poem from last november

Last November while Hugo was doing his third annual nanowrimo, I wrote a poem a day in solidarity since I did not have enough time to write a novel. I write a ton of poetry when life is less than rewarding. And I realize now that I haven't written a poem in months - one negative side effect of happiness.

Thought I'd post a poem I wrote early in the process last November. Last November was hard.

--

You stand naked with your feet cold and your belly hot
under the shower streaming at constant speed,
you see the blue light begin to collect on the walls
white and layered in thick and thin sheets
boards and nails, electrical wire and plumbing pipes

and then you are pulling the electrical wire through a hole the size of a silver dollar
you are opening your fist, closed mostly to itself,
through the paint, the plaster, the sheetrock.
It is 6:24 a.m., everything happening
is rushing down your skull, your shoulders, your spine,
down a drain and into the gutters and oceans. You stand naked;
the material you have to learn is so un-learnable
and imaginary, like God, you wish you could
make something happen in the name of a miracle
you wish it could be like poetry: curious, water-like, warm,
but it is not

everything you have to learn is like falling
your foot slips on some soap
and you fall hard, elbow and shoulder hitting the edge of the tub
hips and spine slamming against the floor
your head suddenly in your hands
as if you were a very small child, sheltering yourself from debris
fallout and rubble
but it is not that
it is only water falling
at 6:26 a.m. What makes you stand up, finally, is the fear of being too late
of disturbing the balance of the day
of not getting up for a long, long time.

Algorithmic Serendipitous Verbiage

I'm working with a startup developing, among other things, an email archiving system. This requires a chunk of sample email data for testing and demonstration purposes. Our first pass just used greek filler, but that doesn't create particularly interesting search fodder. We're currently working with a Markov text chain generator (beloved of spammers everywhere!) to create email subject lines and headers.

Of course, what you get out depends on what you put in. Since our product is focused on regulatory compliance for small financial firms, we decided to feed it the industry regulations... and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations... and Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class... and Plato's Republic... and a little Edgar Allen Poe and Cory Doctorow for spice:

All ritual has a piece of magnificence in Thomas Becket, that he generally proportions to the impositon of a state, and the regular payment of old, because in China, every way fitted for it is worth, in order to raise his wages appear to you with my lawyer and springing me from this fund, indeed, is frequently lent to the health and vigour to the order identifier assigned to the subject company's securities, provided that both Europe and every other nation, might have had any ports upon the valid exercise of traits in this manner yields no revenue to the provisions of paragraph a2 or 3 or 4, above, two times in their hearts and would try to find a reasonable effort to learn some particular classes of shares or a correspondent clearing arrangement with a transaction takes place in all places are causes of the State wise?

I think I shall retire to a hermitage and spend the rest of my days in contemplation.

Public Transit Crush

Half-asleep, I hope to catch a glance
A form in black (with shoulder bag in green)
She sits in silence on the 114
I hate to stare, but never miss the chance
We only share a random circumstance
A bus line, an addiction to caffeine
Our eyes have never met. I've never seen
The slightest premonition of romance

Perhaps I'll try to meet her. I could say
"Uh, hi, I think you're cute, uh, what's your name?"
And turn bright red while feeling like a jerk
Perhaps I'll try to meet her, but today
I'll sit in silence (feeling rather lame)
And turn away, and sigh, and go to work.

(I wrote this back in February, but I didn't want to post it to the public internets until I was over the crush, 'cuz it just seems kinda creepy otherwise, you know? Anyway, I have a different bus crush now. I think everyone should maintain a public transit crush. It makes commuting more fun.)

Poem

Page One

Poem

There is so much to say. Where do I begin?

Poem

Greetings. Welcome. Hi.

Poem

The night is over and the day begins.

Poem

Once upon a time.

Poem

Today there is no looking back.

Poem

For the fork in the road, we chose right.

Poem

This is what I must tell you.

Poem

Today is the greatest day of my life.

Poem

Tomorrow I will love you better.

Poem

This page intentionally left blank.

thinking like a child when I'm almost thirty

The happiest days of my life
realize when I have worked and worked
done and done
so many things
that I collapse
inside myself
in the night
and have nothing left. I imagine most creatures
besides humans
spend every day like this.

Shrimp, toucans, larvae:
reverberation inside the central cavity
a tiny pitch lower
blood and water pushing hard against their familiar containers.

Today I realized
why I recoil from attention
and when I told you, you said amazing.
This is all I need to almost believe
in reality
and reality's insistence to be believed in.

sleep poem

Some lines of poetry floated in my head last night in that stage between sleep and awake. So I wrote them down to expel them. They are so strange and nonsensical to me now. I've done this before (constructed lines of words in that particular state of sleep) but never written it down.

Here it is:

In this agreement
who gets more air?
Who gets more
refrigeration?
The net woven will
partially remain,
partially change.

there is a cycle that will not quit

there is a cycle that will not quit
it is the wash in the machine
it is a washer with quarters always being shoved into it
it's dirty and it's in the public laundromat
behind it there is grunge and stagnant water and lint
(lint that is not yours.)
there is a cycle
it will not stop
you hit it and bang on it and yell expletives
you go outside and run around the block with
your roll of quarters and detergent in your arms
a homeless man begs you for both
you freak out and ignore him and run to the pay phone
to make a call.
but it is a pay phone that will not hang up
and the previous caller's call is still on the buzz
and the quarters are stuck in the middle
and Superman is banging on the window to please let him in.
there is an emergency
on 12th street
that he must get to
now.

poem 2

A kid, no more than four, ran through the train doors
la mama y la tía chattering at him to
go here go there come back stop hey!
but he did nothing but
run and stand and walk and jump.
A kid, no more than fourteen, jived through the same doors
headphones loud in everyone’s ears and eyes and nose
skateboard on hip.
The four year old wanted that skateboard
so he took it
and stood on it
and rolled down the aisle and said
“mama, tía, get back!”
That kid is gonna be mayor one day.
I recognized the beat to the song
blaring from the earphones of the
fourteen-er.
I moved with him. The train rocked and stopped. The wheels got wet
from this morning’s rainfall
and then I recalled how someone asked me
how long until I left
for Minnesota.
I looked at that kid
and then the other kid.
I looked at la mama, y la tía:
beautiful women, yet compact
sucked in with a vacuum seal. Such a combination:
the child on a skateboard on the train
the sisters in polyester in California
the bassline booming, distracting my inner fibers:
this is a catastrophe.
So I got off
that train
and I went home
to be alone.

A

Poem 1

The world is split.
Some particles are
available. Others
are distractions
before they go from conception
to completion.
These others
to me
are primaries to others.
This alone has caused me
too much grief.
Remember when I wrote of the man who walks down the street
early in the morning with a suit on from a bar to a funeral?
Remember when the last catastrophe occurred, and masses ran
crazed, mad, open?
These are my particles.
I own them.
They curl against my nuzzling spots.
They are pearls, rubies, diamonds
old growth
lavish
warm.
The others -
light, rods, steel, and various physical properties of existence -
are headaches, windstorms, empty night places. Coal
coating pitted against clear polish.
They bring me
such enormous grief.

A