"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
Every true poet is a monster.
He destroys people and their speech.
His singing elevates a technique that wipes out
the earth so we are not eaten by worms.
The drunk sells his coat.
The thief sells his mother.
Only the poet sells his soul to separate it
from the body that he loves.
– Tomaz Salamun, Folk Song (via Poetry International)
Look at you, sitting there being good.
After two years you’re still dying for a cigarette.
And not drinking on weekdays, who thought that one up?
Don’t you want to run to the corner right now
for a fifth of vodka and have it with cranberry juice
and a nice lemon slice, wouldn’t the backyard
that you’re so sick of staring out into
look better then, the tidy yard your landlord tends
day and night — the fence with its fresh coat of paint,
the ash-free barbeque, the patio swept clean of small twigs —
don’t you want to mess it all up, to roll around
like a dog in his flowerbeds? Aren’t you a dog anyway,
always groveling for love and begging to be petted?
You ought to get into the garbage and lick the insides
of the can, the greasy wrappers, the picked-over bones,
you ought to drive your snout into the coffee grounds.
Ah, coffee! Why not gulp some down with four cigarettes
and then blast naked into the streets, and leap on the first
beautiful man you find? The words Ruin me, haven’t they
been jailed in your throat for forty years, isn’t it time
you set them loose in slutty dresses and torn fishnets
to totter around in five-inch heels and slutty mascara?
Sure it’s time. You’ve rolled over long enough.
Forty, forty-one. At the end of all this
there’s one lousy biscuit, and it tastes like dirt.
So get going. Listen: they’re howling for you now:
up and down the block your neighbors’ dogs
burst into frenzied barking and won’t shut up.
“Good Girl” by Kim Addonizio from Tell Me
Don’t dream it’s over you don’t
know what’s it’s like it’s like that
& that’s the way it be near me be near
close to you crazy for you got the look
what you done done a do run run
run away run away she was lying
in the grass & she was it something
I said I know what boys like a prayer
a virgin girls just wanna boys
don’t cry don’t don’t you
want me don’t fall on me O
what a feelin’ more than keep
feeling fascination hush hush
voices carry too shy too shy close
to me & you don’t you
forget about hold me now don’t try
to live your life in one day it’s my
life nobody walks in LA woman
every breath you take you take
my breath away there’s always
something in the water
does not compute no new
tale to tell me if you still care
computer love went to her house
to bust a move & had to leave
real early tell me tell me
how to be you & me when I’m alone
in my room sometimes I stare at where
are you calling from call me
tell me fall on me let me be your time
will reveal won’t give me time I’ll
stop the world shut your mouth
on mine I can’t I can’t I can’t
stand losing cause this
is thriller thriller night fine
young pretty young thing is ooh
I like it sends chills up you gots
to chill party up you got to let
me know nobody loves you I am
only human & need you back
in love again bring on
the dancing let’s dance let’s
stay together & dance this mess
around dance dance dance
see how we are family I got
all I need to get by your side
to side back & forth word up for
the down stroke me everybody
wants you let’s go crazy let’s pretend
we’re married let’s wait awhile
again spin me right round baby
I’m a star under the milky way
tonight.
“There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” by Kevin Young from VQRonline.org
to suggest that he move
next door? I don’t want him
gone altogether, neither can I stand
him underfoot. It might be ideal
to holler over the fence,
invite him to dinner.
We’d sit together on the patio, eat
asparagus from his garden,
grilled shrimp under the setting sun,
then kiss the grease from our lips,
maybe more. After,
he’d go home
and watch basketball at full volume,
while I soak in the tub listening to Coltrane.
Then, wearing pajamas, hair uncombed,
I’d curl up in my own living
room with Robert Frost or People
and the cat, the quiet,
the light of a single lamp.
“Would It Be So Wrong” by Krista Lukas, from Fans of My Unconscious. The Black Rock Press, © 2013
I wish they would put it there, unfolded, explicit, so I could be
certain of what they think they saw, the shaky black-and-white
reel they have colorized, the beginnings and middles cobbled
to find their way to the end.
No one will sign his name. Each separate letter will be cut
from newspapers, magazines, to keep the scales of knowing
unbalanced: We have a piece of your life that we plan to torture
into something we recognize. We want more pieces. But
even then, we won’t give you this one back.
I once had all of their names but didn’t keep them. Did they
keep mine? If we passed each other in some far-off town,
I wouldn’t know them, though I have lived beside them
for nearly thirty years. Anonymity is a chosen loneliness,
but a secret in a cul-de-sac has a fleeting life.
Their eyes on my comings and goings, my middling tragedy,
are a kind of extortion, even if they never open their mouths.
If I do not give them reasons, they will think I had none.
If enough people paint me a heart of pitch, a rudderless
integrity, how could all of them be wrong?
Whatever the neighbors know, it is not enough, but the rest
of the story is not mine to tell. See me, then, half in shadow. Or
turn me, if you must, toward your lurid light. I will grow older,
quieter, until no one believes the tale you pin on me. I will wear
sensible shoes. I will outfox you by being too dull to be bad.
“What the Neighbors Know” by Melanie McCabe via Poetry Daily
Words ... for the Time Being 