Boingy Boingy Dot Com

i reread this poem at least once a year and it always feels a little bit more relevant than the year before. i imagine this will peak at age 28, but maybe not... David Berman's book Actual Air is one of my best-loved possessions and I've bought half a dozen copies over the years to give away as gifts to people that needed it.

Self-Portrait At 28
by David Berman

I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in this chair
with my eyes closed.

It is a certain hill
the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill"
and if the apocalypse turns out
to be a world-wide nervous breakdown
if our five billion minds collapse at once
well I'd call that a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn't mind dying
alone or with you.

I am trying to get at something
and I want to talk very plainly to you
so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk
I stare out when I am stuck
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
and I don't know why I keep staring at it.

My childhood hasn't made good material either
mostly being a mulch of white minutes
with a few stand out moments,
popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer
a certain amount of pride at school
everytime they called it "our sun"
and playing football when the only play
was "go out long" are what stand out now.

If squeezed for more information
I can remember old clock radios
with flipping metal numbers
and an entree called Surf and Turf.

As a way of getting in touch with my origins
every night I set the alarm clock
for the time I was born so that waking up
becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do
is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like
when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn
the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.

II two

I can't remember being born
and no one else can remember it either
even the doctor who I met years later
at a cocktail party.
It's one of the little disappointments
that makes you think about getting away
going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables
and taking a room on the square
with a landlady whose hands are scored
by disinfectant, telling the people you meet
that you are from Alaska, and listen
to what they have to say about Alaska
until you have learned much more about Alaska
than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.

Sometimes I am buying a newspaper
in a strange city and think
"I am about to learn what it's like to live here."
Oftentimes there is a news item
about the complaints of homeowners
who live beside the airport
and I realize that I read an article
on this subject nearly once a year
and always receive the same image.


I am in bed late at night
in my house near the airport
listening to the jets fly overhead
a strange wife sleeping beside me.
In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation
of various cold medicine commercial sets
(there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).

I know these recurring news articles are clues,
flaws in the design though I haven't figured out
how to string them together yet,
but I've begun to notice that the same people
are dying over and over again,
for instance Minnie Pearl
who died this year
for the fourth time in four years.

III three

Today is the first day of Lent
and once again I'm not really sure what it is.
How many more years will I let pass
before I take the trouble to ask someone?


It reminds of this morning
when you were getting ready for work.
I was sitting by the space heater
numbly watching you dress
and when you asked why I never wear a robe
I had so many good reasons
I didn't know where to begin.


If you were cool in high school
you didn't ask too many questions.
You could tell who'd been to last night's
big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.
You didn't have to ask
and that's what cool was:
the ability to deduct
to know without asking.
And the pressure to simulate coolness
means not asking when you don't know,
which is why kids grow ever more stupid.


A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises
to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness
of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying
for a letter from the class stoner
ten years on but...

Do you remember the way the girls
would call out "love you!"
conveniently leaving out the "I"
as if they didn't want to commit
to their own declarations.

I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept
and hope you won't get uncomfortable
if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

IV four

There are things I've given up on
like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
and the human race as a group
has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvious now.

It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past,
though try explaining that to a kid.

I'm not saying it should be this way.

All this new technology
will eventually give us new feelings
that will never completely displace the old ones
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
and split in two.

We will travel to Mars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.

Why? I don't have the time or intelligence
to make all the connections
like my friend Gordon
(this is a true story)
who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
until I brought it up.
He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.

V five

The hill out my window is still looking beautiful
suffused in a kind of gold national park light
and it seems to say,
I'm sorry the world could not possibly
use another poem about Orpheus
but I'm available if you're not working
on a self-portrait or anything.

I'm watching my dog have nightmares,
twitching and whining on the office floor
and I try to imagine what beast
has cornered him in the meadow
where his dreams are set.

I'm just letting the day be what it is:
a place for a large number of things
to gather and interact --
not even a place but an occasion
a reality for real things.

Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic
or religious with this piece:
"They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic
or religious," but these are valid topics
and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor
possibly dreaming of me
that part of me that would beat a dog
for no good reason
no reason that a dog could see.


