“When you are all sinew, struggle and solitude, your young — being soft, plump, vulnerable — may remind you of prey.”
“Ducks, Newburyport” Lucy Ellmann
A Great First Line
Tag Archives: parenting
Dear Oblivion
dear oblivion
i hear you
shredding bone
in the golden
place
salivating
somewhere
unknowable
a man
grills
meat
a child
screams
what i mean to say
is this, dear oblivion:
i remember
the littoral darkness
of the rising afternoon
the light
never
having
been
enough
dear oblivion
i hear you
crawling away
High on Queen Anne Road (Cerberus)
Wikipedia Poem, No. 970
why
are
you
the poet
you
are
the poet
consequence
of shit
in love with the marauder
heracles slept in his crate
hera summoned snakes
the snakes moved without reason
heracles strangled the snakes
one by one by one
The Artists’ Head Strung from The Artist’s Head
Wikipedia Poem, No. 885
drop anything my brown kitchen stand falligators quarries airfields swamps post-industrial towns no weather here deep withering made-thing in beautiful or dissociated harmony frying up the stuff and father we make we sort we tell stories you’ll see you said what i don’t call those i read of you here i go again, bumblebeeing, and a notorious leaky bladder the author the sunset-nothing—fully read by drug conviction—hadn’t thought about this before a bouquet of dehydration raked according to all the good over the wall rested in the thing my brown the wrested world’s lean interview with it would just just just strung up confident men
Empedocles and Exaenetus (Wikipoem for My Father)
Wikipedia Poem, No. 824
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
Wikipedia Poem, No. 770
“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
How to Raise a Premodern Family
Wikipedia Poem, No. 743
Suicide’s Remix (branch6) (work in progress) Joseph M. Gerace
disappear into a cloud of those big slick cartoon bombs
pair me with the twin cities or cuyamungué flint or kalamazoo or
something coal blackboard anime avocado cowboy
self-doubt gender cowboy hunger sound of hunger
to the best of your recollection how fast
was the joke? a revolution? an iphone? (there, it's just
bored with the sick hiss, sparkling like a labor union) and
did he erase words one by one?
sparkle me on the sick risk of memory
somewhere, it's january. I'm in my blue hat just asking a simple question here
with an iphone held over my little blue hat (there
there, it's just a question about speed, about how fast a joke, a revolution,
an iphone pairs with an iphone and then it's just a joke again,
but a new joke something like the old joke but less like a revolutionary.) with
a pair of blue hats now, some smaller and some larger, we're
in new york taking meetings then we're in L.A. — I drove past it once,
says the poet — taking meetings because all the emerald
coyotes consider unionizing and their friends
all those big slick cartoon bombs they have
iphones now and their iphones have iphones to feed and little blue hats
Why Phonic Multiplication Is the Work of Trillionaires (Return to the Flower)
Wikipedia Poem, No. 723
“I’d like to return to the flower, / and from the flower, / to my heart.” Lorca, Oct. 1923
On an oedipal level, what a feeling!
Thrilled little clouds in the supermarket: No, I want that. Was it in the supermarket? No, I want that in the car and still make the wrong-colored little clouds. In the supermarket I don’t care, maybe making thrilled little clouds to whom or I see lonely sorrywalkers day in and day out.
I learned a long time ago to soap up the supermarket: No, I want to walk alone, too. Today I learned to be sorry, but I do not care. Remember the red sweater scented with alcohol? I’ve decided that, lathering into the supermarket.
Green wants to see sorry paroxysms leveled. One green sun is never enough. I want that, I said, thinking about lobster blood for years, terminally. What will be enough one day? What will be enough one day. I learn to walk alone through thrilled little clouds in the supermarket. No, I just want to be sorry, but I can’t imitate not caring.
Portrait of John Berryman
Wikipedia Poem, No. 645
“I won’t dwell on these or on any details now. I have a good deal to do and I am exhausted in the eighth day of a heavy cold. This is just to tell you that life has a new mask on.” John Berryman, 10 October 1943
so do i am exhausted in the end of our minds this instead of our minds this instead of our minds instead of our minds this the end of a heavy cold the end minding the cold speaker and spoken to our annual knowing being offered up to us i have a good deal to tell on a term-to-term basis instead of our minds the eighth day of mum as we begin less-than-life has a new mask on this is less-life than less with its new mask hell-in-new-rochelle any details now (exactly what i don't yet know) i am exhausted and at the end of our minds on an animal incomprehensible bizarre touching mint it does so and it is warm its being the beginning offered up at the end of life has a new mask on
Abraham Lincoln, in 1824, Tries on Women’s Clothing and No One Bats a Lash
Wikipedia Poem, No. 616
“If all this be not rebellion, I know not what to call it. I certainly regard it as sufficient legal cause for suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.” William W. Morris
gray to wear lipstick his mouth
he ate breakfast before lincoln wanted
to like to wear lipstick his mother wore
lincoln wanted to wish away war lincoln
wanted to like his mother school her
wear her caring peach lincoln wanted his mouth
to mother his mouth he watched her
thin serious mouth he wondered what
i could do for him and why she did
most mornings air on most mornings while
budget-bonded why she did it efficient
elegant wary to wear lipstick that
i could why all night she wears lipstick
his mouth he wondered while tightening the draw
strings of his small leather sack why
she did it freshly applied
she did it as commentary