I.
What to say-
Your poetry smells cheap
and is full of fatigue.
But the Loving Lincoln Memorial
On top of the gray
leveled torso top
Is full of
apprehension
and looks like the young.
How evenly spaced
cookie cutter dynamics
of this fag couple
The one to wedge
and the other one
demanding the meek to wet his dick
With what honor do I hold in my palms at the sight of these strangers? Where have they been hibernating and hyper extending naive egos on top of the dinner table. This ball of matter made up of a 'Bruno' and 'Popeye' and, of course Olive is just as whiny and wishy-washy under the elevators. Your new home is shocking, I'm sure.
That's the point. right?
That's how you keep up the street cred.
Cried and caught pneumonia
And at long last found the lost and listless
Ate their dinner
Ran their dishwasher
Warmed by their stove
Talked with their storks
Went to their meetings
Listened to their pounding headaches
Came in their toilet paper wads
Washed in their stalls
Smelled their shit and pretended not to
Sailed in their clothes closet
Failed to produce in their production
Found another lost and listless in there
Followed their lips and slowly sank
Frown
Fallen inside
I hope it's all it should be. It should be free. We all know that.
You said the bed was warm and good.
I believe you.
Kick rocks and bend over—
Time for your meds.
I found this list of worries next to my bathtub- as if someone had broken in just to vent. Strange cursive in the way the lower case "L's" looped so large, I mistook so many words to be misspelled. Unable to tell. The list was very worried about the future - about how school is going to be next semester — looking for just the right angel to wed — worried what they may be doing was irresponsible — Worried the drugs they had done may really bite them later in life...
I know you couldn't have wrote it.
It was brave.
It was / had heart and life.
It was breakable and real life. It refused to be caught up in a dream of floating rotary joints and parts and whistles on top of gravediggers.
It's really a shame about me.
It really must have been bad.
But, the difference between you and me is that I know exactly who I'm ripping off, whereas you claim to be original. [And I know who I'm stealing from now, with this modified thought] but to be honest — There is too much honor in plagiarisms when you don't know you're plagiarizing.
I'd like to think positively and say, "You'll get it."
I'd like to write as well as the writers I look up to as well — But that wouldn't be true, or imaginative on my part.
Maybe it would.
Maybe you'll get it.
Who cares anymore?
It must have really been bad.
I wish I was sorry. I've never made a cake as fine as yours — but I have seen my own asshole, and the cake I eat comes out just the same as it comes out of you. I'm not tooting my own horn anymore [and I say anymore, just in case, on purpose], nor have I ever claimed to be a great baker or even work in a bakery.
But I [have/had/have had] a job.
And an unclouded view of reality.
Oh, How does the world work wise guy?
How does the cookie crumble? How does a big wave reach the shore? How can this be true? How many right angles are on main street? How can we trust history books? How can we trust the phantoms of phone messages? Who's to say I'm still sober and twenty two?
Who has the fever? Who has the disease forever? Who can't wait to look stupid and laugh in the grass in a park?
put down my vice break down the yanks put up your fists paddle the middle
to what do I owe this immediate honor plus this apron for sure shelter
as the sky holds
a homo-friendly kid kite
on my birthday
I had déjà vu
with wonderful streamers and my lover's face
lit up by sun and smiles
reflecting in dark sun glasses
my best friend of 2 decades
calling my name
these visions I know
will rerun
the moment I cease to live
and I'll die happy
again and again
Spring is here — so I say
Goodbye blue devils
I'll miss what we had
and what had happened
But I'll not wish
For us to live
like children using depression
As an excuse for something other.
So please excuse me
From the table
For I have work to do
And an angel to marry
II.
"But there is too much," I say
"Oh, but not enough?," She questions.
It's amusing now. A little.
What did you ask, my angel?
Are you sure you want the grown up answer?
It's a big long hallway out there—
Can we make it to the end of it with out stopping for water at the fountain?
[This seems directed at you, (and you) but I assure you, it's not.]
But I'm constantly giving myself a pep-talk.
That's what all of this always is. It's always me talking to me. Telling me to give up. Telling me to walk straight. Telling me to grow a sack and put two little testes inside of it. My dermatologist said, "quit your itchin' " ...
Well maybe he's right. He's old, and smelled all right for his age. He sat upright and walked upright. He wrote down 8 prescriptions for 8 different things for me to take to a pharmacy and then in an hour I'll have drugs to fix me up just right.
How kitschy it all seems when you step out of it.
