I’m not left handed but I wish I was
so everyone could envy me my special-
ness and my cool factor and how
I play the guitar the same way Jimi Hendrix did
or that I’m so good to have spent so much time
creating my own adaptation to life in the
righty world. Right? Right! Righty-right, righty-right,
the whole world seems so righty-right that I grow tired of it
more and more often and I reach for the door knob
with my left hand once in a while just to feel better.

I’m not a happy man but I wish I was
so everyone could envy me my special-
ness and my uncoolness as a happy man
would be suddenly cool the way I worked it
with a steady smile and a glad hand playing
the breaks the way no one else does, as if I expected
them and just did the opposite of what was customary.
Happy now, Tony? No? Then, GET HAPPY!! Let me once get joyful
as a hymn in a whitebread church or a public television cartoon,
and while I’m not a happy man I can imagine myself having a moment
once in a while where I could fake it well enough
to capture that smile on my own face.

I’m not much to look at, have no distinguishing
features other than a big gut, a grey beard, and a petty gift
for making the sound of my voice stick in a head
for more than a second or two past the end of
a conversation, but if I could be the handsome God
of someone’s religion, if the real God could let them love my own special-
ness more than I can love it, I’d be so glad to be their poster boy
I’d even cut my left hand off to spite my smile.
Give me one jealous bone of my own to gnaw and I’ll find a scrap to sustain me.
Give me one of your leftovers and I’ll warm it up for you.
Give me anything that isn’t mine and I’ll make it my own.

My cat loves his window perch,
but only when it’s bright out there.

He watches the neighbors leave for work,
then pads off to more food and more bed.

At regular intervals, he will come forward
and demand attention before returning to his slumbers.

If something isn’t to his liking, he lets me know
with a whine not commensurate with his size and age.

All day he either sleeps or fusses.
I don’t know where he gets that from.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*tip of the hat to Christopher Smart …

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-i-will-consider-my-cat-jeoffry-excerpt-jubil/

Another night in the coffee house
among hordes of worshipful
classic rock T-shirts burnt thin
from pre-sale washings
in foreign laundries…

I bet no one here understands
how it worked back then:
we either wore the shirts to threads because
we loved them to death, or hated to see
the silkscreen chip away and stored them
when they started to look like this
until we could get to the next stadium show
and get the next one.

It wasn’t style. It wasn’t fashion.
It was a medal for love
and death by tinnitus
or misadventuring among the rows, tongue twisting
under the seats with the new friend
and the new shirt tied over the old
and hoping no one found the stuff in the cigarette pack.
It was the way out blazoned on a 60-40 blend.
We’d compare them
at school next day
and envy each other swearing
we’d never miss another tour,

until a day came
when we looked in the rear view mirror,
kissed off all the expensive devotion,
and proceeded straight on to mortgages
and beer guts unconcealable by any shirt.

I’ve found T. Rex on the radio tonight and
can see Bolan’s big platforms and rainbow swirl
on black across my chest, big ass chunky music
gonging in my head for two days and the shirt
telling everyone I’d gone to see The Man.
I saw that same shirt earlier tonight on a kid
as skinny as I used to be except
it was grey as a post and scraped evenly clean
in all the right places.

I don’t know what he saw in it:
how you buy damaged goods
and call it fair trade
without putting your own time
into the wear,
I’ll never know.

I posted this yesterday both here and on Gotpoetry, and got some interesting responses I’ve been mulling over.

The commenters over at GP couldn’t get it — that the poem is designed to speak to anyone who has ever found themselves agonizing over how much volition they have actually had in the decisions they’ve made, but that the initial inspiration was a meditation on the all too human terror and anguish that Jesus must have felt the night before the Crucifixion. People just didn’t go there, and asked about whether the title was a reference to the three day waiting period after signing a contract on Monday, had I been married on a Thursday, etc.

Then, I read it last night at The Spot during the open before tombstonetcs did his first feature ever (yay, Matt!) and asked for people to speculate on the inspiration for it, and got immediate validation from several poets that it wasn’t that obscure a subject — that the inspiration for the poem was the Passion, and that the title alone started to give it away.

Interesting how different audiences react. Didn’t make me want to change the poem at all, but I was struck by the struggle some people had with it. One thing I considered is that a lot of the GP responses seemed to focus on what I’ll call the “poetry as a hobby/therapy” mindset — that every poem is a direct comment on a specific personal experience, and writing outside of that box is hard to fathom. It’s common at GP where a lot of the poets aren’t doing it (poetry) as consistently or regularly as I do.

Any other thoughts? I don’t think you need to know the backstory to get something from the poem — in fact, that was my intent when I wrote it — but I think it throws an interesting light on it once you do. But am I just being overly confident that you CAN get the backstory from the poem as easily as I think you can? (Obviously, some did, so I know it’s not impossible.)

(By the way — I’m not a Christian at all, so don’t think I’m trying to make some theological point here…a good story is just a good story, and this one’s in so many people’s collective unconscious that I figured it was worth exploring.)

Anyway, here’s the poem again…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursday

a day comes when
you say it.

you say
“i will.”

you have already said
“what if.”
you have said it
more than once.

this is no longer
the argument
ahead of the contract.
this is the contract,
last words,
finger flung high, grand
illusion shrinking
as you say it
because with those words
the next tasks become
tiny: all the things
you have to do now
granulate and stick
in your gears and you begin
to pick them out so the machine
can begin its inexorable
grind.

so, you do them. you collect
tools. you measure and find
wanting. you add and subtract.
you flip the lenders’ tables.
you open the black door to the black room
and you do not turn away.

as you count and plan, wiping
blood and grit from under your nails,
you ask yourself — dammit,
what if your words did not
place this sand in these works.
and it was there waiting?
what if the will you agreed to follow
wasn’t yours?

who set these things
to work? who made the
struggle? was it truly
your words
that made this happen, or
was it all ready to go
and simply waiting for you
to begin?
wasn’t it a previous contractor who said
the word would be made flesh?

you have recalled this too late.

you find yourself
outside,
staring steadily at the flesh of you
taking another’s words to heart.

now that the contract has been sealed,
even if you could take the words back
you’d still be bound by them. they
were never yours to do with
as you wanted. wanting
has nothing
to do with this.