Journal The End

Surprise! This experiment is over. I have found I can write a poem every day, but some days, they suck. That wasn't the point when I started this. The point was to get me writing consistently. I have achieved that. Now, I feel I can put that discipline to use. Plus, out of sixty-five hastily written poems, there are ten I actually want to work on for the future. That's better than I thought I'd get, really.

This isn't goodbye. It's hardly hello, but as a concept, this is proving utterly unsustainable. I keep putting more and more time into this every day and honestly, it's too much. Maybe a journal poem every week? Every month? Every year or two? Look for me in the future as some graduate school asshole polishing a thesis manuscript of poetry. Maybe you'll see the grown-up versions of something I started here. But then again, maybe not.

Journal Sixty-Five Planks I've Walked

I read a lot today. I embroidered a little. I plan to embroider more. Something about the night always makes me want to embroider then. Maybe I need a gaslight. A gaslight and a rocking chair and a trusty hound. Bah, I don't want any of those things, not really.

I had a dream last night about two snakes. One was good and the other was bad, but in the end, they both ran away. The journal poem today is based on a mysterious dumpster full of wood I saw outside my house today. It was there while I ate lunch and then it was gone. I never saw anyone take it, it just wasn't there anymore.

Misplacement

Someone left a dumpster
outside his sinking duplex.

He doesn't know
how to tell if wood is rotted,
but the wood in this dumpster
is rotted.

Or maybe it's burned;
it's black and flaking,
but it's probably soft too.
He likens it to a mattress,
a sinking mattress.

If the wood is burned,
maybe his neighbor's house
burned in the night
without him noticing.

How did he not notice?
There is food in his beard.
He does not notice.

He checks out the side window.
The neighbor's house is there,
but the dumpster of wood
has been taken like an egg.

He thinks maybe a ship
wrecked on his street,
all hands down, loot sliding
through the postal slot drain.

There's a mast in his yard.
How did he not notice?
It looks a lot like a tree.
In the crow's nest, there are crows.

Something winks on the sidewalk.
He thinks he better get it
before the crows come down
and pick at it like it owes money.
Maybe it's a doubloon.

When he goes out
to pick up the wink,
he's careful on the porch
because it bows like sheet forts
strung over chairs.
One sure step and it would all
come tumbling down,
come tumbling down.

There are clouds over the block,
shade from rootless trees on wings.

He has never read cloud shapes,
though once, on the Fourth of July,
a cloud of firework smoke
was shaped exactly like him.

He thinks the clouds
must be heavy. If they fell,
they would leave a crater
big enough to fill
with years of dishwater.

The wink is a doubloon
from the sinking of a ship,
but the doubloon is shaped
exactly like an American penny.

He picks it up and eyes the crows
looking down from their crow's nest,
it too sinking in the middle
from the weight of so many wings.

One of them ka-caws a threat
and he realizes he owes them money.
He tosses the doubloon up
and the ka-cawer comes down
to grab it from the air.

He thinks there should be flags
or at least a flag, but they probably
left on the wind, or else they too
were snatched from the air by crows.

The dumpster is back again,
but this time it's not full of wood.
It's full of something else.
He struggles to find a word for it,
but there are no words
for what he peers in to see.

Journal Sixty-Four Bits of Colored Pencils

I dream a lot. This is not a dream I had. This is a dream I would have had but would have forgotten. I like porches. I like birds. I like snakes. I like one thing for another for another, like Koschei's soul in a needle, in an egg, in a duck, in a hare, in an iron chest, buried under a green oak tree on the island Buyan (Slavic mythology). Most of all, I like things as things they are not. Pretending, you know. Sigh. I also like my birthday this week. Where should I eat on that day?

Phoenix Dream

I'm on the porch
and a bird lands
on my naked knee
and he coughs out
a little curl of fire
and a perfect rise of smoke
to make me sneeze.

He hops, he chirps,
he burps more fire,
he flies an X from
one corner
to diagonal other
to diagonal other
to diagonal other
and all the boards
from the porch above
turn into snakes
lashed together roughly
like by Boy Scouts
learning knots
for the very first time.

