Why I Am Not A Painter

the future has never been a date
before. like an evil advent calendar, the days
are being eaten

by tears. this house is made of cardboard
doors i don't want to open. i know we're
in a box, but we're not made to travel.

at the reunion, i meet someone
who works for UPS. there are so many notes
the public does not see, he says.

dropped the package, busted open, box ruined.
repackaged, hope the receiver does not notice.
i see the future like it's here.

voices pound like rain on me
trying to get inside, weakening
my seams

he says look for the fish
behind rocks, and i look

behind rocks for fish.
i tap logs looking

for snakes and never
see anything. the air

through the gaps in these logs and
the fire the fire the

fire and charcoal ensuing--
my feet are almost burning

from this walking.
there is something like a silver coin

on a string, hiding
behind a rock.

everything i say
at parties

is a lie
i do not "get" your cultural references

despite our similar socio-economic backgrounds.
probably, the television

did not teach you to read.
everything i say

at speech-meets are lies, poems
about airports and lost luggage

slosh in my mouth. i want these
verses to tell stories. i want these

stories to be mine. you make a joke
about a movie, and i laugh

but i don't know why

now that you're successful, i
have access to memories

you'd rather not share. i am surprised
by how little power

i feel, closing my eyes, watching you
hide from other children.

are you popular now, or tech-savvy?
it is almost easy

building websites which demonstrate prowess
that, in person, is not there

fair weather
i loved you when you
had dreams

and i had moods
i liked to imagine
four elements, including bile

we were young and we watched FernGully
not realizing we would become naturalists.
the pollution in that film is my darkness

foul weather
it is your darkness
and i'm trying to love you

my hair is shorter
on one side. no one notices
but my dad presses

on my head
so that i am sideways
you look

like you should be
sideways, he says.
your hair looks good.
these things keep growing, they tell me
to do wild things
because you can always

cut it off.
the hours under hot hot heat
with a hairbrush and

unknown toxins, it's not
just in my hair
it's in my head

and i can't cut it

you wake up your wrists don't work
the metal bend you strap yourself
to restricts the movement until the pain
is there again. it begins as something small

in the joints of your fingers, the snapping of liquid
inside you and your elbow
shakes you have to hold your wrist
like a bird there

are no words anymore because
the mysterious interior which once connected
your brain to your hands,
visual language, fluid movement

is broken. an intake of breath
forced by acknowledging pain is now
how you speak. what wings you had
no longer function and the boots for rain you tread in leak

These bones are comparisons.
An umbrella frame leans
against a tree on Saturday.

The empty inside an almost empty
glass forms like a lady about to fall
asleep on a tabletop.

These bones are falling
apart. The noise your bicycle makes
after you've jumped off. These

comparisons are bones. The hail-
like rain as it hits you
as you coast

i verb pronoun

the record which is a surrogate
for you i file in a dresser drawer

under underwear
the essential information is missing

it has never been written. i am always
dreaming about the play you have never

written; it makes me retroact
and in the morning i eat

an imaginary agent, and imagine
those dreams are gone, everyone else

forgets them. it's the placement which makes
you (your surrogate) dangerous

it could be on the dresser
it could be on the wall

i verb pronoun, it's nothing
it's blanks

the money doesn't mean
hi, i'm calling for your opinion

is buffy the vampire slayer worth seventy dollars?
i think i want to own this information,

for when netflix fails. you don't remember like i remember
my father taking me to the video store, and the video store

being out of M.A.S.H. we're out of M.A.S.H. on the internet, sorry.
i think you're taking this for granted. i don't remember not having

a computer, you and i don't remember how we thought
before we could read. here is the rubber stamp, my first poetry

prize. i'm calling to ask, do i write
for rubber stamps? do i write rubber stamps?

what does money mean? it doesn't mean
anything, it means time, which means something, especially

to us because in our perspective we are
all

of it, the center of thought. the producers of rubber stamps. what
do you think? buffy for seventy dollars; that's an amazing deal.

