In Heaven Blues

there ain’t no assisted suicide in heaven
and the grocer never has my favorite beans
there ain’t no assisted suicide in heaven
so for dinner I make do with cooking these

there ain’t no assisted suicide in heaven
and the angel’s harps are slightly out of tune
there ain’t no assisted suicide in heaven
and none of the girls in the choir sound like you

there ain’t no assisted suicide in heaven
so I’ve started eating pears off of this tree
there ain’t no assisted suicide in heaven
and I know you didn’t wait around for me

Concept of the Sun

Go dark for a moment, the world erupts

In alarm. Return to the fire of light,

And calm returns. I have read in a book

That you destroy yourself, cleaving your heart

In an explosion of joy and comfort.

Though your warmth and vast power will outlive

Us all, one day you will lay your burdens

Down. In the years before the final flash,

I pray that you gaze one time toward me

Forgetting all that I wanted to take,

Then burst aflame across the endless void-

Forever the most beautiful star in the sky.

Bowerbird

Shall I grow daisies or delphinium

At the door, or would you prefer flowers

Carefully cut and drinking from a vase?
A hundred seashells from a dozen seas

Adorn the steps. I have captured the sun

In a jar, snuff it out if you desire

Darkness. Shall I show you all that shimmers?

A hoard of gold and silver, mere marbles

But I will stretch them to a braided band

If ever you should wish to wear a crown.

The wind like the fluttering of feathers

Chills me for a moment, you disappear.

Plastic milk caps, glinting foil, copper coins—

I was a fool to hope you could be fooled. 

Oubliette

My love, I called out but you would not sing.

Lanterns in my temple darkened. The moon

Shone crimson. No owl or insect was heard.

I lit a match beneath that sharp shadow.

I held it until my fingertips singed.

I quickly lit another. Nothing moved.

I was alone and had no grand desire

But your arms around me. Impossible.

I will not need to call your name again.

Light a match! Tremble at my blasphemy!

For I have made another one of you,

And I have imprisoned that one within me.

Shake Off the Dust

You can keep something on a shelf too long—

Batteries drained of blood, slack elastic,

Motionless clothes remembered by the moths.

Ink hardens. Paper turns to light, then air.

For all these years I drank my coffee black.

In some way it was like seeing her face.

I would claim it was all unbearable,

To suffer being replaced and replaced

Until the sky froze and the moon fell down,

But I can hear her piercing mocking laugh,

Her condemnation of cream and sugar,

And I so desperate for her regard…

If I am compelled to tell the whole truth

I craved to trade the sweet for the bitter.

Now those moments are a decade removed,

And almost all of that time spent without her.

The world entire was the point of a sword

As I stumbled through a haze of nightmare.

Why torment myself over a woman

Who discarded me and chose another?

The seven years expired. The sand ran out

And yet I stared into the emptied glass.

A coworker woke me with a question.

She asked if I needed a drink. I asked

For coffee. “Black,” she said with a wise nod—

Not the first time I have begged for a cup.

I stopped her. “No,” I said. “Cream and sugar.”
“How much sugar?”

        “Um, one standard unit.”

“How much cream?”

        “I suppose one will do.”

She handed it over. I twirled the spoon

And smiled at the sound of scraped ceramic.

I closed my eyes. I took a drink. It tasted good.

Grief

A little over nine years ago you called me in the early hours of the morning to let me know that Andrea was gone. Today I was working and going through my normal conversational script. I was nearly done speaking with my customer when I recalled that she worked in your office, just around the corner. I was just about to ask about you- I had been meaning to call on you and attempt to arrange to get breakfast or lunch or dinner or coffee.

So, that is how I learned that you were dead.

I remember saying “What?” and then I could not hear very well.
It seems it Happened in late April. A cruel month.

I had been isolating myself from friends
and the technological innovations of our age
because I had not been managing my emotions well
and I was not interested in inflicting myself onto others.

Can we talk for a second about how fucking stupid this is?
You’re gonna bust your ass for your whole life and become a dentist,
help out all these children, give them confidence and secure their health,
then die in a car accident? It should have been me.

If it had been me it would not have been a tragedy.
Not even a surprise.
The waste I am making of my life seems offensive
now that you have departed.

Remember the summer I wasn’t eating
and you bought me all those groceries,
with that sack of rice that must have weighed fifty pounds?
Why did you do that?
Remember the night in your room at college
when I was drinking vodka out of the bottle (don’t worry I will be more precise)
and I started narcissistically ranting
about how I was practically the culmination of existence,
with the finest intellectual and artistic tastes?
It would embarrassed me if I had the capacity for embarrassment,
to say things like that and live a life like I have lived.

But if I didn’t get embarrassed
why was I afraid to show my face in your office wearing my mechanic’s shirt,
and if I’m so smart
why did I convince myself that you wouldn’t want to see me?

I do not know what I am going to do with myself.
This is not the way things were supposed to be.