I am trying to get at something so simple
that I have to talk plainly
so the words don't disfigure it
and if it turns out that what I say is untrue
then at least let it be harmless
like a leaky boat in the reeds
that is bothering no one.

VI six

I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories,
many of them having blended with sentimental
telephone and margarine commercials
plainly ruined by Madison Avenue
though no one seems to call the advertising world
"Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved?
Let's get an update on this.

But first I have some business to take care of.

I walked out to the hill behind our house
which looks positively Alaskan today
and it would be easier to explain this
if I had a picture to show you
but I was with our young dog
and he was running through the tall grass
like running through the tall grass
is all of life together
until a bird calls or he finds a beer can
and that thing fills all the space in his head.

You see,
his mind can only hold one thought at a time
and when he finally hears me call his name
he looks up and cocks his head
and for a single moment
my voice is everything:

Self-portrait at 28.

Labels: poetry

Persimmons
by Li Young Lee

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker
slapped the back of my head
and made me stand in the corner
for not knowing the difference
between persimmon and precision.
How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.
Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.
Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one
will be fragrant. How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down the newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
Chew on the skin, suck it,
and swallow. Now, eat
the meat of the fruit,
so sweet,
all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.
In the yard, dewy and shivering
with crickets, we lie naked,
face-up, face-down,
I teach her Chinese.
Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I've forgotten.
Naked: I've forgotten.
Ni, wo: you and me.
I part her legs,
remember to tell her
she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class
and cut it up
so everyone could taste
a Chinese apple. Knowing
it wasn't ripe or sweet, I didn't eat
but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun
inside, something golden, glowing,
warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,
forgotten and not yet ripe.
I took them and set them both on my bedroom windowsill,
where each morning a cardinal
sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding
he was going blind,
my father sat up all one night
waiting for a song, a ghost.
I gave him the persimmons,
swelled, heavy as sadness,
and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting
of my parents' cellar, I rummage, looking
for something I lost.
My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,
black cane between his knees,
hand over hand, gripping the handle.
He's so happy that I've come home.
I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.
All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.
Inside the box I find three scrolls.
I sit beside him and untie
three paintings by my father:
Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.
Two cats preening.
Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,
asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,
the strength, the tense
precision in the wrist.
I painted them hundreds of times
eyes closed. These I painted blind.
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

Labels: love, otherpeopleswriting, poetry

Poem for the Name Mary
by Mark Cox

Like smoke in a bottle, like
hunger, sometimes light fits,
wraps itself around a person
or thing and doesn't let go.
The light becomes a name,
and that name becomes a voice
through which light speaks to us.
Maybe this is what a friend means
when she says there is a pair of lips
in the air, maybe this is desire
and need too. Or maybe
this is just how to love a potato,
how to see what the potato sees:
the childish, white arms that reach out
through it's eyes into the dark of our cabinets
to bless them.

Labels: love, otherpeopleswriting, poetry

It's been a long time since my terrible Slam days.

Shot In The Dark
Summer Burton

I am fighting unrealness.
It is a desperate and violent battle,
this fight for solidity.
The glow of computer screens and the
tender martyrdom of unrequited love
punches my gut and pierces my chest.
But I will not give up on actual touch, actual taste.

I was thinking about placing a classified ad.

SWF seeks something that will make her hands hurt,
but not her heart.

I have been having dreams about guns,
or maybe about not-guns. Dreams about
not knowing how to hold a gun,
or release the safety. Or shoot. Or breathe.
Dreams where I don’t know how to be not-safe.
Dreams in which the simple metal burns my hand
and I drop the thing immediately. Also, horses.

I know am going to win the fight.

SWF seeks someone who will show her how to shoot,
or give her something else to dream about. Either way.

I have been drinking more whiskey,
It was a conscious choice.
Doesn’t whiskey seem more real than other things?
Like water, wine, or milk? Milk is the most unreal of all;
suckling past infancy on another animal.
When did that ever make sense to anyone?
Where was I when this decision was made?

I am becoming more real every day, see?