how can one pass up these opportunities, to own copies
of work which everyone owns? also, i'm getting an e-reader

it's in the fine print (every
thing) that this voucher,

which entitles the bearer to (every
thing) is not valid for the duration

of you. this computer will run (every
thing) as long as you don't use it.

this book is superglued
this file type is corrupted

you cannot be a dot doc and a dot
pdf - be complete and un-editable

or be subject to accidental changes
in your type

face. it's in the restrictions (every
thing) that you must locate a prize

not that one.
not that one.

it's never settled, although
there are no returns

only spaces
and the semi-colon;

the hours have hands
reach back but

it's NOW

think about scrubbing
bubbles

where was the time
before time-saving

devices? where was
the time before time

telling stories? this sun
is not the same

as the snow-filled
sky, reach back

but it's now, it's late
always too

these hands have arms
wrapped around you

and your mind
has dates, and dates, and dates

which are photographs
of fingers, think back

the time has a film running
over it - these five minutes

are now, time
for rinsing, always

edit 061211

angry at < explicit >, unable
to break up with the television,
every machine is a suicide

machine, every morning is a sunday
in which you wake up too late
to be spiritual

but never too early to begin
mourning for monday. it is all
dread.

angry at < explicit >, this technical
text wants to break up with you.
you're a cheater. you cheat with literature.

a man says, "excuse me, do you believe
in Jesus?" and you say "yes"

parenthesis, i believe in the man.
i believe in history. i believe in fiction.
i do not believe in the Son of God, if that
is your real question, which it is. parenthesis.

the man asks to shake your hand. you shake
as an expedient to the bus stop and think
about judiasm until you think

about your bus fare. you know that
the television is a god and will not
let you go. every morning is a sigh,

a small hope that machines will
break. that you will hear owls instead
of fluorescent hum

***
original typewriter version

angry at < explicit >, unable
to break up with the television,
every machine is a suicide

machine, every morning is a sunday
in which you wake up too late
for spiritual enlightenment

but never too early to begin
mourning for monday. it is all
dread.

angry at < explicit >, this technical
text wants to break up with you,
you're a cheater. you cheat with literature.

a man says, "excuse me, do you believe
in Jesus?" and you say "yes"

parenthesis, i believe in the man.
i believe in history. i believe in fiction.
i do not believe in the Son of God, if that
is your real question, which it is. parenthesis.

the man asks to shake your hand. you shake
as an expedient to the bus stop and think
about judiasm until you think

about your bus fare. you know that
the television is a god and will not
let you go. every morning is a sigh,

a small hope that machines will
break. you will hear owls instead
of fluorescent hum

i guess i have not posted on this blog in over a year and a half, although i have been writing, on and off. let's flip that switch.

i'm just going to admit publicly how things were and how things are and why this is scary. hopefully approaching it this way will de-scary many things for me.

i used to have a best friend who pretty much acted like a decent editor/agent while I just continued writing. he is busy all the time now, and I have no compass other than myself.

I sent out a few things under Adam's guidance in 2006, and most of it was taken up and published. I actually denied an exception to publish something under special circumstances. I just re-discovered this this year. What was I thinking. Really. What was I thinking. I know it was a moral issue in my eyes.

Alex Lemon, former professor and hopefully friend, recommended that I make a big push of my writing at this time (2006) to try and get a chapbook published. I did not do this, because many younger poets who were being published at this time were writing good stuff, but not all of it was brilliant. My thought was that poetry does not really make money - you write it because you want to write. Why publish it when not every piece is as good as you can make it? I kept thinking about E. Annie Proux.

But I probably should have followed Alex's advice. I fell into the trap of having to work (and work and work) to pay off student loans and essentially live, and somehow I stopped writing constantly, the way I had been. As a result, the works which are my brain rusted shut.

Last winter, I began grad school, nearly five years after my undergrad. My brain started to function again.

I've never really been a self-promoter, but that's what everyone does on the internet now, and is something I'm having to learn to do as part of my MLIS program. And the part of me that I most wanted to promote (ever since probably the first grade) was my writing.

So I have to start over, write out all the bad in whatever time I have, and do something better. I am, actually, still young.

Happy Sunday!