Free Write 1, Week 9

"Success is Greater Than or Equal to the Square Root of a G-Chord"

I.

Do you remember the poem I wrote
     about you in 9th grade?
You purred something like, the abstractions
are delightful,
but your sarcastic tone never bothered me.
It still doesn't bother me.

You see, you're no longer just a poem--
you're an abstraction, and my
mentor says that poetry works best
without abstractions.

II.

Do you remember when you shot me
     in the woods
with a paintball gun?  My shirt
carried red & yellow bruises
for days,
and that was before the bleach
rinsed the crime scene clean.  It was
as if nothing ever happened.

III.

Do you remember the picture I drew
     of Christopher Columbus?
He was drinking a cool Coke, but you thought
it was a Pepsi.
It was Coke, dammit--always Coca-Cola.

IV.


Do you remember when we had sex
     for the first time?
You were my first, but I was your runner-up--
the consolation prize from your first pageant.

You complained about your beautiful,
thin body,
and it took you an entire Cure album
before you took off the shirt you made
from the scraps of your mother's
     20-year-old Neil Young t-shirts.
I whispered into your pale ear,
Who needs him around, anyhow?
You laughed like a absentminded child,
and that's how I knew
     you didn't even get the joke.

V.

Do you remember when your mother
blamed my forgetfulness on pain pills
and Vicodin cocktails?  Well, she was right--
your mother,
who nursed cigarette carcasses before her
own children and
got her kicks from black coffee
     and The O'Reilly Factor,
was right.  Her voice sounded
like sandpaper grinding away inside a blender,
but she was right.

I took them to forget you--
the pills, that is--
to obliterate my memory into an eternal sunshine
and a spotless mind,
to pulverize my thoughts into pure dust, to rip
myself into fragments of glass, mercury, and skull.
I wanted to destroy my memories,
to blow them up like
an infant in India who played hide-and-seek
with an unforgivable landmine.

VI.

Do you remember the Bible I bought
     for your birthday?  I took a green highlighter
and dissected 1st Corinthians, Book 13,
and you expressed utter disbelief--
How can an atheist possibly know as much as I?
You were mistaken, though.  I don't know
as much as you.  I, for one, never knew it was okay
to fuck an atheist
but love a preacher--all for God, of course.

VII.

Do you remember when I said
my mentor despises abstractions?
Yeah--well, so do I.
Now die, poem. Die.