New Poem: Traces of Happiness

I can’t stop smiling,

No, I mean, I can’t stop, I really can’t

 they’ll kill me if I stop

I wish I could explain this

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry

I have to keep smiling, because they’re watching

And I don’t have a lot of time

Left,

I’m not trying to sound self absorbed

But

It just all comes out of me

Ever since I started drinking coffee

My days have been one long

Enema after another

An Enemy after my anus

This is real life, this is mine.

And though it smells, and though

It is so eager to escape me

I love it

Did I just say I love my shit?

Is this how poets rationalize their inner sadness?

With words?

I haven’t been gaining any weight. I keep gorging this food

But it’s like I’m pooping it all out. My ribs show in the mirror

And my hips have sunken in, as if my waste

Had been literally stored in my waist, and the more I poop

The more I take on a disturbing, hour glass figure

If this continues, I could be a model. I could go to New York.

That’s what it takes, that’s how you make it.

Somebody help me, I don’t want to die

Someone take me to the poop doctor.

On the toilet Is the only time

of the day that I’m still

Or even truly alone enough with myself, to focus

To calm down,

Without being fed some irrelevant snap

Of information. I go there now, not just

To relieve myself of fluids

But to flush away all the broken

Parts

On the right side of the sink

On the floor, the tiny corpse of a spider

Has been on his back, mummified

By the Clorox I sprayed on him

Several weeks ago. He’d grown too

Large for sympathy, just as I have.

I recite the first half of Hamlet’s soliloquy

Into the mirror, To be or not to be,

Though I have no answer, I imagine

That weeks from now, I’ll have it all memorized

And when I stand up before my thesis preachers

For my final presentation

That is all I will say to them,

And with tears in their eyes, they’ll understand

At long last, what I’ve been feeling.

What I’ve longed to feel,

Let’s make art that’s grounded in the world

Stay informed and make art that’s relevant

Refresh the page of the New York times

And also, look outside the window, and blink a lot

And close the curtains, and then open them again

To check if anything’s changed

Has the sun gone down any

Have the street lights turned on

Maybe a bird’s landed on a power line

Maybe there’s a dog being walked

Maybe it’s a puppy, and if it is

You get to run outside and ask

The owner if you can play with it

And they say yes, because owner so lonely

That’s why he got the puppy in the first place.

Do you know what’s happening in the world

I don’t know, have you heard what’s happening

On Neptune

They found traces of water on mars

They found traces of ammonia on Neptune

In fact that’s all they found

Let’s go to Neptune, because

Everyone there is probably dead

They found traces of life in new York

Only traces, but there is still hope

There’s a theory that California is really

Just a black hole, or that the coast really starts

At Nevada, and that all those people, who go

To California are just walking out into the waves

Like enlightened cows, stoic, brave,

Slow And full of faith.

And California has been a code word for death

This whole time. No one in California

Ever leaves. When is mommy coming home

Mommy went to California, sweetie, she’s never coming back

And someday, when we’re rich enough, we can go to California, too

And see mommy. Grandma’s also dead, but she’s in a better place now.

I can see the bodies standing up right, dotting

The simmering waves, like navy blue dots in the sun

 and they continue, in a caravan

Upright even past the horizon, where the sea floor

Must be miles deep, how enchanted, how cult like

Now, any time someone mentions California,

I can feel the divine aura. “I’m planning on moving out west,

To California. I hear San Diego is beautiful this time of year.

The people out there are just so kind.”

so matter-of-factly

I place my hand on your shoulder,

If only I had such courage.

Poems Tapered to Rockets

Poems Tapered to Rockets

1.

Woah dude,

Like, do you ever think about

How the paper’s shape isss

Limiting?

Like, um, think outside

The rectangle

(in another dimension, I’m sure people say the same thing, but instead of rectangle they’ve got other shapes whose influence they make a point of escaping; think outside of the triangle, think outside of the dodecahedron. It’s all the same, as soon as you realize that the shape of things is not there, and that frames were meant to be ignored)

Life is false urgency

Why I’m making any given thing

Is just a rationalization

I am universally passing the time

Then why pass it by writing, you ask.

Well, why do some people like sushi?

Not all questions are meaningful

I make enough meaningful art that I can afford to do whatever

Could have been a god

I could wake up at four AM

Each morning to study the fluctuations of stock

Value, I could unmask the covers of all science text books

I could think, I could make the right investments

Order the right parts

The right chemicals

Attend the right rallies, craft

The timeliest of speeches

Enter the divine realm of politics

Of currency, and moving the world

I could chase the dream

Assemble the death ray

We could all begin to die

Tomorrow! I could be the antichrist

But without choice

I am only an infant

Scribbling on the walls.

2.

Hey, faggot

Critique this

As if I give any amount of shit

what light your life experience

Could shed on to this stupid rectangle

As if you weren’t just looking for the chance

To hear yourself speak

Do me a solid:

Roll over and die

Let the dreamers of dreams

Tend to their destinies.

