Tag: fatherhood

Volcano is No Volcano [HOLD FOR APPLAUSE]

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

A vicious life wrapped around symbols. What is the thing I want to tell you the reader is the same question as who am I as how do you want your daughter to remember you. A litany. As someone who taught her the courage to live as she wanted is the same as you as the clay won’t harden in such conditions is the same as grow. As the burning u-shaped chassis of the Volkswagen Jetta is to the tree. As hair-covered arms covered in ants. Develop love. Stick to it. What I know. Like white snow. Volcano is no volcano. The greater eyes retain you over man’s laws. And they’ve advanced to the point where you’re convinced you don’t remember the brand: Philip K. Dick. Nam June Paik. Open Mike Eagle. Donald Trump. Valentino Rossi. And more. On this week’s. Meet the Nation. [APPLAUSE] [HOLD FOR APPLAUSE] [HOLD APPLESAUCE FOR APPLAUSE] All art is taste. False. All taste is broke. False. The moment you call him divine. True. Red is blue / a wire monkey, / too. Remember that, Maeve? Syntax. In whose hand? Cheating. A projection. It’s sad the things you remember. My aunt’s hand. Why now? Wow. Disney laid hands. I’m afraid to reach out. Don’t be. Brown cow. And slowly cold rain in hair.

Instagram

Joseph M. Gerace1 Comment

one in three questions is serious
two are small hands grasping
in the wet-dark
for salinized water

hewn stone
or a mustache
arriving at customs
before a tour
of the great pyramids
of vegas

i am obsessed
through collage
but that’s behind him now

a flashlight / in a closet / at the bottom / of the aegean sea

You’re a nag.
You’re a liar.
You’re lazy.
You’re selfish.
You’re deluded.
Stop wasting my time.

he is a craftsman
with beautiful rough hands
full of calluses like truth
with crete between
his team has prepared
marketing collateral
and sand fires for every possible occasion

If you don’t like it, you can leave.

in fact i think you should go
freshly shaven chest
like a great royal crest
give the world what it
so depressingly craves
space

in its arms this generation bears
time or place drowning my hands
around its neck long and slender
surrender

Everyone agrees with me.

 trees sorting themselves below birds

You should be ashamed of yourself.

 great figures inconceivable if not for sky

I don’t need you, you need me.

nothing neat left in this moved-on world

After all I have done for you, this is the thanks I get?

oubliette, oubliette, oubliette

Disambiguate the Precedent (Assassination Attempt No. 1)

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

god is
an alligator white
dunce cap common
supernatural they are kind
of fragile wicked mother
i said i don’t know you
reveal your in
cantatory power
vanishes soon of dawn
alligator called
maeve anything is yours
big smile looking
at leaves
going around
your big breath rattling
every baby born after
june 07
confused about cost and course
are you wind wisened
carried from child
to child in red eyes
we haven’t slept
for weeks drink
some of this
we need to talk
blockchain saprophyte
you imagine
not wanting to die
at cost
suddenly his girl
friend her
cadillac mania
smoldering munitions
return from orbit
burn bump and birthright debased
marlboro of denial
indifferent save a dream
david shields trashes
my bike the hourlies
and the salary men
hide like armor
ed doors
between you and i
and me confusing
memory with money
untold nights buzzing spent
the gin flower in my heart
explodes
killing myself
there’s nothing
i want more
than desire
be alive 🍼
see my alligator
grow up i was 14
or 15 didn’t know anything
in lieu of replication error
chomped a personality
by liquor light 🥃
and it worked
at immense cost
20 years
pry open my skull 💀
exorcise the inadequate
physical ruins of love 🫀
collapsed by mid-morning
one suddenly
recognizes
at immense cost
the crushing power
of Their jaw 🐊

Negative Poem

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

i don’t want
to do your work
do you want to
do your work
work is screaming
at the dog
a terrible person
who can’t be bothered
with other people
the dog lays there
right there
her allergies
her anxieties
on the leafy greens
and onionskin
and cries not at me
she’s a good girl
at the baby nursing
on her belly little
heart beating so fast
i don’t want to think
of the hummingbird
her fragility
her natural work
her glitter
where’s my glitter
there she is right there

