Homework
Do you want to know what it is like to be a poet?
Go to your kitchen
Lightly sprinkle coffee grounds on your over burner
turn it on high
and watch
turn it off and go outside and smoke a cigarette
and think carefully about what you saw
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Cream and Sugar, Milk and Honey
Cream and Sugar, Milk and Honey
She chided me
for drinking coffee with my cream and sugar
while I argued for God’s indifference like a jilted prophet
or an atheist in perfect heath
her slender finger rested upon the arms of a black chair
she did not gesture with them but kept them sleeping
her coffee was black and unsweetened and she sipped commas and question marks into the conversation
described her devotion to her lover divine
to the beloved
four years
are but
four minutes until her lover returns
Abram before god renamed him
once prayed over a knife
and was given a ram
I do not know if I am the faithful father
or the obedient son
or if I am the ram caught in thorns
or if I am the knife
An omniscient God can never claim innocents
but she, being human could not have known
how she wounded me
over the alter of conversation
how I stammered beneath the weight of her theology
struck blind by the image of her God
I excused myself
and in the bathroom where I began to weep
someone had written
“Do not judge” in quotes and attributed it to Jesus
I went to quick work
with my sacrilegious hands
took out a pen and wrote below
“Do not judge Jesus,
he did the best he fucking could”
I did not see God that day nor any day since
perhaps I did but he wore visage I did not recognize
as the greek Gods are rumored to do
no one has given me a new name
I did not see God that day
but there was
a knife
held in the slender fingers of a woman
who had seen the promise land
and not yet been allowed to enter
She chided me
for drinking coffee with my cream and sugar
while I argued for God’s indifference like a jilted prophet
or an atheist in perfect heath
her slender finger rested upon the arms of a black chair
she did not gesture with them but kept them sleeping
her coffee was black and unsweetened and she sipped commas and question marks into the conversation
described her devotion to her lover divine
to the beloved
four years
are but
four minutes until her lover returns
Abram before god renamed him
once prayed over a knife
and was given a ram
I do not know if I am the faithful father
or the obedient son
or if I am the ram caught in thorns
or if I am the knife
An omniscient God can never claim innocents
but she, being human could not have known
how she wounded me
over the alter of conversation
how I stammered beneath the weight of her theology
struck blind by the image of her God
I excused myself
and in the bathroom where I began to weep
someone had written
“Do not judge” in quotes and attributed it to Jesus
I went to quick work
with my sacrilegious hands
took out a pen and wrote below
“Do not judge Jesus,
he did the best he fucking could”
I did not see God that day nor any day since
perhaps I did but he wore visage I did not recognize
as the greek Gods are rumored to do
no one has given me a new name
I did not see God that day
but there was
a knife
held in the slender fingers of a woman
who had seen the promise land
and not yet been allowed to enter
Tribulation Prayer
Photograph by Summer StetterTribulation Prayer
I know I am an inadequate priest
embarrassed by my sincerity
the admission of my flesh
the lust of my eyes
the hunger of my body
God
help me finish this last cigarette
God
help me sip this tall boy
I know it is wrong to expect heaven here
I know the story of Jesus fucking Christ
you don’t have to keep reminding me
I know
God
help me finish this last cigarette
God
help me with this cup
Saturday, June 14, 2008
I like My Whisky Neat but My Oceans on the Rocks
I like My Whisky Neat but My Oceans on the Rocks
1.
The myth of Nature finally expelled
the earth is man
EARTH IS MAN
EARTH IS MAN
Extinction. More or less redundant to the dodo; analogy for idiocy
Dodo did not dead itself, you know, simply fell out of ecologic style
But what is that to you, as you live amounts your fancy cars and houses
Go. Going. Gone.
You, Darwin’s ungrateful heirs
We assume survival of the species
Evolution a fact we are determined to disprove
But listen-
to whispers, grunts in dense jungle
to the grand plots and schemes of playground ants
they know what you loath to admit
the earth is earth
immutable
mother
2.
The secrets of conspirators
other species wait to take this neglected throne
the leathery bat or insecure squid or unassuming koala
Bewared!
