Project 31, 2009

We are gearing up for this year’s Project 31. If you want to be included, let me know.

The last ten days of poems (late again…ugh)

22.
Poetry is the
elimination of all
variables that

distract
from, or dilute
the integrity of
the single moment you aim to
describe.

This poem,
in entirety,
is an excess used to
distract myself from writing words
that have

meaning
and relevance,
words that will savage my
grazing emotions, set flame to
grasslands,

and show me as the carnivorous beast
that I cannot help from being sometimes,
that burrows tunnels in my heart and lungs,
that lurches about dangerous and disregarding.

23.
Though
I know
it is somewhat
irrational, your continual disregard
to return my phone calls
leaves puncture wounds in my memory
of you, has added three-fold to the
gray hair on my head, has built up
the pressure in my jaw to an agonizing level,
so much so, I can no longer sleep without grinding
my teeth, chewing on my tongue, and drinking before
bed. Do you fear that I still somehow
cannot stop pining for you, that I
read and re-read letters from you
before carefully folding them, hiding
them beneath loose floorboards
in the kitchen?
Is that
it?

And are these idiosyncrasies
formed for you
so easily
forgotten?

24.
I listened to the album, “Sophtware Slump,” by
Grandaddy at least four times on the
way to Hastings, truly stunned that
I had not even heard
of the band until
this last year
living in
Chicago.

The thought of this album coming out nearly
nine years ago, and I bought the
CD used a few weeks ago,
and all the reasons I
gave myself to pass
up the disc
for something
else,

left me, for the second half of the
trip, over four hours, in an immersion
into the album that truly reached
some sort of religious awakening,
a baptism in sound,
in the story
of a
robot.

25.
Christmas
with family
follows certain routines,
ritual that captures joy in
chosen

moments,
so no matter
the sorrow, we will know
which box from the garage holds our
laughter.

We will
know just where to
look when grandma enters
so gingerly, and forgets my
first name.

We will
know what package
to unwrap when dad still
has to borrow rent money from
his sons.

We will
know the present
that contains happiness
soothing and absolute, that lifts
us up.

26.
Sorrow
spreads before me
on these lonely Hastings
side streets like boundless stretches of
black ice,

and I
will drive reckless
tonight, with no friends left
awake to force my fingers from
the wheel.

Headlights
appear rarely
at this hour, on these roads-
pale frightened children peering from
upstairs

windows
of new homes in
grotesquely different
neighborhoods, ephemeral and
backlit.

And I
am unwilling
to turn back, preferring
instead to let each new patch of
ice choose

the path that I will follow home.

27.
I enter as the appetizer, the
antipasto, the hors’ doeuvres, and the room
oohs, nibbles at stories
of teaching pregnant teens
and writing a poem a day, but
all anticipate the main course entering
soon after-steam slipping under
door frame, and the smell, oh god the smell,
food that would frighten some with its flavor,
and after steam and smell you
make your appearance
wrapped snugly in your winter coat,
mittened fingers like sausages, waving at friends,
an uproar in every room,
when the realization of your arrival settles
on their conversation.

Thank god I knew I
would not be enough to stop
the massacre when

hours later you still
had not shown up, and brought a
bottle of ten year

port to
persuade those with
blades, frowns, or foul mouths from
ending the night with an exec-
ution.

28.
As far as I know
there may have been a freak snowstorm
just past Cleveland, on an abandoned
two-lane road, which immediately buried Tom
in twelve feet of snow.
Tom may be frozen to death in the
front seat of his geo metro, and I am left
jumpy like a high school mother waiting
for him to return home.

Melancholy music may still be shivering
forth from his stereo (though the battery
would almost certainly be close to dead by now),
mittens gripping steering wheel in a futile
pose of control, face trapped in an unchanging
nervous/cute expression, which researchers will
find him stuck in a thousand years from now,
proclaiming him the world’s greatest find, the
best preserved of all 21st century men.

Or, Tom
could simply be
sipping hot cider with
cute lady visitors, reading
novels

by F.
Scott Fitzgerald,
and grooming as little
as possible, his phone lost in
his car.

29.
I think of you tonight Dan
while standing on Brian’s front porch,
holding a beer I no longer want-
drinking after four no longer amusing,
just depressing, exhausting.
Could you still be up at this hour,
sipping scotch, scribbling down dialogue
for the novel you will not show to anyone,
even me,

until
it is thorned and
crippling, passionate as
pressing lips on porcupine quills,
until

sadness
is cavernous
and deep enough for wounds
to rattle bones and echo up
years from

now, an
unexpected
explosion, released from
mouth surrounded in bats and ghosts
and fear.

I think of you like this tonight Dan,
though you are more likely asleep,
without the scent of alcohol on your lips,
without fingers shaking and raw from your keyboard,
without the knowledge that I imagine you in this way.

30.
Awake at ten-thirty, though seven or
eight was when I fell asleep, Brian
still on the couch, bare chest and thighs
creeping from beneath blankets
reminding me of hours
before slumber. I
push aside beer
bottles to
find my
pants.

Too much coffee drank between Iowa
and Illinois, too much gas station
cheese and beef jerky, big gulps filled
with Dr. Pepper or Coke,
a headache and heart burn
keeping me awake
but uncomfort-
able. Then
Chicag-
o.

Midnight arrival, winter coat smelling
of gasoline, arms trembling under
weight of holiday gifts, trash to
throw away, poorly packed bags,
and another Todd Brown
original, and
you open door
nude, smiling,
holding
cat.

31.
The last day of 2008 and you send me this email:

b,
Weirdly, I was wondering if I could have your permission to send Martha a     letter? Does that seem strange? It does to me as well.
~k

And after too much Murakami in the last few months,
I am ready to respond:

k,
No, it does not seem strange to me, but,
Martha is ephemeral. More chance of discovering her voice in a flight
of migrating birds, than an address that will accept mail.
b

And you will counter persistently:

b,
your journals have woken spirits,
and I am kept awake by the space between she
and I, though we have not met,
though we may never meet.
Please.
~k

And I will send you every address she has ever used,
her phone number, and a photo.
I will provide you a stipend
to seek her out, to hand her in person, rather than mail,
your letter. And I will not hear from
you for weeks, before receiving this short note:

b,
thank you,
kate is beside me, well, and wonderful.
goodbye.
~m

Faces

cheers

31 DEC 08 - best in 09

A New Year

blithe shell
this coasting caravelle
of straited water
some continent to unknow in surprise
of snow capped peaks
far beyond the morning’s mist
could be the root of
another sea

Raw and Cooked

Day 31

Thanks for setting this up Debra