Poets are the refuge of every wounded nation

So in my storytelling class, this thing that is changing my life, I have been unraveling myself.

The first week I told about a blue station wagon that was the chariot of God, that held me like a home and an ark and grew apples in the glovebox.

The second week I told about my great-grandmother who was a sharpshooter, a benediction of blue eyes and how my baby brother is always burning down the world.

This week I told about growing green plants and being swallowed, by whales and religious ideology and about the holiness of good endings.





I want to write these stories down, I want to put these waves of words for you to see them but
something
some
fundamental impermanence
or
wanting to cherish this natural fact of connecting through words to ears,
some
forgettingness on my part or something
stops me.

Give me a call.
I'll tell you a story

It'll blow you away, honest.

I'm thoughtful
but not annoyingly so
(I think)

I love to swing, especially at night,
and I believe that is one of those things that everyone loves to do
and loves to think that they are very unique and profound in this love
and get all silly and sweet about going to the park because it makes them think of secret
nighttime starlight swinging
yes?

I like to talk about learning to swing dance,
but I would never make you learn to swing dance if you didn't want to
I would be happy just talking about it
and shuffling around in the kitchen with the lights out
pretending that someday we'll learn
together
maybe next tuesday

the most common word in my vocabulary
(aside from the uninteresting ones)
is ADVENTURE, followed by YES

and I love to sit on the porch and drink out of glass jars and pretend to be old
and I will talk intelligently and politely to your parents for hours and hours about
their lovely old clock in the hallway,
what a delicious stew this is
Oh, do you play harmonica?
Will you show me?

Sometimes I get all warm and nervous and I sleep in the bathtub

I can drink whiskey without a chaser but I'd rather not

I will live vicariously through your beard and the fluted cups of your ears

I'm allergic to nothing

I dream
frequently and vividly

I know how to bake bread
and
find the best mushrooms
sew a button and start a fire and look people in the eye and grow seeds and walk a straight line and swim a little and fall asleep quickly and drive long distances and make tea and
tie my shoes
and
a couple of other things

I have a sweet face and a fragile body



I
miss you.

At the 164th reunion of Delta Kappa Epsilon
Wrigley and Colgate wander in clasping hands like lovers
like sweet minty lovers

Dick Clark declined a position at the victrola
abdicated to Dan Quayle and
God, it was a wonder to see him dance.

When you see the group picture,
You'll have to look at it good and long
the composition of this crowd is
flawless, inexplicably
delicious

Nothing seasons the stew of a rich white man celebration like

seeing Nat Hawthorne and Rutherford Hayes,
in varying degrees of corporeality
lighting each other's cigars

Nothing goes better with astronaut and hawk of war than
salt of the earth

Look again.
That goddamn beautiful jingoist Roosevelt has
never stopped smiling.

Never will.

When the internet's best friend Frank asked for advice to give to all of us who are graduating, here are some of the good things he got.

I would like it very much if you would give me more advices, because I need it all quite a lot.

( And here they are. )

My top goal in life--

Okay, my top specific goal, not like
"satisfaction"
or
"seeing my family happy and healthy"

--is to create a poem of complete originality
a singularity of anti-banality
devoid of any scrap of a trace of a cliche'

But aside from that top layer where I'm eighteen and think I'll achieve exactly every amazing escapade I can thing of undertaking,
I'm not really counting on it.

I try, but
I keep coming back to the same old record grooves I've traced before and before and before

like
jesus.

Escapism.

A cold glass of water,

The bones in your fingers
and
Substance abuse.

Suffocating self-doubt,
and love.
Maybe love.

Oh God oh god we thought we had forever but our whole life was over before we even could fill our lungs for the first time
It wasn't the endless litany of hours we swore we were promised
It was just the second it took for God to snap his fingers and we were back in the ground like we'd never even sprouted, it was all gone and over like you took a roll of film that was our lifetime and ripped it off the spool like it was nothing at all
Like all the thousands and thousands of muggy summer four o'clocks and as many winter sunrises and enough afternoons breathing in each other's breaths weren't ever there
We swore we would have enough to last for eternity

Think how long it takes you to catch your breath after drowning.