Devour

I was in a parking lot buying a box of your favorite cookies.
The Girl Scout taking my money said,
“Only one? You know they are cancelling the flavor this year.”
I briefly thought of getting more, but shook my head.

Twenty-five cookies later in my room,
shaking the crumbs and powdered sugar into my palm,
I realized I would have eaten them all
even if you were coming home to me.

Letter to Sarasvati no. 1

When last we spoke, old friend, you asked “is there nothing you enjoy?” I deflected somewhat and talked about drinking. But drinking was not a thing that I intrinsically enjoyed, and speaking of it in such a way was deliberately imprecise.

I wonder if, under normal conditions, many others are able to recognize and to doubt their emotions simultaneously. Perhaps they do not feel relentlessly compelled to do so. Oh, envy. What always attracted me to alcohol was its ability to manufacture feelings of authenticity. It allowed me to believe myself in any situation— in whatever I was arguing in favor of at a particular moment, in imaginary betrayal, in the value and clarity of my feelings, in the safety of an embrace, in the necessity of violence. The freedom of this confidence drew me back repeatedly even in the face of its terrible consequences, chiefly because being sure of what I was feeling was such a delightful and foreign experience when compared to my customary paralytic existence- euphoria with a hangover of destruction and disappointment. 

So to borrow liberally from literature and answer your question in a more honest way, I like the taste of coffee, the sound of a needle as it traverses a vinyl record, and the prose of Borges. Due to my preference for self-denial I had only one of those near my room, but I thought of what you said and so a few days ago I went to a store and bought a modern Victrola, then went to another store and bought what is a called a French press for making coffee (the first patent for such a design was, of course, issued to Italians) and whole coffee beans of Colombian provenance and a reasonably priced coffee grinder.

Now I sit in the morning with precisely measured dark coffee in a mug, Rachmaninoff’s Concerto no. 2 in C minor played by Cliburn and Reiner with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1962) on the record player, and I must confess that the morning is better with these material comforts than it would have been without them.

There is more than one path. Once I was convinced that I chose the journey that was appointed for me, and now I am sure that I was mistaken. The air of this early December is unseasonably warm and so I walked a few miles around a local pond in the hour surrounding sunrise. There is nothing in my life that satisfies my desire to exhibit expertise and brilliance- nothing I can do that someone else cannot do better. But if there was, would I find an excuse not to do it? I have been trying to get the results I want out of a broken machine, instead of attempting to fix the machine. Is it any wonder that under such a regime, my body and brain and I are on such antagonistic terms? What is to be done?

A Shelter

A flash of lightning impossibly illuminates the windowless room,
the sound of thunder lost in the deafening torrent
or eaten by the earth before it reaches my ears,
and you are here.
Is your hair the color of ebony, or is it silver now?
My wonder delays my wish.
The light fades, I lurch toward you,
your arms turn to smoke beneath my hands,
the serpent’s wreath of your hair mocks me as you flee my embrace.
I crash into walls, I scream your name, I explode through the doorway,
the rain soaks me to my skin, I shiver. You are gone.

I wake drenched in sweat
she is sitting over me
she says
“You were having a nightmare”
gets me a glass of water
dabs my forehead with a cool washcloth
acts like a good woman
looks down at my deep measured breaths
cautiously asks what the dream was about.
I tell her I do not remember.

Carmen 56

My father was a fisherman
and his father was a fisherman
and my son would have been a fisherman
but there are no more fish,
the wind makes waves of salt,
the sea has disappeared.

Autobiography no. 31

This old man at work today noticed Il Canzoniere set over to the side
and he asked if I was reading Petrarch for school, and I laughed.
Before I could stop myself I said,
"No, I don't go to college. I've got a broken heart though."
He looked moderately thoughtful for a moment,
then I counted out his change
and he got in his car and pulled away.

Autobiography no. 30

Whenever I see a chessboard,
I reflexively envision my father
as I knew him long ago,
when he was a giant and I wanted to understand him.
In those days my father and his youngest brother
kept in touch principally through the writing of letters,
each of which contained the algebraic notation of the next move
in their game of chess.
Of course the postal service works on its own time
and a game commonly ends in around forty moves,
so a year could pass
dedicated to playing a single game on dozens of pieces of paper
while they lived a thousand miles apart,
and I staring at it all enraptured, reading books about chess
and trying to guess what opening my uncle would attempt
after the current game came to an end.
Now they both have technology in their pockets
that would let them play instantly with each other from across the globe,
but I do not think they use their phones for chess,
and they no longer send the letters.
I think about this.

The First of the Line

The tree is going to die soon.
I did not have it very long.
It is the second tree of this genus and species that I have owned.
The first I killed on purpose years ago in a slow rage-
I kept it by my bedside as it withered without water.

