poem for "Unicorns Are Jerks"

The 'title' of each stanza is actually Theo's caption from the relevant page of her wonderful coloring book, Unicorns Are Jerks. Which you can totally buy at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Unicorns-Are-Jerks-coloring-exposing/dp/1477468528 Though my poem is not in it, you can always do what I did and write it on the blank pages opposite. ----- Everyone thinks unicorns are pure and magical, but really they're jerks. This sober fact I must attest: a Unicorn's amusement's best described as "Someone else, annoyed." (The German word is Schadenfreude.) Unicorns use up all of your shampoo. That special soap for which you saved a Unicorn will use (the knave!), then ask you, sniffing, if you've seen the mess they guess is yours to clean. Unicorns hog your fries. "Let's get some lunch!" say Unicorns. Once you arrive, they could have sworn it was your plan to take them there and order fries you meant to "share." Unicorns borrow your clothes without permission and stretch them out. They "borrow" only what is new - your favorites, that look best on you if Unicorns are left alone five minutes while you're on the phone! Unicorns judge you for your taste in music. "Oh, you like them?" they say with scorn - no matter what! A Unicorn will criticize each song they wrote not having heard a single note. Unicorns dine and dash. They wave around a messy hoof and drive the waitstaff through the roof, demanding everything "just so" but then don't pay before they go! Unicorns talk and text in movie theaters. A Unicorn will not sit through to watch the plot unfold (like you). They'll talk out loud, and spoil with glee the details from IMDB. Unicorns don't replace the toilet paper roll. How can they wipe, with hooves? Who knows? The tissue's used up when they go. Those Unicorns leave in a rush, don't light a match - or even flush. Unicorns sing breakup songs around you when you've just been dumped. When your whole world has been squished flat a Unicorn's amused by that. A friend would tell you grief can't last, not sing sad songs to mock your past. Unicorns fart in elevators. On purpose. They'll use their horn to block the door, tromp on your two feet with their four, flick their bright tail with grace and art and then let loose a monstrous fart. Unicorns monopolize the ball pit and don't let anyone else in. A ball pit's made to play and share. But when some Unicorns are there their pointy horns and rowdy play mean we're more wise to stay away. Unicorns never listen. They never try to make amends. Instead, a Unicorn pretends you pointing out the things they've done is "drama" you made up for fun. Unicorns delete your music collection and replace it with their own audio memoirs. They mess with files on your device without permission (that's not nice!), delete your stuff, and when they're done behave as if you owe them one. Unicorns eat your leftovers. YOU WERE SAVING THAT! Although the fridge is full of treats, of course the magic horse just eats that special thing you really want, bought from your favorite restaurant. Unicorns spend the whole trip sulking because you wouldn't let them drive. Since teleporting magically is hard, and gas YOU burn is free They'll beg for rides to far and near then pout when you won't let them steer. Unicorns are the worst house guests, and they never leave. They ask to crash for "just one night" but never leave without a fight, nor ever lift a hoof to clean though last week's lunch is turning green. When you point out that unicorns are being jerks, they act like YOU'RE the jerk. Confronted with their own "horse play" a Unicorn will always say you're making a big, stupid deal of something that's not even real. Don't be a unicorn. Even unicorns don't appreciate it. These magic horses' uncool ways can leave you steaming mad for days. They may look nice- but they're no fun to hang around. So don't be one.

no chore

the mess you left me yesterday is in my way. the cold floor slaps sleep-tender feet I'm up, for if we eat is mine to say. when I shake you awake, I pray the day we face will end with me held in your arms again. today's mess may be mine. I mean, only the dead are clean. life gives the soul indignant needs: eat, shit. drink, bleed. this mess does prove we live - entangled, as we move in sheets and fates. no chore, but love, to smooth them out once more.

acquisition

you want to get what gets you what you want and yet the acquisition of intent is where the bulk of bloody money's spent. sketch on white napkins in posh restaurants to pay the piper dancing to the tombs prepared for those whose lack has made you great. the waiter lifts away the empty plate, hushed as unmentioned elephants in rooms. the hand that feeds, once bit, will feed no more. those dogs who cannot hunt sit by the bowl; whomever's rooting through the cabinet must see the beasts that crouch behind the door must keep them thus, must spend for their control more than is meet to keep their needs well met.

