Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Poem: Happiness Happens, Actually

Happiness Happens, Actually

Actually sat down for tea, but ended up having rice liquor. She preferred

tequila to both, but took what she could get—you know, he was paying.

She thought, I see no ‘tea for two,’ as promised, and that she’d rather date a

guy with pretty blue eyes because they seemed more “angelic,” but it was—

an annoyance in spite of good looks.

Actually knew better than to answer the call of a blind date and a friendly nudge.

But, here she was, sitting in a clown suit—a tribute to Halloween ‘08

and a week of build up—entertaining thoughts of fucking a stranger

just because and fingering her sake cup erotically.

If this clown suit gets me laid, there is no greater God than Desperation.

And if this guy pushes his glasses up his nose one more time…

Actually wanted to punch him.

Guy made obvious attempts to bridge the gap and distort the awkward silence.

His voice cracked: “You’re a cancer, aren’t you?”

Guy was avoiding the obvious—an avoidance too unreal for Actually.

She took off her red nose and squeezed it, making a fist.

“What about me seems so much like a Cancer, Guy?”

Guy, startled, index-fingered his glasses till they were flush with his ‘brows.

His hand darted for his expensive apple-flavored sake.

Fucking nerd. Maybe his dick is big. Might be this fucker’s only saving grace.

Guy’s lips tightened, reaching sideways and skyward: “Excuse me. That was tangy.”

“No worries.” Actually, taunting a Russian accent, eyed Guy flirtatiously.

“Well, I’m embarrassed. I admit—I don’t know why I said that.”

Actually was a Leo and, at that very moment, started thinking “lesbian” was

the way to go. She lit a cigarette and mentally memo-ed.

Note to Self.

But, alas, she had already been down that road—and pussy hadn’t really spun her skirt.

Actually’s doubts were suddenly slighted by invasive twinges of compassion. Out of nowhere, she felt like doing someone else a favor.

She imagined she would fuck him in the best way possible. She would build him up “hard” and let him down “easy.”

While her short-spurted fantasies played out, she felt herself becoming wet.

“Could it be my unruly appearance and soft pink core?”

40—love.

Actually uncrossed her legs and, with the precision of a beach volleyball nailing the sand, farted.

Her calculations, like two-faced bitches, had turned against her. She was beat-red with embarrassment. Beneath the ludicrous and vindictive veneer of face paint, a semblance of humility began to surface.

Now, it was she who was squirming. She could no longer meet Guy’s once darting eyes with such prowess and strength. She was no longer the beast in the jungle.

And then, for the first time all night, Guy scooted his chair close, leaned forward, and met, what he’d later call, her “fortuitous look of consternation” with the same sassiness she’d had.

He cleared his throat: “You know, I’ve never smashed a clown before.”

And then, for the first time in a long time, it happened—happiness happened. Her once frozen, brokeback mountain heart had been surprised off its high horse just long enough to thaw.

It was then, during the April of those unexpected happenings, that Actually was able to love again.

Monday, December 6, 2010

A Work of Art is Good If It Has Arisen Out of Necessity

From Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke

Paris

Febuary 17, 1903

Dear Sir,

Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses, for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't so sayable and tangible as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsayable than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small transitory life.

...You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should avoid most right now. No one can advise you or help you--no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sounds - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take the destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.

But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I as of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.

What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your while development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to question that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer...

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Poem: Turtle Baby



In Memory of Judith Gardner, Sean Hughston, and
Souls Gone Home

Turtle Baby

The turtle that carries home on its back carries the
weight of the world without ever saying a word.

Movement is slow but steady.

A turtle will be a turtle, no
more or no less than a turtle.


The Earth spins on its axis around 1,000 miles per hour,
while revolving around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour.

All those (r)evolutions.

From outer space, city lights emanate,
like glow worms or kindling fire.

God is an astronaut, sailing through the
dust and memory of eternal falling stars.

I am His Judas, Her Mary Magdalene, Sweet Jesus, Ruth, the Israel who was once Jacob.


Little turtle babies leave the sanctity of eggshell, rake
the sand with their little turtle baby flippers, return home.

Moths to the Proxigean flame of the new moon.

Soft shells harden with each successive elliptical rotation of
the Earth around the Sun and the Moon in love with the tide.


We’re all following the path of
a kite lost in the infinite sky.

A yellow balloon ascending as one final salute.

What lies below are the memories of
the living—our only afterlife.

On Slights

My aim is to deliver
a toxin to your liver.

The dead dog
is where you
go to die.