Revisions

So I had to revise a bunch of stuff for a portfolio, and rather than create a separate entry for each poem, I figured I'd group them together and present them as one unit. I will say this: most (or all of the poems) aren't finished at all, but I had to turn something in. Oh yeah, and I worked on these revisions two hours before the portfolio was due, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Revision in KUTZTOWN, PA 19530

The KUTZTOWN UNIVERSITY BOOKSTORE

has made its presence known

in the middle of a Nathaniel Mackey poem.

Who to blame?

The SALES CASHIER: JEN,

the one who sold

01 HOOVER/POSTMODERN AMERICA for 26.95

SUBTOTAL (TOTAL)

on 1/30/07 10:39.

She must have known,

the intuition of fingers

when she had slipped the sales slip—

“PROUDLY SERVING YOU”—

into Ghede’s speech

that she had performed a service

of national merit

in restoring the lost

middle page of Mackey’s poem.

I cannot see now

how Ghede’s mantra

“what does all this loving make?”

would ever ring true

without that slip.

Without that slip,

Ghede chants himself down either page,

his hands holding onto his own

bent elbows touching

the exact same pair

on an opposite side.

For years it slept,

tucked into Mackey’s sheets

for Ghede to hold again.

There are Enough Good Enough Things

Don’t eat alone.

Eat with a friend.

Watch, they’ll say....

Oh, you have class?

Well, sometime later.

Talking with your parents is not a friendship.

The alone by-yourself gestures of desperation.

Use your computer for something worthwhile.

What email would come? You Sourpuss.

Looking at pornography—Sourpuss—

is condemning yourself to a mossy life in a well.

Don’t talk to yourself you already know what you will say because you are the one saying it.

Chatter is unsettling,

empty.

If on the beach you will find happiness on the next wave in.

Stop writing things down.

Removing the English language from your working memory

will make you happier by making it harder

for you to articulate just how alone you feel.

If you have no language, you can start screaming.

Coffee?

Coffee?

Do you want coffee?

Let’s get coffee?

Oh, I see.

No one wants coffee?

Drink tea then.

Hyperventilate while saying the rosary.

Rapture in a gift box.

Don’t sigh.

There is no guilt in expressing relief that your life is almost over.

The year of his death

after John Wieners

In 1967 Wieners's lover left him and went to Europe with a mentor of his, but not before aborting his child first.

– “John Wieners Papers,” University of Delaware Library

It came quickly,

an unruly collection

blinking and unblinking.

It never cared

for staring. Hanging

outside the reach of

this afternoon. I wondered

how the dull light, piercing

as arrows found

me today. Full of

mistakes. I mumbled

my prayers. I kept

St. Sebastian, tethered

and pious, in mind:

how the shafts

disrupt the stretch

marks on his

sacred gut. Those angry,

red fingers, like

ripples from a pebble

dropped into his

belly button wishing

well by a sleep

deprived child.

Most in the pews act

like they are not clearly

aroused by their secrets,

even as their pants shake.

To clear my

mind, I remembered

the breath of the children

of the future,

and what it will

remind me of, the acidic

poisons in my night

sweat, and the confident sex

appeal of pilgrims lying

through yellow teeth.

Select Comfort

These are the nights I

appreciate my

new queen-sized mattress

and the rituals

involved

in sleeping

next to another.

At first, I wanted

guidelines,

directions.

What about nightmares,

tossing and turning,

endless bickering?

Easily enough

they became steps in

a nightly

routine:

you lie next to me,

we pretend to sleep

until it happens,

we do not have sex

unless we want to.

Sympathetic to

the truce we make when

we undress, and brush

our teeth, wash heavy

faces. The hygiene

of self and other—

examination—

judgments forgotten

when you turn the light

in the bathroom off

and slip under the

covers that hold me,

house us like orphans.

This is our retreat

from stress

and pressures,

my weakness lying

next to your body.

Our hearts

listening

for the other’s beat

while our body heat—

exoskeleton

fills in-between space.

Light breaths harmonize

yet not in tandem.

