Saturday, April 23, 2011

Fondness Now---For Nelly(2001)

Fondness Now
--for Nelly

It was the day
that we drove to Tuxedo
up the 17 North
and we stopped to eat pizza
and you convinced me
to leave without paying;
they were so unaware,
preoccupied with motocross
and racing things.

You got up
to use the bathroom
and then slipped
out the back door.

I watched you
start the car and 
then I scuttled along
and we went driving
up the 17 North

to cliff dive
where the spot
on the ledge said ‘jump here’
spray painted next to it,  ‘Pink Floyd’
and I forget
what color it was
painted in but I am sure
that it is up there
even now.

We made love
before the bugs eyes
and the waterside

and walked among
that hum and quiet
in-between the highways.

It was that day,
I remember it.
I remember you so well now,
Your nervous laughter
and your music
.

I regret not thinking fondly of you,
for so long in that period that
came after us and now it’s gone.

I am still
the same but I am not,
still gentle and hiding a sorrow
and perhaps you know
what I mean.

It was that day
that we went driving
Up the 17 North

to little tucked away Tuxedo
And all my pizzas now are paid for
with the fondest memories of you.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

So many buttons

The first one is the original version which has been published in Askew Poetry Journal: Issue 10, Spring 2011

So many buttons
In Madrid, I was catching street signs one by one,
dragging them behind me
in the long loose net of the day;
El Pintor Juan Gris, Alcala, Gran Via, Lope de Vega, San Bernardo.
All the names weighed less and less with every ‘avenida’ I burned across.
Todos son flush, perfectly in place upon my memory
like so many buttons on a winter coat;
so many plazas and stones, so many footsteps make a road.
I drank café con leche everyday and my words
tur
ned this warm stain of moreno, bubbling in a froth of sweetness.
In Madrid, New York, Austin, Honolulu,
my desires have been dragging always just behind me, too close for me to see.

-->a revised version was written before the acceptance by Askew and is my current version of it.

So many buttons

In Madrid,
I was catching street signs one by one,
dragging them behind me in the
long loose net of the day:

El pintor Juan Gris, Alcala,
San Bernardo, Lope de Vega, Gran Via,
sign after sign, they burned me alive, 
I drank in every avenida 
like I do rioja.

These memories,
they are imperfectly in their place,
hoisted high above and weightless, 
like so many buttons on a winter coat,                                                
so many plazas and stones, 
so many footsteps make a road.  
   
I drank cafe
con leche everyday
and my words transformed
into a warm stain of moreno,
a sweet bubbling froth
of lispy castillano.

In New York,
my desires had been dragging
always just behind me, 
too close for me to see. 






 

Wally, I have foresaken thee

I started off this blog with commentary relating to poet B. Copeland's commentary in her own blog, about how she can't read Wallace Stevens.  I wanted to make it my point to read him and then decide if I too, could not read him either.  It has now been close to 6 months and I have yet to read him.  It seems, perhaps, her dilemma (and the use of the word dilemma in this situation is truly up to the beholder), has become mine, albeit for different reasons altogether...i am sloth personified...nahh, I'm just absorbed in my own work....eh, well, maybe its denial too..digress digress,, ahh, to be sailing down the Nile!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Me and magritte--(2002)

       Belgian painter Rene Magritte(1898-1967): "The Subjugated Reader"


Me and Magritte
Magritte, you've succeeded.
I was merely skimming you when I fell asleep,
and there in my lucidity you made your first incision
upon my heart. Your portability, my nightmare.

Inside the dream, a chair began to fold in on itself,
the front legs bent up and inwards, breaking its own abdomen. 
It looked as though there existed more space behind it than in front of it.

Steel pin light rained down on me from a ceiling of smoke,
stabbing me in the eyes and in my pain I was a God,
reeling and gasping in the boredom of an eternity.

My mother walked by, shirtless and coughing blood,
weak and gurgling my name, her eyes cast downwards
looking at the missing square cut from the center of her chest.
My father stood beside her, seething with clenched fists,
panicking, the ghost of the last buffalo, hot ash white skinned
wide mouthed, broken horns  and gargantuan tongue in full on rot,
panting, waiting for a drink of cool-water Hope, for the taste of ancient reverence,
-his face frozen like mine, the horror stricken jowls of the 'subjugated reader'.

I ran back and forth from her room to the bathroom,
wetting towels to soak up the blood that was marking a path
into her disappearance.  My mother, she could not stop paling into death. 
I cursed Magritte, with incomplete conviction, for attacking me, the reckless sleeper.
I knew that I should wake up, to sketch out the shadows of these images,
yet I seemed content, living out the terror of things that touch me.

I did panic, like my father.
I became angry and all the dream was suddenly swept away.
I felt for the missing piece, the square where once my heart had beat
and looking down through that hole in my chest, I saw myself,

my eight year old self, running away, giggling and clutching
the waning glow of the cut away meat and it looked, I think,
that there existed more space behind me than in front of me
and I woke up because I knew, surely this could not be true.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Healthy release

Healthy release

I must appear to you
a song half remembered,
the words have their meaning
but I lack what you structure.

I see you sitting among degrees and awards,
gold-set and gilded print on creamed velum,
framed with hues from collegiate colors,

and you see right through me, I'm not quite the fit:
"We hope that you make it, we'll adore you like Brigit."