Category: Exhuming old stuff

Memory XVII

A sweet smell of dying flesh stops us at the door.
It seems to be coming from the linen closet, but we’re not
fooled at all. Not at all. The flowers droop.

Some of us whimper at the sound of you, whirring
and sucking, curled and old in your hospital bed,
tubes and catheters and IVs running into you.

Not even chemo will keep you forever. We’re not one
to hold a grudge, after all, we were only small when
you hurt us so. Our wounds have scarred nicely.

But none of us are surprised to see these three
witches perched, hovering over your bed. After all,
it’s not like we’re concerned with your eternal soul…

The youngest of the three with bloody hands holds
a cup of water to your sucking lips; her job was finished
long ago. The spindle lies glittering in her lap.

We can barely see her as she whispers, dark
braid swaying, the story of your birth into your hungry
withered ears. We can hear your breath catch.

The second is round as life, and her tapestry is
so long that it rolls out the door. Some of us stumbled
crossing its folds and tangles on the way in.

She peers deeply into its swathes of color, thin
fingers unravel a worn grey thread from the rich
tangle of future threads. It hums in her fingers.

We see the second look long lastingly at you
as she hands her strand of grey thread from across
her loom to the crone with silver hairs upon her chin,

who is cackling over black basalt blades, crouching there
grim and furious, oh-so-ready to snip at the last
the very last inch of thread; unless she’s trying

to decide when to snip, which shuddering breath to cut
short. Moon drops are sliding from our eyes,
we promise. Feel the slime of our eyes upon your cheek,

and rejoice at our devotion. For you are no legend,
no Arthur to be shuffled off by three bright queens to Avalon.
There’s no return for you once the thread’s been cut.

Even we could decide the hour of your end.
See this length of electrical cord, plunging deep
into grids of power: one swift yank and you’re dead.

All we’re saying: if someone gave this line
a tender yank, a loving pull, a flirting tug
your dainty heart-contraption would go all sputtery,

just another broken cog in your old fleshpot.
But we’re not so unkind. We love you yet. We love
your withered and drying face, love your raspy

breathing, love your spittled lips and memories of you.
But we promise: when those witching shadows of all-night
crowd around unbroken and leave you gibbering

as you name each and every ghoul, we promise,
then you shall be utterly and truly alone.
our squeaky toys and sharp balloons and buckets

bright of daisies and pansies and violets
will all desert you. These neon or lackadaisical
lights aren’t so flattering: your face’s like pasty dough

marmalade or old sea chalk. You don’t have any fishing left in you.
Those old scissors are scraping back for a final cut,
screeching and we press our hands tight against our ears.

Oh, and now the old hag’s laughing:
those clunky slicing terminal scissors are closing
cutting close your last breath-hoard.

Quick! catch it fast in your sack—forget the hag:
she’s already wandering, wonders where her next child’s
gonna be, sawing air with blushing blades—don’t sigh.

Keep the last breath safe and soft in ashes and dust.

***

Huh. Wow. I guess I was pretty angry when I was younger.

Memory XVI

glittering sausages are gloating through my dreams
my nightmare cites are built of glittering sausages
and sausage people: sausage men and sausage women
catch sausage taxis on the crowded sausage streets

they shout sausage words and betray their sausage meanings.
all the sausage phrases seem scripted by committees
of scratching sausage writers: pale with sausage fluorescence
as they strive for dramatic or comedic sausage.

sausage stage directions dribble off the page and sausage
thespians recite their sausage lines and drum the
sausage boards with huge bulbous sausage feet
while hunched sausage techies scurry

and cinema projectors are throwing huge sausage
images into stark relief onto pale silver sausage screens:
hushed sausage audiences inhale large pails of
sausage popcorn and red strands of sausage licorice.

***

I have no idea why sausages would be gloating, but I’m kind of glad they are. I’m a vegetarian now, so maybe I was just working through some stuff. I’ve noticed that I was playing around a lot with what happens to words when you repeat them a lot. I’m glad I worked through that particular phase. Still, I think a city of sausage-y things is pretty funny.

Memory XV

floating his tired head on visions of the past
(airline food settling deeply into the stomachs)
dreaming of dirty bedsheets and laundry slippers
(a thousand miles to the south of his new home)
he says: “please go away. I’m minding my own business.
(she reads over his shoulder, tasting words)
“Now and you can please depart: but please
(her eyes are glistering in the pillowlight)
“to ignore the iguana or the rhino lying senseless
(the remote lies heavy in his hand, tv blaring)
lying turgid, collapsed upon the middle of the floor.”

***

XIV is missing too. I traveled a lot on business when I was younger.