I’ve been lodged up my anus before

It was actually quite clean—the walls

Were painted white, with adequate lighting

A few stains stuck sixty centimeters from

The soupy, black tile floor.

And on Friday, there was an opening and I set

Up, then all my frieeeends crawled in

-To my cavity and ate it, some one

Even wrote down in my little book

“Kind of a shit show”

“Your shit needs more space between

It, so that it can really breath”

One of the pieces said:

3.

Hey baby, yeah—you

With the little plate of finger food and sangria

Look down, that’s it—now up

Now, sheepishly meander about the room

Of meanderers, for these are your people.

Come back and do your hardest

To look engaged with me

Lean in a little, oh yeah (baby), lean in

And squint and turn

--now small talk, mention the spring rain

Mention how the work speaks

(just in terms of compositional elements

And juxtaposed motifs--)

To YOU, now mention how it draws from

That other exhibition you saw in New York,

How it’s no big deal but it was amazing

(and they should have gone) and comment on

The thousands it does or does not cost, maybe

Suggest its over or underpriced, it depends

On how impressed you want the poor

Asshole listening to feel.

Say new York over and over, new York

Now look away, blink, let the conversation

Falter, idle, disappear into the feigning

Of all human emotion.

(“new York, new York

Must go to new York

New new York now new

Networkingnetworking

Meee, baaaah baaah

I poop in my mouth

I poop in my mouth

Bah bah bah

I poop in my mouth”)

4.

If I am going to be honest

Then I expose myself to the critique

That I am not original, that I am

“sophomoric”

Bear in mind, you are a talking monkey

(Talking to a talking money, about talking

Monkies talking about it.)

You could really push this piece further

You could really make these symbols

More interesting to me

There is no real risk for anyone to take here.

I could be honest, but that risks

Being criticized for

Not taking risks

This isn’t communist Russia

Nothing in my life is at stake.

My art could be jumping off cliffs and into traffic

And it would still never put me in harm’s elusive way

Let alone call the attention of a contemporary

Slideshow of critics. Contempt or airy, left alone

And falling, Why Write? the question as to why

I feel compelled to share thoughts has not been

Inquired by the outer world, so I’ve not,

I’m afraid, considered the answer.

The Residue of Failed Self Actualization

I’ve been here so long

I’ve been dreaming of a better place

I am letters, I am abstractions

The sight in front of me is fleeting

But Death is real

Death is real

Death is real

I’ve wandered

And arrived

At drop.

I hear birds chanting,

I do not feel close to any of them

I imagine leaves pacing the edge

Before the abrupt and parallel void

It looks like glass, as though the leaves

Were painted on, layered down lightly

This place exists nowhere but in

My mind, and I look at my legs

And arms and this book, extending from

This indiscernible thought machine,

Picturing the subtle clicks of inner clock

Work as metaphors for itself

Half expecting the body to continue falling

Out of me, for the monster to grow

Death is real, spread the word

I love mother and the world

The mind is a lie

The earth is a zoo

I just want to fit in

I just want to fit If

I just act like an auto

Matistic puppy, the people will love

Me me me, but I also

Imagine leaving the gas on

Or hanging myself from the top of the stairs

So people will find me in the most

Dramatic lighting, I’m the hidden messenger

I’m the hedon-mystic hand, lid closing so shut

Death is real, spread the word

Let it soak into the dry bread

Of of of

Society!

Butter knife the truth across the faces

Of the innocent with shanks of

Of of—

Prosperity!

Death is real, spread

the word living is the doing of nothing

day to day chores only get in the way

I did the math, I spend close to four hundred

Hours a week, wasted, just on sweeping

And ten hours a day adjusting my cape

An extra hundred or so explaining it

They say, hey, nice cape, and I say

“Who, Me?”

Death is real, tell someone close

Perhaps someone already passed

As who else would be best

To know and listen that death

Is a thing that comes.

There is nothing worth caring for,

But our wildest dreams

I still lie awake at night

Searching for even weight

Under the bedspread

The word! Too thinly across

So many papery layers

And I wonder why I cannot just fucking say it

I can fill a moment with deliberate motion

Into the door of a plane

Into the sky, from here to there

Is much distance, and someday

I will be dead, and from here to there

Is more than any length conceivable.

The plates of the earth, in slow molt are shifting

As though already none remained

To hear that grinding of the fire.

It’s not enough to be post modern. If you make something post modern, attach rockets to its behind so that it can at least fly. No college professor can dismiss that kind of innovation.

Virgin poet Considers Sex

I was once head-to-toe inside

Of a wimmen.

So it’s safe to say

I know them inside and out.

Turns out its dark

--and bloody in there.

I figure that sex,

With all these dudes rocking

Back and forth like broken clocks

Into the pelvises of their lovers

--is an animalistic longing

To reclaim the safety of the lost,

Inner world

Of darkness and the blood.

But the hole too small,

Or The jutting body too big

--and I stop and think to myself:

How the moments close behind us, how

In life, we cannot go back,

Ehem, the way we came.

I smile, for I too have grown.