The machination of those crafty marsupials
they sleep in trees now, but soon our beds
will dress in our clothes, take up our vocations: cabdrivers, professors, TV producers
Curate our museums where skinless reconstruction of t-rexes smile, no less ironically
they schedule book tours for authors
discussing the study of our decline and inevitable death
rattle
they will drift into our gutted homes
invited through doors we left ajar
they carve into their doorpost our epitaph
a warning to their children
the earth is earth
undeniable
father
3.
We are a candle burning beneath a paper cup of water
We are Samson; blind and hands against the beams
We are Sardanapalus reclining on red satin
We are the atomic. fucking. bomb.
willing to curse death with death
But what did you expect other than violence
should a vulture sing like a meadowlark
or Hyena of the plains learn to weep apposed to laugh
the cat will mew, and mew, and mew
until some one
lets her
out
Fire wants to tell you something
It covets wood until it is black and valueless
satiates its heart and speaks its extinguished breath
a warning
to you
The Earth is Earth
indisputable
death
4.
Some speak like we might seceded from earth
cut our selves from this womb
like an adolescent Zeus
Some speak like earth is mute, tongue-less, resigned.
Do you really think she will remain silent forever; suffer this disgrace?
Gaia gonna find you after class, gonna take you behind the handball court and fuck you up
Poseidon has traded his trident for a 45. and is calling your bitch-ass out into the street
Earth prays for a deliverance from you
She recites the Psalm 109 with every hurricane. She calls the name of Shiva with every quake.
Do you think even faithful Yahweh or longsuffering Allah
are going to let you little shits trade in your birthright for a house on the coast and a full tank of gas. Squatters and transience will be evicted, so saith the Lord.
The spirit of Jonah walks now through the streets of the world
through the hollowed out buildings of Chernobyl
to the five lanes of the 105 down into the belly of Los Angeles calling,
Repent, Repent, Repent!
The day of wrath comes!
The Earth is Earth,
unassailable
life!
1.
The myth of Nature finally expelled
the earth is man
EARTH IS MAN
EARTH IS MAN
Extinction. More or less redundant to the dodo; analogy for idiocy
Dodo did not dead itself, you know, simply fell out of ecologic style
But what is that to you, as you live amounts your fancy cars and houses
Go. Going. Gone.
You, Darwin’s ungrateful heirs
We assume survival of the species
Evolution a fact we are determined to disprove
But listen-
to whispers, grunts in dense jungle
to the grand plots and schemes of playground ants
they know what you loath to admit
the earth is earth
immutable
mother
2.
The secrets of conspirators
other species wait to take this neglected throne
the leathery bat or insecure squid or unassuming koala
Bewared!
The machination of those crafty marsupials
they sleep in trees now, but soon our beds
will dress in our clothes, take up our vocations: cabdrivers, professors, TV producers
Curate our museums where skinless reconstruction of t-rexes smile, no less ironically
they schedule book tours for authors
discussing the study of our decline and inevitable death
rattle
they will drift into our gutted homes
invited through doors we left ajar
they carve into their doorpost our epitaph
a warning to their children
the earth is earth
undeniable
father
3.
We are a candle burning beneath a paper cup of water
We are Samson; blind and hands against the beams
We are Sardanapalus reclining on red satin
We are the atomic. fucking. bomb.
willing to curse death with death
But what did you expect other than violence
should a vulture sing like a meadowlark
or Hyena of the plains learn to weep apposed to laugh
the cat will mew, and mew, and mew
until some one
lets her
out
Fire wants to tell you something
It covets wood until it is black and valueless
satiates its heart and speaks its extinguished breath
a warning
to you
The Earth is Earth
indisputable
death
4.
Some speak like we might seceded from earth
cut our selves from this womb
like an adolescent Zeus
Some speak like earth is mute, tongue-less, resigned.
Do you really think she will remain silent forever; suffer this disgrace?
Gaia gonna find you after class, gonna take you behind the handball court and fuck you up
Poseidon has traded his trident for a 45. and is calling your bitch-ass out into the street
Earth prays for a deliverance from you
She recites the Psalm 109 with every hurricane. She calls the name of Shiva with every quake.
Do you think even faithful Yahweh or longsuffering Allah
are going to let you little shits trade in your birthright for a house on the coast and a full tank of gas. Squatters and transience will be evicted, so saith the Lord.
