The Poems

Maybe if I write how much I love my job
Often enough
The synapse of joy and care will fire correctly
Aerodynamically inclining energies
Completing the feeling
The sensation I need
To actually do this
To enjoy it
To see past the fallacies of my chosen profession
That seamless synapse
Of conviction

That I might once again care
About what it is I’ve chosen to do
Care about you
The student
Who doesn’t.

I never used to pay attention
To “kids these days”
The “youth of today”
But the effect of “these days”
On the kids

The kids aren’t all right
These biological indicators
Akin to amphibians of the natural order
Are disfigured ignored red flags

I stand up here
With the pretense of telling these kids
And their war zones, rap and decayed environment
That knowledge can change the world
But the words
What I have never doubted until now
Die on my tongue like an unformed snowflake

They’re not all right.
The only expression they know is hostility
The only concern they show is for apathy

The world can’t hurt you
If your concern stays inside the enfolding brackets
A finally-safe place of familiarity
A place you fight hard to keep untainted
A place I can’t bear to see you

I understand too well the promise of the trap
A quill doesn’t hurt so much going in,
But it’ll tear like hell on the way out.

These lives, or lack-thereof
That you as “adults” are contemplating
The “act now, think later”
Teenage normalcy
With steeper debts imminent
You’re only fifteen and your lifetime credits
Are chronically fissuring out of a lesion
In the back of your brain
Self-induced bullet wounds

I feel bad for wanting to teach you poetry
I know that in the grand scheme of your life
That would be the pleasant part
A distraction from merely surviving
Unlike the privileged kids in a high school
only three blocks away
But pleasant isn’t good enough
Isn’t fast enough, isn’t money, sex, meth-amphetamines, coke, cars, clothes, shoes
Intimidating reputation
All these things a mask for growing powerlessness
It’s not going away– it’s only getting worse.

The ability to think
Not do, not run, not hide
Is outdated,
The message overlooked
Redundant, boring

I hate myself for writing this poem
This ugly snippet of truth so disturbing
That this school is where critical thought goes to die
Am possibly getting less intelligent the longer I stay
Four years of vocational training
Is instantly redundant here
In the wilds of a high school on the north side
I’m eighteen, foreign to reality
Again.

Ezra Pound’s Metro poem is laughing at me
As I later contemplate jumping out the window
Running away across the football field never to return

The class is silent, perusing the art
Compressed words compressing images
Glimpsing Pound’s glimpse in the rain
Into a sea of blurry pink faces

“How long did it, like, take him to write this?”
A student asks.

“He wouldn’t be famous if it had taken
Only, like,  two minutes you moron,” another one adds.

“It’s like a picture, right?”
“Yeah, like he just turned his head for a second,
And like, wrote down what he saw
Like he was looking to cross the, like, street
Or something.”

This conversation would have boiled Pound’s blood,
Loosely flying descriptors everywhere,
But something in it has arrested their attention
A challenge from an old dead poet,

It will make me smile on the way home,
Maybe even for the rest of the week,
This glimpse

Maybe they will be fine.
It’s Jammed

Not all mornings are like this

The ride is sombre, lit with tinny music
Fluorescent lights and tens of people
Struggling to greet the day
Electronics betray the time that is passing too quickly

The sky darkly threatens to collapse
Smother the spokes of morning’s flashes

The ride is over much sooner than I’m prepared for
Flung out of the transitory rocking warm space
Into my destination

The feet have to go forward
The feet have to go forward

The feet have to go to the place
Exactly 400 paces adjacent to the sun struggling to rise
The feet have to get there, to my work
A formidable box-like prison surrounded by suburbia facaded projects

The feet have to go forward
The feet are planted in a Toys ‘R Us parking lot
Toes point west, aligned with
Parallel to yellow scabbed parking line bar graphs

Toes point west
Towards a low lying sunrise lit mechanic shop
Towards two pine trees standing guard for six city blocks
Highest natural points piercing gangrenous winter clouds

My coffee sits on the eroding ledge of the light post
Toes point west though the feet have to go to work
The lights snap their watchful orange halogen off
Simultaneous officiating of the morning over the parking lot
The sunrise grows red with insistence on the horizon

I light another cigarette, stalling
I study my reticent feet
Faded shoes hang tenaciously onto faded concrete
Imagining the possibility of being flung into space
Were it not for gravity
My body could be a leaping gash in the sky
Vomited out of the stratosphere

I look up and watch other people in their cars
No problems going from point A to point B
And I wonder stupidly of course, why that is
Knowing that enjoyment is outnumbered as a statistic
For every one person who loves their job
8 more scrub toilets to make ends meet
Hate it, don’t mind it, do it to pay the bills,
But there is nothing ecstatic in what they do
Contagious to existence.

Sobering thoughts to float around in a parking lot
The feet have to go forward
Tentatively they start to move
Momentum gaining from energy of a pity party re-routed

The feet go forward
Realize not every day is like this.