It's as fluid as blood and twice as indelible
No matter how much you matter to me it doesn't warp time
No matter how much time we wrap each other in, it doesn't change the fact that time
is subject to gravity and the inertia you exert by existing
you massive force, you inarguable compulsion
You dense and inverted celestial vacuum, your matter warps time
beyond recognition
beyond sanity

You get six breaths and then eternity is over
I know, I counted

Just let it serve as a reminder that the only constant is that nothing stays the same and that sometimes the only choice is to evolve already and crawl out of the mud even if it feels like you can't breathe, it will all be over if you don't leap at chances like it's what you were born to do.
No matter how stapled shut your chest feels and no matter how dry your eyes become,
remember that this is what all of time and space conspired to birth in you.
No matter what else, just inhale and

breathe deep while you still have time.

come hell or high water

survival is your birthright.

I'm planning on saving the rainforest and uncovering the mysteries of consciousness and also making the world a brighter place through really gigantic installation pieces and awe-inspiring prose.

Except, I won't really do anything like that because in 2012 Quetzalcoatl is going to return and we will ascend to a higher vibrational realm where we don't have to worry about food and all we will do is drift around incorporeal and revel in each other's touch.

This is how it's going to happen.

I don't think this is in any way complete or finished.








Allen Ginsberg found Walt Whitman in his grocery store because he knew where to look, right
in between the tomatoes where they exchanged holy communion
as well as they knew how.

I must say things never play out quite as smoothly all the time
and never the same way twice,
SO when I didn't know where to look at all Ginsberg was outside my supermarket in the rain
unlaced shoes filling up with water
It isn't a grocery store, it isn't a market, the produce is so far from fresh it left both of our mouths a little dusty and disappointed
and I felt as though we should exchange some rites
that there was a ritual I should know that would dictate the progression of our encounter besides

these tomatoes are hardly ripe enough
&
I think I've had better

But
we were fulfilling an archetype dictated by eons of uncomfortably-shod half-awake dreamers
standing incarnate across from the post office under the awning of the produce department
letting our shoes fill up like the bellies of whales

hands perpetually half-cupped like receiving alms, like
receiving car keys, like
supplicating our individual pantheons to not let our futures play like our pasts did
please
cupped like we're holding tomatoes
Elbows cocked like defending ourselves, knees bent as we slog down the sidewalk,
looking for garbage bins,
looking for umbrellas and galoshes,
looking for one single porch that wasn't dark when we got there
Shutting our four eyes until bursts of light skitter across out eyelids,
looking for the country full of ripe wheat and endless promise that leapt from Whitman's visions and opening to dirty sidewalks--still unfounded--

Still, Walt Whitman, our bread is only bread and our rain is just rain
and our dream is unconscious and unfounded
still.
The porchlights turn themselves on as we walk past them
The automobiles resting over dry squares of asphalt are not even idling in the least bit.
All the ashes dusting your forehead are running down your face, Allen Ginsberg, and there isn't an empty trash can for miles.
Nobody dims their headlights for us, and even the grass looks pallid today.
Every torn newspaper and bottlecap inhabiting the gutters tries to extract the promise that dwells in our diaphragms
Streamlining magnetic in crisp 12-point letters that read
/Babylon has fallen
/Your ship has sailed
/Nothing is left on the vines your grandfather planted

They are trying to pull out the hope sewn inside of our lips, Allen Ginsberg.
They are trying to pull out our teeth.
/Everything is a naked trellis
/Overripe wheat lying burst in razor-cut rows like comb
TEETH
/like seven hours of white lines on the mirror that used to hang over your mother's bed
/So tight you could bounce quarters
EMPTY
/as eye sockets and the bellies of bell towers
/ever and ever amen