A hand pops out,
and then another
and they part the snakes
like beaded curtains,
like a novelty of plastic.

The bird is flapping,
is circling, is diving
at the new body
from no body before.

A head lowers
from the treehouse
of lashed snakes
and it is my head,
but it is older,
maybe five years,
ten if I'm honest.

Older me says,
"Why, what
have we here?
What young thing
in recreational repose
on his rented
front porch?"

I tell him
he isn't fooling me,
I know who he is,
he's me from the future.

"Of course I am," he says,
"how wouldn't I be?
Ask me a question
before all the blood
pools in my head."

I ask him
what choices I will make,
what things I will change
and will I, can I,
ever find my way.

He's grunting and red
like a blood-filled balloon.
"You become
a wrangler of snakes;
that's all
I can really say
without giving
the rest away."

He yells, "A-one
and a-two!" and
he's gone and the boards
to the porch above
are boards again
and I'm bored again
and the bird
hasn't stopped circling
the space where my head
just was,
though now he's a bee
and now he's a seed
and now he's just an idea
I once had
while I smoked
in a dream.

Journal Sixty-Two Is Only a Number

Now that Josh is back, we're eating and walking and watching movies and talking about our deepest desires for the future. It's like this every Saturday. It's like this and this usually tastes like curry.

I'll be twenty-five soon, less than a week. I'm going to tell you a secret; I've been pretending I've already turned twenty-five since at least February, maybe even earlier. It seems like a good number. It seems like a serious number. At twenty-five, I feel like I can allow myself nostalgia for things that happened during college without feeling lame or guilty about it. I miss going to QT in the middle of the night to buy fruity alcohol. I miss hiding other people's expensive things. I miss pacing the senior attic and freaking out about what comes next. I miss wondering, "What comes next?" It's like I already know now. There are no more surprises. But sometimes, there are maggots from I don't know where.

Like Birds

I keep a pack of cigarettes
in a cupboard
and I take them out
and smell them like markers,
to get a rise, psychosomatic,
of course, before I do anything
summery. I go outside,
after, and I see some birds
pecking the road.
This is where, if I smoked,
I would draw a deep drag,
ash in the grass,
(all cool and confident,
all relaxed inquisition)
and then check on the birds.

What are they pecking?
Are they eating
the filthy road, little bits
of loose asphalt like seeds?

I shadow over them,
but they don't go anywhere,
it's too good, too fruitful,
to ever leave this patch of street.
They are picking at tiny white things,
snips of yarn, I think, but no,
it turns out
the yarn is maggots.

Again, if I smoked, I would
light another cigarette,
the one sitting behind my ear
this whole time, the one threatening
to fall into pecking range
of hungry starlings,
yellow beaks like feeding tongs,
dotted coats like astronaut pajamas.

But I just run my hands
all through my hair instead,
worry that the sky is raining maggots.
And it is, if only for these birds
and if only in this swath of squirmy hell
in the shadow of a man
sniffing cigarettes like a fetish.

Here are worms
for the purpose
of being worms.
Here are starlings
for the sake of starlings.

Journal Sixty-One Gun Salute to Uninteresting Names

Went out for shakes with Melissa and heard a conversation about names. It was kind of weird. People have such awful taste. I mean to say, people prize names they've only heard in a porno or seen on the side of organic cereal boxes in the testimonials ("This cereal has such crunch!" - Colleena Bendoverforya).

Anyway, that's kind of what this poem is about, but not really. It's more about how I sometimes feel like either nothing is unique or everything is unique, which really means unique doesn't exist as a thing anymore. Blargh. I need to drink a beer and sit on a porch swing. It's that time of year.

Undoing What's Been Done

"People have told me so many things,"
she says to the man in the booth,
"about the meaning of my name."
The man says it must be Hawaiian,
something tropical and sweet and carefree.

