THIRTY FREE WRITES FOR
NAT'L POETRY MONTH 2018
I: UNTITLED
it's 2006 and we're not so alive,
we're not so taught as to
trip/skip, catching breadth and balance
catching, she says death is catching,
like unlit tombs and useless light switches,
yellow years for scratching carpet,
blue for a total fucking abyss of the mind,
my mind rocks back and forth,
doldrumming along, we conundrum too
tocking the ticks and fucking it all up,
I kollaps in a pile of fake nails,
come to in a pile of realer ones.
it's not like I can talk about it
without some deep sense of shame jumping
across lanes of traffic in a warped record,
onto another overpass
we look, I look, overtake
an arrhythmic sense of
how bridges fucked up
my requisite isolation,
it's not fair that I'm this close to bayview
but it's not like I'm on coney island,
or any other fallible prison of the mind.
we're all undone
it's so undone
to kollaps, kollaps, kollaps
II: YOURS/MINE/HOURS
tell me
if I am youth enough
for you and yours
enough to love,
some hearts
have changed hands
too few times
to play into the
gentlest ebbs, workflows
for the premeditated,
intense, and immediately crass
sway of idle wonts.
III: BOYZ JUST WANNA HAVE ACCESS TO DECENT MENTAL HEALTHCARE
baby boy’s heart muscles
are too warped and strapped
for this world, hurrying their
decay for a chance
at the hardened and
so-much-very-valid chance
at life as a well-respected bone
V: CRADLING THE BREADTH OF TIME BY SLICING OUT THE IN BETWEEN-- A BISECTED REVERIE
we meet
with all the fervor of two strangers
swimming laps around a pale kitchen,
we meet
like this soft cocoon is hope/fear enough
to stave off mutually undesirable lives,
we meet
beholding the tragedy of memory
and everything else that came undone,
we meet
contention hangs like a cool cigarette,
our bodies slumped and miserable.
…
we met
as if oceans held space for reverence
or campy choirs for gracenotes,
we met
transfiguring shambles and left behinds
for luxes and gold, for strife and swine,
we met
and I finally saw what a sewer looked like
undressed, terribly supine, and beguiled,
we met
so let me sing some selected reveries
of noxious gas and regretful lovers-- I left.
VIII: “DID YOU REALLY JUST SAY THAT YOU HATE YOUR BAND'S MUSIC?” (OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT)
of all the days
to realize that
my love of hate
is, apparently,
all abrasive
and a bit wrong,
misguided, or
too full of its
own passion.
said that I have
fancier words for
really shit things
and that I like
to hate stuff.
don't mind me,
cursing away at
rivers and homes,
I just don't like
trees or woods
or plains or grass
or certain places.
but I like these
feet on concrete,
the portal to a
city's soul is vast
and so capable,
it's vexing and so
sustaining, shared
across rust belt
sensibilities, trading
acres for decades,
histories in home,
waxing dangerously
towards love, I do.
it's more space
than it is place,
to be wary and so
cautiously brimming.
my sentience is
stagnant and maybe
I don't leave enough,
but I'll always be
coming home.
XII: NOTES ON NOPE
try to kill it with wine
and will it go quietly,
will it take a shape--
a slump--in the unsightly
sight of neighborhood
views. is it a moon
for sketching twin
irises under, is it a lip
or softer way to say
stop that isn't silent,
is it a conical way of
poeticizing pain, to
ask if this is enough
trauma for me to stress
about later, says it'll
take a lot of work in post
to get this bourgeois
lens flare just right,
and as I stretch into
words I don't really like,
all these thirty days
in this thirty day month
get tired and trite.
I lose steam in editing
and preening, choose
to say a lot without
saying a damn thing.
XIV: DREAMSCAPE
“at the Pfister,
we're purposely protective of
very private people--
one time
we found a cup of blood
in a man's microwave
…
they didn't let us do anything
about it, just forget it ever
happened”
IV: A MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE THAT I HURT WHEN I TOLD THEM THAT I WAS "TOO TURNT FOR EARTH"
Whitman could hold his Specimen Days
in his pocket, carry it ‘cross his heart
as an atonal means of protection and hope,
a little book of skulls for whenever’s clever.
so give me my Shithead Days and let me
suffer with its impossible implementation,
let me do this for me and my crayon-eating
human familiar and the animal in all of us.
VI: HORSES IN THE-- FUCK
Before I started thinking of all the things I like with post- as the prefix I started thinking of skulls and rock salt, or how every year of my life has been enough of an A Silver Mt Zion album title to give a fuck of because that's what self-love really is, right on, it's harvesting the most devastating interludes between nauseating optimism while you explain to your surroundings why it's okay that you hate the trees/the woods/the sun/the grass because somebody needs to love the overcast/the noise/the concrete/the mildew that becomes oppressive and shatters in the basement I hang my head upside every night and every morning I pry my eyes away from the bastard, loving sun and wonder why so many people are so excited to see beyond the streetlights so I step lightly when they come on and I keep close to corners, always looking for something chilling like skulls or rock salt or an impromptu effigy for post-Sam.
