Scriabinist

Composers & Poets, Coexisting

my writing

And I Lounged and Lay on Their Beds

When I went to that house of pleasure
I didn’t stay in the front rooms where they celebrate,
with some decorum, the accepted modes of love.

I went into the secret rooms
and lounged and lay on their beds.

I went into the secret rooms
considered shameful even to name.
But not shameful to me - because if they were,
what kind of poet, what kind of artist would I be?
I’d rather be an ascetic. That would be more in keeping,
much more in keeping with my poetry,
than for me to find pleasure in the commonplace rooms.

A Finger, Two Dots, Then Me

Lying together in the park on Seventh,
our backs smoosh grass and I say
I will love you till I become a child,
when feeding and bathing me is no longer romantic,
but rather necessary.
I will love you till there is no till.
till I die.
And when that electroencephalogram shuts down, baby
that’s when the real lovin’ kicks in.

Forgive me for sounding selfish
but I won’t be able to wait under the earth for you,
(albeit a romantic thought for groundhogs,
gophers and the gooey worms.)
I will not be able to wait for you…

but I will meet up with you
and here’s where you will find me:
get a pen -

Hold your finger up
(two fingers if your hands are frail by now)
and count two stars directly to the left
of the North American moon.
You will find me there.
You will find me darting behind amazing quasars
Behind flirtatious winks
of bright and blasting boom stars!

Sometimes charging so far into space,
the darkness goes blue.
I will be there chasing sound waves
riding them like 2 dollar pony ride horses
that have finally broken free and wild.
I will be facing backwards, lying sideways,
no hands, sidesaddle, sometimes standing
sometimes screaming zip zang zowie!
My God, it’s good to be back in space… Where is everybody?

You will recognize my voice.
You will see the flash of a fire trail
burning off the back of me
burning like a gasoline comet Kerosene Sapphire.
This is my voice.
Don’t look for my body or a ghost.
I’ll resemble more a pilot light than a man now.

I’m sure some will see
this cobalt star white light from earth
and cast me a wish like a wonderbomb.
And I’ll think “Hmmph. people still do that?”
I’m sure I’ll take the light wonderbombs
to the point in the universe
where sound does end.
The back porch of God’s summer home.

It’s so quiet, you float
it feels the way cotton candy tastes.
He let’s me in through the back porch.
St. Peter’s busy in the front
building a catfish pond and swimmin’ hole
for sea-drowned-gray-green souls to enter up from.
I don’t mind his stories
I just get tired of his voice

So you should know what to look for
and exactly where to go…

Take your time and don’t worry about getting lost.
You’ll find me. Up there, a finger and two dots away.
If you’re wondering if I’ll still be able to hold you
… I honestly don’t know

but I do know that I could still fall in love
with the swish of light that comes barreling
and cascading towards me
It will resemble your sweet definite hands.
The universe will bend.
The planets will bow.
And I will say “O, there ya are. I been waitin’ for ya. Now we can go.”

And the two pilot lights go zoooooooom
into the black construction paper night

as somewhere else
two other lovers lie down on their backs and say
“What the hell was that?”

personal

I find it terribly difficult to make friends beyond customary acquainting. I know it would be odd or creepy, for example, to ask the girl I met at the show I put on at my house whether she would like to get coffee, because she only went to my show and introduced herself, and I added her on Facebook. Fuck, what an odd, human way of going about things. It is not so simple as asking. There are rules.

Meanwhile, I would just like a friend or two to call.