Shut eyes imagine

how we now appear:

tired,

unguarded

graven images

softly releasing

domestic incense.

Your body might sink

into the mattress,

leaving nothing but

bones for my desperate

hands to rummage through

to rub together

The friction of lust

pulverizes them.

The gray dust of you

covering my hands.

I have never felt

such skin

like parchment.

Forgive me for that

rude comparison

to preserved calf skin.

Don’t think of yourself

as the sacrifice,

you,

the offering.

Fragment

Since I'm posting everything I've worked on since October out of guilt for not posting anything since then, I might as well add this to the mix.

[untitled]

Let him sleep.
You, lying next
to a breathing,
living thing.
Sweat confusion of
his body heat.

Stare at the clock.
Time is a mouth,
chewing everything
down to mere minutes.

Or take off your
glasses and close
your eyes until time
passing becomes a
feeling that sounds
like sighing.

Response Poem

So, yeah, we had to each pick a poet/poem and then write a poem to him/her/it. I chose John Wieners because he was a crazy homosexual.

The year of his death
after John Wieners

lives outside the
reach of
this afternoon. I wonder
how the dull light, piercing
as arrows has found
me today. Full of
mistakes. I mumble
my prayers. I keep
St. Sebastian in mind,
how the shafts
disrupt the stretch
marks on his
stomach. Those angry,
red fingers, like
ripples from a pebble
dropped into his
belly button wishing well.

Most in the pews act
like they are not clearly
aroused by their secrets.

To clear my
mind, I started
remembering the breath
of the children
of the future
and what it will
remind me of, the acidic
poisons in my night
sweat, and the confident sex
appeal of lying pilgrims.

New, Crazy, Written in Ten Minutes Poem

Rules That Let Me Kill My Father

My right ear scraped a buckle.
--Theodore Roethke

I woke up just as you were walking toward the door. When I said good morning, you told me to hurry up. I didn’t want you to be late, so I asked you to help me get dressed, to help me put on my pants. I held them up by the pockets as you needled the belt through the loops. Then you asked me why I had gotten out of bed, what the hell is the point. You raised your voice and pulled the belt tight. Too tight. I couldn’t breathe, only felt pain as you pulled tighter. My intestines fell out of my rectum and slowly slithered down both my legs—large on the right, small on the left. They soaked my socks. My stomach grew wings as it crawled out of my throat. It kissed both of your eyes before flying away, its esophagus swinging in the wind. You took out a handkerchief and wiped off your eyes. Then they were dry again.

Select Comfort-A Syllabic poem

Syllabic poem= where each line has the same number of syllables. An interesting exercise in restraint to be sure.

Select Comfort

These are the nights I
appreciate my
new queen-sized mattress
and the rituals
involved in sleeping
next to another.
At first, I wanted
guidelines, directions.
What about nightmares,
tossing and turning,
endless bickering?
Easily enough
they became parts of
a nightly routine:
you lie next to me,
we pretend to sleep
until it happens,
we do not have sex
unless we want to.
Political, yet
sympathetic to
the truce we make when
we undress, and brush
our teeth, wash taut
faces. The hygiene
of self and other—
examination—
judgments forgotten
when you turn the light
in the bathroom off
and slip under the
covers that hold me,
house us like orphans.
This is our retreat
from stress and pressures,
my weakness lying
next to your body.
Our hearts listening
for the other’s beat
while our body heat—
exoskeleton
fills in-between space.
Light breaths harmonize
yet not in tandem.
Shut eyes imagine
how we now appear:
tired, unguarded,
graven images
softly releasing
domestic incense—
I have never felt
such skin like parchment.
Forgive me for that
rude comparison
to preserved calf skin.
Don’t think of yourself
as the sacrifice,
you, an offering
to a night that has
brought us together,
but at such a subtle
cost that unnerves me.
A special terror
of mine betrays this
closeness, for I can’t
help but think that I
might wake up alone,
your shape having been
flatten into the
wrinkles in the sheets
sometime before dawn.
I would never sleep again
if given the choice
to watch you sleeping,
to know you would stay
here lying near me
the rest of your days.
My willingness, then,
to close my eyes, sleep
my back echoing
the promise in yours,
is my neglected prayer
that you will stay here,
and stems from the fact
that I cannot watch
time slowly take us
away from this place.
I am afraid to
witness your passing,
though it is rehearsed
practiced endlessly,
by time’s bipolar
flipping the light switch
that moves us from here
to the day after
by no personal
means or decisions.
Do you stay here when....?
In my dreams, teach me
to awake from what
I cannot leave yet.

