tommy was eddie l’esperance’s brother
eddie my friend
who died at age ten
when the big dodge caught him
tipped him ass over head
dragged him from here to ramelli ford
and that was pretty far back then

tommy was eddie’s brother
and he was fucked even before
eddie died
tommy had two other brothers on smack
a father on the bottle and a mother
who looked sixty at thirty-five
and they all died early too

tommy was eddie’s brother
and he got killed a week ago
shot by a homeowner who caught him
falling out of a second story window
onto the back porch roof
trying to hold onto a microwave
in the middle of a half-assed burgling

i went to tommy’s funeral
and there were some fat guys with stringy hair and short ties
an actual smalltown cop
and a couple of tommy’s later kids all snotted up and whining
while his girlfriend kept going out for another cigarette

and there i was
and i didn’t know a soul
but
i went to tommy’s funeral
because tommy was eddie’s brother
and when i was ten no one was my friend
the way eddie was my friend
and he would have wanted that i think

but mostly
i just went to see
how much he still looked
like himself
and he didn’t

eddie’s
still the champ
at that
because after the car dragged him
his face remained intact

the only member of the family
to die and still be
beautiful

Our world is here, below us. The one we see
in the sky is not the earth for us.
Ours is dirty and impure. Ours welcomed us
as we were. Ours will hold us when we rot.

I ride this world as if Ganesh himself
had placed me on his back.
I will fall as I have risen,
and I am content.

I do wish I was nothing again —
just my mother’s desire, strong enough
to come forth and be, too weak
to be more than that.

I wish I was nothing again.
Nothing is worth saving.
Nothing sits in the doorway and thinks
before taking a step either way.

Some of you understand this: A tree falls,
and the elephant straightens. A leaf falls,
and the tree lifts itself higher. And what will happen
if I fall? Nothing, I pray. Nothing at all.

__________________________________________________________

(Eyes come open at 3 AM. Again.)

I believe I am afraid of dying in exact inverse proportion to my longing for certainty. Death is the only way to preserve certainty. If I remain uncertain, I remain alive. The more certainty I desire, the more attractive death becomes.

That pursuit of death — that’s narcissism perfected. I alone own myself, own my life; my need for comfort and certainty is all-encompassing. Taking my life away from all other people is the ultimate act of selfishness.

This is the standard response to the fact or the suggestion of suicide. I think, however, that it does not work this way for many of us. There is a form of suicide that is unconcerned with the rationale for it — it’s more of a reflex for some of us. Given a stimulus, it comes to mind automatically.

For instance: personal rejection, a stymied love affair, a financial debt, a wrong turn in traffic on a bad day even — any of these things may make the suicidal person suddenly split in two, and soon one rational half is watching the other half prepare razors, contemplate guns, research the dosages of sleeping pills needed for lethality. Half of your consciousness sits in powerless judgment of the irrational acts of the other half.

Sometimes it stops short, sometimes it does not, and it often seems a matter of chance as to whether you come forth from the trance.

Don’t judge the suicide too harshly, for I suspect that frequently he or she is as surprised as you that it happened at last.

And when the cat died in Schroedinger’s box, what do you suppose he was thinking? That was a suicide, of course; if you’ve ever watched a cat, you know they love to get into boxes all by themselves.

You are the captive of your darkest heart. Free will is not only not free, it’s illusory. Given the same situations, you’ll play your part over and over again — and what’s more, we all have an obsessive knack for finding ourselves those same situations to play in over and over again.

None of this is original thinking. Which is the point: there is no original thinking. Even Einstein was only dreaming God’s random thoughts.

A poet in this area once wrote a book with the title, “I Wish My Room Had A Floor.” I think he got it wrong. I think most of us wish our rooms had a door.

The window is always an option, of course, unless you’ve made it off limits. The limits of original thought would suggest that even when you have, nothing is ever truly off limits.

The way out is through the ceiling — way up there, solid and suspect and unfair; or through the walls, which have the added downside of being close by. They induce despair because unlike the ceiling, you can touch them and realize the futility of escape. At least the ceiling is beyond reach and potentially penetrable.

When do you think it’s ok to admit you’ve made an irretrievable mess of your life?

At what point do you declare the game piece broken, toss it aside, and look around for a substitute — a penny, a piece of wood, a piece lifted from another game?

Must we assume that every trial ennobles everyone, or are some people born to shuffle?

Is the capacity for hope always supposed to triumph? Or are some of us supposed to be object lessons?

Insomnia.

I have literally been awake all night. I try to sleep and I can’t.

Been working on the Chinatown poem all night, staring at it, thinking about it.