Aporia

Peoria! With your unshaven boys
Smooching on the street corners or talking
On the phone while skating headlong into
Tourists who throng the ghostly avenues
Of Peoria! With your grand soirees
And jubilations pushing out against
The weight of history — Peoria
“Capital of the nineteenth century”!
With your cloud of excess signs and gold leaf
Settling on the eyelids of black-haired
Women glowing from terrace cafes
Which line the stone banks of Kickapoo Creek
Flowing like blue milk under bridges
Of Peoria! And your swank manners
And red suburbs and no future and movies
Where strangers swap philosophical gems
And fall at once to bed — never have
So few of all possible kisses
Involved me as in Peoria
Midwestern city o’ lights! And so off to
Glamorous Vernon city of canals
Five-step bridges with arcane graffiti
With its three million atavistic
Pigeons at the heart of a jewel-box
Labyrinth and its ancient library
Drooping langourously into the lagoon
A few inches per annum bearing Tom Swift
Down to the Doges. Vernon and its dead
Ends and no vistas and supermodels
In their sunglasses and autumn exile
Like the four figures in “The Mystical
Marriage of Saint Catherine” (attrib.
Parmigianini) seemingly torn
From a glossy and glued to the abyss:

Everywhere at once I must be with you!

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

personal

If I stop and concentrate on the knot in my chest that I’ve been carrying around for the past several months, I could break into pieces on the sidewalk. Nothing feels good anymore.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

I read this to a class at my two-year college a couple years ago, and I return to it this morning:

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.

Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Resisting Arrest

A year and a day later the wolf stopped
by as planned. He made conversation
about this and that but you could tell
from the way he favored his gums that all was
not well. Later the driving pool shifted.
I had no idea that you were planning
to stage an operation but it’s all right
this time. Then I read your account and
was dully impressed, right at the edge
of the sea where the land asserts itself.

He told a cheering crowd the infighting was over
at least for that day. They had more affairs
to remember than just that one time. Why,
he went over it and that was that. Plethoras
to be announced, etc. You’re telling me.

Warming to his theme he brought us in
as though we belonged. Ma and I
decided to wait it out but here again
he was unyielding, hoping to lure a big-name
retailer on the strength of our fevered gain
over the past months of quasi-activity,
dark with relative distress. That proved uncertain
and doesn’t smash it all. They liked what they heard.

No one wanted to shoulder responsibility
for the times and to slog off to uncertain
destinies in fiberglass pilot houses.
I had no idea that you meant it to be early.
The fatal tarnish of the everyday
groans and incites mobs to splendor
and wrongdoing as though a tissue of sleeping cars
were to upbraid dawn. They asked me to read
off a result or temper a calamity like I was involved
in the unfolding reaction with everything
else, they wanted me to reside at 478 Pavilion Avenue
and the story would resolve itself munificently.

Not in my receding horsepital. I paid
my dues to the city and look
how out on a limb I am and you could guess
this too, you could plan more strategically.
That’s all for now kid. Drop me a line sometime,
seriously.

Survivor’s Guilt

How I’ve changed may not be apparent.
I limp. Read and write, make tea at the stove
as I practiced in rehab. Sometimes, like fire,
a task overwhelms me. I cry for days, shriek
when the phone rings. Like a page pulled from flame,
I’m singed but intact I don’t burn down the house.

Later, cleared to drive, I did outpatient rehab. Others
lost legs or clutched withered minds in their hands.
A man who can’t speak recognized me
and held up his finger. I knew he meant
One year since your surgery. Sixteen since his.
Guadalupe wishes daily to be the one before. Nobody
is that. Sometimes, like love, the neurons just cross fire.
You don’t get everything back.

Do Not Tell Me Your Name

Do not tell me your name
why you came to town
what you do on Sunday
your favorite poet
                    movie
                    comic strip
your age and next of kin
         in case of  accident.

Say instead that I am warm
let your touch talk
let the motion in the darkness speak
then go away if you must
but not while I’m looking.

somewhat personal

I have my writing organized first by prose and verse, then by “completed” and “incomplete,” and then by year. My recorded poems go back to 2008, and my prose goes back to 2006.

After skimming over the files chronologically, I am so unabashedly pleased to see how much I have improved over the years, never mind my grimacing at what I was submitting to community college anthologies in 2009.

I feel a rare happiness. That’s all.