dragon histories

An X-ray beam inside the ancient stone spreads out, reflects a fan of angled peeks inside the fossil Archaeopteryx, at feathers anchored to its hollow bones. A flock of robots wavers in the sky. Their plastic exoskeletons owe much to this clawed beast no human hand may touch. Far from the first of vertebrates to fly, it seized a happy accident's design, leapt from a limb and, reaching, did not fall - spread wings which are but ghostly shadows now. Will our experiments leave such a sign, set down in text or chipped from limestone wall, when dragons turn to ask their histories - how?

interface

the road unfurls an icy landscape, seen, not walked by bone-sore legs on frostbit feet face winter through a window, through a screen as wheels crush slush that vibrates through your seat gloves on the wheel, a scarf across your mouth you touch no thing and all that touches you was built to meet the hands you now reach out your only world's the made things world leaks through five thousand generations fought to tame the wind and lightning, growing things and ground give every object function and a name which we can call to answer to its sound infuse world with the internet of things then hang from it, marionettes on strings

love sustains

Hell is the place where nobody loves anyone or anything, and nothing ever happens that is new. You can be surrounded by the hateful, the deceitful and the indifferent - you be can be utterly isolated - and still not remain in that place. You can draw love out of yourself; anything other than none is enough. You can love the trees and the stars and the wide solid ground and the way the wind searches out holes in your coat because it wants to be near you. The silent world echoes back whatever you pour out into it, like a whisper in an enormous room.

Where there's love there's life and where there's life there's hope.
This is causation. Love, and there will eventually be hope.

Consider this also.

You're the result of an enormous succession of people having kids and managing to keep them alive to grow up. Somewhere along that line - your parents, their parents, your great-aunts and uncles from the times of old - somebody dreamed of the future and loved you in advance. Someone was rooting for you even though they didn't know exactly who you'd be. Every time one of your ancestors got fed up with the troubles of their time and thought to themselves, "curse these troubles! someday I hope these are gone from the world!" they might not even have known it but they were hoping it for you. You live in a world they could never have imagined in their wildest dreams.

And you live. You're alive, right now. You may not feel like this is a big deal; it may not seem to be doing you very much good. But every moment you live you have the power to make the world a little more like heaven. Just by loving it. So many people are choosing to do otherwise that it might feel pretty small, but it isn't.

Love is stronger than destruction because it makes connections, it binds together, it multiplies and sustains. It opens up space around itself and makes room for what's new. Like those ancestors dreaming of a world with you in it, when you make room in yourself for something new and good, you open up the possibility of sharing that good with others.

And that's how this world becomes more like the kingdom of heaven. Where we share joyful things with the people we love, and discover new wonders together.

definition of magic

1. Magic is the art dedicated to optimizing the rate and methods of the adaptation of one's being to the progress of events, in accordance with one's chosen ends.

2. Magic is that by virtue of which a thing is greater than the sum of its parts.

3. Magic is an effective method of achieving a result which is unique to the circumstance in which it arises.

4. Magic is a symbolically representable system which facilitates the orientation of the components of one's being towards the objects of experience.

it is still winter

but inside I'm okay
I can live without your dime
where snowmen never melt
instead they always shine
                  ~ Animal Collective, "Winter Wonderland"


This is the first time in my life I've been romantically unattached.

True, I've been single for almost two years now. But the distance between "single" and "unattached" is best measured in millennia, like the distance between "treatable" and "cured."

Not that love itself is a disease. My capacity to engage in it it was just bound up with some other, painful stuff.

Writing things down again feels strange. There are states of mind I've traversed in the past couple of years which were so embarrassing, so delusional or overwrought, that I'm grateful my word-maker was largely offline and I didn't leave much textual evidence of my thought process. Even so, what's already on this blog is so voluminous I already feel as though, without ever writing another word, I ought to see my headshot in the Wikipedia page for "tl;dr".

Deep down I used to feel that if I had a thought, a sensation, a feeling, which lacked the stamp of approval of another person's awareness, then my experience was null and nonexistent. This was one of those feelings too big to be consciously understood; it drove my actions as though standing behind me, larger than my own awareness and impossible for me to perceive. Compulsively transcribing everything was like a nicotene patch, a more socially acceptable substitute for what I really felt driven to do--ask for permission to exist, a new permission every instant.