My First Response Poem

This poem is a response I've cobbled together for Sean Patrick Conlon's poem "Something Else," which can probably be found online somewhere, though you only need to know that the repeated sentence is the first line of that poem as well. And yes, this beast is memorized. At least, hypothetically.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog.
I was on my way home from school,
tracing the daily route from my first grade classroom
to my family’s apartment with my younger sister
and her friend Stefi walking with me.
We stopped in the nearby park
to swing on the swings.
I took the opportunity to throw away my math assignment like I always did
so that when the babysitter later asked me
if I had any homework I could honestly tell her I had none.
I was a bad student,
more concerned with the chocolate milk they handed out at snack time
than with my grades.
I learned that trick from my best friend Max, whom I will always admire because
he once told that he lived on a farm and owned a pet fox.
I still wish I could have a pet fox.
I’d probably even name him Max
though I can’t remember what he looked like
except for the mole on his left cheek.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
After launching ourselves in the air repeatedly,
we were tired and ready to head home.
Stefi, on the other hand, seemed hesitant to leave
and when I asked her about this, she told me
that she had found something cool, would we like to see it?
Yes! We enthusiastically shouted.
After quickly scanning the area to make sure no one was watching us
Stefi led us to a thicket of bushes
that were twice as tall and three times as wide as we were.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
There it was in the underbrush:
a tattered magazine
out of which someone had ripped each page,
its leaves were scattered among the roots of the bush,
wrinkled and covered in dirt,
like they had been used up and thrown away.
A man stared at me from the ground.
He wore nothing but a gold necklace and tennis shoes.
Not even socks.
There was something extraordinary in the image that
I could not look away.
I could not help but think it strange that someone
forced him to run naked and oiled like an ancient Olympian.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog.
There was something about his smile that made staring down at him feel natual,
almost as if it invited me to look at him,
to hold my attention while I recognized every single detail of his display.
I was inexplicably mesmerized.
Noticing this, Stefi told my sister that she thought I liked it.
They both giggled.
I mumbled a shameful no while keeping my eyes on the man’s body.
It would have been useless to try to look away.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
before I had ever heard the word cock
or known what it meant.
The V of his legs drew my eyes in
to a mass larger than my fist.
This was weird sculpture put on display for ignorant eyes.
What would the photographer have thought,
seeing his trade on sale for the wrong audience
and watching it be misinterpreted as something
far more innocent than was intended?
This was an athelete; I could not explain why he was naked
nor why it stirred something in me.
It was safer to keep staring than to think about what was happening.

The first cock I saw was in a catalog
on my way home my heartbeat returned to its natural pace
and the blood left my flushed cheeks
asI began to look forward to watching afternoon cartoons
and to not doing my homework.
Sometimes, the miracle lies in the fact that nothing has changed.
Now I remember it as a Fall day with gray clouds,
a day when my younger sister, her friend Stefi, and I
went to the park to swing on the swings
before walking home.

List Exercise (a Draft)

