is stuffed, / de world, wif feeding girls

A country or two full of girls, but what world
is full black-and-white? Back to back to that
past excitement, they are not made of gloss
paper and billboards and boredom, not all.

Not entirely, I mean. Simplest beauty, less
daisy than Leucanthemum vulgare, see oxeye,
a kind of beauty prefers damp landfill and
the constant company of others. Tuesday

see one, by Friday the world brims to full.
Any one you please, ask the nature of love,
the French call it effeuiller la marguerite.
We have named it as well, though plainer.

We have loved as well, methodically, a jerk
rhythm, scuffed oxfords on college sidewalks:
You see them and sneer, their slight frames
and large bags, always their perfect hair.

as you have always yourself: in your own image.
A singular satisfaction, bringing the outside in,
a small bit of human nature in your living room,
a face round as a girl’s, a vase like cerements.

Lamp light leaning I wait
On your one headlight car
This nervous bike officer
His endless vulture circles

I’ll have none of your advice
It seems there is no place
For me yet to be anything
Other than disappointed

I can pace off the wind chill
Ten feet in either direction
Bum a bum a cigarette
Waiting always on money

On your black hood car
On the time it would take
A person to learn to flirt
After years of indifference

You know that I’ve tried
Nights in dance floor bars
Surprising years ago now
And stopped not by choice

Those months I spent
Trading six beds at least
I never told you about
The nine times in ten

I was too fat too poorly
Dressed too anything
At all and so desperate
I kept on and on asking

What solace they could
Afford me almost enough
Never never at all enough
Reason to keep it up

Even this sidewalk night
Let the Spanish moss to wag
The moon to shake itself
Awake again as always

A round vase faint of light
Never as shining perhaps
As might be true sometimes
When no one is looking

Eventually you learn
To give I suppose by
Rejecting everything
You’ve ever received

Eventually you learn
There are always strings
There are some things
You can never not be

Sometimes I miss you even when you’re here
in the other room or in another chair and I wish
things were such I could touch your hand or press
my shoulder into yours. Proximity is a weakness of mine
I know, and one you gently resist most of the time.
There are exceptions. Once watching Fellini on
my mother’s leftover TV. Once talking about music
and the price of apples until an early shift at work.
Once in your hospital room filled with shrinks and
too few flowers. The day I think you began to believe me,
and cried. Sometimes I just wish you would sleep, staying up
all night with your cigarettes and increasingly empty
bottles of wine, always work in the morning. Of course
at night you feel the souls of branches scrape at your
window and want nothing more than to let them in.
Put on some Smiths record, you can see the way the sky
outside fades to a duller gray. Turn on the light, you
can hear the crosstown cars carry their burdens
to somewhere or other, you can hold your stomach
with one hand and say to no one in particular, Oh
how strange to be mirthful. Once I took care of you
when you got drunker than anticipated and vomited
in your bed. You took care of me when I was fevered
and breathless two days later. Both times you said to me
there is no apology, no thanks enough. Now I say
they are equal errands. Both nights we shared your bed
for the first time. Both nights we said incomprehensible
things and understood. You want everything in life I have
never wanted. In that way we are the same, I suppose.
I cannot know that what small things I have to offer you
are payment enough but for my own satisfaction
when you are glad to see me or occasionally when you
touch my hand or kiss me briefly on the cheek.

I bought a new Rhodia notebook, and this is the first thing I wrote in it.

Restlessness, 21 December 2009

Opera in the other room
so I left it through the door
looking for rubies or
what else can fit in my pocket.
I find you picking bones
from a dead bird on Spring.
I say Hello and I am thinking
of moving to Norway or
Tuscaloosa. You suggest
packing woolen socks
or a bolo tie. I thought
I heard a calliope from
a block over, but it’s
only the wind on steel
chimneys. What am I
looking for? What is
anyone? Someone to
share a headstone with,
something to write on it.
You say you’d like
to die saving a burning
bus full of orphans.
I think I’d rather drink
cyanide not knowing
that despite evidence
you were still alive.

is stuffed, / de world, wif feeding girls

A country or two full of girls, a black-and-white world
They are made of glossy papers and billboards and boredom
Simple beauty, different of course from daffodils, ocean spray
Think sidewalk rain and the painted backs of lavatory doors
You love them of course methodically, a rhythm like economics
A bear, overall—in keeping with corporate policy, after all
Any street in a college town, you will see them and sneer
Their slight frames and large bags, always their perfect hair
Admiration an easy distraction, boredom on heavy boredom
You know the game, what rules to break and when, how
In line for groceries and behind some keen miniskirt
One can look; to talk is to risk what’s left of your capabilities
There is no doubt—there is never—what will happen next
All young angry boys grow old and die, leave nothing behind
Their plastic glasses and string suspenders will have gone
All their fullnesses emptied, all their emptinesses filled
At last there is no trace of their rebellion, their compliance
Rest assured, it is never your fault entirely: you are ill-equipped
From the beginning crippled by your own understanding
The mortal dangers of self-creation, a complex of gods
The way nothing turns out as we planned in the beginning
But how lucky you made this machine to manufacture unrest
A kind of frustration factory to keep you alive, or so, for now
And eating, and going to work; it’s more than some of us have
Perhaps even those girls—open-backed, broken-mouthed—
Will envy us one day: we could not have been better

Two in the morning
A new Thursday
No sleeves even to keep out
The coming fall
Stood as always underneath
Some statue or memorial
I invite the leaves to gather
Dark around my feet
To stay for a moment
This city does sleep
A long summer
Ravished the pavements
The tin rooves
All sweat-slick and breathless
Sometimes a car
An airplane passes
Like a child’s dream
A drunk man delivers
His dinner to the city sewer
Everything shudders
A restless anticipation
The coming birds of winter
In time my mother
Will send an envelope
Filled with money
She will write my name
Barely legible on the outside
The card will read “I hope
You’re sleeping well.”