Memory XIII

(numbering the oceans of the sea)
left-handed shadows are so much more
comforting while circling with pain and darkness
those tiny puddles of the world
(lights out lights out)
pill-popping to nod myself
but even so the echoes of the clock
whir out through the crunching hours of the night
poor little sad little thing:
a broken duck, dragging its mangled wing, arrived too late
(tension hums along my spine)
all the bread was gone from heaven,
quacked away in a frenzy of feathers
“Old woman, bread woman:
“can’t you see! can’t you see the cross-eyed
“duckling dragging its slow way to you;
“hope dogging it’s all-gasping:
“but you are gone. you have no bread for crippled ducks.”
the flock departs, as the broken one arrives.
memories scare the dreams away:
did my eyes weep huge crocodile tears?
did I sniffle for a broken beast?

***

There was this one winter when I really started confronting my demons in a serious way. It involved some brain meds, which I felt super ambivalent about at the time, but, in retrospect, helped me a great deal. I worked for a little while in this office park that had a duck pond in the middle of it. One day, I watched this old woman feeding bread to some ducks. The ducks swarmed over, ate all the bread, and then this poor duck with a messed up wing finally got there only to find the bread all gone. I was sad about this for a while so I ended up writing this thing about it. I guess I’m still a little sad about it.

Memory XI

so there he was
that dirty old bird, there he was
sitting on the head of that iron-works statue
that miserable metal secretion:
a tribute to the dead and uninspiring of long years past.
hopping and tripping and skipping along that iron hat-brim,
that iron corn-cob, that iron-works of a nose
and pecking ferociously at the bouquet of stale roses tucked between the statue’s arms akimbo—that behemoth contraption, still-works, iron-works of a man.

azure-breasted, gold-plated, -beaked and be-clawed
this soiled aurora borealis bird clucked and chuckled and squawked.
the sad and tired student of human nature, sitting on a bench,
taking a break from his studies
watched this quivering feathered fury fluttering and frying and coocooing itself.
“what an odd, toodly, grimacing bird of a bird,”
the student thought, or rather the thought came to him.
his half-moon-glasses slipped down his nose and he did nothing,
his upper vision smearing into a runny blurriness:
jogger, viking, thief…
soldier, doctor, priest…
It could be anyone walking by,
but that bird—those clacked and clenching claws—
and its feathers were soon parted and the colors bled and bled
spreading across the dripping iron,
feathers settling down about the feet and waist of the statue.
the student found himself knee-deep in blue and red and purple feathers:
those off-puttings of a depraved and balding hopping-mad bird of a feather.

now, those glasses, those crutchy protuberances,
slide fully off his nose, slip down his shirt-front and off his legs,
crinkling on the ground.
and now his lined and wrinkled world is smoothed over
hard and harsh details blearing into a distance
and this gives him comfort, comfort he thought he’d lost.
and the bird, sees him there, sees him blinking—
tears are running down his nose—
haply happily in the morning delight.
this bird flaps down in all its glory,
flaps down and pecks out this student’s eyes.
“oh how delightful,” the student sighs
and settles into the sleep of the dead.

***

I don’t remember anything about writing this one, but I’m fascinated by it.

Memory X

so the thing’s all worn and wiggled and it’s saturnine
and rather sad and the dionysian thing
has worn itself out, worn its happy nose to a bare nubbin:
when you squeeze that red thing it won’t go honk,
how sad.
and the clown’s face is sad, beneath all that white paint,
that big white face, those big red lips, those big blue eyes
and those big red cheeks:
they’re all so fake and flimsy that a thousand carnival barkers
can’t keep it afloat.
sinky sinky, he’s morphine sinky and his eyes are all all a’brim,
all a’brim with sink tears and before he’s done,
he’s drowned.
a drowned clown. how sad.

how’d he get to this sorry state, this Ukrainian clown?
well, a voice spoke to him, calling:
huddle now, you yearning pumpkins, to be free
or something: and these words:
these happy, deceptive words, these utterly mercurial words
(disappearing quicksilver down the drain)
did fry and frizzle around the edges of his brain,
his hot griddle-pan head,
possessing him with dreams of the Western Lands,
those magical lands where the sun comes to rest.
words which burned acid holes in his brain,
leadpoisoning holes, that rotted his brain
with dreams of hope and glory and money.
and all his electrochemical wiggles danced in one direction then.
he was crazy as a cart-horse then, with his dreams of the West.

so as a cart-horse he came, and as a cart-horse he stayed,
and wicked wise old men came at him,
rode his back with carrots and sticks
and measuring tapes and forms filed in triplicate,
garbage heaps and dirty wonderful words, tv,
beautiful women he would never have, beautiful cars
he would never drive, beautiful houses he would never,
not ever, live within. beware them, cart-horse clown!
beware those secret ghosts who steal your soul,
your happiness and hope, your delirium and dream!
you’re smarter than that, you’re not that silly:
don’t let those olde money cats count you out:
jump in that heap of sorrow and they’ll be at you,
eating your weeping and your sorrow: jigging on your grave.

but he died inside when his dreams flew away and vultures
squatted around his bed, a cardboardbox with tv and glue.
but then cheap, sharp moments filled his head with damaged joy.
and that was that.