The spirit of Jonah walks now through the streets of the world
through the hollowed out buildings of Chernobyl
to the five lanes of the 105 down into the belly of Los Angeles calling,
Repent, Repent, Repent!
The day of wrath comes!
The Earth is Earth,
unassailable
life!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
19 to my 28
a
darling
nineteen to my
twenty-eight at my
twenty-ninth birthday
She attends
a classmate/friend of my little brother
And poor Beth,
drinks to much. at my party. bad argentine wine.
regrettably drunk for the first time, she spends the party
alternating between
passing out and throwing up
calling out the name of some unworthy boy
and finally settles in broken limbs
a sunken ship
to the ocean floor of our neighbor’s couch
In the morning I groom her
the beautiful dark shadow of her hair
holds like a bouquet, tokens of the night before
leaves, pine cones and wads of pick vomit
I thread the pine needles from her hair, a diligent seamstress
comb my fingers through the soft tresses.
until “presentable”.
She is embarrassed.
but lets me to my work
and I am careful not to appear over-pleased
a man in love with a widow
should not smile at the funeral
It is love
love that turn vomit to ribbons
love which teaches youth to make courageous errors
and love which allows age, in turn, to see itself in youth.
To Beth
darling
nineteen to my
twenty-eight at my
twenty-ninth birthday
She attends
a classmate/friend of my little brother
And poor Beth,
drinks to much. at my party. bad argentine wine.
regrettably drunk for the first time, she spends the party
alternating between
passing out and throwing up
calling out the name of some unworthy boy
and finally settles in broken limbs
a sunken ship
to the ocean floor of our neighbor’s couch
In the morning I groom her
the beautiful dark shadow of her hair
holds like a bouquet, tokens of the night before
leaves, pine cones and wads of pick vomit
I thread the pine needles from her hair, a diligent seamstress
comb my fingers through the soft tresses.
until “presentable”.
She is embarrassed.
but lets me to my work
and I am careful not to appear over-pleased
a man in love with a widow
should not smile at the funeral
It is love
love that turn vomit to ribbons
love which teaches youth to make courageous errors
and love which allows age, in turn, to see itself in youth.
To Beth
History Lesson
History Lesson
1.
The Vogue
Commas are out this year
periods- old hat
and failing capitalize the 1st person singular personal pronoun- down right embarrassing
Poets today would not be caught dead
using bold letters after labor day
steer clear
of anything too unscholarly
too Bukowski
cite Homer over breakfast
and Ovid at brunch
Auden in the afternoons and T.S. in evenings.
As for what’s hot
Italics are in-
in
IN!
and dashes seem to go with everything
but nothing goes so well
with prose-
as cancer
or repressed childhood memories
of an abusive father
or the doe-eyed embarrassment of a first sexual experience
or a mild objection to perceived political injustice
or a fat adolescence
or the difficulty of relating to an autistic grandchild
anything- any subject that sounds quaint and nostalgic
vomiting forth from Garrison Keillor’s
gaping
Midwestern
pie hole
2.
Briefly and Currently
-Howl is the last 50 years of dust collected on book shelves and Ginsberg has been dead for 10 of that. Unrecognizable from a pile of gardening sod.
-Our post-soviet Ulysses returned finally home, Milosz died on August 14th ‘04, as I traveled to a wedding. Weep, orphaned children!
-Two years before, Robert Pinsky exchanged barbs with Homer Simpson and did more for poetry than any confessionalist had done in the last quarter century.
-So many Sylvias we might reenact the Normandy invasion with live ammo and still be drowning is in kitchen metaphors and daddy issues.
This purgatory of confession prose
tyrannical and philabustering
for sixty years
For sixty years
this tabloid intimacy smile
readers notice the single letter difference between
Illusion Allusion
but still pronounce them the same
Headlines reads
striking journalist omit byline in protest of censorship
while the poets omits everything else to censor nothing.
Oh grief! cherry wine, scratch that, edit to contempornaity
malt liquor of tears
Oh! unblushing shame
Oh! fashionable vice
Oh! endless bourgeois swine call of injustice
naked subterfuge
courageous deception
to lie of,
about,
and to oneself to others
like declarations of war
everyone look prettier on the page
3.
