Thirteen, what luck to have made it this far

Sooooo, guys. This is my like, show -offy poem for poets. This is about the Arawak people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arawak) that Colombus encountered when he first landed. It's written from their perspective, because so little of their culture has survived due to their lack of a written language. It uses the Fibonnacci sequence, (0, 1,1,2,3,5,8 and so on) and every line that's a Fibonnacci number is a lie.

We Are Happy to Have You Here

There is plenty of of gold, bleeding from the mountain like gods' blood. Yes. We will fill the hawk's bell for you and we can do it until the stars unspiral.

(we find your ships impressive.
even now we are speaking of your swords in hushed tones, in caves.)

You were right, senor. We will make fine servants for your queen,
dressed in emeralds and moors-cloth. That is
if we don't sweat to death, bleed out in ways the court doesn't talk about.

The land here is good. You do not like the way we throw the seeds on the earth
trustinng that the arc of the universe bends towards justice and life.
Our games are complex. You will not bother to write down the rules.

When the dogs come, we will not run. Even as they eat
our children, we will lift our face to you, still trusting
your book, your greatness.

We did not go naked to offend you. The air is so warm
and the warmth hums around our bodies. We wish you would join us.

Your god sounds frightening. We will trust in the spirits
who speak to us without incense. Our spirits sound
like our dead sisters, yours sound like smallpox.

We do not regret welcoming you. It was a good decision.
We continue to prosper.

12, and so many to go

The Conversation Redirects Itself

Let’s not talk of love or chains or things we can’t untie.

Let’s talk instead about the world as a place to fall asleep

and link pinkies and promise to do nothing to disturb the sleep

of a woman about to give birth.

And talk sideways, about the diorama in the Museum of Natural Science

of a boy who died of pulmonary tuberculosis two thousand years ago

and how they discovered him with the bison hide still tucked around

his wasted body.

(let’s not talk about who tucked it, and if his mother was inconsolable)

Why don’t we talk about Norma Jean, and shooting stars

and how you can tell some things are going to crash and burn,

you just don’t know how.

We used to talk about dugongs and Falkland foxes and passenger pigeons,

we don’t anymore.

Instead, we talk about the Violent Femme and

take ten for everything, everything, everything

and the hitch of hope in your chest that feels like kickdrum and bass,

in the best way.

Let’s talk about those uncivil and unstable creatures

who are permanently banned from the zoo,

the bad influence girls who need their warmth a little less metaphorical

(duvets and hot water bottles, even in California).

The conversation redirects itself.

The things we don’t discuss are as powerful as the things we do,

There is so little left to be afraid of.

The city’s asleep and the world is ours. Come, see and be conquered.

Week 11

How My Mothers Talk To Me

I'm not terribly pleased with this, but I'm trying.

1.

Dear Niece,

Please stay in college

so you don’t have to get as exciting a job as mine.

Today a DLOM, a dear little old man, for those of you not in the know,

called my desk and wanted me to read off the baseball listings from the newspaper.

And he’s not even a subscriber.

2.

Colleen. Please get off the table.

You and I both know the administration does not hold with that.

Yes. You really can write.

Yes. I believe in you.

No. That should not go in your mouth.

Yes. If you were orphaned in a tragic car wreck,

I would adopt you.

(you could milk my goats and write me poems)

3.

I Just Want You TO Know That I LOVE YOU REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU DO

and JESUS LOVES you TOO.

Pray for the Second Coming OF CHRIST And Another Republican President.

I’ll send you some cookies I baked next week.

4.

Please shower more. And brush your hair more than once a week.

Are you taking the Vitamin D?

Be sure to send in the promissory note, it’s very important.

Are you sleeping enough?

Martha’s been watching me a lot.

Your furry Dad is off in the mountains somewhere.

Your sister’s off with the boyfriend.

I miss you.

Missed my first week

DAMN. I'll post two to make up for it, I promise. I was too bust having shenangins in San Francisco to retype the poem I wrote.

Nine

Ugh. Midterms. I should be doing them instead of posting this.


Cash Out and Get Out

Because sometimes I can hear the creek, but mostly I hear the freeway
Because my small and private pleasure are being marketed to focus groups
(and they aren’t testing well)-

I am cancelling the electricity, I am letting the dog run feral.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I’m not saving you.
You know this, the poet rescues nothing

All poets feed on forests. We grow bloated
on the exact light of midmorning, the sensation of preemptive grief,
love’s tangled footpaths through the heart.

If you want much of anything, cut the oaks down,
cut your mother and St. Sebastian and the house down.
Mulch it into the pen and paper that will give you permission to say this:

i’ve always felt like that treasured childhood memory
could’ve used a little extra poignancy, a touch
of extra melancholy. let me add some.

Verse eat, verse lies.
For every Grecian vase, a grandmother,
for every Howl, a child

The Hebrews thought seven was holy, I don't know why

Some people you miss more than others. Goodbye Bill Kalenius, you did better than most.
http://www.columbian.com/article/20090929/SPORTS02/709299935/COMMUNITY+SPORTS++VLC+founder+made+a+lasting+impression

Dead Rower Villanelle

I don’t understand why after you, things just didn’t stop.
Nothing has to be like this, stroke
after stroke after deathless stroke. Things
were sharper with you
around. Now? Even air feels like water

without you.
All those early morning lessons, and all I can remember are your instructions on the water;
to not fight it, how to move it, that the wanting will come in waves, about ripples and patterns. Stop
this, please. This feels too much like your elegy and I wanted to remember you for your stroke. Before all this breakdown, I’d ask how you did it. You’d sigh. There are more important things.

Let’s talk about your stroke,
the catch is still late. Damn memory, and the awful things
we hold on to. I keep remembering the water
and how you never really understood that storms could hurt even imperious you.
Please stop.

You taught me well. Some things
break down. You?
Never. Sure as the water
that stopped
you breathless every day, sure as your stroke.

I miss your broke down baseball cap, the lake’s water
at six in the morning, how you never stop-
stopped, I mean. I keep coming back to the wrong things.
Tenses will trip you,
like a stutter in your stroke.

After you leave, little things will break me. Fragments of things; your healthy hand and your licorice, you and your licorice, your smooth stroke over the water in holy cycles, ripples and patterns.

Six geese a laying, out of season

This is my take on the anatomically correct trend that swept lit arts last year. Mostly for Nikki.



The Anatomically Correct Love Poem

And you tell me that my heart will beat two billion times in my life
each beat an event as surely as the day
that the first amphibian looked at land with some kind of hopeful aspiration
is a red letter day on some god’s calendar.
Think about it, you tell me.

lub
Your first breath is demarcated by the right atrium gasping for oxygen depleted blood.
Your mother cries with relief

dub
Your nineteenth custard that summer on the boardwalk in Atlanta, before it burned down.
The right ventricle exhales drowned blood into your lungs and you learned how to smoke
that summer.

lub
Your first cliff dive. The Illinois river. Your toes, the edge. The light, the blue.
Your surrender. The left atrium swallows blood.

dub
Your failure, the last time you try to remember your son’s name. Your synapses struggle
valiantly, like an old Lab struggling to stand. Your left ventricle releases blood, still hopeful.


Everything moves in cycles and systems, you tell me.
The smoking instructor made your son,
the blood that began in your bones moves your legs to break them.


The heart is a muscle the size of a fist, you tell me.
Keep on loving, keep on fighting.