She prayed until the man who made the rounds
had stopped and saw the child growing old.
He placed a single hardened candy in her book;
her tongue against it wept and danced and hoped.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

mmmm whitman


From Section 1 of "The Sleepers," from Leaves of Grass:
The female that loves unrequited sleeps, 
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps, 
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps, 
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep. 

I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and 
the most restless, 
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them, 
The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep. 

Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear, 
The earth recedes from me into the night, 
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is 
beautiful. 

I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers 
each in turn, 
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, 
And I become the other dreamers. 

I am a dance--play up there! the fit is whirling me fast! 
-Walt Whitman

Friday, October 8, 2010

October

Every rigid line, every shimmering crease in a foul double bed
and the aches in the muscles of our legs when the sun rises
like your round, golden hands in a classroom scorching with light
when you say perfect words you’re too stupid to know
The way you say “good-night” and that’s it--
Two words, maybe one 
(something you could say in a breath)

And we dreamed in our locked-up skulls,
looking out for the narcoleptic Freud on the other side
who pervaded our subconsciouses with images of each other
A nervous old man with spectacles and a crooked laugh,
who made note of the orange-scented empty weight of our stolen glances

And the plane made it to the holy land with too much turbulence,
The way the seasons changed that year,
a humid summer melted our faces, then morphed
into a chilling fall with an interlude of soppy rain
But we made it and we clutched the rocks in our hot palms
and looked around, so afraid of people seeing our bones,

So afraid the natives would see us counting our demons on our fingers,
Shifting to the side when we got in each other’s way

and Michael told me he was the most alone person in the universe

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

e

i want to miss the way you shine so hard
you take a cheap breath in your rust home
make me rush home to know you new.
the bed hurts it creaks with each step
of each new soul you get.
it feels so right like the tip of the knife
the gray sharp thing that melts to gone.
eyes brown cheeks quake new flesh, my home.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Infestation Above a Pink Room

I remember when I brought the demons home with me;
they clung to the space beneath my shadow until 
I locked myself in my box of a room 
and they lingered in the narrow space 
above my ceiling, in the attic I saw once
but was scared of falling through.
I heard them running in the summer nights as 
I trembled beneath the thick white canopy,
on which I placed my collection of
stuffed bears like amulets.

But their stuffy faces and rocky eyes betrayed me.

I remember the night the ferret got loose upstairs and
wandered into my room but I knew
it was Teddy, the oldest of the pack,
with the broken ear and crusty sides,
directing the haunt.
And the people in the graying posters mocked me
as I lay still on the floral quilted tomb that
jutted from the bare wall,
listening to the demons scratching in the walls,
desperate to get out to get at me to
end my childhood.
And in the morning the leafy fingers of the
trees would rouse themselves awake
outside my two closed windows.
A car, maybe two, would pass in a 
strange kind of silence on the empty road.