--Endless columns of type are still pervious to dim laughter
and
A portent of a herald of a comet
blue tail drawing notepaper lines over jet-stream and crow-clouds can end the inert spell of
bottlecap-newspaper-brokenglass-deadend-guttertalk
the pressure changing like a universal exhale just as we're holding our breath for the vision of
         a pine box with the lid nailed down
         wrapped in film and painter's tape
         full of boxsprings and heart and alcohol holding pinecones in stasis
         a veritable eden of heirloom tomato seeds
         marigolds
         kernels of corn and barley and hermetic wheat clusters
to shudder like tectonic laughter
to burst from the red-clay soil
to twine through locks and bolts and tear under the doors of the post office
The brass and marble will be torn asunder with the force of the sprouting, Allen Ginsberg

I anticipate policy change, Allen.
I expect the rivers to swell with fishes and the rain to let up
I expect an improvement in local produce,
       expect we will never again be disappointed in this way, our mouths will be overfull of
       fruit that tastes like the wind from car windows and amber waves of grain,
I expect I will see you again, Allen Ginsberg,
I expect I will see you
often.

all this edgy living, well, it seems to have twisted you in knots,
like
a party game, or a bad case of shingles
like a cocktail mixed by someone with
no thumbs, all middle fingers with chipped nails.

And what does that say about you?
these distant, empty-house parties you light upon like moths
made of ennui and blunt ashes,
where all the guests suggest icebreakers and then give you herpes
offer you an antibiotic with your dry martini
steal your shoes.
This isn't fun after all the lightbulbs start to flicker
--not like romantic carnival flicker, like
I'm going to have a seizure
just got hit with a brick sort of flicker
and then they all go out like you do.
Just catching some air, it's cool, I'll be right back

I know when you do that you are holding this picture in your head
probably a polaroid because you know they don't sell those anymore
that when you escape to the veranda
or whatever passes for one these days,
there, red plastic cup dangling gracefully from one
hand
nails all chippy
there will be that girl in a wind-tossed scarf and a skirt who understands your need to breathe

once in a while.
(she will maybe have black glasses on her delightfully freckled nose and you will know
in your heart of hearts that your prescriptions match exactly)
the damned light flicker will become a symphony of undiluted sex and the dog in the neighbor's
yard will howl backup in 4/4 time and it's the most reassuring signature imaginable.

Your eyes will meet, your hearts will swell and you will talk late into the night like sleep is a handfull of carnival tickets you can spend tomorrow,
the grass will never get wet except with the joy that drips golden from the crowns of your twin heads, because dew has nothing on the shared stunning of two people who had never given up on finding their missing puzzle piece, and the finding, and the interlocking satisfaction therein

and then you will buy a house with a flat roof

and lots of hanging plants and you will have cabinets full of
honey and bran flakes and Louis Armstrong on vinyl discs

perhaps you two can adopt a cambodian orphan together and send her to private school
and frequent art galleries and farmer's markets and walk outside in the
morning's dewless grass
and have no need for shoes and you can stop taking the antibiotics

because clean living will heal your every cell.



No.
Wait.
You are still on the veranda, you still have a cocktail that is half cigar smoke and half dislike and

the girl isn't there,
she's in a muted movie playing in someone's perpetually deserted family room. Your glasses
have thumbprints on them and your shirt is made of glass cutters.


Damn.

Wait,
freeze, the wind is still there and the dry ice clinging to your impractical clothes is almost
gone

the girl is imaginary but the hanging plants are true as ever,
no macrame basket holder was ever knotted with more conviction
no half-melted cooler ever leaked with such intent.
nobody's watching, you can turn yourself inside out for a second and let your lungs fill up like
they're supposed to, let all the nervy little tendons under your skin twine like forsythia up the
trellis of your fingers,
let
that breath you've been holding since the second grade escape with a rustle like wrapping paper
When God stumbles out of the house all fuzzy quiet and asks to share your seat on the sidewalk,