To my accomplice (aka the goldfish poem)
I want to be a conspirator
With you
As I see the look upon your face
Words left unsaid
As we still continue to speak

For that knowing gaze alone
I am loyal.

I want to speak with you
Only from the cyclone of words internal
Those words I can’t seem to harness control of
Ill-timed phrases leap upon the shore of my dialogue
Spastically, frenetically splashing like goldfish lost in sewers
My right words are a stormy deluge often weathered in solitude
Steered wrecklessly onto paper only
And to you, the glimpses waver

In any stolen moment of our conversations
I never seem to know where my soul is hid
Why it cannot seep always out of my skin
On command of my lips
It preferring to hide in the blue vein
Above my left ankle
Or the crease of my thumb and forefinger
As I write this

I wish I could write a message, a conversation
Witticisms, a completely versed profound thought
All over your hands for my lack of verbal insight at times

My soul is hesitant flighty ball-lightning
My hands warmly an entrance
Being the same as the exit.
I hope you understand this.

Bill Atkinson, this poem is for you

I woke up and checked the weather

by rolling to my right

The old folk’s home is obscured by driving snow

Cars are hung up on the hump the graders left behind

And I have to work today

To make everyone else’s Sunday a lazy relaxing one

I can’t shake this lingering thought

A thought that was lodged behind my retinas

This morning

Exposed with waking light

A face I hadn’t thought of for several years

This morning

Squinted back at me as I looked into the snowy inferno

I knew you in the winter, true

I realized in the tub

Today could have been the day I met you

All those years ago

Just an unexpected voice on the other side of the phone

My friend hadn’t been home

You sang Pearl Jam and Nirvana to me

Strumming your guitar gently for Stairway to Heaven

2000 kilometers away

It’s amazing your face

More than your voice

Would be nestled in my brain today

As I lie still in the bathtub

Cat litter tinkling along the bottom on scratched porcelain

But when I see your face,

As I meditate over my bhudda belly

It is the same expression each time

Of guilt and embarrassment

The last time I saw you

Being the first time I saw you

And her

Her not being me being there

With you

But her being there instead

Like you felt pressed for time for me to be there eventually

Like you felt pressed for certainty in someone

Enough to lie to me

The first and last time

As I got dressed in my chilled bedroom

I wondered if I would ever see you again

Remembering all the times we would randomly

Encounter each other

Much to your blue-eyed guilt and embarrassment

After the first and last time

Not really the last time

But a few more stabbing and twisting of the knife-times after

Did you marry the girl

Who hated me instinctively on sight?

Did you marry the girl

Who didn’t like it when you sang to her

Did you marry the girl?

That girl with the beady pig eyes

Pasty clutched fingers whitening knuckles on your arm

I’m sure I would have understood

What she apparently did

If you’d bothered to tell me

Eating my cereal on the couch

The little cat skitters across the tea-stained carpet

Your face lingers yet

But I feel less bereft

The more I imagine your happiness

However imagined it might be

Still befuddled to the timing of your face in my morning

Looking down at the square

Upon a spinning strawberry ride in -25

I deduce this must be the reason

Maybe you are down there braving the cold bluster

In one of those frosted spinning carapaces

Swinging around, wildly laughing at the notion

Of an amusement park ride in the wasteland

Of the city in the winter

Maybe she’s with you, laughing giddily with red cheeks

While I simply watch

And imagine

Maybe.

Maybe not.

notorious poem with no name

He asked me something
In the darkly lit romantic atmosphere
Of a burger king about to close
Over the remnants of a whopper with cheese
A plastic kids meal prize as chaperone

Now,
This is a delicate query
Baby, would you–
I realize this is sensitive
A touchy subject
A dangerous pursuit of the highly erogenous
But baby would you…

You know…

Your girl part?
For me?
Wouldn’t that be special?

I can only splutter
Fries and brimstone
Choking on my coke and your innuendo

Do I look like that kind of girl?
Do I look like that kind of girl?

Who would spend eons
No,
More like three hours
Attempting to peer over
A slightly protruding navel
Musing over the environmental impact
Of deforestation
Clear-cutting

Who closes her eyes
Grimacing for the first decisive swipe of the–
No wait! Re-open them!

Do I look like the kind of girl…
That kind of girl

Stupid enough to clog the drain
Of a 35 year old bath tub
Present with the super
As he would look at me and say
I’m going to ask you
If you have a problem with melancholic mice often
So you can say yes
If you want to alleviate the tension
Of this attention
…

Do I look like the kind of girl?
Am I that kind of girl?

Honey, sweety, darlin’…

I’m the kind of girl,
Who makes sure eyebrows don’t have love affairs
With a fairly conservative European attitude
Who will shave my legs
Only within three hours notice
Of getting laid
Who believes wax,
Is better suited to drunken toastmasters or dead celebrities

Smart enough to realize
Shag is practical carpeting
And will make a comeback eventually

End rant here.

With furrowed brows, he speaks.

“I just thought it would be–
Enlightening transcendance, baby.”