This is what I wrote when I entered the room after the waiting room:
Things to mention to the Doc:
– Different Meds to use on face vs. rest of body...?
– Is the Steroid I'm using now safe for facial use...?
– How often should I use the Meds...?
– Is there any new Meds out there...New info about Psoriases?
– T-gel on my scalp...Is that still a good idea?
Is this Dr Appointment a good idea? This entire building is despicable.
This room hasn't changed—
Though I've never been
In this building
Never went up the ancient boxy elevator
With big box buttons
That don't even light up
Never sat in the dim depressing waiting room
With chairs that look tiny under the huge humans occupying them
Stained and broken
Dated gold magazines hang from a wall rack
Though I've never been in this room
Where I wait under dirty florescent clear ceiling tiles
With an oscillating fan in the corner, for there's no air conditioning
The yellowed walls from when
Smoking was still permitted indoors
The little dark brown stool
With it's little wheels beginning to rust
...
Nothing has moved in here since the early to mid-eighties
When these things listed above were brand new
Clean.
Bright.
Sterile.
And then you look above 'Sterile' a bit in Webster's and see:
ster·e·o·ty·py
[ˈster-ē-ə-ˌtī-pē, ˈstir-]
n
1. persistent inflexible behavior pattern: a pattern of persistent, fixed, and repeated speech or movement that is apparently meaningless and is characteristic of some mental conditions
Which is what happens here.
Which is what brings me back.
Brings me back to my earlier thought
Back to my repetitious ...
Repeated speech
Or movement [around — circles — circuitry — phonetically speaking "súrkit"]
That is [or is not]
[or it is]
Apparently meaningless [devoid of a meaning — devoice — mouthing meaning through smiles and whispers and hums]
But secretly
I wish for things to appear on page.
As I write.
I secretly hope for dreams to make themselves evident within the few words I pick and misspell.
I trust my pen to walk over the paper and make love happen.
In verse!
[sometimes] I find myself re-reading just to look at the way it's written.
I'm looking for meaning. (It's the same poem I've written a million times! It's not creative anymore! It barely was at one point — at the beginning)
But the blank page... The empty page.
It is a kingdom.
It is the universe waiting for a big bang.
Alien life forms, and the moon full and cloud covered on a fog patch night.
The page blank can be the most amazing thing ever written.
It's waiting to be perfected, and find its perfect mate
[papermate pens and color pencils and back to school sale excitement.]
These are the improper training courses needed to look at the blank page.
And in order to ruin another:
The page
Sparkles
Speckled with strange freckles
Like the most beautiful red-head in mid-summer
Like no other
She'll smile and melt mountains.
Open mouth
Mouths words which I scramble to write
And scribble ...
And the page adjacent
Now sparkles.
Because it is fixed.
It is saved.
It is not the page with the bad poem written on it.
That one has passed away.
It's fallen to hell with the rest of the poems that have:
not been very good, /
not been very inspiring, /
not been very proud to be poetry, /
Just some form of recycling
Such as, if I we're to say,
"Earth hates toxic waste..."
I could reply:
I might consider
taking up smoking again...
this is simply because:
I've drank more water in the last 3 weeks
in order to detox
I'm very afraid
of this big full bladder bursting
because I'm holding all of it in
so I don't piss away
all of the coolness I've built up
But we're all going to hell soon enough.
I might as well stop trying so hard
to be an indie rocker
to be a Detroit hipster
to be a Nu-beatnik
I might as well enjoy the ride.
III.
In a car.
Going to work.
Watching with a closeness out the wrong window.
With precision and a slow motion accuracy.
the way you might expect to see a real life train wreck.
The young boy tied to the tracks—
...
Then it rains red.
But the good doctor always was an advocate for the imagination.
And who can blame him.
When looking at bad modern art—
And good modern art too.
There is a definite sense of imagination which finds it's way around corners of cubism.
No pun intended.
Right as Rain.
As the fire spreads
Its black wings
Over Florida and Georgia
Women roll up the windows of the sedan
And men roll up their sleeves
Sweating profusely
With a broken A/C unit
On the bottom of Interstate 75
As Earth rids itself of itself slowly
Strangely enough, everyone received an invitation. [Oh, you're invited too. No need to send a 'save the date' we'll come to you, you see but besides that, you'll want to come. Everyone is coming. Anyone who is anyone at anytime will reach out and grab the arm of a stranger Cry in public— Be covered in
blood— Run from the giant glow of disaster—
Religious figures will have field day after field day after field day with the world's end.
The ravens will suck every last worm out of the holes in the ground.