say yes and trade drinks with him.
Let the envelope of pretending your life is a picture on someone else's empty freezer
unlick itself, and put the stamps back in your pocket.
bad luck was your party favor, and the best thing about those is that no one expects you to

keep it.
put it in the recycling bin on the curb with the crushed corona cans and ironic dinosaur napkins, pull your lungs back inside your cagey ribs and zip yourself back shut,
ask God to do his thing with the light and the darkness and when the lightbulbs quit flickering fill your eyes with them.
Rome wasn't built in a day, right, so this absorbing process can last as long as you like.
let the brightness crawl its way into the space where your heavy sigh used to rest,
let it fill your throat all golden like the honey in infinite imagined cupboards
when it reaches the roots of your hair and the ends of your ragged fingernails and lets you ask
yourself a question,
when that trumpet-playing record voice spools out your ears like a victrola humming earthquakes
and says

"Hey buddy, I've got a great game we can play,"

say yes, say okay
as long as we can play without shoes, that will be great.

I want to write a love poem to the good things in my life
to my little yellow lighter and ripe mangoes and the kids that sit in the sun with me,
you warm my heart.

To the big tree outside my window and the raindrops that drip off it when I walk outside
Your eyes are stars and you make me weak in the knees.
Oh, painting teacher and concerts in the city and my best friend Rachael,
you make me feel like I can be so much better
you make me want to cry, in a good way,
and I can't even tell you how much you make me
love.

My calculus class,
Ours is a rocky relationship but I
cherish you, I
will miss you when you are gone.

It's an awkward thing to mention in a love poem but my love is honest so
Hydrocodone,
I don't know how I ever, ever lived without you
dear.

Dad,
Dad.
I am counting, absolutely counting on some sort of earth-shattering apocalypse
preferably of the zombie or painless variety
so we can die on the same day and never have to deal with losing each other.
There must be some more tender way to say how much you are my heart but I promise I
mean it in the sweetest way possible.

Boy that always tells me he loves my hair
and girl I met for two hours and then kissed under the fire escape,
I love you the way I love sunshine
looking at it out of the corners of my eyes,
feeling the warmth that rises in my face when I think about it
maybe getting burnt a little sometimes
love.

The Garden of Eden,
Tall man on the subway,
Dr. Guffey and his beard and his manner of speaking about bioethics,
the way I dream when I go to sleep with a fever
love.

thrift store owner who doesn't make me pay for sweaters
new crayons,
quiet library patrons
cafeteria lady who smiles when I forget my number
love.

gentle parole officer
girl who cries during children's movies
baby ducks
tomato soup,
You.
you,
you
are
precious.

Ever see the way warm feet hate to touch a cold floor,
or watched the way a body moves when it's barely woken up in the middle of the night,
pulling the heavy weight of a self, heard all those tiny snaps and groans of little joints
in the arch of foot or spine and a release of air, a crack that's not quite a sigh,
but a notice of movement, a post-it note scribbled with a dry felt-tip
a leaflet stapled to a pole or magneted to the cluttered fridge
/this is a body/
/we are moving through it/
through the gentle curve of a shoulder blade leading down

Now magnify your lens and zoom in to the sweet, fragile web of skin between fingers,
the creases where that hand has bent at the wrist a million, million times,
once for every lovely dark eyelash
one for every hard knuckle
one for every freckle and taut wrinkle of skin and blood cell and taste bud

now zoom out, broaden your view
appreciate the artful sweep of calf to thigh, smooth cup of patella and basin of ilium
fragile indent at the base of the throat, room for a thumb and no more,
Now watch as the undercurrent of anatomy changes, the shift that comes when the teeth
show up, the light in the two dark eyes when that slow smile creeps across the face.
Look at that. Just...look. With your two eyes and your gentle mind, the warm and
happy furrows of occipital and temporal, watch the change that turns solid bone and
slumped muscle into a miracle of strength and motion and song and heat and damp
breath all foggy on the back of your neck
and a shiver when those hard, white, ordinary teeth brush your earlobe and an
ordinary infusion of H2O and CO2 becomes a real soul