Saint Maeve

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment
Livingston Manor, NY (Summer 2021)

is a story
first about places
of worship and

winter’s
verbose
soul

like the cockatrice
coming home to
roost like a photograph

aspires to distill
feathers fiery i
want to say

i burned himself
at the stake

ruddy rectrices up
from drifting smoke
addled measurable jawn

miserable i’ve been
unable to live
under these conditions

of resounding success
of first impressions
proof of laziness

i burned himself
at the stake

no monumental ever
but one’s life
the after-father eternal

alabaster born in power
i wanted i
remember slower motives

drawn from records
of dawn discovery
momentary challenges form

i burned himself
at the stake

long forgotten architect
amidst the inferno
of genius vandalized

permanent civil war
naves columns vaults
facade transepts crossing

and apse plans
and photographs burnt
plaster models smashed

i burned himself
at the stake

snowy february morning
explicit appreciation homage
and circumstance of

life her personhood
list of words
and phrases eurub

i like ike
bob’s your uncle
gale poets exaggerate

i burned himself
at the stake

everything you need
to know paginated
drunk knocked off

course young poets
old whores lol
bolaños let loose

like balloons struck
from chest stunk
old sneakers times

are tough times
have always been
tough in time

i burned himself
at the stake

square pose bubba
gump shrimp selfie
stick sagrada familia

20g gunpowder 20g
ethiopia 20g bitter
20g still water

cooked uncomplicated surveillance
software in neon
syringe of hammers

o i burned
at the stake

hours without touching
another freeman’s tongue
welcome says amygdala

sorcerer’s teaspoon of
distraction of slight
of face of

wild fathers’ simile
like ruddy fears
exploitation so rips

i burned himself
at the stake

fulsome feathers from
his dictionary good
advice hard advice

advice deeply swallowed
in that suck
called breath brooklyn

rusty
premeditated
agent

i burned himself
at the stake

life’s a story
first about places
of worship and

the venous cockatrice
coming home to
roost among memories

of photographs over
blazing patterns a
genealogy in light

Dear Oblivion

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment
Jersey Avenue, Jersey City, N.J., June 2020

So much light, dear oblivion, night after night; I offered up my body. You refused. I drank. Begged, really. Said my dreams, you don’t belong here. Some countable mornings ahead, crouched in the internet’s dark corners, hands reaching into prosaic brightness, not to gather, but offer: News spreads of a virgin conception. And so much light.

Empedocles and Exaenetus (Wikipoem for My Father)

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

Wikipedia Poem, No. 824

PROVE2D

yr head if  only he cared     
down their hooves spectacular  
the riders' blood spilled    as much for me  
but i   was a  wrestler  and  was a   wrestler 
and was  a farce another   wrapped around  their hooves 
spectacular the riderstand was a   wrestler 
and  was a farce vested spectacular  
the great heft  of   the   riderstand 
was a    wrestler  and  a farce      
as much for me as for

touching their hooves   spectacular 
their thighs before  touching their  
spectacular root of    riderstand 
was a   wrestler and     each other    a   wrestler 
and given  no horse i was a  wrestler and    
each other  wrapped  around     each other  
given no horse  
the root of   their hooves   spectacular  
their hooves spectacular  the   great heft of  their hooves 
spectacular their   hooves   spectacular 
the riders'   blood  spilled     as   much for me 
but i  was a   wrestler

Kneel 1

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

Wikipedia Poem, No. 770

w770
“Amongst a-many terrible bright scenes, / in the submarine’s sick-bay a fire began / which we all fought in the aisle, / pillowcases exploded into flame, & fiends / swept the length of the great ship of man / cleaning out the good & the vile.” John Berryman (DS, 317)

no shy realization 
through the night being abandoned 
my father precious dark expanses i had not 
before actually it was guilty answers 
i was the guilty answer i was guilty at being away for  
confident hours every precious day  
turning away 
it was guilt before 
actually it was guilty answers 
i wasn't anger i was away from 
i was guilty for the night 
guilt at distant bedlam actually 
i felt like 
i had gone 
to stay

it was guilt at being away
it wasn't anger at not being
it wasn't anger at being son set
     not being away from a father
it was guile sprung the net