Cookies and
A Glass Half Empty of Milk Memoir
Prologue
This Plathian fantasy
A mirror’s
a mirror.
it is the eye that deceives
takes account, discount of who perceives
the angle, the bend of light and memories
Chapter: First and Last
Reflection: more like water
fluid forgetful
the titanic lay hidden for almost hundred years
a hundred years, a hundred years
and Sylvia was never found
She sank into her legacy
scuttled between the plaster walls of her prose
a violent violet’s imprint pressed in pages,
perfumed postmortem
her resentful specter drags over the kitchen linoleum
whispering poems through stove pipes
soot smudged fingers rim every mason jar
every glass and goblet and pitcher and picture
filled with her dirty tears
(If I were stuck in a kitchen with her she would have to fight me for the oven door)
Epilogue
A few words on the fate of the characters
You found her body at the feet of the killer
that letch
who burned her final words to silence
sealed her mouth with his misogynist cum
but he’s a good flirt and you couldn’t resist
his white ford bronco and birthday songs
His stout-pout lips
He played that same song and you danced like you did for her
sugared his effigy
whined “the veil of poetry, rent!”
You have rejected the Copernican revolution for a universe of self
The sun never sets on Ted Hughes Ego
even dead he cheats, pinches ass and sleeps with every undergrad that will let him.
4.
Speaking of daggers. . .
Confession came to vogue
when taboo had teeth,
in the unkissed mouth of that poodle skirted society
to confess, to howl, to cry daddy was rebellion
then. . .
And now,
The diarist and poet become one.
Left margin to Center mast
does a poem make
Tell me if this sound familiar if not endemic-
The persona (Forgive me, I almost said poet) begins in that airy personal pronoun of self-speculation on dysfunction X, slowly alluding to via domestic setting and tone, an over-turned aspect of the writer’s relationship with a easily identifiable object-person, Insert: distant father, dead mother, druggy son, dick obsessed daughter -whatever. The writer metaphoric as oracle alludes to nature and a mortal climax (often explain in as clear-cut a manner as possible) and then concludes with denouement chaser- a witty or revealing ending illustrating the writer full grasp of the implication of his/her pseudo-emotive-crisis.
Poetry as therapy has won the day.
Billy C, protect me from your followers
the witch-hunt of intellect
purge of the new
poetry: as simple as reading
simple as sentiment
reduced to melodramatic denominators
135 words of EEC “may i feel, he said”
reduced to
Five words on the inside of a
Febuary 14th themed
greeting card
Hail the subjective antidote
Hail the straight-forward-backward
Hail American’s cancerous illiteracy
It’s instant oatmeal attention span.
the art of art out of step and style
We,
The bastard princes of a bankrupt crown
What is left of this inheritance to fight over
poets of this generation
the audience has dwindled to people who think
of themselves poetically I.E. clamoring for publication and an open mic
like the cardboard brandishing transients
we speak only to ourselves
and are paid even worse.
Children
avoid the company of morose princes
that villain of Denmark
by any other era but ours
mascot of the abysmal
He did not invent the monologue but popularized it
convinced himself his questions were more interesting than
a empire
But what is left to confess?
Wait!
I forgot a denouncement
is a form of confession!
1.
The Vogue
Commas are out this year
periods- old hat
and failing capitalize the 1st person singular personal pronoun- down right embarrassing
Poets today would not be caught dead
using bold letters after labor day
steer clear
of anything too unscholarly
too Bukowski
cite Homer over breakfast
and Ovid at brunch
Auden in the afternoons and T.S. in evenings.
As for what’s hot
Italics are in-
in
IN!
and dashes seem to go with everything
but nothing goes so well
with prose-
as cancer
or repressed childhood memories
of an abusive father
or the doe-eyed embarrassment of a first sexual experience
or a mild objection to perceived political injustice
or a fat adolescence
or the difficulty of relating to an autistic grandchild
anything- any subject that sounds quaint and nostalgic
vomiting forth from Garrison Keillor’s
gaping
Midwestern
pie hole
2.
Briefly and Currently
-Howl is the last 50 years of dust collected on book shelves and Ginsberg has been dead for 10 of that. Unrecognizable from a pile of gardening sod.
