Tautology (6/27/06)

In a sudden frenzy of sleep
you saw a parade of ex-girlfriends,
fat, and getting heavier.

Embarassed ever to have felt
toward something so gone,
you didn't introduce me.

Sit back.
I'm handling the introductions.

We took up the weightlessness of bicycles
and have become, as you would say,
perfectly proportioned.

I know because you said
you would rather be young
in here, with me,
than old, outside, alone.

I don't have much to say about this one. It's based on a dream and it's more successful than most dream poems, I think, because it's based on someone else's dream. In fact, it's all about statements the dreamer has made to me (the narrator).

I think the narrator starts displaying skepticism towards the dreamers utterances at that middle part (Sit back...). I like to think that stanza has some special meaning in the poem, since it sticks out so much in tone and rhythm. (Speaking of rhythm, I basically just made up the punctuation in an attempt to recreate the dramatic way I read it.) The statement in the last stanza isn't actually a tautology, but that word seems to capture the way it's almost meaningless because so obviously, a priori, true.

This one was considered for publication in the Brown undergrad literary journal at the same time as Untitled. I got to listen anonymously to the debate and, if I remember correctly, this one won out because it was considered more interesting, unusual and difficult to do things with weight than with colors.

Spring Cleaning (7/20/06)

Five peoople
in three rooms
and two words
between them.
They needed to discuss who
spoke first,
whether or not one wanted
mopped floors
too personally.
"You never knew this before,"
she said,
"But I'm a little crazy --
cant stop cleaning,"
which felt a bit forced
though very necessary
this season,
in a language
so small
and unforgiving.

This was written about two weeks before 'Meal Plan,' but revised a lot on the day I actually wrote that one. The previous title was 'Summer Cleaning,' since the poem is about a summer living arrangement. But that seemed, as is often my fear, clever and cheesy.

Actually, it's even hard now to tell what the final version of this one is. I'm not sure whether I've ever typed it out before. The last three lines, though, have been in tact for a long time. They're even bracketed and moved around as a unit in the very first, much-scribbled draft.

The gimmick of this one is that all the lines are either two, three or five words long -- the three numbers mentioned at the beginning of the poem. Each line, based on the number of words it has, supposedly corresponds to, or is about, the noun mentioned with that number (Five-word lines are about the people, for example.) But I'm not sure, now, whether this was part of the original idea, or whether I made it up part-way through, or after the fact, to disguise my bizarre line-break choices. Either way, it's hard to totally accept, since most of the lines could be 'about' rooms, words or people. Maybe that's a good thing?

Speaking of line breaks, I always read this one with more dramatic, abrupt pauses at the ends of the lines than most of my poems require. And the punctuation is fairly serious -- period is a fuller stop than a comma and so on. Probably one of my many emulations of Robert Creeley. Or maybe it's to emphasize the numbers of words. Creeley voice or odd line breaks? Chicken or egg?

Meal Plan (8/6/06)

This is the age
of our convalescence
waiting for
and wandering attention
to soak in.

We are at an age
of re-absorption
of gauzy language
and forgetting how wounds heal.

In the age of
unnecessary procedure,
an unconsidered steam hangs
over exotic soup.

With those holes in your mouths
it is all you care to eat --
and isn't that a better deal,
at our age?

This one was written very shortly after I had my wisdom teeth pulled. I was away from home and, I think it's safe to say, feeling cranky during my recovery.

I was also thinking about the fact that our University's dining halls were "all you care to eat" facilities, not "all you can eat."

This is another one where several observations came together and seemed to give rise to a picture of the mood of a particular moment. In this case, in my self-pitying and possibly drugged state, that moment morphed into an entire age, a picture of a whole generation.

I don't think I've read 'Meal Plan' on stage since college -- I'm not sure it would make any sense.

Untitled (2/23/06)

Because of the wildfires
we waited for cigarettes
to burn orange to black
between the leaves
even after the rain.

Driving south to Texas
great black swaths
crossed the highway
but marked only the grass,
so yellow elsewhere, it was orange.