VII: NOTES ON TALKING
you aren't enough mouth for me
not enough gape or maw or
piqued pieces of exposed skeleton
teeth, you aren't enough teeth
for me, you're not enough skull or
moon or meat or stars, you're a lot
less than more than enough, if
tongues were alms you'd be too few,
if I could keep language in my hands
I would, I'd lay mouths to rest, but you
already have no lips to offer, no spit
to drip along to, if all tomorrow's
textbooks fell dormant I would find the
page about mouths and scratch your
name from the record, you don't belong
in a holy archive of tooth sounds,
you're not enough mouth for me, you
aren't enough mouth for me, you're not.
IX: HAPPY BIRTHDAY
staying young in a world
that will move on without me--
a harrowing task and a burden.
growing old in a world
I'm too sick to function within--
simply a harrowing burden.
X: NIGHTMARE WAVES ON A BROKEN BED, WE'RE SPACEFUL AND IT'S MORNING
a dream where I am only running
I am only running, and I am fearful,
I am fearful, ushering breaths from
detached lungs, telling each one to
vacate, make space, because I am
very fearful, but I am running--just
running--to a fault there is no point.
XI: ASSOCIATIONS OF ME, CASE STUDY 2
can you take it as a means
to keep time? will a rememory
creep to its key, will it sway?
does the grip of a machine
feel understood, like chemicals
know their purposes from
hard-fought battles against
silvertone mirrors? are they
like us? if they, then us? if no,
then I sway, say yes too much,
say are you so much of a
lullaby, so much of a broken lamb
more than the average salt?
say it's about time, say it's not
enough to be wrong, says so?
in endless question marks I see
too much you, there's too much
spine between the each of our
company, it's a pleasant hurt
but it's not gentle (?) is it.
like two machines fucking, it is
an epiphany and a nightmare.
XIII: SINCERELY CHAOTIC
unended sentences and really cool blood,
I keep yr steady hand for a piece of play,
reread your sad sonnets and think twice
before bringing you back to bed in another
daydream, our hair looked so much better
twisted, my fists looked so much more at
home when clenched and ready, set, spiral,
we're poorly matched but it's fine (it's fine),
I creep towards defeat every goddamn day
that I circle your smile, play into your funky
platitudes, you're a hum dummer and it's
our balmy summer, we both hate your shorts
as much as I hate your really cool blood, as
much as I hate unended sentences, as much
as I hate you, so callous & sincerely chaotic.
XV: LIKE PHOTOSHOP BUT ONLY IF YOU CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT REAL LIFE
my wet knees are freaking out
again, about strength under pressure
and if this spring snow will make me
real buff, so buff that the knee skin
stretches against boyish and flamboyant
knee muscles, stops the slouchy folds
from looking like a dead dolls’ face
when the bones lock into place and the
skin is at rest, hanging around with
nothing to do (but move more snow)
XVII: THIRTY DAYS OF GARBAGE POETRY WASN'T A WISE CHOICE
so many bad ideas--
a feathered hat made from
yr old lover’s dead bird,
a breakfast cheesesteak
for yr sorrows / “yr” at large
as a spelling convention meant
to say that I'm less uptight than my
breakfast cheesesteak implies,
poetry as a means of
self-regulation / self-hate
(it's working all too well?),
just don't date men with birds,
ripping out eyelashes for
dramatic effect / it's not worth it
but it certainly is dramatic,
if you must, eat it without jalapeños
since you can't keep your hands
out of yr goddamn eyes (yucky),
don't write dirt-tier poems and
post them for yr peers to read
during poetry month (oh boy)
when yr bad ideas are this bad.
XIX: GILT, GUILT, ETC.
I cared a lot about wet meat that summer.
I drowned my head in a consuming couch,
feeling what fretting looked like,
letting it all overwhelm just a few senses.
today, the smell of Hamm’s is a
heart attack or a homing missile, is a
memory stirrer and a bad time, feeling sharp
crabgrass and stale wheat at my fingers,
tearing it all apart. I fucked it all up
before taboo got the best of me
and I'm sorry, but only in a cool and idle way
that flattens time for no other reason
outside of my blinding and blinded guilt.
XXI: LIKE THE SOUND OF A FEW LEVERS PULLED ALL AT ONCE
a wisp of my soul
tears away whenever I see
a bank of lights shut off
in sequence,
overwhelming and final,
there's only one way to find out
if the lights make noise,
and if they do I miss them,
but when they're far flung
and I see their shuttering
from just enough away
my mind fills in the cascading
thump of discontinued
circuitry,
and I miss what was
never there, I hear
what never happened.
so soon and softly
it's dark, my mind is beating,
and we're alone now.