If it’s true that every poem written, every poem performed, should be treated as though it was your last work, should be treated as though it was the last thing you could point at and say, “that was me” — well, I should have died years ago; because I write the same poem over and over, and have for the last five years, and I can’t seem to stop.

I’ve written some marginally better stuff lately, but I can tell when a phase is ending, and it is; and I no longer believe in my own capacity for self-renewal.

Too many male poets lose their edge in middle age, and become masochistic whiners or esoteric fops, chasing arcane visions. I swore long ago to become neither.

But I need to recuperate and rebuild to get past it. And I’m so tired and I can’t sleep, and I don’t know what to do next.

___________________________________

In this movie a woman who is her sister’s mother
gets shot by a cop and her sister-daughter is
put in the care of her grandfather
and her father who are one man.

Another man drowns and another one
has his nose slit open by a man who
(in real life) raped a 13 year old girl
and lost his wife to a serial killing mob
of hippies.

All anyone can think to say
at the end of the movie is “Forget it, Jake,
it’s Chinatown,” as if the climate was responsible,
or maybe the people themselves, even though
you barely see anyone Chinese in that final scene,
and everything awful is brought to a climax
by these people blaming the locals, these people
who came from somewhere else whose job
is about moving the blame. They move the blame so well
you can’t tell east from west.

You turn off the TV after the credits
but the movie
never ends, everyone of them is in bed
with everyone of them,
all the good people are drowning
and parents are siblings and ogres at once.
And it goes on forever.

Eventually you discover
the secret of their success:
everywhere you are
is their Chinatown, and
those long red dragons
and mysterious omens
and snappy explosions for a happy new year
are not, in fact, meant for you.

Public journaling is not diary-keeping. More akin in spirit to personal zines, blogging is by design a public act.

Therefore, statements that “it’s in my journal and therefore people have no right to be offended if I say it” are disingenuous at the least and dishonest at the outside.

We’re leaving aspects of filtering, etc. out of this for the basis of this argument.

that Sandra Day O’ Connor has submitted her retirement to the Prez.

Let the games begin.

although i did get some sleep…and will get more.

i played the guitar tonight for a bit! first time in a while. granted, it was my Backpacker as opposed to any of the regular lot — weight considerations, you know– but it was still something.

tomorrow I may break out the Portuguese guitar…mandolin sized twelve string from 1908 used in fado music. light and resonant…do me some good.

staying away from here a bit today — triggers too much introspection right now

anyone got any information on vicodin triggering depressive episodes?

although i’ve got some legitimate personal stuff going on, this seemed to hit more swiftly than was warranted. i’m a little concerned — not for my safety, just from the information point of view.

slept late. went to batman (drove for first time). batman rocked. came home very sore. slept. worked on poem.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Adolescence

overnight elroy
learns to turn his duke cap
to the right
and becomes another wannabe.
mom and dad fall out over this
and go to pieces especially when
little man drops his first
“nigga” in front of company
they point at will smith
and scream at their boy
“the fresh prince never says that”
elroy turns his hip away and shrugs
“that’s why he ain’t one of mine”
no one understands the conversation anymore
no one knows how to talk each other
elroy turns his duke cap all the way around
his parents slump against the kerry posters
no one sleeps much that night

overnight elroy
lines his eyes and becomes a goth
his family bugs like an egyptian plague
especially when the little man
bisects his chest with daddy’s razor
they wring their hands and point at each other
screaming “what did we do wrong by you”
elroy turns black back on them and sniffs
“sins of omission are still sins”
no one understand the conversation anymore
everyone bites off more label than they can chew
elroy tattoos his arm
with a pattern he got off the local parlor wall
his parents slump against their own sunny dispositions
and no one gets much sleep that night

overnight elroy
takes off his hands like gloves
steps out of his skin and agrees to be a problem
his parents cannot matter enough to be a solution
and they fall apart when the man
blows off their fingerprints with a goodbye kiss
they point at a picture frame and whisper
“we miss your head between our own”
elroy cannot take his eyes off the mirror
as he says “mother, father, blister, bother”
and the conversation is the same one everyone has
every time another rebel without a trace disappears
elroy begins to pretend he has been here all along
his parents shimmer and cross each other
as their boy sheds his fads and leaves home
making room for sleep to come back to its nest

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

good luck tonight, delawhere…

1.
fuck me, this hurts. tonight it’s really bugging me. one side in particular. i shall take some more pain medication and sleep, dammit.

2.
where, pray tell, are jeff and tonie these days??

3.
god, i hate summer. any day where the temperature rises above 70 degrees makes me sociopathic.