living in a human casing, an honest breathing mass of flesh that can't wait to see
what's behind your eyes and inside the hollow of your throat
look into that face, that coil of artery and wiry tendons and soft flesh over a hard

ribcage, fully solid carpals and metacarpals and a brain and heart that tick with
knowledge and intuition and fierceness
shut your eyes and smell that smell and feel the perfect knobs of an arched spine
lick your dry lips and place them gently against a smooth, hot forehead
feel the steady pulse of that inviting outstretched wrist and then you tell me there is

no god.

Remember that time when you were seven, and you flew off the swing?
You knocked out two of your teeth and didn't even care because you knew
they'd grow back.
But now you're ten, and you're more careful when you swing.
Maybe you don't go so high.
Maybe you don't swing at all,
Now you are twelve and pragmatic, and swings are the last thing on your mind.
You're fifteen and mad and wishing you could swing and swing and throw yourself forward and knock out your all teeth without caring, cause when you're that young,
they're replaceable
but now you know that you've bitten off more than you can chew, and you're stuck
with every one of the sharp
incisors
molars
and canines in your adolescent mouth,
and you open the cabinet in the kitchen and reach past all the wines that never get opened to the half-empty bottle of vodka in the back left-hand corner
the tall, narrow bottle that always feels cold, that sends a shiver up your spine and makes you pray to the not-god that you'll never need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous like your father?
And there, you're swingin' out into the void and everything is as easily forgettable as your teeth in the grass, and the chain-rattle of the swingset and the sharp mulch under your knees

I don't remember what happens next
whether you lose it, fall hard and knock every sharp white tooth out of your red-eyed,
innocent face
or float gently to the ground, and sleep like a child who never knew about monsters or pavement
(or divorce or bloody noses or biological warfare or wolverines or free radicals or herpes or hellfire or high school or hand grenades)
or hangovers

but since this is our memory
and I do think that we both have quite enough pain already
let's say you slid to the floor without a sound, and let's add some lemon to the vodka
hell, we can even add a glass, and a bottle of aspirin on the counter for the morning
a blanket around your shoulders
and a little more tolerance than you usually could hope for
in this memory we share, remember me in it?
How I came in through the screen door without letting it slam,
and we slept on the kitchen floor,
under the table,
and how when you woke up you were seventeen
you were taller
and I had little diamonds stamped on my face from the tile,
and when you smiled all your teeth were still there
and a few more,
tucked away in the corners of your mouth like an irrepressible secret
there, something new:
Wisdom teeth.

And then one day you just wake up and the substance of everything has changed-
all of a sudden
(and how can I say this without sounding trite,)
colors are deeper and the sky is brighter and words whispered in your ear are truer
and the air slips into your lungs easier
oh how sweet and simply perfect, to be allowed to breathe again.
(and okay my happiness is triter but what can I say)
Now the world bends to let you into it, you don't have to push so hard anymore.
And the little green things pushing out through the dirt are no longer poison ivy and they don't snag your sneakers when you step outside, lightfooted and dewy,
now they spread their baby leaves and say
"Good. We have waited for you to come outside."



( This is going to be a glorious summer. )

‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off'

when my eyes blink open and adjust
to the sun-motes and moth-eaten
weather-beaten curtains drawn tight round the dusty window
fingerprints and initials smeared into hiroglyphics
and the manuscript by the bed is a dead sea scroll
the sea-smell goes away when you wake up
your arm thrown over your face
a gesture of defeat and protection
from the sun or a family that hurt you
tied their sin around your neck and drove you into the wilderness
All I can see is the red glow from the tip of whatever you're smoking
unfamiliar spark but it smells like all I've ever known
I know that smell it smells like you and like how it feels to wake up hopeless
foggy and hot
cheap and stoned and your mouth tastes like dry bones
waiting for God's wind, make the bones in my mouth an army
smoke rings circle around our ears
I don't remember checking in to this cheap hotel,
or tearing the pages from our Gideon bible but there they are
Ezekiel under the radiator
Exodus in the sink
black ink and words of christ in red
the rest of my life is the dirty water circling down the drain
Red circles round your eyes and inky fingers through your hair
when your eyes sear and run, the way the tigris and euphrates always run downhill
to eden
and your chest aches and burns
the same way that god can burn forever and never go out
I want to burn forever
and God, never go out