***

I guess I had a sense, even in my idealistic youth, that the US of A wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Why Ukrainian? I don’t know. I’d been reading a lot of Russian literature I think.

Memory IX

doubly worse, or even triply:
that’s what it’s like this time and the next and the next and forever.
it’s this drinking, this carousing, this wild night
that wriggles and churns like wormsin that old milky soul of his
(or hers, I forget)
and but this time it will be better,
they say.
they whisper in their hundreds of indistinct rather melancholy voices,
this time won’t be like last time.
but we would be a fool to believe her,
to trust him.
to have faith.
foolishness.

yes, but in spite of this shortcoming,
this unbridgeable gulf between—
in spite of those quivering nightmare tendricles,
those gleaming liquid poisons—
between us and them,
yes, even with and in and because of those,
there is a chance at some kind of an awakening,
a break from this dark dream world.

***

I don’t know what happened to VIII either. I think I drank too much one night. If this poem isn’t argument against drinking too much while being inclined toward melancholy, I don’t know what is. The state I like least when drinking: being drunk, but not wanting to be in that state any longer, waiting to sober. That’s incredibly tedious.

Memory VII

weak green eyes blink noncommittally down the stairs,
those old rastafarian stairs,
those winky and slinky downstairs.
and the ragged shoes go clatter-clatter down those stairs.

and at the bottom, for a flash of an ounce of a glimmer—
the time bomb stopped—
the wise and cranky gentleman twirled:
presented his velveteen rabbit to you
plus his hat and his coat and his trousers and socks
and then he cuddled up his nose to you
as he stood whiskery in short pants,
there.

yes, yes, and so he stood
pinching his mustachios, peering at you in the gloom
and stacks and stashes of hordes of books
loomed around and all about you
tilting and filling this old and revered hallway
this tired and happy bookstore
with its damp walls and its mildewed ceiling fans
and it’s be-spidered corners and creaking floors.
normally a happy time, but this night
(and I was there)
there appeared some writing on a wall
and the libros sweated a penchant sort of dread
and it was overwhelming (I could see it in your eyes),
far moreso than the leering gentleman in shorts…

but as you waited, waited for the other one to drop,
those book titles all lost their meanings,
their covers bled together until
all the words and pictures and letters and all
melted together and dripped to the floor.
they slipped through our skin:
we couldn’t speak them fast enough.
we nearly drowned in words that night.

***

I don’t know what happened to VI. Perhaps I skipped it, just to be whimsical. That seems like something I might have done. This was inspired by a very strange and vivid dream that I had. A dream about following an old man down some stairs. Then I added some other stuff. Sometimes in a dream you’re a you and an I. The books melting was the other part of the dream.

Memory V

All she ever said, all he ever said, all they ever said together was “gorgonzola” and the rain came and blew all their leaves away. And with tears in her and pleading streaks of madness, she whispered, “gorgonzola” and with a tight-lipped sincerity and an utter devotion to “truth”, he spoke: “gorgonzola”. with her eyes bugging and her face flushed and a crazy tingling on the edges, she chortled, “gorgonzola”. this time his hands were clutching whitely the edge of his wooden chair and his face was growing warm and he felt his grip on things slipping as he stammered, “gorgonzola”. and she laughed and laughed and laughed and chuckled and giggled and with tears streaming just barely managed to get out, “gorgonzola”. and with a rictus grin he shouted and screamed and though mostly incoherent it was quite clear that it was “gorgonzola”. and so she left, without another “gorgonzola” between them.

***

I like cheese ok? Also the word “gorgonzola”. I guess what I was struggling (and possibly failing?) to get at here is how what words people say doesn’t matter so much as how they say them. I had this idea, when I was a kid, that if I could just find the right words to say, I mean, the exact right ones, then everything would be ok. I think I was probably struggling to find an exit to that concept (not a helpful one for the anxiety-prone!). 

If I were to do this over (and I won’t) I think I’d probably dial down the drama for something a little more subtle. I’d still keep the word “gorgonzola” though.