Sunday, April 11, 2010

Bright Eyes- At the Bottom of Everything

We must talk in every telephone
Get eaten off the web
We must rip out all the epilogues in the books that we have read
And in the face of every criminal
Strapped firmly to a chair
We must stare, we must stare, we must stare

We must take all of the medicines too expensive now to sell
Set fire to the preacher who is promising us hell
And in the ear of every anarchist that sleeps but doesn’t dream
We must sing, we must sing, we must sing

It’ll go like this:

While my mother waters plants
My father loads his guns
He says death will give us back to God
Just like this setting sun is returned to this lonesome ocean

And then they splashed into the deep blue sea
It was a wonderful splash

We must blend into the choir
Sing as static with the whole
We must memorize nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run

We must hang up in the belfry
Where the bats and moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And in the caverns of tomorrow
With just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

And then we’ll get down there, way down to the very bottom of everything
And then we’ll see it, oh we’ll see it, we’ll see it, we’ll see it

Oh my morning's coming back
The whole world’s waking up
All the city buses swimming past
I’m happy just because
I found out I am really no one

Saturday, April 10, 2010

ebb and flow

sometimes
my heart fills up
like a big dumb balloon
bloated with blood and empathy
for the poor kid in the hall
the redneck in the aisle
my brother in the apartment

waves of filling
swelling against veinous walls
spilling over with threats
of open human love

other times
my heart closes up
criscrossed daggers
and gnarled liquorice roots
guarding, posturing tough
pettiness, which plays so rough

liquid flames fly high up
in the brain stem
primed for the mental manipulation
storing fantasies and plots
closed in grey tissue drawers

sometimes my heart is crushed
sometimes nothing is never enough

housewife

"Housewife" by Anne Sexton

Some women marry houses.
It's another kind of skin; it has a heart,
a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
The walls are permanent and pink.
See how she sits on her knees all day,
faithfully washing herself down.
Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah
into their fleshy mothers.
A woman is her mother.
That's the main thing.

words on paper

connections crumble
shift and shake
buried under
tectonic forces
of reality

words on paper remain
memory a mystery
life is [but] a dream