Three Poems
Poem about the bad Xerox copy of yourself one becomes when others tell stories about you that don’t sound like the you you hope you are and the disappointment that brings.
The limp and worm eaten alder leaves
won’t stop moving in this afternoon’s breeze,
and I’m not working when I’m supposed
to be producing, the room empty, so tasks
should be easy. I have a song
on repeat and a clear directive list
but the leaves keep moving over the devilwood
tree, and I see them in the thin window
over the industrially heavy metal door,
and their vibrations, their jiggles, their perpetual
rocking without ever gaining distance,
makes me wish for distance from the hereness
of here, of this now, which, of course,
is not possible, this leaden hour is good;
as Dickinson tried to tell, this now is forever—
I’ll try to think of a word for the sky as seen
through worm eaten holes in alder leaves.
If you believe the afternoon can collapse
into strange privacies you are right, right here.
Rag Bone, Rag Bone
Pile it on, pile it all
on, find the shot
through sock, paper
scraps, twisted pen caps,
baseball bats, violin strings
snapped, water pitcher,
floorboards, hair clippings,
pile it on, rag bone, rag bone,
bring out the dead, over used
coats, sandals, wall paper, sheet
music, light bulbs, cell phone
batteries, pile it on, pile the clouds
rag bone, pile the pennies,
rag bone, pile the dust, the toes
the rags, the bones, x-ray, dead end,
hospital gown, juke box, cookies crumbs,
relics, books, torn rags, torn bones,
the fat from muscles,
the heft of them the rags, the bones,
pile it on, pile it on
bring it out to the flaming cart
it is time to wheel it away and sing
the sweetest love-mumbles alive.
Samuel Beckett Has a Good Day, or My Nine-Year-Old Nihilist
“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
–Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot
The rain fell hard on the deck, and we stood listening
in the door, while she finished her nightly medicine.
Usually preferring her mother, I was pleased to have
her arms around my waist listening to the rain together.
I know such an image is much to ask you to suffer.
Then (I swear) she says, “Funny how life doesn’t mean anything,
our mind is there and then it is gone.” I wait for more,
then offer, “but in between we get to love each other.”
In the immense confusion one thing alone is clear,
I placed each board last summer, one after the other
neatly, even after hitting my face with the hammer—
and she owns nail torn party dresses, and the plum tree’s
blooms are flooded to the dirt—everything is a failing dyke,
and last night, singing, she says her name’s Catastrophe Strikes.