The formatting isn’t quite right, but this edit box is frustrating.

“The enemy knows the system.”
—Claude Shannon

I wrote you this letter, left it just inside your
bedroom drawer hopefully where you will see it
and no one else; think of Herodotus
of Histiaeus’s slave, his head shaved
for a tattoo message, Milesian revolt as soon
as a full head of hair—but steganography
is something else—yes I wrote it but
this is how it came out, some strange cipher
unintendedly impenetrable, Le Chiffre Indéchiffrable
but that’s Vigenère, a kind of Titanic
of cryptology: decidedly sinkable
and this anodyne text, covering something
surely there’s something; think of a Grille cipher
rowboats of meaning on an ocean of all this
that doesn’t, but what’s to be found
in decryption? Ask Mata Hari, married
at eighteen to an advertisement in some Dutch
newspaper, never to teach kindergarten again
who as a spy caused fifty-thousand soldiers’ deaths
she knew the danger, was cuffed and dragged
from her room at The Plaza Athénée, decoded
radio messages the trial evidence—stood guilty
in front of the firing squad, perhaps she saw herself
in the late evening sun finally unencrypted
perhaps she even found herself good news
but satisfaction comes no matter the message
no matter how mundane its contents
how horrible it is: anything elucidated
is something gained—at least I hope the work
is enough for you, enough for this letter
I can promise nothing inside it worth the effort
of cryptanalysis; I don’t even know
myself what’s there to be found or even
what enemies there are to intercept it
perhaps I’m the one forbidden to know
the blind author writing despite his
inevitable ignorance; anyway if I knew
I’d have written it that way instead

I didn’t have internet for a while.

I hate the title. Not sure about the poem.

First Time Every Time

Straining, I have strained
all but my hands. Birds
in harmony, try your mouth
at their tune. Street-side
window filled with faces,
gutter-drain street fumes,
brake squeal under the
corner light, turn your
attention to the west,
do not bother getting up.
Sacrifice a cigarette to
the creation of one thing
or another, you invent
untrue things: aphorisms.
Self-aggrandizement is
my greatest virtue, self-
amusement my greatest
vice. My hands take care
of themselves. Sometimes
I feel. Sometimes I, insane
with bass drums and
the threat of death, hold
quiet communion alone.
Is there another option?
The world outside, filled
of course with pigeons,
has little to offer tonight.
Introductions to be made,
I greet myself amicably,
I offer a shaking hand.

Sometimes I miss you
even when you’re right here
in the other room or in
another chair and I wish
you would let me touch
your hand or press my
shoulder into yours.
Proximity is a weakness
of mine I know, and one
you gently resist most of the
time. There are exceptions.
Sometimes I just wish you
would sleep, staying up all
night with your cigarettes
and increasingly empty
glasses of wine, work
in the morning. You feel
the souls of flowers
scrape at your window
and want nothing more
than to let them in.
Turn on the light, you
can hear the crosstown
cars carry their burdens
to somewhere or other,
you can imagine what
it’s like to be mirthful
but honestly. And all the
windows are painted shut.
You want everything I
have never wanted. In
that way we are the same
I suppose. I took care of you
when you got drunker
than anticipated and vomited
in your bed, you took care
of me when I was fevered
and breathless two days later.
I would like to tell you
they are equal errands,
I would like to thank you
for staying with me as long
as you did. Both nights
we shared your bed for
the first time, both nights
we said incomprehensible
things and understood.
Tonight I came home after
waiting too long after work
to meet you for dinner,
and you were accidentally
asleep, your bedroom door
open, every light on.
Tomorrow I will dress
myself in dirty clothes
and give your apology back.

I could knock, I suppose,
but what good is it, really?
I’ve seen you often enough
on his shoulder, more often
now than on mine, even,
and never it’s pleasantly
candid: I’ve sat watching
a powerline as it holds up
jays in summer. I have
gone alone to a small
downtown shore at dusk
and seen the sun give
itself to the Atlantic.
I would much rather
find myself closed tidy
in my room, solitary
and Elvis Costello vinyl.
I would rather I were
tired of myself and full
to sick with books and
twenty-or-so cigarettes,
a preponderance of
black bile, a constant
state of pitiless sincerity.
Going through the motions
is motion after all, which
is more than some people
can say. I’ve remembered
an apple if I get hungry,
a glass of water if I’m
thirsty. Everything is fine
and in place. The night
couldn’t last long enough.