Fresh
1
When leaves are watered.
When salads are fresh.
When spring kisses earth.
I learn to sweep through the air
unlike a ballerina — for my dance
knows no training. It is a spirited joy
which moves my limbs merrily awry.
And I wither as the cold comes,
as old age points its rotting
claws my way.
The other night, lots of little things came
from up, up above the tallest buildings:
white, fluffy, moist, and soft they were.
Going’s to come, come Ohh-ai-i-i-iaaa.
Same as the yeah, yeaAOooh weeds.
Like me sour,
no good seeds. Out
hunting,
white little beaks
put a hole
here, a thumping thing:
swells, pinches, greedy
fat sputters
on lean, bleak hunger.
Dirty, dirty white.
Can’t twirl,
hollow yelps
. Don’t tear.
“Go slow, please. Please. Just go slow.” When I hear her say this, I know what will follow. Which is something I don’t know. Something unexpected. So why do I say I know, I mean I know where to categorize what will be next. She might kidnap a monkey for all I know, and though we are only in NY, actually only in Queens, and in a stupid apartment that looks out not into the neighbors windows, which would have been excellent, but into a cheating parking space. Cheating, because the cars are either cheap or very cheap. Nothing fancy to hold the eye, you would think they would leave it alone to the gray of the place, but no. Life’s always coughing something weird like that. No matter how the sun shines, this place looks always like a moaning female dog. Ah, I think they should make it into a funeral home. Even the heartless would love to weep here.
“Didn’t you here me, Sticks?!” I said go slow, freak!” Sometimes I really wonder why I am with her. I hate that she calls me Sticks, and I can’t even protest. I know she only calls me that because she knows it makes me want to pull the hair off my balls with one of those neon tweezers she loves to carry with her. I removed my eyes, almost painfully from the soul sucking view, and looked at her. I know I must not talk. One word, and things that I know I don’t want to happen will happen. So I look at her. My face as clean of expressions as possible. Like it would make a difference. How is that we are considered so smart, and by we I mean human beings. What is our intelligence being compared to? Animals? That makes me really wonder.
She was on top of the couch, not as you think. She likes to sit right on the headrest and wipe her sweaty feet into my cushions. It confuses me how her feet are booth cold and sweaty always. No matter the season. I don’t like leather seats, but if I knew I was going to be with her, I would have gotten those instead.
“You shouldn’t think too fast, Sticks.” She whispers, her eyes looking very cunningly at me. I raised a brow in response. ” I can hear your thoughts from here!” She laughs out, and I smiled. I hate that I love her. You’ve heard this before. Well so you have! But have you felt this before?! Hating that you love someone. Like couldn’t your heart have chosen better? It is the way that she laughs. It is like when the sunshine makes love to you. There’s nothing like it.
She jumps off the seat and walks very slowly to me. ” I want to die, Sticks.” And as she said it I knew what she meant. Tomorrow will not find her body warm.
She makes us weep
red things from
our hearts,
She takes away the
hums we jam to
on cold, lonely mornings,
She rolls the ground
beneath our half frozen legs
and oh how she laughs;
so wild, so loud –mesmerizing;
as we tumble, as we fall,
back to our knees and hands.
And as suddenly as she pleases, her eyes shines,
the brightest in our world. It fishes out our lost smiles
and pegs them out on long lines to dry;
lovelier in their chasms of experience.
So she’s nature. And she’s
natural. So we are animals
and forward is instinct.
Yesterdays rode the hurricanes,
today flies on surges of
golden light.
And the tomorrows will bring
whatever she pleases to
gift. And we may scream
with starving eyes
You curse us Mother. Why?
Out for a walk this very morning.
You and I. Yellow leaves float about our bare feet,
burying weak brown blades with soft dry sighs.
You say they are golden, potato chips; I contradict.
Stars move into our eyes.
We look up and the birds are winging aplenty.
They know Sandy’s to come, you sing.
Yes, they watched the news through my windows.
The stars become suns.
While Sandy sashays about, we could, Perhaps, hug
a pillow together? I hum.
In a bathtub?
In a bathtub.
The suns explode.
It’s been some months now, and I am already over the tossing of the words: Graduate, School, Me, I, in, am — put together one way or the other. I am not counting. I don’t like counting. I am awful at counting. It still takes me a full three seconds to remember how old I am. So I dreamt of an MFA program where I wrote poems, sung poems, and showered in Hardy’s moans about the sweet miseries that life love to pour down our unprotected heads. I happen to be madly in love with Hardy. Must I call him Thomas, for your sake?
As the title suggests,not, I am to talk about these things. My writing is suffering, mate. But it’s because I haven’t bothered to bother. You know, to write, that is. I am not reading either. It’s a bit scary when I think of how I am starving that need to do these things that I am not doing. I’ve been doing a lot of other things. I have read some Wordsworth, some Coleridge, and some Clare quite recently. But I am not reading them as a poet, I am reading them as a lazy Eng Lit. Student browsing for familiarity’s fleeting embraces. It hurts me. That I do these things. I am assigned so many of their works at a time that I have not the time to actually sit and savor.
I have come across some awesome authors. I met Italo Calvino in The Baron in the Trees, and his outstanding if on a winter’s night a traveler. I have been introduced to the Oulipians, of which Calvino is a member, as is Gorges Perec; whose A Void, I’ve started reading. Not perusing, just bobbing my eyes to in an absent minded fashion.
Of course I will be reading these books, and Poets again. In some future when I can’t let myself starve anymore. But at the moment, something is holding me back. I know not what. Or I do, I am just too chicken to woman to it.
