Thursday, February 28, 2008

March Morning


Tonight I dream I'm lying down in a field
and she's there, and everything is the most beautiful green
and she tells me it's ok to be sad again. When I wake

I go out, past the room, past the relatives
waiting for the wake, sleeping on our living room couches,
out the front door to the driveway,
to the car under the morning sky where I sit
and try not to wake anyone when I scream.

In my old room, my brother's room,
I can still feel the folding metal chair
at my granny's bedside where I sat and listened
while wheezing she tried to tell me something
I forget now, even if it was important.

Nobody walks past that room – nobody but me,
to get to my room.

When death arrives gradual there's nobody to blame,
so when blame comes and drowns the house by inches
outside the real world feels continuing and harsh
like March wind coming in under the front door,
snow held in bare hand, the telephone at night.

The sun still does rise on that lacquered wooden cross
she hung on the wall above her bed, but
we moved the bed after a couple weeks,
my brother moved his baseball cards in and that was that.
The room is still empty somehow, but with the months that passed
it's easy to forget she died here.

My mind's learned now
how to walk past the room without thinking of her
but my heart beats slower when I do,
and seeing the sun rise makes me sad,
and when I stick my hand in the snow I don't feel much.



i'm looking for some critical feedback.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

A dirge for Doomsday, and for Brutus.


I know we work primarily with poetry, so if either of you are against me displaying it here, just let me know and I'll remove it. It's a short story I wrote for a creative writing class I'm unfortunately taking this semester; composed one night under the duress of it being due the following morning.

To say the least, it really rubbed my professor the wrong way. A couple choice phrases I picked up during her critique would include "If you put shit in a bucket and call it cake, no one's going to eat it, and that applies here", "[This is] like a one-way fuck", and "It's not even a story". Hilarious, inappropriate, and hardly helpful.

So, I'm putting it up for professional review.

Here.

Friday, February 1, 2008

In escaped vernacular
Odysseus rides the train; wonders what it's like
to live in a place he can see.
The king takes the train to Ithaca;
commands no men;
wonders what it's like.


Suggested by my train ride in to school each morning, past decadent homes and deceivingly-ruined neighborhoods, wondering whether Odysseus would trade ten unsure years on the sea for ten certain ones in the slums of Chester or Eddystone.

It's a simple thought, and the Ithacan king has always been rendered in heroic verse, so I tried to make it as plain and quiet as possible. While the train is far for being a sanctuary for silence, it's still a place where subtle reflection is possible.

I'm unsatisfied with the punctuation/flow towards the end; wasn't sure if I should have used "The king tries to take the train to Icatha" or if I should have left that absurdity unemphasized; or how I should arrange things so that the last "wonders what it's like" clearly applies to the two lines before it. Finally, any suggestions for a replacement for 'place' in the second line?

//Winter Solstice/The Halcyon Days//

//Winter Solstice/The Halcyon Days//

Car-casses of rust
Salt-stained windows
Cream spread softly in the skies
Her hand stretching into the shade,
Asleep on the passenger side door.

These are The Halcyon Days.


Along the same lines as the last one. Thought to call it "Winter Solstice" in connection with the mythological "Halcyon kingfisher" bird, said to quiet the seas at the winter solstice and, but that might be a bit much and a bit too obscure and utterly lost on people as nothing more than self-absorbed bullshittery...which it kind of is really, I guess.

//Prefaces and preambles//

//Prefaces and preambles//

January fading in silence
Fading in fanfare
Half-thawed frost
A sad-slow-lowly-silent-sound.

This time tomorrow I’ll have shaken off these words
Embraced a beer

Back to a new
old
huddled
prostrate,
puking
cowardly world

Heard from the second stall,
Looking for a balance of
sweet smelling sheets and sweat-stains
between
the
desperate
heartbeats.

The prefaces to weekends
Bottles,
Innocence,
beyond reach,
beyond hope
The preambles to the weeks,

With my dreams inbetween:
A cottage in the countryside,
suckling tonic and anise.
Fairs and festivals in the evenings on the grange

And my aching waking reality:
A degree at the bottom of a bottle,
To pay for car-troubles, and collared shirts

But for now it’s a tango
three sheets to the wind
doing the dance of The Diapered Nihilists.

Either way between the desperate heartbeats
it’s ultimately a long slow sad lonely
selfish
show.


My university has a 4-1-4 system which roughly means I can do whatever I like for the month of January. For the past month we've spent our days skiing or on short jaunts, watching films, making meals, working on the side and generally lazing about and now it's coming to an end. I've realized that I probably won't get another opportunity like this, perhaps in my lifetime while so youthful, or at least for quite some time. This is a contemplation on those Halcyon Days on the university dole.

Forgive the redundancies, thought maybe you gents could advise me there, hadn't yet figure out where to eliminate them so I just jotted them down. Seems a bit long-winded too, but then January's a long month so I'm not sure. Have at it.