POEMS
Before I am back in New Jersey
How awful it is (a racist poem)
Machine gun for Morrissey
A great leap forwards (a gay poem)
Annie / Ántonia for Willa Cather
Child is the father of the man
A popular Leonard Cohen song that was featured in Shrek
Before I am back in New Jersey
My friend pushed me out of bed today
(we all slept together)
and though I was left with a sliver of space
and my butt was exposed to the cold,
I could not wake her.
I moved to the circular chair and stared
at the shaft of light falling on the wall
and onto the tiny Christmas tree.
She pushed me off,
and as I sat on the toilet, I thought of it,
her and my other friend,
lying in bed, having smooched drunk a little earlier,
and envy crept in.
Not that I wanted to kiss them,
but that they could or even wished to kiss each other;
that age-old stupidity.
Then I remembered:
Idiot,
she physically pushed you away
because she was asleep.
And though moist kisses are not shared between us
(and I share mine with no one still),
I still felt their breathing, held them in my roommate’s bed;
they still gave me water and held my hair while I vomited…
And lips-to-lips I need not miss,
a kiss is just one form of this.
A death at the library
I picked up
your words
in the library.
I touched the ink
I scanned your thoughts
and my fleeting glance
did not fill me.
I placed you back
among your decimal kin,
and you died. I felt it.
How awful it is
(a racist poem)
How
awful
it is
to meet
a black person
(an odd term,
considering
one never
becomes invisible
against the night sky)
and be slightly surprised
when he talks clearly
and coherently.
How
sick
it feels.
Machine Gun
for Morrissey
Sweetheart,
how could they
ever think that you’d
hold that machine gun
as anything
but a joke?
Didn’t they see
that on the back
of that photograph,
you scrawled
the same quiet desire
that you’d always
scribbled about?
To kiss
and be kissed
by someone kind?
Well,
you were right.
If they don’t believe us now,
then they’ll never believe us.
Oh, well.
A great leap forwards
I won't say
that the reason why
rocks get thrown at gays
is Will & Grace
BUT
insipid one-liners
lineless faces
jokes with no punchline
besides
fag fag fag fag fag
well
if I were that kid in Kansas
not the simplest frame of reference
I would not feel any reason
to look at them
as human beings.
Soil
Soon we will all be
in the cold cold ground,
and our flesh
and our sinew
will melt away.
For now
there is Nina Simone’s voice
quavering,
"My baby never treats me
like he should…"
(I remember she herself
has offered herself up
to the worms and the soil)
and the wet grass
and warm flesh
and moving sinew
spooning for warmth
in a frosted field
with coyotes
howling
in the distance
Annie / Ántonia
for Willa Cather
Don’t you think it’s funny
that after a century,
the desire Willa
tried to hide
behind the veil
a young male narrator
has been shown to light
and
though she pushed
so hard
to conceal it,
it’s merely funny
to scholars
and those of us
who pore over her words
in our beds
how obvious
she was.
Child is the father of the man
I like how
at a certain point
old men can be cute like
children again.
No longer imposing adults,
all possible danger dissolves.
Their proportions round out
like large koala bears.
Their pudgy smiles
are restored;
that state
before self-consciousness
exists.
So close to womb or worms,
what is there to worry about?
In-between we forget
that nothing actually matters.
For these select wrinkly folks
and all small children
there is a lot of pooping,
feeding animals,
and a lot of laughing.
Very little else.
Thoughts at 73 MPH
For years I
passed by
this sign
on the I-
95
that said:
"Getting Divorced? Try
MEDITATION
A better way to divorce"
and this
always
pleased me.
I
was mistaken.
The sign
in question
suggests
"MEDIATION."
My mind
tacked on
the ‘T’.
I prefer the first,
but both
are needed.
I drove up to the Acme
and tossed your slinky black dress
into a clothing bin dumpster
for drug-addicted teenagers.
Steel sky overhead,
the garbage bag went in,
your dress
along with the other
unwanted garments.
I imagined some slim girl
slipping it onto her
frail
form
and I hoped she would think herself beautiful
in it,
no matter what harsh eyes
deemed the reality
of the situation.
A popular Leonard Cohen song that was featured in Shrek
I sit
rain assaulting the windows
and the speakers emit
a frail voice,
a feminine voice
singing of love’s mine-marked battlefields.
Well, the song he sings –
it isn’t so simple.
I’m doing disservice
to the soul
who scrawled it.
There’s a taste
in it –
his trembling hand –
his callous eye –
I can’t help but sing it
everywhere I walk.
And, Oh!
The lilting delivery
that escaped from this boy’s tongue,
light
as the sweet by-and-by…
This boy whose lungs gasped for water
in the Wolf River
but a few months later.
And I can hear him
calling now,
quietly,
then with venom,
then kindly again:
"Hallelujah,
hallelujah,
HALLELUJAH,
hallelujah."
Boys
Recently I decided
I did not want to be a man.
I wanted to remain a boy.
All the men I knew were
Coarse and hard and dull.
The ones that weren’t hard
wanted to be.
When they kissed,
they didn’t kiss.
They spit.
And they walked around
Laughing without laughter,
sticking it in
without love.
Caring for a child
with striking
or silence.
Training hearts
into islands.
Barking
and grunting.
Scanning weak limbs
with callous eyes.
I haven’t ever heard a sound
I wanted to emulate less:
the silence where words wanted to be
and these noises when lips
should not move.
This is my manifesto.
It ain’t Karl Marx, but,
y’know, who ever said Karl Marx
was so great, anyway?
There is good in the weak
and ordinary.
Outside what’s decided
to be a Winner
or a Loser
to be ugly
or Beautiful,
there is deciding for yourself
to be cruel
or kind.
A better occupation
than veins of ice.
At the airport
I saw four old people in a chorus
outside of the Fox News Shop.
They sang of deep and heavenly peace,
and the singing
was so beautiful.
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