a poem you are unable to write

"You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest."
- John Berryman

ice cream and its accouterments

Drowning in amniotic fluid,

I smiled.

I thought about dinner time

and had a kind of cheery

hope for fried chicken

or Asian rice noodles

with broccoli

And I ceased to mope.

I must remind you, however,

it was tough, very tough

to breathe through the motherless goo -

my shit had nowhere

to go but to float inside me.

(Thinking: That was very rough.

That was rather messy.)

However, I thought of food,

and that felt

good. So good, without thinking.

I tried to swim inside her private sea,

and found it would be

more healthy to get out

before I got lost,

there in the fluid.

It was so very very

(believe me!)

very good,

that is,

until I started thinking.

I wanted ice cream and its accouterments!

I wanted to feel cool,

feel calm.

the plight of the work horses

If my head stays on my hands

and I mean to mourn for you,

the halter holds my head back;

my teeth grind against the bit -

there is no way, the Master will say,

to mourn at all without

being chemically off-balance

or a danger-to-your-fellows off-base.

There is no healthy mourning

for horses pulling carts - their hoof-beats

in the shit, the muck, the welter

of carcinogenic hours, chained against

the post with no room to move

their heads, no way to get their heads

to their hands, which they have not,

being only - merely - horses.

AND, if you break your leg, you're shot -

point-blank, eye to eye,

unwanted and unneeded to be dealt

with in any kind of other-than-dismissal

command or even comment,

and buried bloodily out of sight of

the Master's children.

sea light

1

I woke

to the wall where you wrote:

"To the edge of the waters

we're going!"

I got a craving to smoke.

(And smoke, I did - a vaporous body!)

Your warmth still

pressed into the bed

from the night before -

a pleasant ghost, you are.

2

I think of the sea

and the light we've basked

in it, storing it

for the winter, for the long

lasting water coming with it,

grey and off-white,

hung in sheets.

We hid that summer sea-light in our bags,

drawing it out as we descended

Constitution Mountain,

and later, the heat

from the insides

of your legs - your life-heat

a white-hot sound of love

I could suffer for,

the lovely tingle

of your darker hairs. And our

birth-sheets warming

as the sea-light fades, as

waking fades

into soul-sleep - or something

like true repose

begins, your legs wrapping

mine in amber

morning light.

The sea

moves

ever and again,

turning over

and under itself

in its own shimmer,

its own liminal

reflection -

I sleep in the water's sound.

home, maybe

Wake me

clean in your arms -

you're almost

like home to me.

The smell of your body

on my body

and the twitch

you make when

you're asleep

tell me I'm

here, not in

the darkness

of anyone else,

but, maybe -

home. The quiet

home when you

go walking alone

in the purple-grey

dusk, the tea-pot

gurgle-home of

returning,

sleeping,

and waking -

to you.

just another wedding

This is from Jess Walter's The Zero, a 2006 National Book Award Finalist. I'm rereading the book for class, and this passage hit me hard, for some reason.

April's eyes narrowed then as if she were thinking the same thing. "So . . . do you ever think about what yours would say?

"My--" Remy opened his eyes.

"Your portrait in grief. They're not like obits--see. They're not resumes or tributes. They're more like crosscuts, a strobe flash on one part of your life. One moment. One theme. So what would yours say?"

"I don't know," Remy said.

"I know what mine would say."

"What?"

"She saw death as just another wedding she wasn't invited to."