Now green near Houston,
"We got your rain,"
says Aunt on the back porch.
Dad's skin a pale orange,
twelve days in his memory
so dim, as not even to be black.

A title just never congealed for this one. I always sort of call it, 'After the Rain,' but I think that's pretty cheesy. In the margin of my journal here, I see that I toyed with titles that brought out the themes a little more clearly: "Potential Risk," "Fires on the Evening News," "Risk Horizon," but none of them sounded right.

It is about a couple of seemingly unconnected things -- illness, travel, wildfires -- that are all linked for me by a particular time and place. I felt the need to put them side by side to try to remember the strange feeling I had during that time. The colors, and the way the sounds work together (at least, I think they work pretty well), were almost coincidental.

The more I thought (and still think) about this one, the more they seem connected thematically too, though. All of the risky things move from far-off, potential risks to intensely personal, bizarrely real events. And I like to think the poem does the same: moves from the impersonal to the personal, from big, natural surroundings to dialogue and familial relationships.

Maybe. Again, there's a lot of coincidence in the construction of this one, and it doesn't feel as well-controlled as some of the others.

After Dinner (7/17/05)

I feel like laying my face
on this slab of steak.

Will you bring up the recycling?
Will you mention the waste?

Its thickness is
the solace I deserve.

Fred would love this t-bone,

And who else could continue
to be so excessive?

The first stanza of this one did actually arise out of a moment after dinner, while I was staring at a leftover piece of steak. The absurdity of that image made me laugh.

Apology (6/05)

Please,
let me be quiet.

I will walk around,
baking pies.

I have to say, I laughed pretty hard after writing this one. The contrast between the melodrama of the first half and the absurdity of the second is definitely supposed to be funny.

But I had the privilege--and it was a wonderful experience--of listening some peers review the poem and consider it for publication in Brown's undergraduate arts journal, Clerestory. It was anonymous, so I basically got to hide and hear what they thought.

I was blown away by their ability to find meanings in it. Someone suggested, for example, that it was about the Jewish holiday of atonement, which apparently involves food.

I think (as much as I hate to paraphrase poetry) I originally wrote it to say, "I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk right now. The domestic actions I'm doing (both directed and flighty) are keeping me busy and taking the place of normal communication. I need you to read them that way." The reason I think the poem says this effectively is because it really doesn't say it. It's terse, abrupt and uncommunicative--very much my mood at the time.

For Fred (6/05 and 3/07)

I.
Man, Fred,
you are a furry furniture,

a french-fried
phantom feline.

Fat friend
with football physique,

a favored little fellow
for fetching.

Do not forget me.


II.
Recently,
rather rangy.

A rail-thin
ragamuffin, really.

Remember romping recklessly
when rewards were richer?

Rotund, rambunctious
and radiant?

You regret nothing.


III.
Apprehensive,
engaged by my emergent expectation,

allow each utterance
to arrest your activity.

You acquiesce to our
accustomed understanding

as all vowels are allowed
to alliterate with each other.

Even unto the end.


IV.
Domestic decay
delicately descends.

Dust destroys.

Dander does damage.

Dogs do not deny death,
goddamn it.

But Fred
forgives everything.

Part I of this one was originally just the first two stanzas and its writing accompanied the writing of what eventually became 'Apology' (to be posted later). This was very early in my poetry-writing career--really less than two months in--and it's surrounded by some pretty bad stuff.

Not until February '06 did it become its current incarnation, originally titled, 'In Praise of a Schnauzer.' (I struggled a lot to decide whether Fred's dog-identity should be revealed at the beginning, and I still wonder this when I read it.) It was part of the spurt of writing that produced some of my favorite poems.

As I usually say when I introduce the last three sections, it became apparent, after I left home and came back a few times, that things had changed. Fred was a good barometer of that change for me, so his poem became this epic about communication and death.

The idea in the third stanza is that both our ideas of alliterative propriety and our communication with animals are conventionally determined--maybe sometimes surprising in the way they seem right but aren't logical or are messy and complicated but still work out.