6.30.2006

third new poem

this is actually a slight revision, with new title, of an earlier post.

i'm happy with it in this form, and the title is a good fit, i think.
the title actually comes from diane's long poem greed
, part one.

so here it is.

oh, one more thing--as with the last two poems i posted, i don't expect that the indents, etc. will come out correctly. which will bother me more than anyone else, i'm sure.

AND NOW THE SUN IS IN ME

for Jeremy, father of light, heart full of branches

The truth is I loved the running:

each step
a small shadow broken by your glow,
each step taken slower than the last.

So that even now, months later,
you are breaking across me as the aurora borealis
and saying

I don’t know why I let myself go down this road

and I am thinking of Bob Dylan
singing Baby Let Me Follow You Down, of Creeley
saying O, Love, where are you leading me now;

I am not yet brave enough to ask
what it is you are chasing

when you chase after me.

I love these moments, you say, but moments like these don’t last forever.

It’s enough to make me stop, to turn and face you

to tell you
we’ll be petrified in this moment;
that now we’re immortal,
this tiny light-storm pulsing where your
hand now rests.

6.28.2006

second new poem

I can’t remember tomorrow
What I said tonight

Jack Spicer, “15 False Propositions Against God”, Part VI

YOU SAY THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS WHEN YOU’RE DRUNK


This is not a love poem/ this poem is an act of love
this poem is an act of love for those words you slur into my hair from the stool in Moriarty’s
your tongue thick with whiskey
your thick whiskey tongue saying in Johnny Cash baritone I am afraid that I love you
leaning across the space between us to touch my stomach
now ballooned as the soccer ball you spent your boyhood passing between your feet
to put your lips against my ear and say with whiskey thick tongue

I am afraid that I love you

as though loving me were viral

as though loving me were the flu and you weren’t eligible for vaccination
as though you had been waiting in line at the health department all day
as though all night you had been feeding your fever shots of Jameson

and I lean my face into your neck

thinking of the time a friend called me Man Poison.


And some night as I am stepping from my clothing
as I am stepping from my clothing into your bed you say
I love watching your silhouette move
my silhouette now not the same as it was months ago
my abdomen so flat beneath your palm/ beneath your ribs
on a layer of couch cushions on the floor of a friend’s home
and this makes me think of Olson
to be in different states without a change
is not a possibility.
You say I want to make love to you and I laugh

before we met I called it fucking

and even the first time you kissed me I laughed

and I curl my hands into your hair and breathe deep/ you always smell like light.

You say some night

when again we have found ourselves in the same bed

after a game of shuffleboard at Art’s

you say it is your fault, when you slept here the other night

your scent stuck to the bedding and I couldn’t

sleep smelling you all through my sheets

the moonflower, arresting.

You say this will be a scary twenty years for you and me and our daughter

you say I will lead a revolution, you say

I want you to sleep here tonight
you say

would you like me to stay with you tonight

you say I just want her to be happy

you say I want to love you but I am afraid


This is not a love poem
but this is your poem, Jeremy
because I do love you, and I will use your name, Jeremy, Jeremy John Wittrock
because I love you correcting my technique throwing darts, my grammar,
saying use your wrist and for whom
I love you arguing with me about poetry, art, my poetics,
the impossibility of writing a good political poem,
finally calling me an elitist
I love you scrambling cheddar cheese into the eggs when I am frying potatoes
on Sunday afternoon even
though again you have kept me in bed so long
that we have missed the Lions game
I love you saying You can’t just call Tom Brady a terrible quarterback,
you have to have reasons
I love you quoting Tombstone, saying you are Doc Holliday and I am Kate, saying
You are a good woman,
but then again, you may just be the anti-Christ

I love you squeezing my toes in the doctor’s office during the ultrasound
when the technician announces the gender of our child
I love you rubbing my shoulders when I am sitting in a wheelchair
on the first floor of Spectrum Hospital
in Grand Rapids after falling down some porch steps
and I am so cold from the rain
you give me your sweater
which is even now too large for me
I love you falling asleep with your whole body wrapped around mine,
as though you really were hugging a
tree, you who only now, in November,
are beginning to wear shoes.


Last night I had a dream
and I was reading you this poem over the phone
you who are so often gone to some other state

we were on the phone
my voice was fuzzy like trees
you were fuzzy, too
you said you will leave me

you will leave our daughter

you will go and you will go and you will never stop going


I was reading you this poem


there was a page missing
and it was the most important page

it was the page where I told you I loved you

and it had something to do with Jack Spicer

and Jack Spicer said something beautiful
but I cannot remember what.



Jeremy, I am saying your name
I am saying your whole name,
Jeremy John Wittrock/ I will not protect you any longer:

I am in love and cannot endure it
I am sitting in Stober’s while you are in Florida
I have played I’ve Been Loving You Too Long eight times in a row
and I’m looking for more dollar bills

I think I am Otis Redding
I am singing along
I am forgetting the words until seven months from now
when our daughter is asleep and I hear it again

I’ve been loving you too long
to stop now.

6.27.2006

new poem



had a wonderful meeting with diane a few nights ago; the product being three (hopefully finished) poems.

this poem is the oldest of the three (i'll post the other two later) and probably still has some work left in it. we'll see. i'm not entirely satisfied with it yet, but it's getting closer.

HEART SWELLING TO THE WEIGHT OF AN ANCHOR

I am sleeping in a hotel in Pittsburgh. I am
remembering the first time I watched Jaws,
how terrified I was to step from bunk bed.
I let the phone ring, hear its pause, wait
for it to ring again.

The silence circles my mattress;
the sunrise crashes into my ears
like the Pacific, the ocean I visited once
but was too afraid to swim in.

When I answer, it is my sister’s voice
telling me Abuelita’s heart failed that morning.

And so it is that she bled
to death inside her own skin, the brilliant red
spilling from chamber to chamber, coating
each dark organ; heart swelling to the weight of an anchor
and that great predator smelling it the whole time,
her eyes darkening for weeks;

it should not have been such a surprise.

Yet even as the doctor’s words stalked us,
the we can just try to make her comfortable
a hammerhead swimming
the halls of the hospital, even then we waited
for something absurd as the Coast Guard
to save her, all those men in white
the shadow of fin and tail.


6.14.2006

paying my dues has finally paid off!

so, i've been in lansing since last wednesday with jeremy and evie, picking up a little data entry work with the good old clean water action.

i've been chatting with the state and great lakes directors about different positions opening up, which would all involve canvassing...now, i loved canvassing, but i can't be away from evie for 12 hours a day just to work for five. i can't see the value in that. and i don't have any desire to manage a crew in the field, etc., when i feel like i need that energy for my little one.

this morning, as i was getting ready for work, one of the directorscalled and offered me a temporary slot as the office manager while our regular o.m. takes a leave of absence to do campaign work until november.

so, of course, i signed on the dotted line this morning...and i'm starting monday. which leaves a ton ton ton of things to get figured out between now and monday...

that's your update. i'll add more soon.

ps--i'm reading "the gospel of mary magdalene", which i picked up at a local bookstore ("everybody reads")--the store is after my heart, offering a book exchange where i picked up (for free!) "the gospel...", a novel (handling sin) and stephen jay gould's last book (the name escapes me, but the subtitle is "mending the gaps between science and the humanities). so once we're moved and the books are all unpacked, i'll be taking some books up to the exchange to pass thru the community. love it! book recycling!