My ability to love and to feel lovable had to grow and heal a lot. For that to happen, I needed to stop using my ability to describe, analyze and create words as a substitute for the affection I couldn't allow myself to accept. Now that I can do so, however, I also have the task of coming back to writing with different motives.

Love is different--or it will be, when I have some again. Creation is different too, and I don't know what it is now. It's all new, and like anything new, I feel perplexed and out of my depth. I tell people very often, "Don't be angry at yourself for being bad at something new. It's new--of course you'll be bad at it until you learn how to do it!"

Well. Even if the things I make aren't quite as powerful, because they don't have the weight of my pending impending annihilation pressing down on them, at least they'll still be alive. I believe anything created has a kind of symbiotic life to it; it joins in the lives of those who appreciate it, growing along with them.

But I still feel very cold.

photosynthesis

Second doppler poem! I'm gonna offset the alternating lines in this one so it's easier to see the two distinct poems within the poem. Here the "blueshift" perspective (read alternating lines from beginning to end) is that of a forest absorbing the light of the sun and using that energy to transform itself. The "redshift" perspective is the light of the sun being captured by a forest and finding itself totally consumed as a result of living processes. I finally figured out a regular rhyme pattern that works for a doppler poem. Fiendishly difficult, but it helped a lot when I get stuck, writing it outward from the center, to have a rhyme-word to draw out the next equal but opposite image-concept in the transformation process.



as rock's a molten planet's skin
     so forests are the way life found
to harness all of sunlight's toil
     the sun's rays stripped of every tone
its lush growth captures, winnows thin
     through withered husks heaped up in mounds
strands stick like honey, glide like oil
     gouge trenches out between hard stones
what sky rains down, the earth drinks in
     strip broken rootlets from dry ground
sink fingers into cool wet soil
     earth shrugs off flesh, sky scrapes clean bones
plow furrows where new life begins
     dust, windswept, granulate, unbound
as delicate fresh furls uncoil
     where once white naked light had shone
they give the rainbow back again
     absorb the spectrum up and down
life cools light; brings itself to boil
     to make stars' radiance its own

lonely bones

Doing more pantoums lately. A way of easing myself out of the all-Petrarchan-sonnet rut I was in for so long. Tried to make this one sonically dense. Works okay.


clone's own lonely bones
drawn on thick
red-spread broken stones
concrete, brick

drawn on thick
same name, borrowed clothes
concrete, brick
guilt-built structure flows

same name, borrowed clothes
zipped up tight
guilt-built structure flows
chalked out white

chalked out white
red-spread broken stones
zipped up tight
clone's own lonely bones

impact

New form for this one, inspired by discussions of the Doppler effect in the physics class I'm auditing. I just love cyclical and repetitive structures in poems generally. Like emotional palindromes, they require both the writer and the reader to retread the same experiences from two different perspectives.

One of my favorite forms, the pantoum, has a structure in which not merely rhyme-sounds, but entire lines are repeated from one stanza into the next: abcd / bedf / egfh / gahc. That's in 4 stanzas, the shortest possible version of the pantoum--they can go on as long as you like. 

I decided to make an even more drastic repetitive requirement for this doppler poem. This first one is a 20-line version, but you can do it for any even number. The first 10 lines, or the "blueshift" half of the poem, describes the subject from one perspective, going from beginning to end. The next 10 lines, or the "redshift" half, goes from end to beginning, interweaving with the first half, and repeats the very same lines with slight changes in phrasing to show the same material from a different perspective. Rhymes are totally optional--and a big challenge to incorporate! Here I've used "I" and "you" for the two perspectives, using the image of two asteroids colliding.


we touched each other once - but why?
your bound inertia shapes the dark
it traces out a silent arc
you gave me something like a name
a flame ellipsis cross the sky
broke your established orbit free
I knocked your vector off its skew
your meteoric speed's the same
however much I miss you by
you are the one who misses me
I am the one who misses you
however much you miss me by
my meteoric speed's the same
you knocked my vector off its skew
broke my established orbit free
a flame ellipsis cross the sky
I gave you something like a name
it traces out a silent arc
my bound inertia shapes the dark
we touched each other once - but why?