There are Enough Good Enough Things

Don’t eat alone.
Invite a friend to eat with you at lunch.
Oh, you have class?
Well, maybe something later in the week.
Talking on the phone with your parents
only counts as half of an encounter with a real person,
because really you’re still only by yourself.
If you spend more than two hours on the computer,
you must spend most of that time on homework.
Continually refreshing the browser in the hopes that
a new email will suddenly appear will only sour your mood.
Staring at computer screens can also dampen your spirits
and cause eye strain.
Looking at pornography is condemning yourself to a mossy life in a well.
Please don’t talk to yourself.
You are tricking yourself into thinking it’s normal,
and it unsettles the people around you,
which will only lead to further isolation.
Can you see the outlines of these ripples yet?
Carry your swim trunks in your backpack.
That way when you overhear a conversation about
people going to Rocky Point over the weekend,
you can pull out your bathing suit
and ask if you can buy the second round of drinks.
Stop writing things down.
Removing the English language from your working memory
will make you happier by making it harder
for you to articulate just how alone you feel.
If you have no language, you have no need to express your depression.
Ask him out for coffee.
Ask her out for coffee.
Ask the next person who walks by out for coffee.
You don’t drink coffee, but you know saying,
“Hey, let’s get tea some time?” would be vaguely deviant enough
to deter even your mother from doing so.
Don’t sigh.
There is no guilt in expressing relief that your life is almost over.

Slam Poem Probably

So one night I was a combination of lustful and depressed and several revisions later this is what I'm left with. Yay!

An open letter from Fatalism to Lucas

Dear Sir,
The way you see it, you have to make a choice between two schools of thought,
two spools of thread that if followed will lead you to your future:

Either
you are completely satisfied with your life at this very moment
or
you are working toward change your hope will define as improvement.
Parallel lines meeting at infinity.

They meet here,
where dissatisfaction has brought you.
Your mind is doomed, paralyzed
as uncertainty urges you on while holding you back.
Before you boast of the prowess of your intellect and how it has saved you from similar times of despair,
may I remind you of your fears, the soot in the corners of your mind that will stay there forever, despite your years of studying existentialist texts and learning confidence-boosting mantras.
suffering is inevitable
suffering is inevitable
Yet how shocked you are to find yourself here again.

The triumph of your will has only offered you a sense of self-defeat,
and because of this
the same nervous logic that stirs unease into your breath and forces your heart to pump faster every time you are faced with an impossible dilemma
offers this simple question:
if you cannot be happy now, why would you ever be content with a future based primarily on the consequences of your actions?
Hasn’t what you’ve done brought you here to the landscape of the discontented?

Despite this, you refuse to abandon the hope that your actions have meaning.
I suggest that these muscular twitches you call actions are but tiny puffs of wind that stir the world’s dust before quickly being buried in the movement of time.
You yourself have experienced this: you have fought for everything that you know, and yet have still been overwhelmed.
The shock of battle intertwined in the anxiety of dilemma.
Exactly what is it that you are fighting for?
What are you forgetting to do when you refuse to act in your own self-interest?
Or is that refusal in itself an action done in your own defense.
How you trace the outline of these Mobius strips of logic.
It reminds me of the way nuns fondle their rosaries while begging God for guidance.
I’m amazed you’ve stayed engaged in your apparent struggles for so long,
but then again, admitting that you are as happy as you’ll ever be would be kinda disappointing, wouldn’t it?

Listen,
no conclusion you draw will bring the necessary choreography to enact the purpose of the rest of your life.
And acknowledging the guilt you feel for your passivity in this matter
only adds shame to injury.

Therefore, let me give you this advice:
look at how your body hints that it was built for something.
It is filled with subtle yet defined evidence of purpose:
bones, muscles, organs
bear no accidental shapes.
Without command
the eye looks
the lungs fill
the heart beats.

So shall you, without command, move again
the grace of uncertainty
will lift up your chin.
eyes that once looked upward
will look forward,
powered by a heart that will continue to beat out the eternal question:
for what? for what?
May I remind you that some questions are rhetorical
and your silence on this matter shall not ensure your defeat.

Revision of Said Funny Excerpt

Mutualism

Something is not right,
you said, this place we call home has got to improve.
I thought of renovation,
ingenuity.
The trick that falls and covers everything anew.

Thought for redecorating:
the average adult has 5 to 6 liters of blood—
enough for a fountain,
small, in the corner of the garden near the cactus.
But such a display often leads to
feelings of inferiority or, worse, embarrassment.
It carries with it a heavy risk—
no currents flow in the sad un-use
of a broken fountain.

