Month: May 2018

Memory XXXII

It’s not always so treacherous on the way down
But why does it hurt so now?
Fists of pain and hurt and cruelty?
It’s there again, but it’s not, oh it’s not.
Regret is for the old: the young must go on and on and on
beyond the firboughs and the cold and the soul-stripping.
Beware it! This is no time for regret!
No time for lost loves.
No time for fauning and mooning and drooling over that past time.
That mould time when wet mould crept all about
and many-fingered spiders crawled everywhere.

{into:
a spider:
my very own sleeping shirt on my very own chest:
and I stood weeping, sobbing, screechinginmyhead
a quivering wriggling nightmare spider in my beshirted hand
those many-legs sending drips of terror crawling
up up up my arm and piercing that beating carbuncle
that red-pumping terror:
I was too too too to crush it
and I was alone so alone all alone
and you were asleep while the terror
scraped the walls out of my mind}

These darknesses don’t go away;
these shadows don’t crawl back beneath their rocks.
I’ve played dice with them before now,
stared into their grim sighs,
while tiddlywinks and razortrout and stud.
But they win.
I will not play chess with them.

***

Thankfully, I don’t think regret is for the old either. Also, this poem gets at the origin story of my arachnophobia–now dulled. Twice, I’ve woken up with a spider crawling inside of my shirt. One time, it was particularly traumatizing. Somehow, I’m not as freaked out by spiders anymore. I wouldn’t say we’re chums, though.

And that’s the last of my Memory poems. It’s been interesting going back and rereading them. I was pretty unhappy, generally, and I’m grateful that, as tough as things are sometimes, I’m mostly pretty happy and satisfied with my life. Go figure. :) Mostly, I think, it comes down to me not tormenting myself as much.

Try to be kind to yourselves, friends.

Memory XXXI

like the herring on my trouser cuff,
I can swim the two-step down to the corner stoop
kick it!
and drowse there in the summer summer sun
with my eyes spinning in my head
those boogas lining up to sing their sweetly

how’s this go again?
this tune?
this rummy tune?
I’ve forgotten you see
and my dreams have run together into a sticky malaprop
my words, my saucy words, my flimsy words
my barrier words are breaking open
breaking down, over-run by these eyes
bursting through the front door
ravishing the country maid and barreling
burbling and bursting out the back
the country’s not as tame as it used to be
sad
could be, the ducks have come home to roost
and to strew their dirty longings everywhere
their filthy desires
their muckraking swill

maybe the two-step’s not such a good idea after all

***

I like the idea of memories being like cracked eggs, with the yolks running out. At least, that’s what this makes me think of.

Memory XXX

patience, patience, patience, have patience
my cronies, my comrades, my curmudgeonlies:
this caffeine haze is dimming the light of our perceptions
do you like what we discuss here? now? soon?
beware the fiend who howls at the birthing of the moon.
do you hate the gregious flaws? the errors? the missteps?
wouldn’t blame you if you did: my heartmates
this statue smells of eros, cinnamon and lye.
it’s not pretty, by most lights, but that’s the light we’ve got
words and words and words spike through my brain
down my tongue and across the aether, to slip
(miscommunicadoed, as though on purpose)
into the labyrinthine curls of your ears—
and such pretty ears they are: I could kiss them—
where they incandesce and then flare out:
the wincing platitudes and summertime small-talk
cavations and exvacations of those bright caverns of darkness.
dispassion and fortitude are our only allies here.

an anecdote:
Feelflight the Featherman begged me:
“A doubloon, if you would be so kind:
“unleash the wonders of the wicked verm.”
whether or not he did so, nevertheless, regardless
I gave him a bus token out of town,
so that he might fly along the dusty interstates
and roam the collard plains and see the torn and tragic…

***

The higher these numbers get, the less I remember anything about them. I do like Feelflight the Featherman, though. 

Memory XXIX

jamaican japanese radio music

***

I don’t know either.

Memory XXVIII

the boy’s knee-high socks are crushed about his ankles
he’s been crawling in drain-pipes again
tut-tut, what a naughty boy he’s been
why’s he twisting his fingers behind his back like a scared little thing?
little boy, little boy: you’d better behave
ratchet your paper-thin door shut against the goblins:
oh don’t you just see him jump!
the goblins gonna getcha, if you don’t behave.
when your windows rattle, those are ghosts:
rattling their slithering selves outside.
on full moons, they can slide right inside on moonbeams…
is it a full moon tonight? why! I just think it is…
ghost kisses will turn your face into nothing but wrinkles.
the darken sleeps under your bed at night, oh yes,
and when the sun goes down his alarm clock whistles.
he’s yawning and blinking when your nightlight comes on,
all ready to roam through the shadows in your room.
the darken likes perching on pillows, especially yours.
why? oh, well they have a weakness for towheaded boys.
and you, my lad, are a towheaded boy. yes. yes, you are.

***

Look, it’s clear I read too many fairy tales as a lad.