corn king

This is the first freeverse I've written in a loooong time.
I look at it and sort of have to facepalm. Just look at the stupid images. It's mega obvious. And the title, of course, you know, the hopefully apocryphal pagan tradition of killing a guy and plowing him into the fields as a fertility rite, major hint. Okay, girl, we get it, you wanna get laid.



you yearn
to shuck the blankets from your knees
and finish convalescing
wobble out to glint, glossy,
nude in the golden afternoon
as the pearl-sheened kernels
under the husk.
there is enough, you know there is enough
plump succulence
nestled in the silken strands
to be both planted
and devoured
bitten into, butter-drenched
and folded into cool, dark earth
to come up young again.

I orient myself towards some pain
and look upon it, and its source, with love.
Trace how it's rooted in the forces of
repulsion and adhesion. Feel the strain
of separated things to join once more:
the wrinkled edges of a healing cut.
My answer when you're wrong about me: "but
you're wrong about me" chafes me till I'm sore,
until I stitch the separated sides
together--roughly, bloody. Good enough
to foil the flies that fresh red blood attracts.
What's torn apart is hurt, but pain abides
in distance, searing every edge that's rough
till it fits smooth as evidence fits facts.

like riding a bike

now wrap a chain around two wheels with teeth
watch splayed-out bits of metal learn to fly
down long roads nocked like arrows at the sky
this blur of chrome and paint, these two swift feet
just pause, rock back, recalculating, poised
the hands rest loose, the long cool alloy frame
rider and ridden, destination same
bound by that ready twang, the joyful noise
of rubber pealing over pavement, flesh
pressed in, embracing interfaces tight
to feel the contact coursing through, the song
"rise up, daughter of Zion, rise and thresh"
to human and machine, stood up at right
angles to earth, and no direction wrong

Unlubricated gears and levers scream.
Come, scrape the skin-snug coat of rust aside
until it opens wide. It opens wide
to lap up light and air like cats drink cream.
What scuttles scatters shrapnel in its haste
to carve a deeper crack and crawl inside.
Rust, filth and dust and I lived where they hide.
Fed on my love, they ate and could not taste.
Now here comes sun, to lay their home to waste
to heal my twisted, mechanistic name,
re-forge me, sleek, new, polished till I glow.
They flee who once consumed me now. I chased
the morning star until my hands caught flame
and burned down hell, the only place I know.




..........................



It kinda sucks. Yeah, yeah it really does. Cause I've had a long, long spell without writing any poetry at all and my image-maker is rusty. Eventually I will move out of sonnets, but I feel like I want to hide in sonnets for while because they're so easy. Like you know you can make spaghetti with cheese'n'peas and it's easy as hell and good, so you make it like four days in a row. Sonnets are totally my spaghetti. Easy and always at least vaguely edible.

the distance from C

At both the wake and the funeral for my cousin JP, I heard people relate the story that he could hear a note and  recognize instantly where it was on the keyboard, which note and which octave. I knew I wouldn't be able to feel grief right away but I knew it would show up in the form of a song and that this would be the title. Then it showed up today; I was at Amber's house and found out my aunt Rosie, JP's mom, was going to come visit. So the song's in first person but, y'know, it's not supposed to be me talking. I want the song to do the thing it's for; Rosie wasn't up for listening to me play it today, she's been through a lot lately. But I hope it can do the thing it showed up to do, for her, at some point. It's gonna drive me nuts till I get it recorded, but putting the lyrics down here will help some till I get back to my place.


so I fought but the last battle cost me the war
but I never forgot whom I was fighting for
never meant to be cold, I just couldn't be sure
wish that I could have stayed just a little but more
yeah, you love me, but take your words out of my name
I wanted your affection, to hell with my fame
it's in me to give thanks, never once to lay blame
just please say you are different than when I came

well if God wrote my life as a jest
He ain't laughing at me
it's a shout in the dark
that goes echoing endlessly
when I get to the nest where the sun hatched
He'll know it's me
like the bright little ache in my chest
knows the distance from C

the naked eye

Distrust what grasps to give perception shape
to hold and tilt it, cuplike, lip to face
slot every object in its proper place
pedestrian, dark door: danger, escape.
It is a shade drawn over broken glass
thick makeup covering a pockmarked cheek
I wrench my mind from it, call myself weak
for letting expectation gather mass,
but God! the terror of all things made new--
these strangers' fingers sprouted from my hand
this tongue writhes wetly under every note
I sing with joy for rubbish, mountains, dew,
the risen sun, the stone beneath the land,
the spike of hope stuck sideways in my throat.