XXIII: I SAW YOU WITH A GRASS HOUSE, I SAW YOU WITH A NEIGHBORLY SCREAM
heart hurts,
ankles scream
darkly
darkly,
emergent and cold,
urgency and
a void
like spent winters’
reckoning
tailor-made for
sun sweats,
how hot can asphalt be after
eleven o'clock
passes by,
throws its weight
around until
I'm really out of space
darkly
darkly,
the sins of naïve hands
become imminent
and clear, so
darkly
darkly
every totem escapes
and all tombs are free
the sun is spent,
so happy to have found
its peace
XXVI: HAUNT
do you ever check up on
people you let go of
however long time ago?
I’d like to say that I don’t,
but I’m bad at keeping promises
or telling lies, even to myself.
feeling so simple next to
all those pictures of you,
it’s clearer than most
summers but brackish, too.
she’s so beautiful and
you’re so lovely, take care.
XXIX: RECONNAISSANCE IV
the bastard bastions
of performative poetry
aren't with me no more,
tried and tired quills
don't sit so tightly in my
distended abdomen,
in my shithead heart;
I feel an awakening pulsing,
in retitled prose and often
misguided semi-sonnets--
these ghost buddies
don't sit so well with my
well-weathered eyes,
and I'm a prophet no more.
XXX: LIKE EYELIDS
with dark winds and too much space,
with decaying buildings still in use,
with torn up book backs and
with erstwhile harmonies fleeting,
within a quiet timeline and
a luxe and just parable,
the roses of moons precede you,
and the anger in the water
succeeds your form and self,
the trickling hang-ons of human
succession bleed the heart dry
and it still pumps something
twice a day, it's clockwork,
and it takes its time with tumultuous
and spirited ghosts in silence,
silken and very obviously gray,
making a tomb for every tomorrow.
XVI: MISHEARSAY
these are all poems based on
the problems of being present,
how memory
and ephemera
carry side effects of spirals,
painful cravings, and more
trite, wrought,
and really crabby
poetry, leaves you semi-supine
with a leg kicked outwards, arms
clutching pillows (not bodies),
dead eyes smiling,
dead friends dancing
across the blackened screen of
wee-hour eyelid insides, it's
a sky for feeling pensive under,
an atmosphere for regretfulness,
a dream where nobody has hands
so nobody can clap, a dream where
nobody has mouths so nobody
can get on with their life, a dream
where silence feels formidable,
feels like grace
and god is a boy
selling cigarettes
by the pound.
XVIII: WELL.
who the hell can shriek like me, who the
hell cannot, it's all of you in the skin of
a thousand oranges as if that pulp will
protect you, protect your potion and being,
let it juice and drip so effortlessly while a
jet black, black, black coat hangs off the
shoulders so reposed and so fucking gently.
I'm a tooth guy, I'm into it and want to talk
about that, I want to talk about how your
fetid smile makes me feel like hot plaque
roasting in a fevering mouth, makes me feel
like a small god, like I'm in charge of quiet
but only until after sunset, it's like the veins
of a sundial are falling apart and I am enough
of a reason to shut the whole city down, shut
the whole neighborhood down, shut the whole
street down and black out the sky, it's forever.
XX: WROUGHT AND WOBBLING, YOU’RE ALL TIN AND I’M STILL GRIEVING
in trying to pay
a compliment--
“it’s almost perfect
for finding out
your mom has
cancer, or
something like
that,”
and I’m sorry if
I offended you,
but it’s music for
impassioned,
if a bit desperate,
moments, fracked
and folded, but they
all decay anyway.
XXII: YEARS' SONG
I'd rather not quantify grief,
rather not see it weighed by the pound
or spoken for by the pint or quart,
as it becomes more malleable and
gloom slips into closer corners,
see it scrunched into a ziploc bag,
moving and oozing within the plastic,
my skin within it, my heart buried
beneath years of loss and love for
people, places, and things
that just aren't here anymore,
until I've said it's fine a thousand times
it's still not enough to assure the
ghosts that it's okay to go, to abandon
my mind and memory, leave me
lighter and endlessly more able,
nebulous and fraught, decaying
and weary, it's overburdening and hard
to tell how much of me is still in mourning.
so I appreciate the ambiguity.
XXIV: LIGHT AND WILD
I pray for the fork
in the road, that
its attention stays
divide and vast.
its tines are too
short for focus,
sprawling and wry,
pulling peace
from the fracture--
a party to the
collapse, it’s fine,
it’s fine, and we’re
here for decay,
divvying sins and
sway, separate
slides for all my
peers and their
pressures.
XXV: ON REGRET
screaming, a lot
XXVII: REPOSE, REPRISE
as an affront to the hard times
or the miracle of being a fraction,
offering up alms in the night to
whoever wants, needs, craves,
or says in plain tongue that
they would like this, that, or
whatever, if only to be whole.
XXVIII: WAKE FOR LIFE
broke body,
broke mind,
broke wallet--
testament to a
wild and willful
collapse upon an
infinite stage and
cascading, momentary
conclusion, before
my body and blood
becomes christly
and effervescent
in morning or
mourning-- I forget
how many mountains
it took to make
something so far
from saintly.
I'm a hateful demon
and my body means nothing
right now, it's all rich,
and tired,
and broke,
and willful
within peace
as it is in death--
amen.