-Our post-soviet Ulysses returned finally home, Milosz died on August 14th ‘04, as I traveled to a wedding. Weep, orphaned children!
-Two years before, Robert Pinsky exchanged barbs with Homer Simpson and did more for poetry than any confessionalist had done in the last quarter century.
-So many Sylvias we might reenact the Normandy invasion with live ammo and still be drowning is in kitchen metaphors and daddy issues.
This purgatory of confession prose
tyrannical and philabustering
for sixty years
For sixty years
this tabloid intimacy smile
readers notice the single letter difference between
Illusion Allusion
but still pronounce them the same
Headlines reads
striking journalist omit byline in protest of censorship
while the poets omits everything else to censor nothing.
Oh grief! cherry wine, scratch that, edit to contempornaity
malt liquor of tears
Oh! unblushing shame
Oh! fashionable vice
Oh! endless bourgeois swine call of injustice
naked subterfuge
courageous deception
to lie of,
about,
and to oneself to others
like declarations of war
everyone look prettier on the page
3.
Cookies and
A Glass Half Empty of Milk Memoir
Prologue
This Plathian fantasy
A mirror’s
a mirror.
it is the eye that deceives
takes account, discount of who perceives
the angle, the bend of light and memories
Chapter: First and Last
Reflection: more like water
fluid forgetful
the titanic lay hidden for almost hundred years
a hundred years, a hundred years
and Sylvia was never found
She sank into her legacy
scuttled between the plaster walls of her prose
a violent violet’s imprint pressed in pages,
perfumed postmortem
her resentful specter drags over the kitchen linoleum
whispering poems through stove pipes
soot smudged fingers rim every mason jar
every glass and goblet and pitcher and picture
filled with her dirty tears
(If I were stuck in a kitchen with her she would have to fight me for the oven door)
Epilogue
A few words on the fate of the characters
You found her body at the feet of the killer
that letch
who burned her final words to silence
sealed her mouth with his misogynist cum
but he’s a good flirt and you couldn’t resist
his white ford bronco and birthday songs
His stout-pout lips
He played that same song and you danced like you did for her
sugared his effigy
whined “the veil of poetry, rent!”
You have rejected the Copernican revolution for a universe of self
The sun never sets on Ted Hughes Ego
even dead he cheats, pinches ass and sleeps with every undergrad that will let him.
4.
Speaking of daggers. . .
Confession came to vogue
when taboo had teeth,
in the unkissed mouth of that poodle skirted society
to confess, to howl, to cry daddy was rebellion
then. . .
And now,
The diarist and poet become one.
Left margin to Center mast
does a poem make
Tell me if this sound familiar if not endemic-
The persona (Forgive me, I almost said poet) begins in that airy personal pronoun of self-speculation on dysfunction X, slowly alluding to via domestic setting and tone, an over-turned aspect of the writer’s relationship with a easily identifiable object-person, Insert: distant father, dead mother, druggy son, dick obsessed daughter -whatever. The writer metaphoric as oracle alludes to nature and a mortal climax (often explain in as clear-cut a manner as possible) and then concludes with denouement chaser- a witty or revealing ending illustrating the writer full grasp of the implication of his/her pseudo-emotive-crisis.
Poetry as therapy has won the day.
Billy C, protect me from your followers
the witch-hunt of intellect
purge of the new
poetry: as simple as reading
simple as sentiment
reduced to melodramatic denominators
135 words of EEC “may i feel, he said”
reduced to
Five words on the inside of a
Febuary 14th themed
greeting card
Hail the subjective antidote
Hail the straight-forward-backward
Hail American’s cancerous illiteracy
It’s instant oatmeal attention span.
the art of art out of step and style
We,
The bastard princes of a bankrupt crown
What is left of this inheritance to fight over
poets of this generation
the audience has dwindled to people who think
of themselves poetically I.E. clamoring for publication and an open mic
like the cardboard brandishing transients
we speak only to ourselves
and are paid even worse.
Children
avoid the company of morose princes
that villain of Denmark
by any other era but ours
mascot of the abysmal
He did not invent the monologue but popularized it
convinced himself his questions were more interesting than
a empire
But what is left to confess?
Wait!
I forgot a denouncement
is a form of confession!
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