(you can’t imagine)
I am arrogant
(sweetheart)
I am
(you can’t)
arrogant of my imagination
(imagine, sweetheart)
Even though it is where you put everything
(you can)
around me, you said
You can’t imagine, sweetheart
and I realize
(sweetheart)
that you are arrogant as well.
a synthete watches fireworks
and sees more in the afterboom
than she’s seen all day
someone says,
the sound delay is something else
eh?
Yes she says,
the sound delay really is
something else.
a
poet might see the little ones
the squiggly ones
the bursting squirming tingly ones
and say Tadpoles!
a
different kind of poet
might see fire curling
and wonder what it would feel like
to hiss towards the moon
before it is washed over by
the milky afterboom.
Perhaps my whole body is still blushing from the sparrow song
water-logged already
with the dew of tomorrow and
thrice-duped by an ice-cube
in a syrup drink warm with stick.
What if my skin is razz with the friction
of flutter leaves and bumble bees whereas
the jazz of it all leaves you pale
and no wonder you find the air stale
I could starspin beside car-din
after bar-been
just to get dizzy
and I’ll always find you busy
pressing your fingers
on your own skin
assessing.
tomorrow-filled, and sky-thrilled
i am weary of capitalization
but tongue-billed and flower-frilled
My words have flirtation sensation
If you must know,
I may be a bit
star-crisped
But sunburnt, I am not.
if every train whistle
is a song only my
soul can hear
is every fallen tree
still a balance beam?
This poem is part of a series of poems I’ve written in parody of Charles Bukowski’s Friendly Advice to A Lot of Young Men. Also see Friendly Advice To Charles Bukowski.
___
Go to a football game.
Drink a beer.
Lift weights and eat protein.
Show off your muscles.
Imagine all the places that baseball has been.
Be a man.
Wear lipstick.
Show off your figure.
Paper mache your boobs.
Wear something with flowers on it.
Start a garden
And give some of it away.
Sew a short dress for yourself.
And stab yourself in the eye with a knitting needle.
Watch the way the snow falls on a sleeping bird
The way the sun shines through a wine glass
Or write an outrageously cliché poem about holding hands.
Run for mayor
But don’t forget to write a poem about it.
Just because you can.
It was a window to her soul.
She thought these words, standing among one hundred wobbly-legged strangers, and immediately imagined giving herself a face palm. How utterly cliché. How obscenely boring. The women beside her dove headfirst into a stroller to retrieve her screaming child. It was this sort of unwilling bravery that made her want to stay on a train forever, refusing to get off and definitely not relinquishing the window seat.
A window to her soul. What kind of person thought that sort of thing? Women who walk into a library and head straight for the uncatalogued paperbacks. The romance section. These books will end up left out all night beside a pool, their pages dewy, their mediocre text threatening to seep into itself. Once dried, the wavy pages will make the book look thrice as large, and when asked about the damage the women will say “Oh that wasn’t me.” When asked about the book women will say “Oh it’s a wonderful story, I just can’t remember the title” and then they will add “But I know you would just love it.” Everything they say will sound as though it should be in italics. Slanted. Wispy.
The title would be about passion and restriction: The Duchess in the Dungeon, The Butcher’s Bedroom, Sadism at Sunrise.
The Widow’s Window.
The title would not be about screaming babies, drool on satin, or strollers getting stuck in security gates. There would be no impossibly tangled hair, wrinkled shirts, or stale faces. Something that used to be porridge. Melted crayon in the carpets. Lost balloon catastrophes. The woman emerged from the stroller covered with play toys. One magnificent pacifier sat in her hair like a halo.
Who would pick that window for their soul? A bright wedge illuminating a crowd of moronic, sniffling, acronym spouting, unapologetically lumpy, loud wanderers. Perhaps anyone would think it was their soul after spending 5 hours on that train. Pressed up against a man with a stain on his knee “In the same shape as my home state, see?” The size of The Huston State Fair.
The culture of Texas probably doesn’t require a very elaborate Wikipedia entry, she thought.
Is ‘the soul’ always meant to be figurative? Maybe there’s no such thing as a soul. Oh god, that’s a scary thing for an artist to be thinking. Well not quite an artist yet. Unless the diagrams she drew to help her study for her last sociology final counted.
She always felt like an artist, though. The way she could criticize a poorly worded sentence, or recognize an overused cliché. And the degree in the social sciences had to be good for something, right? She thought herself an artistic observer of people. It was a good start, the way she could recognize determination in a foot fall. The way she separated the idiotic from the mediocre. The way she knew the annoying ones from the worthwhile ones. Come to think of it, there had been less worthwhile ones lately. She must be even closer to artist-dom than ever.
Soon age would take this clarity away from her. She knew it. Something happened to adults, the woman with the soother hat, the man with the knee map. She knew her brain was destined to ripen into an ever accepting mush. It would think it was “mature” or worse, happy. She must grasp these moments in her life, allow her gifted insight to point out everything that was wrong with the world. She must wallow for it! She must express what it cannot. Finally! These morons didn’t know what they were missing.
It was a window to a train station.
And that was that.
Happy Poem in Your Pocket Day.
Morning at the Window
by T.S. Eliot
They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,
And along the trampled edges of the street
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids
Sprouting despondently at area gates.
The brown waves of fog toss up to me
Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,
And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts
An aimless smile that hovers in the air
And vanishes along the level of the roofs.
by Walt Whitman
WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the
water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love—or sleep in the bed at night with
any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, 10
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds—or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down—or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best—
mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans—or to the soiree—or to the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old
woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, 20
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring—yet each distinct, and in its place.
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass—the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.
To me the sea is a continual miracle; 30
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships,
with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?
“I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly”
- Albert Einstein before his death
at 76
Dr. Einstein is Dead
He is dead in the Princeton Hospital
Dr. Einstein is dead in the news
he is dead in the kitchen where his children played
he is dead where his ashes hit the side of the road
Dr. Einstein is dead in Berlin
Offered surgery,
he turned
his attention
away from the window
Offered surgery,
He said no
It is my time
“It is time to go”
Accused of letting a world down
that superhero head
had a duty to the rest of us
It didn’t have to die
but ”I have done
my share”
it said
and it was time
to go
so
“I will do it
elegantly”
said a mind, suddenly sophisticated
in the face of death
an elegance which was
never expressed
so explicitly before
an elegance which was
a chance to watch
a world outside of the confines
of time.
A chance to find out
if everything really does
happen all at
once.
“it is time
to go”
I say: Je sais! Je sais!
C’etait étourdiment.
I only realize now
c’est car ils font riment.
A blog by someone who believes you can pave your way through life with words.
