As much as I've increased the pace of posting these poems online, though, my writing of them has not kept up. For the first time in however the hell long it's been, I don't have a full set of fifteen poems written and ready for the next installment. So the next time I make a post like this, it will likely represent the sum total of my poetical product up to that point. That's kind of cool!
Today's poems date from August to October of 2015, which is super-current. At least by my standards, anyway. They aren't in chronological order, and while I could easily rearrange them to be so, I don't think it's really important. The actual earliest, as it happens, is A Quick One Before We Go, but for whatever reason I didn't really want to lead with that one.
This batch of nonsense features further ruminations on my depression, my continuing obsession with candles, a dash of sexuality, a cute excursion into concrete poetry, and what I can only describe as a mad scientist's ode to gross body fluids (Studies on Glass). Eclectic, is that the word? That's the word I will use. Further commentary at the end, as always.
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Observing the Candle's Death at Midnight
Little blue, your nose is red,
it quivers in your hollow room.
Be careful not to get it wet,
a candle's life is like the womb:
the walls are easy to forget,
the waters will be rising soon.
Little blue, I'll make a bet:
before the shadows of the moon
have melted from your shallow bed
in dripping swirls and wavy swoons,
you'll have to dip your feeble head
beneath the wax, embrace your tomb.
September Self Portrait
Woe to the man
with great desire
and small ambition,
noisy passion
in a silent box.
Sleep to sleep,
his satisfaction
never comes;
he smells of the stale
air in his room.
If he cuts his face
or cleans his ears,
he may be tempted
to declare a victory,
take what he gets.
Round the track
he falls, step
by step, further
to the ground but never
falling down.
Sleep is all
that he desires
anymore,
and sleep is granted
from time to time.
Fatigue
Every day,
every goddamn day
I rise, I reach for the light,
and every day
I fall again,
every goddamn day.
Waking up
I want to go to sleep -
speaking, or working from home,
driving cars
or eating dinner,
I want to go to sleep.
It has a name,
this unfortunate trait:
Fatigue. I say to my doctor,
"name the drug
that banishes
this unfortunate trait".
On the train
my station passes by.
I wake, and find I am lost,
and I want
to sleep again,
the stations passing by.
Everyday Hours
Awake,
I move with pain, fatigue -
but sleep
does not improve me.
Exercise
could be the answer -
only if
my crumbling limbs could bear it.
Orange
juice with each important meal -
breakfast,
second breakfast, brunch.
Abandon
hope of further consciousness -
there never
was a day to rise with.
Hope
in dreaming -
pain
can find itself endured forever.
Running
Grey,
my mind as the sky -
September mornings
spent
alone, outside,
and freezing cold,
grey.
Thought
as empty space,
complete awareness
of
the impact of feet,
suppression of all
thought.
Numb,
a still sensation
of the world,
made
uncomfortable,
but tolerated,
numb.
Pain
before and after -
once again
light
and color return
in waving sheets of
pain.
Child of Earth
O Child of Earth,
oh lay me down,
oh let me down
so peaceful, easy
in the dirt.
For what it's worth,
I've been around
for many years:
I don't believe
that this will hurt.
O Child of Earth,
my summer ale;
the summer fails
to warm my body
in the dirt.
For my rebirth,
I would request
a simple, quiet
ceremony
in a yurt.
O Child of Earth,
if I should rise
again, should raise
my shoulder, put
me in the dirt.
Let there be mirth!
Forget my silence,
dance to music
in your brightest
cotton skirt.
A Child of Earth,
a girl of twenty
seven, twenty
seven lays
me in the dirt.
Into the Hidden Garden
I would try
you, even if
your sweetness were
forbidden;
kiss your mouth
and breathe you in,
the scent of dew
and honey;
exalt in your
exquisite taste,
you paragon
of women;
enjoy a feast
among the florets,
in weather blue
and sunny;
make another
rendezvous
when secret signs
are given.
A Quick One Before We Go
In twenty minutes we'll be missed,
they'll start without us -
and it would be
a shame
to miss the show,
with you in such a pretty dress.
But we can make the drive in ten
if I can help it:
we haven't time
to waste,
you don't have time
for taking off your floral dress.
Anything we miss is worth
a little risk,
to feel ecstatic,
feel you
shaking on
the floor in such a little dress.
We'll have to make the drive in eight,
I couldn't help it -
there's your purse,
now let me
help you up
and straighten out your wrinkled dress.
And nobody suspects a thing!
The show is starting,
and besides,
you're looking
elegant
and chaste in a lovely pink dress.
Studies on Glass
Samples cut thin
of hair and skin;
clearly labeled
semen, blood,
and here, the fabled
melancholia
on the table,
cold and dark.
Frustratingly small,
eleven tall
glasses steeping
specimens,
from the sleeping
homunculus
I've been keeping
in the dark.
Strict Criteria
I want to be with anybody,
anybody,
almost anybody:
someone with a sense of humor,
anybody
sort of ticklish,
and maybe with a certain style,
anybody
with a wardrobe
draped across a rocking body,
anybody
with a human body,
almost anybody.
The Girls And I
Deeper, time is drawing,
I've so much to write,
and smoke is slowly filling
the room in a spindly column.
I've measured it - a thousand
cubic feet of air
to breathe, if I can swallow
all this waxy smoke.
And somewhere, beautiful women
think identical thoughts.
In several such somewheres,
a beautiful woman lies
on her back and doesn't sleep,
with a thousand cubic feet
of candle in her lungs.
