a poem for Zachary Cohen
your footsteps are like echoes
a ticking clock in an empty house
hours earlier the sun has fallen
and strolling down an avenue towards
infinity you no longer care about wallets
and missed calls
questions or the unbearable need for answers
do you remember that night
when we drank whiskey in Brooklyn
and you flirted with some Puerto Rican girl
who was married with kids
I tried speaking Spanish
to her, but all I really wanted
was to black out and wrap myself
twice in that tweed coat
I’d bought
and so maybe it’s important to love
or be loved
to not be the same as your parents
but to maintain a certain moral turpitude
like the villagers of days yore
but I remember evenings
wine stunk in pocket park
reading poems from a memo
pad and imagining Che Guevara
was riding in my ephemeral sidecar
another night, San Francisco breezes
the ocean’s stink and seals bark
as I lay on a bench and drank straight
out of a bottle of sweet 2 dollar port
a whole poem in my blood
and negative space upholding my neck
to care is something different I think.
money is a curse of adulthood
someone should shout fuck you at the banks
I spit on the ATM and pee in garbage cans
buy leather shoes and stick them in the fire
whilst still on my feet
Driving through Nebraska at 18
all I could imagine was something that never could be
do you remember the smell of pages
the stacks of I.O.U.’s and the rivers
of filth flowing through the crescents of our moons?
Do you recall the thunder of rain on
air-conditioner units?
Do you say I love you to the meanings?
in queens she was raped while all the neighbors
watched, but a recent study proved that it wasn’t
apathy, it was faith in others that allowed it to go
unreported
faith that someone else will do what you wish you might do should you do anything
I listen to music
I write novels
I make money
I am a poem
I drink because I have nothing better to do
I drink to black out
I drink to drink
Whiskey and wine remind me that America
can cushion a fall as long as you admit you’re falling
Europe will burn
and so will New York
remember 1977
and the world is all a cycle
nothing is new
money money money
better make sure they pull the net
I want to fall into the abyss
do you smell the rivers mush
the refineries cough
and the powerplants whirr?
On 1st avenue
it’s easy to fall in love
if you don’t try to
I walked all night
until my toes bled and my body ached
across bridges and under
highways searching for a reason
to believe
at the end of it
all I heard were footsteps
and the echoes of those footsteps
and the sound of my voice
reciting a litany of verse
from the columns of my mind
It’s hard sometimes, writing poems on the fly, a night time bender, the moon hidden behind lights and clouds with puffed out chests, the inherent violence of life, incumbent charm, a father in a chair sleeping to college football, weather the whether will be weathered
noontime drinks in the yard, kicking dry leaves, autumn chill and gray clouds, a wind whipping eastwards towards the sea, the smell of chimney smoke and cinnamon and dust. the water of the sewers singing like a waterfall
The word “and” can be used like an accelerator pedal, dumping words like fire on the dry eyes of a dimly lit house, thimbles full of tears, drinking the salt like wine. God never called and if he did would you even take the call, when elevators ascend the midnight hustle of your lowly lived life.
silverware, and candles, the blur of conversations and how the voice can grind one’s own ears when at the end of a sentence he can truly hear himself trailing off. The news on a nationally broadcast station reporting terror to two year olds, lives dumped in the wreckage of a medium.
fragile like a beaker
bored like a blade of grass
the summer is not so far away
in milk stained bowls
the wallowing of stinking sinks
rumbles with tectonic shifts
plates crackling
beneath broken toenails
I want to give thanks
thanks for this job I spend too much time at
for the dreams I’ve watched in the windows of my eyes fade into the distance
for poetry, like a lover that’s slighted me
for William Burroughs
and the ideas that nothing is worth a lick because we’ll all be dead
In the boulevards of Hollywood the crown weighs heavy
wealth is the language of love and adoration
multiplying children
scatter over granite sidewalks
unaware of their parents broken marriage
and the ideals of a whole country crumbles
I miss the rivers of my youth
The Hudson and Harlem River
The Mississippi
the peacefulness of water, cool
breezes cutting splinters down the spine
supine memories
undone by adulthood
coming to on the shoulder of some freeway
wearing coffee stained clothes
and water filling green eyes
unsure of the future
and attached to history
fragile like a glass spine
bored like a redwood.