This history talks of revision.
I had told you
I had the desire to rip my jaw off
and feed it to you in small pieces
and have you rip off your jaw and feed....
Wait.

I see you now—
the vision of you has been tainted
with the color of copper
as mutualism replaces desire.
Its wings leave dust mites in their wake.

This talk of averages is unsettling,
yet still we collect data,
measuring and recording
our feelings of commitment.
I want these scales to fall away from my eyes,
disappear into memory.
Better yet,
let’s turn off the controls
and let the machine break down
on its own.

Be confident
there is enough time
for everything to turn into dust.

Funny Excerpt from in-class exercise

The average adult human has 5 to 6 liters of blood--
enough for a fountain.
Such displays often lead to the production of
feelings of inferiority.
I have a desire to rip my jaw off
and feed it to you in small pieces
but that only sounds good at midnight.
Not every project requires such a huge commitment
or an extensive working knowledge of pump mechanics.
Still, working with a non-profit can be rewarding.

End of the Year (new draft)

I ended up liking the first draft so much that I spent some time this week revising it. I just came back from the poetry slam and got a bunch of scores in the five and six range for it. Ha, I guess that's how it goes.

Poesy:
The university celebrated the end of the semester
by delivering dumpsters to each dormitory,
the idea being that students would be most remembered
by what they had thrown away. And when they left
they left behind all knowledge of what they had accumulated.
Off they drove into the sunset of forgetfulness
believing they will never have to return.
Jealous, the remaining students must stay one more night
in the ruins of an abandoned campus.

With nothing better to do, I decide to take a walk.
One last stroll through the campus
I wouldn’t see again until the end of the summer.
Unsurprisingly, the sights that meet me are of the apocalypse.

The remaining roommates dumpster dive together
finding food and drink in bulk,
discarded to save space and time.
One shouts this is enough food for a month
even though this is their last night together.
I want to ask them: Will you divide your spoils up?
Better yet, would you want to live on ramen noodles and propel water?

In the Starbucks the employees
are only making drinks for themselves.
It looks like an Edward Hopper Nighthawks scene
in a commercialized space conducting the energy
of the awkward, lean bodies inside.

People have parked their cars where I have never seen them before:
lawns, sidewalks, courtyards.
Without their drivers they look abandoned,
yet sitting in place without the fear of being stolen,
even on a night of disinterested pillaging.

The order in the landscape is changing, being challenged,
yet the lamp posts still shine
as polite as slaves can be.
The sprinklers know they are unsupervised.
Their malfunctions froth in the drowning grass.
The excited ones dream of being fountains,
their wild sprays stain the sidewalks,
creating dark puddles,
an inconvenience for the few pedestrians walking around.

This is the last night for lovers.
Men and women in two by twos
stand in the shadows of buildings—
It is the night before Noah.
Whether she is leaving him
or he her does not matter.
The summer is a distance that cannot be overcome.
Like mementos, they transmit their last thoughts from lip to lip.
And this is for them.

Catching Up

My last post was in May. Did some stuff since then; traveled a lot. Finished the chapbook.
I'm taking a poetry workshop class this semester, so I expect to be adding more things here as time goes by.
And I'll be working on my longer poetry project. I've already taken some notes and I'm glad it's already underway now. Before I was stressed out because I kept thinking "when am I going to start this project?" But now it has been started so that thought doesn't bother me anymore. Those thoughts seem strange/irrelevant now that I read them. Oh well.

Stroll Through Apocalypse (Draft)

