Reading “Special Effects”

Reading a poem of mine called “Special Effects”

new poem 1.21.2010

1.21.10

the smoke slowly moves around me

at my desk, my apartment, pint of rum

dylan’s Blonde On Blonde,

my body aches partly because you are not here
partly because

I’m intolerable to the world

OR

the world’s an intolerable place

I react the only way I can

least it seems so

yes, that’s it.

new poem – Orpheus 1.3.2011

there are factions devoted to you

and your looking back, your unwillingness

shattering the split seconds

where you watched your only want

wane back and disappear

as ghost among ghosts

as a memory

that takes the time slowly

fading to the recesses

and though you remake it

it is not new or whole

but a replica of a replica

shedding itself uncontrollably

*****Spicer talks a lot about the Orpheus/Eurydice myth, and countless others have written/discussed it, but I figured why not

New poem 12.29.2010

12.29.10

I am the combination of any three adjectives
each generic and boring in their own right
measured approximately against
the walls of the approaching new year

which is the next similar year of drum machines and 20 year olds

thumping around as though they’ll never grow old or change

this all hurts my brainbox where the CHC’s eat away

the ozone between commercials the radio

hollers ‘tonight we’re goin’ hard, just like the world is ours
we’re tearing it apart’———————–

no, sadly, we’re not if anything

goes on without say so

fragment/section of something i’ll probably never finish but began tonight 11.30.2010

somewhat not a lark
but a spark lost
that i may lose

 

working sixty hour weeks

slinging cases of food

on handcarts heavy as building frames

 

it’s the porcupine of survival

gnawing, poking me awake

at each instant I close my burning sleepless eyes

 

there’s no rest if you want

to survive, to get more than just by

 

11.26.2010 – new poem

You want to know what a fork is like
it’ s never simple enough, never just two choices,
never one fork, but one thousand at least

thinking about it

There’s so many they lose meaning

That any way is a way
and you’ll choose one
or
it you

 

Or maybe

Because I put the glass in the sink

(the glass trapping your face)

After I drink it dry

That there exists

A high power
pre-arranged

Pre-ordained

To choose for us

(wouldn’t that make trips to the grocery

store easier, we needn’t any lists?)

god

that’d be swell

 

II

even when the doors

are locked in my apartment

I’ve to shit with the bathroom open

so nobody or no mental ghost
comes in and poisons my drinks

 

any open container is a chance

I’m not willing to take

 

at the Bar, my buddy will leave

his rum half-drank to hit the pisser

come back

as if there weren’t all these people

around looking to fuck with him

 

he even trusts me enough

when I can’t even trust myself

a chance I’m not willing to take

 

III

I can’t look at anything

without anticipating the consequences

 

surprisingly most are negative, surprisingly—

I wish I had the day off work so I could sit

on the flood wall, overlooking the river

and its muddy banks, and trick myself into thinking for a minute

that it’s all mine and I don’t have to worry about it going

 

 

tho I’d  leave soon for good hopefully

it’d wait, at least for awhile

Rant vs. Conclusion

Hey have some confidence kid! So what if a female won’t look at you? So what if you don’t really have anybody to talk to about writing or poems? So what if just about everyone you knew from college bailed on you because you’re too uptight! So what if you have principles! So what if people are generally bored by you and every time you meet somebody new they are immediately disinterested in getting to know you! So what if you’ll always be a failure! So what! So what is a great song by Miles Davis. So what if you aren’t hip or cool and rebellious anymore, smoke weed and go crazy again! Go get laid and get herpes! So what if you work 60 hours a week! So what if you haven’t been with a woman in 3 years! So what if you’re longest relationship was 6 months! So what if the women that have been attracted to you in the past have less confidence than you do, so much so they see you as a viable option! So what if you were balding horribly since 22! So what if you have no female friends! So what if you live in the middle of bumfuck PA while transitioning into grad school! So what if grad school doesn’t work out and you’ll be in this spot when you graduate (and we both know this will be true). So what if you’re life is a giant turd and you can’t figure out if you should drink cleaning chemicals or time travel and tell your mother to have an abortion and save you the mental anguish! So what if either isn’t possible! So what if you’ve lived by yourself for the last 2 years! So what if you’re only resort is to bitch and moan over the internet on a blog that no one will read only confirming your aloneness and lacking optimism for the future! So what if nobody reads your poems! So what if nobody sucks your dick!

Here’s a tip: Cry— Cry about it. Cry about it some more until it feels like you’re breathing in ammonia, then look around: Oh wait, it’ll still be there won’t it? Nagging at the back of throat like a cough that won’t quit.

New Poem – 11.3.2010

And so you drag along the empty hemispheres, amphetemene nightmares, coffeebuzz, alarm clocks banging into your brain, YES I would like to sleep more! Here’s your nation, chocked up to meandering  nothingnesses slapped on billboards bright as the damn sun’s got sky. Bring down the whole house, start from scratch, blister up the burned-out sun’s sanctuary. These nights be so damn cool you’ll lose your mind shivering, reliving each second your car goes without heat. I’ll say ‘Fuck it!” drive with the windows down below freezing, and bemoan the whole good goddamn show of sleep, wake-up, wash, rinse, repeat. Tell me, quickly, in 100 words or less, why it is you are even here. Hold your thumb up to the moon, watch it disappear. It’s only some dreamlike state where Tom Hanks plays you as a belabored youth scrounging around for some kind of complimentary semblance of positive living. Yes, there is a large keyboard involved, and though yous 25, yr still young, still harbored and locked down in contradictory values. I eat up or burn the whole damn earth if it displayed a new angle I haven’t thought of, or entertained. And yes, the rest of yous be dancing around, wondering all’s what went where and shotput ten feet into the damn earth. That fucker’s buried in clay, and you’ll need a steam shovel just to ease the agony on your lower back. Still still, you’ve enough life left yet, and its so still. So stoic and sad against these undermining lamps. Have a cigarette, or don’t. I don’t care for cancer but I’ll get it anyway, and remember everyday I spent was like the last one, though they’re all the same now, I’ll dissect and crochet them when’s my brain’s got old bloated and beat enough that it’s all dried up, like a two-day old dead dear by the side of the empty highway, headlight illuminated.

a prose poem

10.15.2010

The wind weaves, brushes between buildings standing side to side on Race street, on Race where one or two windows in each house is lit and the children, if they’re awake, wonder what it is they’re doing.  And the trees, so aggressive with sound, letting whoever’s listening that they’re still there. What it must be, to be attached. To be struggling against the current of air, braced and holding on, it must be something. Yes, it must be.