nice place you got there
all by your lonesome
you'll be surprised what
you'll find if you want some
if you want some

bricked up the chimneys
boarded the windows
plugged all the drainpipes
you still let her in though
let her in though

painted the mirrors
to not let her out
can't say why you fear her
she lives in your mouth
in your mouth

(ooo)

nice place you got there
which do you preserve
the inside or outside
you ain't got the nerve
got the nerve

to touch them together
and find out how small
is everything heaped up
inside of your wall
of your wall

she's just a baby
she drinks till she sleeps
wake up if you want to
to hear how she weeps
how she weeps

(ooo)

Life is very good and I have a lot to be thankful for, and I know it.
This poem, though, does not arise out of that gratitude. I have to be honest with myself and let myself go ahead and feel grumpy about the few things I do have to be grumpy about. My little sister's in jail, my ex won't take me back, my computer died with a lot of cherished stuff on it and my closest friends are all either seriously depressed or really worried about stuff going on in their own lives. And I still haven't got my creative fire stoked hot enough yet to even write a blues song about it. So early this morning I at least managed to put it into a sonnet. I'm grateful for that.

The poems used to pull me out of bed,
but now I need the motherfucking sleep.
Cause cash is king and poetry is cheap,
I'll take the extra half an hour instead.
Too soon I'll just be ashes in an urn
and you'll be withered, impotent and frail.
Who'll know if all your bold ambitions failed
or care I perished with so much to learn?
It makes me sick to look at my guitar
when every line I've written sounds so trite,
square, overclocked with words that won't burst through
to where I sit, not knowing where you are
or why the hell it matters what I do
or how the fuck I'm managing to write.

it's enough

Wrote most of this back on the 6th, got the rest today. Twenty days is a little above average for how long it takes for a song to germinate; "teeth of the storm" is still my record-holder at a little over two years.
Mychal, you'll perhaps be happy to know this one took most of its inspiration from you. You've been wanting me to write a song about you for years! XD Of course it's as much about my own experience as anything, wouldn't have been able to write it otherwise. And as always hopefully lots of people can find something in it that says "oh yeah, that feeling. I know that one."
Guitar chords on the left, in case I should happen to lose the hard copy.


D] it isn't enough
Am G] to know how it feels and be able to say
D] you have to be anchored outside of it, grateful
Am G] that what came to pass did not stay
D] it isn't enough
Am G] to love without limit, forsaking all pride
D] no one has to let you
Am G] even be on their side, even be on their side

Em Bm A] but you hear the prayer
D A] in the song of the wheels
Em Bm A] travel there along
G A] something stronger than steel

D] and you roll out of bed into shelter and comfort
Am G] and calm and it isn't enough
D] and you roll right through walls that stood tall against sieges
Am G] and storms and it isn't enough
D] and you roll back the sky and the skin of the globe
Am G] and stand naked and cold in the night
D] and it isn't enough
Am G] and there's nothing to fight

Em Bm A] but you hear the voice
D A] that it breaks you to hear
Em Bm A] cause it's not your choice
D A] that can beckon you near

G Bm A Em] slide your tongue inside till you cannot pull it out
G Bm A Em] open red eyes wide on what you used to dream about
G Bm A Em] pull your hand from the hand that ain't your lover's anymore
G Bm A Em] when the void gapes wide where there used to be a floor
G Bm A Em] spend your sweat and blood till every heartbeat is a crime
G Bm A Em] the torrent rips it from you till there's nothing left but time

G D G] only gravity never gives up
Bm A] so it must be love
G Bm G A] tell me, who can tell you who can tell you
G Bm G A] who can tell you who can tell you
G D A] who can tell you
D] it's enough