"Colleena," he says, "CAW-LEAN-UH.
You sound like a pineapple, a delicious
pineapple." He smiles the smile
of someone asking for another slice of pie.
He asks, "Can I get another slice of pie?"

She winks at him and touches her nose,
bops off to the counter like this
is the most important thing, to get
this man more cheddar-apple pie.
When she gets back, she asks for his name,
"If you don't mind, what's your name?"

He fishes the air with his fork, says,
"Harry, HAIR-EE," punctuating each syllable
with a poke at nothing. He smiles more,
but she's frowning confusion, a unique thing
that's come across a common thing, a deer
sniffing at a McDonald's bag before leaping
over a stream and into darkening trees
colored like jewels, the shape of growing things,
things unmade when they're reproduced
and given such common names.

Trees. Harry. Two stamped patties
of amiability. He keeps smiling
as she frowns, as she backs away
like maybe he won't notice
that suddenly she's gone,
like maybe he'll forget
a girl named Colleena
could ever have been so close,
could ever have served him such a thing
as cheddar-apple pie on a dish so clean,
on a dish so perfect
it could have had its own name,
the name of a genius,
the name of something
you see once
and never again.

Journal Fifty-Nine Flowers Arranged Strategically on the Hood of Your Car

The only human interaction I had today took place in text messages. Oh, and the pizza place down the street. I have this not-really-a crush on the skinny guy that works there. I think I'm probably not attracted to him, but maybe I am, I don't really know. It's not like other crushes. Probably because he's selling me pizza. I used to think he was flirting with us, or at least with Josh, but now I understand that's something called "customer service." Anyway, I can't help it. Today was spent very much in my head and in my hands.

One Slice

As soon as I step in,
he asks what I've been up to,
like we're familiar enough
for him to understand
how I sat and embroidered
for hours; for him to get
that I'm only here because cooking
seemed like the final, inoperable chore;
for him to even fathom
the struggle I had just walking here
without feeling totally defeated.

But here he is, smiling and winking
like maybe he would get it,
like maybe the tips aren't everything
and to be liked and wanted
is only the concern of narcissists;
what would he know of desire--
a pizza boy in a corner spot
drawing steam lines on the dry-erase board
over a slice of pizza
that looks more like
a piece of melting apple pie--
what would he know of anything like that?

He tries to meet my eye
as I leave a tip, but I won't have it,
I won't give that away. A dollar,
fine, but not my eyes;

never look a man in the eyes
after he asks you
how you spend your time
when he isn't around.

Journal Fifty-Eight Calls Transferred to Other Lines

I talked to Audra on the phone today. It's been rough for people lately. I blame the stars. It's easier than blaming other people all the time and it's much easier than blaming myself.

It's technically a new day, so I'm going to post this poem now. Still, I may post another later, we'll just see.

Forget It

Life is cruel, sudden
and inept as people.

She says she's so tired
she wouldn't know her name
if she was asked it.
I ask, "Audra, what's your name?"
She is silent for a bit.
Thinking I've lost connection,
I ask, "Audra, you there? Audra?"
No sound and then,

"Who is this? Wait, who am I
talking to? What's in my hand?"

And we both laugh
though I'm not convinced
it was a joke to begin with.

I tell her to get some sleep,
it's been a rough week,
get some real, honest sleep.
She says, "You know me,
real and honest, so real,
so goddamned honest
I can only tell a righteous lie."

She uses this word, righteous,
like other people use water.
It's a cleanser, an agent
to justify her work, her excess
of worry for worriless people.
"I don't think they'll ever know,"
she says, "how much work it is
to look after their drunk asses."

And I say, "Hm, yeah,"
like I always do, the non-answer
to a bunch of unasked questions,
chief among them, "Am I talking
way too much? I feel like I am.
Am I?" I know it's this way
when she starts to ask about me
and I have nothing new to say.

But she has more to say,
even if I have nothing.
She tells me about the times
she's thrown people out
of very crowded places
where the only noise
she's heard for hours
is the ordering of drinks
and the calling, over and over,
of her own forgotten name.