I have no abdomen for this hair-raising dissent
Baby
Vive le revolucione in your own front yard
Better you wage this battle of the razor first
And get back to me
On the things you would never do
For a girl like me

Because baby,
I’m not that kind of girl.

James

Being alone is a terrible thing
I imagine you know what that is like
Though you’re clever enough
To be stoic about it

I know you’re there
2 scant stories above me
Force myself to serenade you
With an iPod and mini speakers
Sappy Foo Fighter songs
For the sake of being fickle
Imagine you hearing it
My humming along
As you drift off to sleep

I think of all the holidays
Special events
Whether you consider them special
Or not
Where you will find
Thoughtful non creepy gifts
Tucked under your door
Secretive 2-d admiration

For it’s quiet
That’s the basis of my feelings
You are calm and still
The air hangs with your presence
Not with small rambling nothings
A sanctitude of mutual respect
Amiable silences

Admittedly in those silences
I can tell by your face
You’ve a good many stories
And I wonder how often
They’re begging to be told

That’s where I would be useful
And I entertain myself with the idea
You aren’t genuinely adored by someone else
Who makes you laugh
Smile
The way I’m sure you could
With the chance I’ll never get
Would be afraid to get

I am concerned with
Crossing lines
Being discovered
That maybe you’re allergic to cats
Afraid of snakes

Yet I assure you
With some weird pathetic need
You certainly don’t need to know
who I am
I’ll certainly never greet you
At your door
It would petrify me
Exposed by the unexposable
Man, I dig that

But not enough to get caught.

The AA prophecy over Hanoi

It should be my goal
To end up so happy
Only concerned to rave
Of things I know nothing about
Or rather
Everything about
From nothing

“Who is the biggest loser?
How is bungee sex possible?
When is the next episode of CSI on?”

And,

“Where
in the fucking blazes of hell
is my pizza?”

“Kids of today don’t know
How fucking good they have it
Or how fucked they are.”

My uncle
A husk of a ‘Nam vet
PTSD’d and LSD’d right the fuck out
Can only relate to me through marriage
The rest of my family
Scandalously competitive
With patience

Living a life
This journey remains
Only a crap shoot for sympathy
Affirmation that he has suffered
Because he did something
Said something
Right

And he is right–
The kids are fucked.

No Sex/

My libido has died
It has gone
On a long fantastical journey
Similar to all the deaths
Of my childhood pets

It bit the big one
It rode into the sunset
With a gasp and a shudder
And belly-flopped
Down 23 flights
Of fancy

I miss it sometimes
When you kiss me
And I am indifferent

Disclaimer

“Babies are born so broken that pedophiles won’t touch them.”

When you look at me
I know what you see
I know your eyes dart to mine
Notice the dermoid

“It’s a birthmark”
I’ll say;
–”or, a rather open look
at my bloodshot soul.”

I know you see my disheveledness
As a sign of madness
Forecasting my future as stinking of cats
Wondering how I’ll smell
If you get too close

Hubba-bubba.
I checked.

I try and tell you
Try and make it ok
To tell you I don’t become radioactive at night
I’m not missing the important parts

“Hey look man,
I’m double-jointed in my left hand?”

Twenty fingers and twenty toes
Last time I counted
All my teeth

But what can I tell you
Of something
This dis-ease
About my disease–
My symptom
My prognosis
My….

1 out of 600, 000 strike out of the cosmos
Doctors don’t inform me,
I inform them.

Even one thinking
My 22 year old heart
Was “clearly backwards”
After 44 seperate cardiologist visits
Not him, clearly.

Golden Hars
What rhymes with Golden Hars?

Girl from Mars
Born from stars
But seriously now,
Covered in scars
Scars so profuse
That stories thicken in my skin
As your beautiful brown eyes
keep widening

You take a step back

I tell you I understand
But I don’t
I want to shake you in my hands
The way a Megaladon shakes a boat
In a terrible science fiction world

Science fiction
That’s what my mom heard
Upon my wide blue-eyed silent entrance

Not quite normal
In need of repair
No warranty in sight
Enough to make the family drunk cry
Disown god

It’s not right
It’s not right.

But I am right.
I am here right now
Unshakeably certain
That this mind is pure
–that what I think–
If you’d wait long enough
For my guard to lower
Would draw you closer
If you could ignore this disclaimer

Just protecting my ass, you know?
Like an honest car dealer
For a lemon with hot white leather seats
Mint condition

I don’t owe this honesty to you
This disgusting honesty
The horrible truth is not horrible to me
It is me
I am me

I used to think I did though
That this was how it had to be
That settling was realistic
WIth the first blind man
with no sense of touch

Or I could wait forever
Until you finally settle for me

You listening to my spiel
Letting me run this one minute commercial
Speeding through the nasty bits
The truths
Right here and right now
As I declare the optomistic flaws more loudly

“But I hear perfectly out of my other ear”

Has ruled you out.

At long last
This supposed ignorance-squelching conversation
Is over.

I scowl inwardly
And walk away
In one piece.