The Randomest of Random Poetry

The diss is finished, submitted, accepted. Which means now, perhaps, there will be time for other writing.

Jon Tuttle asked me to read a poem or two for the Snow Island Review reading on Tuesday the 30th, and I didn't really think about it before saying "Yes." Not that I'm regretting it, but that with this and the Pee Dee Fiction and Poetry Festival earlier this month, I have come to realize just how much I've failed at writing in the last two years.

I've decided to read either two short poems from the Disability Workshop, or two shorter, older, poems that I had polished long before the dense, academic prose took over my brain. In trying to locate these (some of them on this blog), I found some other, really strange, pieces I wrote last year, my first year in Lafayette, and my last year in Boston. So I thought I'd post those here, in an attempt at recovering what was lost. Note that these have not been revised, and at times falter in syntax.

Friday Last

too lofty a word to speak here--love--and yet i do, aware that the "v" goes on to long, that i'll have to lick my lips quite soon. the rain falls listlessly unlike that first time i thought about the concrete ledge of the stadium, when it poured so hard no one knew i was crying until i tried to speak. too close to the rain, to the sidelines, to his breath fogging in time with mine, i fall back to my place on the third tier of seats without hearing a reply. florida, i say to the floodlights that cast our shadows together into one, can be reached by car in twenty hours. the ledge is too far to climb at this hour anyway.


On moving back to the midwest
if this is a sign of retribution, of atonement, nearing me then i’ll look away or look into the sun to blind me. this cloth is scratchy on the shoulder that’s not sweating yet this shoe is digging hard into my heel. the robe around me is just enough—my god, it’s may, and there’s my breath—just enough of a coat and it’s black. this robe cost too much, too much to cut my hair and box my clothes and drive drive drive west, even though the ocean calls me. the strap has blistered me again, flesh welting in accusation, making my cheeks twitch, i’ll give it away now if i blink or smile or raise an eyebrow, this carefully twirled hair will pull the cornerstone out and i want it to. there’s the pole i fell upon, there’s the one that fell on me in the early morning scent of steam and sweet cookies. there’s the track we circled around then around again and never quite met in the middle, the rubber soles and the rubber ground bounding us away from each other.


Solo
The ones my fingers know they've always known
and at this stage, can no longer afford to hazard guesses
this touch was my only intuition once
Pairs of people wander around me in my pretty dress
they come, they always come, to spoil the child
with "babe" and "hon" and "sweetie"
a slippage in the slick sweat on metal
intentional falter, intentional trip over sidewalk cracks
his words are praiseful, bouncing against the raindrops .


The trees come at me--this can't be--but the light is moving and I know I can see North and South at once. The wind slaps like waves, chunks of wind patting my eyelashes down to shut out the marching forests. Blunt wind, sharp sun--they say you can bathe in it, but it's all spikes and rays--speeding the leaves up into my face. It gives us a chance to sing loudly into the roar about the conditions of possibility--meaning, really, hope. To think about definition as the definition of the shadow on the moon. To hum a melody about what we contain, how we curtain it away like a shower, like a dirty room, so that the open space won't swallow everything, so we don't lose our shapes and release the churning infinity within. The strain of forever nips at the bounds we set, the missing fences around sensation.
The setting sun lances with intention this time, opens the pain, pokes holes in the boundaries of my flesh and I bleed freely, without cause, this time. The hole it makes expands, jagged, and infinity seeps out, flooding away words, lines, fences, until all is All and All is one. The trees are marching to staunch the flow and even the simplest question--are you alright?--is a feat of creation, but not impossible.


A vision of the messianic

I see you in the finite,
Which is, of course, wrong.
I see you as a condition of my caught breath,
As a phantasm of a deeper structure.

I ask for simpler words
(Perhaps angry words?):
Something to keep a beat to when the beat slows down,
And to walk to in the new night.

I want to measure a chill in the air.
I see you as a condition of cradles and graves,
Without which I am hungry.
It fed off of the delta valley.

Every other line is empty
Of devotion and vocation to cloister.
Not me, not in context, not in the northeast,
A condition of angrier words.


Being a liberal in war

Oh how easy it is to die in war,
The fletch of the arrow, the hilt of the sword
To see your own blood and want to see more
To bow to the sky, to scream from the core

Oh how lucky to die before
The panic sets in, they even the score
They burn all the bodies, loot all the stores--
How lucky to die as they blast through the doors

Oh how simple it is to protest
To scrawl on a poster and scream with the rest
About blood, about oil, about the oppressed
To fast and to mourn that we’re overly blessed




Happy

We are one big family
While all the stupid people writhe in agony
With sauntering steps kept to pace
The brush and bend of pulse and pages.
The party blesses one another;
In cold address each does stumble,
Hiding in their fetal poses
As one would cradle rose bouquets,
Cherishing sores from thorn arrays.

The undesirable among us
Chip each edge of memory from us
With emotion sweet as sugared donuts.
We must choose to abuse the past like this
It does not come naturally
It does not leave quietly
It will not be happy till we loose our fits
And miss these bleak displays.