They'll wake at noon and shrug.
Carelessly
Caressing the deep winds under wings
under cloudy smog and smoke
Above the ground
above the buried alive
This just in!, or ...
But in other news:
Believe it or not— The water is still safe to drink. After the move from ghetto suburbs to suburb suburbs the streets are brightly lit at night. The streets have very little garbage. The streets have a blanket about them, something that covers up any honesty that the city wanted to yell about. The tattoo you regret is covered up in the eyes of your neighbor. And this— This being the suburb living... This is something. This is a community's attempt to have some self dignity, or at bare minimum, have the respect to know that most outsiders don't care to know your dirt. They don't want to see your garbage, hear your wicked little secret, or what you claim to do behind closed doors. They barely want to know how you take your tea/coffee- They simply hope you keep it down at night, and respect their lawn as well as yours.
And
If you're the anti-Christ,
and you now live across the street...
Please keep
the blight in the backyard
so my company
(which I entertain on Wednesday evenings)
will not have to
be a witness
to such an eyesore.
But of course.
This is a nice town.
With nice folk
But I have no real black-eyes.
I've yet to really decided if this is worse.
I've also yet to decide if I'm being sarcastic concerning the uptown suburbs.
But I have no real black-eyes—
[but as I started earlier...]
I just want to run into the bars... name dropping obscure hip bands or modern authors or post-modern painters. I want to keep saying, "I don't live 'round here... you see, I live where poor people die on the streets and nightly you can hear men beating their girlfriends, or racial comments lead to police sirens because for some reason or another houses burn down all around me every other day... I live down the street from this guy named James— the singer of the Detroit punk/experimental/noise band 'the piranhas' ... Oh yeah, they broke up a little while back... Blah..."
Hogwash—
But I have to grow up.
I feel so foolish thinking in this manner—
I wish I could talk circles around people all day and night, but the way these kids are now I'd either end up over my head because I don't know enough or half as much as I claim — or I'd still get disrespected for being pretentious and counter culture...
I need to grow up.
Or the next bar I run into will give me a black-eye.
Sometimes
it's very difficult
to just be
To just listen
to smile at bad jokes and feel sincere
"don't go over the situation in your head," I think to myself before entering a room
"let the room be.
"you're not as important as you wish.
"don't feel sorry — don't be sorry —
"don't wish
"don't wash it down, or bring it up
"Just listen.
"Just be."
This is often when the imagination does it's best walking and best watching. Intuition leaking into imagination and blowing a soft tune into wanting ears
Just listen
Having no destination to reach
No time constraints ,
the two simply roll about one another beaconing
the something that could eventually waltz around
the feeling one gets
the feeling you get
covered in strangers' blood after a long night
after you grew fangs
under the forced full moon
IV.
Under blue light —
with white stars —
black sky —
Soft wind and swaying trees
Moving in and out and about
The street lights are long
Long turned on
turned down to light the ground
And,
Mother would be
So proud to watch you passing this test—
Seeing you looking both ways
Even though it's 3:49am
And even the drunks have passed out by now.
Just the real life early birds
Grabbing worms
Out of dirt
Lowly lit from a distant street lamp.
These are the times when you stop and realize, after walking alone on the streets where you grew up from sunset to sunrise — just being one with your center — your old stomping grounds — the elementary school a few blocks north of eight mile between the bowling alley and I-75 — the overpass that will take you to grandma's house — Or the Ball Family house on the corner — Meijer bridge where the cars all run the light — your cousins house a few blocks north of the bridge, down the street from Marinco's party store — or even the house you grew up in on Madge —
These are the times when you relive childhood moments:
And know that
going to hell
won't be such
a different place
except the devils
will wear red
But sir, this is not to say....
Yes I'm sorry.
You mustn't come to such depressing conclusions ...
I'm sorry I don't follow?
Hell on Earth sir, it is such a depressing thought.
I was unaware Hell was depressing — I'm having the time of my life.
Be patient
You're in the Hospital.
On top of your bed, I found the puzzle pieces.
[Push the button Call the nurse]
I found the pieces of dry skin— Fast fallen from your limbs which itch and twitch and bump into other legs in the night...
While you sleep.
While you dream.
In empty rooms filled with space and high ceilings with fans circling like
[has she come yet? Get the nurse.]
vultures in fast forward and the kitten leaping from one pillow to the next...
While you sleep.