I have a window now
looking out on the
mountains of Los Feliz, Silver Lake
snow capped beyond
Love Hate Tattoo
street signs below
the sprawl of Los Angeles
and this awful feeling
of Deja Vu
a hangover
sunken into a desk chair on Madison Avenue
the summer burning outside
and a million poems
spilling from my pen
the thunder storms of summer
humidity and sex
outcast friends, craving flesh and fine print
the fucking of a river, flowing stink
through waking dreams in Williamsburg
night.
She was high on my list
prone to cocaine and holey underwear
my friends didn’t like her laugh
or the way she always ordered the most expensive
drinks, but then wanted to split the bill
one afternoon in Chelsea she gushed about
an artist she’d had lunch with,
i wish she would’ve just said they’d fucked.
He wore a speedo in Tompkins Square while sunbathing
I was more shy.
And the city during those summers
was like a future unannounced
little promises shimmering in windows
black to the outside world
Intellectual overtones,
Collective underachievers
real thieves wandering avenues
searching for subterranean bars
and large ideas
I think it was a tuesday when I got mugged
stumbling through China Town,
hiking over the Williamsburg Bridge
in search of a girl with
tiny tattoos and thick lensed glasses.
And now we are
hovering over Los Angeles
Nuclear
planning vacations and wandering
the silence of our homes
sunbathing in fenced yards
and waiting for inspiration.
America’s political and military goals
seem
d i s c o n n e c t e d from
the situation
on
the ground in
Afghanistan.
Eleven people
died
in fighting
that broke out
during a protest
by Christians over
the
burning of a church.
A legislative effort
by
companies providing the loans
has been met
with
vigorous
opposition
from
insurance companies
and chambers of commerce.
Beatings
and shootings
begin
in demonstrations
that had been
relatively
peaceful.
Alarm
over the condition
of a
turtle
that scientists
say could be more than a century old
has prompted an
urgent effort
to determine and treat
its ailments.
Human Rights Watch says
the country faces a “crisis of impunity” that has festered for decades.
Eighteen young men
and teenage boys
have been charged with participating in the
GANG RAPE
of an 11-year-old girl,
which was recorded on
telephones.
The fast-moving fire
broke out
while the mother was milking cows
and the father was taking a nap nearby
in a milk delivery truck, the authorities said.
An estimated one million sardines
turned up dead Tuesday
in a Southern California
marina, creating a floating
feast for pelicans,
gulls
and other sea life
and a stinky mess
for harbor authorities.
Bank of America executives said on Tuesday
that a government idea to write off tens
of billions worth of mortgage debt
was unworkable and warned that
it would be unfair to untroubled borrowers.
Use red or green cabbage in this comforting vegan dish.
Her name is Wisdom,
and she also bore chicks
in 2008,
2009
and 2010
Twenty-one priests are
on administrative leave
because of credible
charges that
they
had
sexually
abused minors.
Football coach
was suspended
two games and
fined
$250,000 for
violating
N.C.A.A. rules.
The producers are planning
a significant overhaul
of the
$65 million
Broadway musical
that would
involve shutting down performances
for
two
to
three weeks.
The pressure
designers feel to
come up with something new
is evident.
As protests spread
to new areas of Yemen on Tuesday,
the
foreign minister
appealed to
rich
Gulf
countries
for $6 billion in additional aid.
Mitsubishi
denies responsibility for
birth defects
and leukemia
cases near a
former rare earth refinery
in Malaysia,
but
volunteered
to clean up the site.
Two federal marshals
and a city police officer
were shot
while
serving an arrest warrant.
The case
of a man
charged
with distributing
child pornography via YouTube
is the talk of a small town.
Raj Rajaratnam was greeted
by photographers outside
the courthouse,
but little drama
inside, as he began
his trial on charges that he made
$45 million
by trading on illegal tips.
The depression
that the poet
Les Murray suffered,
detailed
with self-effacing honesty
in his memoir, “Killing the Black Dog,”
informs the humor in his
new collection, “Taller When Prone.”
Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates said
that the United States
faces
an
“acid test”
this spring
and summer
to determine if
gains in the war are sustainable.
Under the lights
everything reflects
blindly
a morning like afternoon
afternoon like night
night like sleep
and no sleep
The ocean used to be close
now it is far
a forest used to rest by my back door
now a single tree sways under California sun
grass used to smell like stale cereal
now it feels plastic and looks too green
And even though thunder
is invisible
the thickness of its sounds
send shudders through our vision
another night spent thinking
about lives worth living
Though the list isn’t a list
I miss the smell of wind
the feeling of sea water
the smile of a copper beech
and the luxury of tall grass dancing
in the gusts of late spring and
early autumn.
the evening dances
orange light bouncing timber
analogous tearful faith
I subscribe to The Writer’s Almanac and get a poem in my inbox everyday. Occasionally I think the poem is so good I want to share it. This morning I got this one and I loved it!
What Did We See Today? by Robert Bly
Some days we are passive, listening to the incoming waves.
On other days, we are like a light that sweeps
Out over the husky soybean fields all night.
What did we see today? Horses at the end
Of their tethering ropes, the wing of affection going over,
Flying bulls glimpsed passing the moon disc.
Rather than arguing about whether Giordano Bruno
Was right or not, it might be better to fall silent
And lose ourselves in the curved energy.
We know how many men live alone in their twenties,
And how many women are married to the wrong person,
And how many father and sons are strangers to each
other.
It’s all right if we keep forgetting the way home.
It’s all right if we don’t remember when we were born.
It’s all right if we write the same poem over and over.
Robert, I don’t know why you talk so confidently
About yourself in this way. There are a lot of shady
Characters in this town, and you are one of them.
A Trip By Train
I left the train
behind, it was snowing
and I was tired, so I didn’t
go and meet anyone at
any bar and countdown to
the new year
It’s occurred to me
more than once
that seasons are segments
of time meant to cure
or cause
depression
it’s only natural
I was in bed when the planes hit
I was in bed when the space shuttle blew to pieces
I was in bed the day we started the invasion
I was in bed while she went into labor
I was in bed while you fell in love again
I was in bed when I was supposed to be at work
and the avenues are like
shallow canyons outside
my window,
not the bottomless
crevice of nightmares
but the shallow pools of youthful
exuberance.
The trains are all iron and
aluminum, silver screeching
bullets loaded with worriers
headed for different destinations
with a platform, a bad cup of
coffee and the USA Today in common
the weather meaning
a slide show in between
A soundtrack would
be nice for these types
of situations… Another
distraction from the eyeless
face that is your memory
crying babies
kicking feet
and a cold window
against my cheek
C. Platt, 9.14.2010
Los Angeles, CA
That book that I was
reading wasn’t very
good and I’m sorry that
i snapped at you when
you were only trying
to be helpful by
turning on the
lights and offering me
a beverage
I was alone, for
the first time in a
while, and you came
up from behind
scaring me
half to death.
The nightmares
continue to wash
over me like warm
water in a dirty swimming
pool, you and I
and all the people
we used to know
when we were social
and interesting
and interested in
the ideas in the atmosphere
that we could snatch and stuff
into our intellectual
satchels. This
is not an apology
mind
you
but an admission
that perhaps life
hasn’t turned out
as we’d planned
and come to think of
it
whose really does,
right?
the book I was reading
when you surprised me
with your voice, which used
to sound like a song bird,
and now like a siren,
was not very good
despite the rave reviews
and the websites dedicated
to its excellence
the author wears sportscoats
i bet, while teaching at an expensive
University with talented students
thinking he’s a Jesus-y type
able to teach them
how to turn
words
into
wine
and wine into
residencies
and then they can buy
their own sports coats
and smile at their
minions. When you surprised
me I guess I was
lost in the filth and
the dirt
and the waste of time
I had been convinced
to partake in
by the cute bookstore girl
that looks like a pixie
you know the one.
So while I am not sorry,
why should i be?
I will say that when you surprised me
i was reading another book
I wish I’d never
bought
but couldn’t
put
down.
http://laexperiment.blogspot.com/2010/09/our-intellectual-satchels.html
