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.

Response 1, Week 8

On Josh's Free Write:

Some of the language you employ works really well.  Specifically, I'd like to note the opening line and the line "I fall down the dashes" (12) as examples.  Both are unexpected, as one will probably never see the same combination of words ever again--"down the dashes" and "Benzene pumps."  However, the final stanza seems long-winded and choppy in certain places, especially in the last three lines:  "a sausage egg and cheese that / means I'll strap my shoulder once more / before watching sand bleach in the aqua rays of morning" (13-15).  The adjectives become overwhelming and ultimately confuse me.  Though I appreciate your use of alliteration and consonance, I feel it could become much greater if you were to trim some of the adjectives away and tone the final staza down some.  Sometimes understated can be better than elaborated.

Calisthenic 1, Week 8

Writing Poetry:  exercise five, pg. 100.

John Ashbery, "Glazunoviana" (Vintage, pp. 274-75):

The man with the red hat
And the polar bear, is he there too?
The window giving on shade,
Is that here too?
And all the little helps,
My initials in the sky,
The hay of an arctic summer night?

The bear
Drops dead in sight of the window.
Lovely tribes have just moved to the north.
In the flickering evening the martins grow denser.
Rivers of wings surround us and vast tribulation.

Result:


The deity with the perfect track record
And David Hume, is he there too?
The compass giving way to superstition,
Is that here too?
And all the little distortions,
The invisible monster in the sermons,
The pitchfork of a right shoulder's eye?

The war hero
draws dementia in sight of the bullet-ridden apathist.
Horrific substitutes have spread to the north.
In the appropriate time zone the martins never lose sleep.
Landfill-stink of wasted lives overwhelm us and parade organizers.

Free Write 1, Week 8

"When Green Light Becomes Topical"

To know God is to become God--
a social pariah in every snake pit and rat hole
except Bertrand Russell's grave.

Drunk on the machinery of fifteen-minute fame--
Warhol's fake alcohol that convinces fifteen-year-olds
to stumble through lies and second acts,
like an F. Scott Fitzgerald in T.S. Eliot clothing.

She left me as a zombie--not brains, oh not brains,
only hearts, oh only hearts.
She tossed me into charred forests
and 24-karat eye lakes like a dwarf--
a petrified Indian, a hungry prisoner
starving from lack of nutrition
and sleep.  She paid Insomnia to kill me
so she could cash-in my life insurance policy--
yeah, the one I never knew about.

I'm a starving insomniac
who spends his days counting minutes with pretzel sticks
and crying like the baby in Eraserhead.

The pills I take to sleep
gather my brain cells into a concentration camp
somewhere near the medulla oblongata,
where Vomit and Coughs reside,
and bathes them with today's finest poisons
under a shower-head, under lampshades
that prisoners donate against their own will.

I am a liar, and none of this is true,
depending on which linear, cobble road
Martin Amis is traveling today.

Improv/Imitation 1, Week 8

Laura Kasischke, "Barney" (Writing Poetry, pp. 182-83)
Chad Parmenter, "Holy Sonnet For His New Movie" (Writing Poetry, 183-84)

"When Gumby Forgets to Feed Pokey"

When he waves his perfect, symmetrical hand,
all slick with dough and drenched in food coloring,
miniature horses with loose, plastic eyes
become putty, a pool of miraculous, holy clay--
a miracle greater than turning water to wine.

He distorts himself upon particles of light and radio-waves.
He distorts himself so we don't have to.

Devout believers guard themselves
against the nocturnal rebellion of drowsiness,
sedating themselves with night-lights
and the adrenaline rush that engulfs their
apprehensions like rolling waves
upon which professional surfers elevate
or evolve into mystical giants--
a wave, a liquid Babel only seen on television.

He suffers the salt-and-pepper snow-storm
and this is just a test; he suffers
the infomercials
without information about commercials; he
suffers through Girls Gone Wild,
I Love Lucy, and
whatever Pat Robertson said this week.

Jerry Falwell never asked for forgiveness;
he was never forgiven.
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson caused 9/11;
no one forgives them.

Junkyard Quotes 1-4, Week 8

1.  "...the insanity we call the 20th century." (Dr. Sturgis)
2.  "You're either a pacifist or heir to the conquering nation." (Dr. Tietjen)
3.  "I said to Hank Williams, 'How lonely does it get?' Hank Williams hasn't answered yet, but I hear him coughing all night long, a hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song." (Leonard Cohen)
4.  "Waiting, are they?  Waiting, are they?  Well, let 'em wait!" (Gen. Ethan Allen's last words)