When they put that glass of wine on your new mattress and told you,
"Go ahead, move. Nothing you do is going to spill it,"
how did you feel?
Secure?
Or or like you've lost your place in the world?
/shit, all I know how to do is spill/
it's okay
you don't sleep a wink all night with this crisis of self looking you in your dark-rimmed eyes, that's okay
you won't disturb the wine any.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive God to be; and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

by Max Erhmann, 1927

Music fun:

Choose a band/artist and respond to the questions using only song titles of that band/artist.

Sufjan Stevens
1. Are you male or female: [Sister]
2. Describe yourself: [I Can't Even Lift My Head]
3. How do some people feel about you?: [They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhhh!]
4. How do you feel about yourself?: [I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight]
5. Describe an old girlfriend/boyfriend/interest: [Oh God, Where Are You Now?(In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)]
6. Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend/interest: [A Good Man Is Hard To Find]
7. Where are you?: [In the Devil's Territory]
8. Where would you rather be?: [Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, And I Shake The Dirt From My Sandals As I Run]
9. Describe what you want to be: [The Mistress Witch From McClure (Or, The Mind That Knows Itself)]
10. Describe how you live: [Kill]
11. Describe how you love: [We Are What You Say]
12. Share a few words of wisdom: [The Oracle Said Wander]

I don't know what's going on
for the smart kid, the smart sibling, the bright child I sure am confused a lot
I don't fucking ever know what's going on.
and all I ever do is sit around and do nothing and be jealous of people who get to do things and this jealousy, this horrible emotion is ugly and ill-fitting on me
like the clothes I have to wear on laundry day because everything else I own is sodden
and filthy from everything the world's thrown at me
but maybe, maybe, if I push all the right buttons
(warm wash cool rinse detergent softener large load gentle cycle)
then at the end of the day I can shake it all out and it'll be warm
and clean again
and nice smelling
and I can forget about these stupid things bothering me
and just breathe in deep
and go to sleep
and never wake up again.

I wish it happened more often
that the thing I step on
accidentally crushing with the waffle tread of my size seven sneakers
turns out
(happily), for once
to be nothing more than a husk of a leaf,
and that crackling crunch you hear is the sunny, cider-smelling feeling of fall
and not the crushing sound of breaking something irreplaceable
eggshells, teacups,
your heart, maybe
or someones value of me
(a vision of someone lovely and worthwhile quickly replaced by the thought of someone who doesn't even watch what their size sevens are coming down on top of, and how foolish of them)
and once something's crushed, well,
all the king's horses.
you know.

There's no going back.

Petulance.
Obscure metaphor.
This is my life.
Nothing is happening
and I want that to change
even to the point where I want to stir up happenings with a big stick
like hitting a beehive
something I despise in others
of course I overlook it in myself.
I'm on a desperate search for beauty
and all i see is my own reflected ugliness
in shop window, bathroom mirror, muddy puddle
and I don't know where else to look
cause all my senses are clogged
like those blue vent filters, you know the ones I mean,
that turn grey and mossy cause you always forget to replace them
and by you I mean me, of course
cause all I know how to do is forget all the things I most need to remember
and i never remember to change those darn things
they just sit there inside my walls, you know
picking up more dust from the air I keep taking in
breathe in
breathe out
breathe in
take a deep breath
not sigh, damn it, I said breath
I'm too young for all this.
and by all this I mean growing up yet.
I swear, everybody forgets that this part of life is so damn awkward
except me
you know, that's the one thing I always remember