This poem is inspired by a stroll I took through a rather quiet campus last night. And I'ma try to revise some things while in Tucson.
~~~

They celebrated the end of the semester
by delivering dumpsters to each dormitory.
Roommates dumpster dive together
finding food and drink in bulk
discarded on account of space saving.
One shouts this is enough food for a month
even though this is their last night together.
Will they split their spoils up?

This might be the apocalypse.
In the Starbucks the employees
are only making drinks for themselves.
Cars are parked where they have never been seen before:
lawns, sidewalks, courtyards.
The lamp posts still shine
as courteous as slaves can be.
The sprinklers have been given free reign
their malfunctions froth in the grass,
the excited ones dream of being fountains,
their wild outbursts temporarily stain the sidewalks,
puddles the few pedestrians out tonight must walk around.

Lovers
men and women
in two by twos stand in the shadows of buildings.
Whether
she is leaving him
or he her
does not matter.
Tonight is their last night
they will be split apart by summer.
Their last secrets transmitted lip to lip.

Proximity (a draft)

I am jealous of your polo shirt.
It gloats
and reminds me that I cannot go to work with you,
or to the supermarket to buy that night’s dinner.
But after the pasta
when you and I are sharing the same space again,
I look at your polo shirt,
now glowering at me from the floor,
and smile.

The Perfect Morning

So a couple of days ago I was subjected to a group teaching demonstration in one of my teaching methods classes. During the presentation, the class had to brainstorm what a perfect day would look like. I wrote this little thing and will probably edit it soon.

On the perfect morning
I would wake up to the sound of laughter.
My cat would read me a poem
he had written the night before while I had been sleeping,
and I would stop making the bed
to pay attention to his descriptions of how the moonlight
peaked under the curtain and how it made him feel.
After breakfast we would move over to the couch
and I would finish my cup of green tea
while watching the raindrops
play a game of tag
as they fell down the window pane.

In Memory

And not without relief
did your door click shut,
moving comfort without
and self within.
You heard their talk
murmuring in the hallway.

Some had remarked that
none could save the youth
hundreds of thousands of buds
from leaving
brave as figureheads
and returning in anonymous cocoons.

While others waited
for their metamorphoses to recognize the offer of
loss for progress,
you returned to the chore,
digging with your pen
light scratches at the surface
of the dumb page
of record and recollection
again and again.
What passageway did you intend to find,
what offer, or inviting space?

In this I find you,
hands stone-heavy
tucked into your lap
pondering the perfection,
the justice,
of flowing water carrying
the remaining debris away
in the same way time handles memory.
How silent your pen,
already asleep in a drawer.

In Buffalo Park: A Poetry Cycle

1
Air like stone
drags down the weary heads of sunflowers
with the indifferent weight of silence.
The sun,
already sinking into the cradle of the mountains,
sends out the last rays of the day
like naked arms brushing past the branches
of pine trees in the borderland.
Spectral hands groping among the stalks,
rifling through the temporary
and expired architectures of blooming,
of broadcast.

These emptied witnesses of summer,
now stooping in autumnal air,
speak of nature’s efficiency:
there will be no waste.
Yet how they waste away,
how their cry for life, more life, has been forgotten,
ignored in the season of deterioration
that already has started to break them down
in the conservation of energy.

Promises of fertility
now fulfilled
now spent
now fit kindling for the fire,
which is second only to the sun in marking time’s movement.
It is impossible to separate change from consumption.

Next summer
nothing will remember that these sunflowers were.
The greening field, astonished at the new growth,
will marvel at the naïve miracle.

2
Though stunted and broken
the slopes of the San Francisco Peak
suggest lines,
invisible dashes
that extend beyond the physical heap of rock
and connect earth with sky.

Today, clouds have gathered at the summit.
They have become the homes of kachinas
who will send the rain—
sprinklings of dashes,
momentary cords that link
all beings to each other.

Change comes.
The afternoon sun grows shadows.
The grasses and birds, lichen and deer plead with the sun
to disobey its course away from them,
forgetting that it is their earth
that moves them away from the light.
They know predators need no other invitation to begin
the feast of dark hours.
When the sun sets
the Peak will cover itself with a veil
of crows’ feathers.

3
The formation of a cloud is a mistake
taken as an opportunity.
The same wind that bends
each stalk of grass
with caressing fingers,
reaches up
and stretches clouds out until they cover miles,
carving shape out of nothingness until
sweeps of color appear
and reappear
and change.
Backdrops for whatever light the sun
or the moon
is willing to give.

Neighborhoods of water particles and dust,
clouds are distorted mirrors
that reflect beams of light
and transform them
into the substance of being.