The window doesn't open
in my room, or in hers:
any of all of these hers.
Collectively, all these candles
smell like total chaos,
and nothing can be learned
from what the girls and I
are burning tonight.
Maybe she made love
within the last few months,
another she is a virgin,
another she is feeling like
it hardly makes a difference.
Something else recedes,
and this is loneliness.
She has so much to write,
but she is slowly filling
the room with other thoughts.
Falling Out of Myself
Through a thin
straw, I pass suddenly
out, for an instant.
My collapse
feels like a squeeze
of super glue,
the kind that burns.
All from this compression,
brain constriction:
clean me up,
I have pooled on the floor,
too weak to stand.
Ten minutes,
give or take an hour,
until I rise,
but maybe days
before I think clearly,
gather my mind.
The Dark World
Magic mirror
resting in the medicine cabinet -
don't you know
that every mirror is magic?
You can see him,
if you focus on the center,
in the corner of your eye,
but not inside the mirror.
Often dancing,
if you gaze into the mirror
you might, perhaps,
become his dancing partner,
step amongst
the molecules of glass
with unprotected feet
if he invites you to dance.
Sophisticated
patterns on the bedroom floor,
the magic mirror
tessellates itself
with every footfall.
In the corner of your eye
the spirit must be dancing,
but not inside the mirror.
La Croix
I have no problems with the "natural",
but truth be told, I don't know where it starts:
all the apples may as well be lemons
if I cannot tell their skins apart.
Silence in the morning has a flavor,
sour as the iron in my blood,
but in the woods the rivulets are sparkling
as they slither naked through the mud.
In my isolation, strings of water
strike the only sympathetic chords.
Sparrow's Quest
Look!
Tiny sparrow soars like a great white phoenix,
with a fire burning in its little pinion feathers,
navigating solely by magnetic lines, from roof, to tree,
to mountain peaks, in search of the one true north.
Even tiny sparrow's wingspan casts a fine shadow
on the ground,
flames
around the
feathers' edges
_______________
What to say about Observing the Candle's Death at Midnight? It's pretty much exactly what it seems to be, a reflection of my thoughts as I watch a candle burn itself out, examining the textures of the melted wax and the color of the light.
September Self Portrait is also pretty much what it looks like, a description of myself in sour times. I swear I'm not always like this. It's not really a remarkable poem, but it is a fine statement of my state of mind. Fatigue, Every Day Hours, and Running are sort of companions in sentiment, and they all bear a strange resemblance to each other. Almost like I'm spinning my wheels, but no, that couldn't be, could it? Running deals, of course, with my exercise of choice over the last few months, which I do enjoy in my own way, but man does it hurt...
Child of Earth came out of me after I met a girl named Tera (no connection with Tara), and went on a couple of dates with her. All of that is on hold for now, possibly indefinitely, while she takes a break from school for personal reasons. I had feelings, and made them into a poem, wherein I envision myself as an old man dying over the affections of a young woman. The fact that I am myself only twenty eight is of course a little ironic.
Then there's Into the Hidden Garden, a pure fantasy scenario wherein I cast myself in a younger light, on the stage of a lover's rendezvous. Pure self-indulgence, I know, but I can't be all doom and gloom all the time.
A Quick One Before We Go is more brazenly erotic, and so you should really just cover your eyes and skip it. I mean, it's good (I think it's good anyway), but it's very naughty. I think I scandalized my friends when I showed it to them. It is, obviously, about quick sex on the floor before a social engagement, which is really one of the finer things in life if you ask me.
Actually, if you skip any of these poems it should probably be Studies on Glass. It's just kind of icky. And it was supposed to be, which is why I included it here, having achieved my icky purposes. But I won't say you have to read my sticky little homunculus of a poem.
Strict Criteria is a sad little poem, I think. It's hard to be picky about such things when you're desperate and lonely. I think the effect of the poem is a little humorous, so I enjoy it despite the loneliness.
Combine that feeling of solitude with my persistent candle obsession, and you get something like The Girls and I. It's a very loose, free sort of poem, a collection of thoughts and attempts at putting myself in the shoes of someone else.
Falling Out of Myself is an expression of exhaustion disguised as a double entendre. I almost didn't want to admit that, but I might as well.
The Dark World has sort of an interesting provenance. I wrote it just after finishing reading two books by Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance. The latter is a sequel, but there are many discontinuities in style and tone, and I sort of concocted a theory in my head that it was meant to be a distorted reflection of the former. I drew upon a scene in A Wild Sheep Chase that focuses on what is and isn't seen in a certain mirror, and there you have it.
La Croix is a better poem than it deserves to be. The last word of each odd numbered line was taken from the side of a can of La Croix brand sparkling water. I woke up early in the morning, wanted to write something, and turned to a carbonated drink for inspiration. By all accounts it should be nothing more than a warm-up exercise, but I think I tried a little too hard and made something sort of good out of it.
Sparrow's Quest is cute, isn't it? I had to rewrite it slightly in translating it from page to screen, as my handwriting gave a false impression of how wide the words would be in many places. Anyway, it's a poem about a bird, that looks like a bird. It also looks like the Greek letter Psi, but I don't think that means anything. I think I executed the effect pretty well, with phrases of importance separated by gaps. If you're confused about how to read it, it's meant to be read straight across, as in "tiny sparrow soars like a great white phoenix", not "tiny sparrow soars with a fire burning..."
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