While you dream:
Of oceans and library meetings of you and people you're afraid to see during the day— you'll have hushed talks over his typewriter — and a fight will break out in non-fiction — by books on near death experience with witty specific religious insinuating titles such as, 'walking toward the light in the tunnel' —
While you sleep.
[H e's slip ped fa r into his se lf]
While you dream.
At the height of the scuffle, a muffled and strange goodbye will be mouthed to you as you watch your partner in non-violence be pulled away by something. Run away from someone. Disappear behind some bookshelf somewhere. And as the scene plays out in less than real time, to feel a sharp sting on your chest- looking down to see someone sticking pins into you—
While you sleep,
You wake
Simply to know
somewhere,
someone
just died.
And you didn't save them.
For you
were busy sleeping—
Dreaming.
Searching.
Looking for the directions back to—
Away from slumber.
"Where is this ladder?"
(Genesis 28:12)
Climb it to Heaven...
But it is gone from you.
There is only,
the bed sheets
the sweat under your body
the striped walls:
painted by street lamps
and cheap pull-string blinds
the open door
the buzzing fridge
the parlor window:
Which sits cracked
Letting in the crisp night rhythm and blues
The fuzz and the June bugs
An empty bar with a full juke
Your wide eyes and jugular
It's time.
Wake-up.
V.
Yawning on the front lawn while the baby bird is eaten by flies.
A car passes by.
You plant some honeysuckle and breathe out billows.
You remember your pillow and the confusion of the dream you had had.
Yellow clear glass holds the plant.
Decadence.
Dance on air.
Re-appear.
Yellow stains on your smile. For a while you saw that there was a fence between the two of you... but no more. The fence which was hopped time and time again and hacked down by time passing... the weight of a human. It's only wood inside of dirt. Mother natures can have at it at will. Mother may paint it, but it will still rot from the inside out. . . This fence is no longer around... torn down by whatever, and it doesn't matter, because it's gone.
It's more of a locked door now which leaves you stuck in summer, or another [any other] season while others are off in winter.
Or Fall
having fell—
Not having seen—
have a beer before bed
have nine
nineteen minutes into the reading.
ninety pages into this book
From the nineteen twenties
twenty minuets later you've forgotten the preface
you've forgotten the plot
you've forgotten if it's prose or poetry, and if it matters.
Re-read:
Because of spring...
Refined and antique.
"It is the complete antithesis of poetry!"
Oh yes. . . Here we are.
It's spring and the Devil wears blue.
The Devil shows others
how he suffers
though echolalia*
And of course
makes friends
through echopraxia.#
* parrot-like repetition of a word or phrase just spoken by someone else
# repetitive imitation of the movements of another person
Blue
like the color of sorrow and the sky in spring — mid-morning
Blue
Pusses pity on periwinkle flowers in the summer when the street shows a mirage in the distance
Blue
Work shirts that hang off men and women who know better — who've long been bitter and angry with diseased scripture in their mouth and moths in the dresser drawer — The ever growing urge to take away from others, piece by piece, in order to make themselves look taller — bit by bit, and inch by inch — look closer to the blue above — The midnight blue sky — The berry blue car she drives — The navy blue slacks and socks mismatched — The blue ice trays gone empty — The blue and white heaven that floats around, looking down on jet planes with pilots and co-pilots wearing blue suits and silver pins shaped as wings of blue angels drinking blue ocean earth water in the blue envelope to a blue birthday party by the big blue house next to the blue mail box surrounded by blue spruce which are all cut down to make blue books listing the elite blue blooded royalty but before living with them are blue jays which fly away once every blue moon just as the Blue on Blue friendly fire but never telling and receiving the blue ribbon but the dead man is just another blue-eyed boy with a wish to sing blue-eyed soul so they plant bluebells on his blue-grey headstone —
Blue
As the day she died
[As the day is long
And willing]
in her will
in her suicide note
she wrote
"He is as Evil as the Devil
and as Kind as a Christian”
And she died in a blue sun dress having over dosed on purpose, of course....
This note was written in Webster's in blue ink, under the definition:
blue dev·il
(plural blue dev·ils)
n
"barbiturate capsule: a capsule containing the narcotic and sedative barbiturate amobarbital"
(slang)
What else to say—
My prose is cheap
And smells of me.
—So...
Of course the devil wears blue,
For when it's half past spring
He'll admit in silence
"I'm still watching you."
Shaun Wisniewski is from Detroit, Michigan. He is a Taurus.
Comments (closed)
tina r. johnson
2009-06-07 15:24:13
wow. this needs to be read a few times. what layers. so visual and visceral.
thanks for writing and sharing