This tree got ants early on.
The ants came for the aphids, which came for the flowers,
which came out to try to kiss the sun as it arced above.
I put poison on the windowsill but that was not enough to dissuade them
and because I was not willing to poison every inch of the room
I put the tree outside in the sweltering heat of Arkansas summer.

I watched as the days went by
and the mercury in the thermometer climbed
thirty degrees Fahrenheit above the tree’s acceptable range.
I watched my tree defy its new environment for a time,
then fail to thrive.
I watched the fresh green shoots of spring die,
I watched the dove-white flowers torn apart by a thousand insects.
I watched the leaves shrink away desiccated,
their brown bodies thinner and thinner with each passing hour,
and tonight I watched their shadows flicker on the ground
while my tree’s last chance at life
floated away in a cool breeze beneath the light of the moon.
It would have lived if I could have accepted ants inside my room.

Crawl

I could start out trying to explain the way I feel inside about working for a living, about being degraded and disrespected, about never having enough for someone else because I never had enough for myself, but that kind of thing stings like chlorinated water in my eyes so instead I’ll fall into a metaphor some silly idea like being in a swimming pool brightly lit and deeper than my feet can reach and there’s a million or a billion people in here with me but there’s room enough for everyone. When is the first moment I noticed that this pool contained a race? Was it the report of a shotgun making the grass tremble and the birds flee the trees? The tug of a fish trying to escape and knowing that he could reach cool and peaceful depths if only he had not bitten the worm first? I realize that everyone is competing and that I have been in competition all along. I size them up quickly and determine that I am swiftest, but my thought is stopped by reality just beyond the the gate. I eagerly press forward then feel sharp teeth gnaw upon my limbs. I frantically attempt to free myself but I cannot. What are these shackles upon me? Is this iron that delays me? No, it is not iron, no element alone made this chain upon my ankles, and I am suddenly sure that no one above water can see the device that holds me here. It pulls me down. Everyone else is racing but I know I am going to die, and still the people in the stands are cheering. I gasp for air. I cannot do this any longer. Surely someone will jump in to help me. They will swim to me and embrace me, breathing deep, kicking up, saving me from certain doom and letting my lungs fill once more. Before they drown they will look down and see the skulls beneath my feet.

Sol

When I am am incensed at the heat of a day,
I rage against the entire sun
and
not the single ray that brought sweat to my brow.

By the time my curse has finished the ray is gone
and the sun remains.

Why can I not remember that?

Savannah Smiles

I was in love with her at least a little bit and she knew it
but I was polite enough to never say anything,
which may not have mattered to her
but sure as hell felt necessary to me.

I tried to stay out of her business
but so many days I saw her with tears in her eyes
that I had not put there—
and I wanted to rush over to her
and move a tear away with my thumb
and then brush my hand against her cheek,
gently rotating her face so that she was looking up at me
and I would tell her that it would be okay
and she would believe me.

One day I was eavesdropping on her
and I heard her say that she was hungry.
I made an excuse and made my way over to her and I asked
what her favorite kind of Girl Scout cookie was
and she looked gratified and confused and told me
and on my break I went and I got her a box
and I was too embarrassed to bother her to give it to her
so I got someone else to give her the cookies instead.

I got home and went into my room
and flicked my knife open with my right thumb.
I cut through thin plastic and cardboard
and sat down in my chair
thinking about the day.
I took a cookie from the packaging
and bit down.
I reveled in the crisp stolen pleasure
of finally knowing
what it was like to be something she adored.

Bukowski no. 43

Eventually my brain is going to beat me.
Could be twenty years from now
(won't be tonight)
but time is on its side
and it only has to triumph once.
When it happens
I hope people have the decency
to not act surprised.

Anywhere I Lay My Head

My lungs scream that I demand too much,
my muscles burn,
my feet blister from the relentless strain,
but I dare not slow.
He is there behind me,
his breath hot on my neck.
I can hear him
(often he is all I can hear)
but I tell myself that I am not afraid of him
because I am an animal that knows how to run,
and from time to time I taunt him by looking over my shoulder.

But see the moon catch in his red eyes!
See the yellowed teeth smiling at me!
See the slavering mouth that claimed me long ago!


The clouds before me break and I glimpse the future-
I stumble on some pebble I did not think to fear,
my feet slip and fail
and before I can rise
he is upon me and I remember his name.

In the morning
there will be no beast that remains,
nor a sign that ever there was such a thing.
The crows will circle what is left of me
and no one will believe that I tried as hard as I could.

Autobiography no. 29

I can remember it like it was yesterday.
We were standing in the kitchen of our apartment there on 9th Street
and she was deeply frustrated and she said, her voice and body shaking,
“You have depression.”
I argued the point with her at great length,
because I believed
that I had a personality.
So many years have passed since then
and I am still not sure
if either of us were right.

Bukowski no. 42

When they tell me that there other fish in the sea
I notice
that they have not asked
if I am fish or fisherman,
and then I see a glint of light and bite.