SWF seeks ten-thousand weapons and an equal amount
anesthetic. SWF seeks a solution. SWF seeks.

Labels: mywriting, poetry

I went camping with a bunch of friends this weekend and, dorks that we are, we spent hours playing the 'poetry game'. Each player gets a page to start a poem and then passes it to the person next to them. As the poems get passed around, each player folds over the lines above the one they just wrote so you only get to see the line right before yours. Then when the papers are full, you read aloud. It was pretty much the funniest, most inspiring, bizarre, wonderful time ever. Although a lot of the poems were super ridiculous and silly, we impressed ourselves by collectively writing some genuinely beautiful stuff. Here are a few extra-solid examples of what we did. Keep in mind, these were written by eight people who had been drinking since 10:30 am.

Writing by Summer, Laurie, Kelly, Patrick, Gabriella, Bryan, Thomas, and Mandy, otherwise known as 'River Krause' :

-

She was under the music’s spell
She closed her eyes and dropped her guard
dropped her shirt and shoes.
Before she fell to the floor in a crumpled mess they all laughed and pointed.
She meant to fall down.
Scraped knees are dirty dignified badges.
Distinguished bruises, I cruise my memory for thoughts of you, morning pancake days.
Coffee, smokes. Pictures of you – every day.
A fresh start
But how many “fresh starts” do we each get?
Zero. Nothing is really new, is it?
But what did you really want to know?
I could tell you everything in five minutes but the truth would lose it’s luster.

-

Even when we yelled,
It tasted like a whisper
And then I heard silence coming back in from the cold wind.
And it was fascinating to hear silence.
The echo of empty it embraced
Like a rock tossed in a well.
Dark, cold, alone.
In a dungeon of doubt.
Handing on the cliff of a memory
holding on because letting go would mean something ended. You hate endings.
There’s a possibility that this won’t stop being painful, but what the hell.
It’s not always healthy to feel good.
Sometimes, it is necessary to die.
To be re-born…

-

Her eyes were tired.
Dark circles made her seem older, more experienced, sexy.
She was tired. Possibly.
Possibly because she was on some awesome drugs.
Or just seeing clearly for the last time.
The last time she opened her eyes, it hurt.
And she wished she were blind.
So she wouldn't see his...
It's not scary, not scary, not scary.
It's cinematic.
And profoundly monochromatic.
Meditated upon like Rothko.

-

Otis had it rough
and tumble
down down down until there was only me.
Well me, and that guy, and this girl make three.
Changing who I thought I could be.
You know, something kind of new. Maybe pink.
Maybe blue. For boys and sky -- two things I hate most of all.
"I'll break myself of it once and for all."
He said for the fourth time.
She watched the progress of her cigarette,
to be interpreted as the shortening of her patience.
He left without words, he wanted to hit her.
He ran to his car and punched the window.
Fuck!
You!

-

Hills ran for miles through the window of the train
the rain raced rivers on her cheeks,
cutting through the beauty shell.
I wash my face and stare at the mirror.
And hope they have forgotten my bad-luck incidents with their ancestors.
The ancient dead have no reason to forgive our bullshit.
But it doesn't matter, we leave them flowers.
Posies for rememberance, it feels like it's been hours.
Hours, or days -- it's easy to lose track.
Lose time, lost mind. Missing hours spent with an ex-boyfriend,
taking Zanax and talking on the phone.
Was that my phone going off? Hold on.
As per usual,
everything is always the same.

-

This is a great first line
It came from the record player, scratchy and proud
like a goddamn lullaby in the middle of the day
sung with conviction -- enough to believe.
They had stars like firecrackers in their eyes and then they stopped.
She reached out her hand like a ghost
and stuck it right through him.
"Oh," he said, "that feels nice."
But really, it felt awful.
...like a thousand tiny submarines of grief.
like a bathtub full of blood or money -- what's the difference?
Different strokes, different folks.
"That's the way," people say, "the game is played."
Cheaters win, and love becomes suspect.
Sluts win! Sluts win! Sluts win!
But we let them.

Labels: funny, lovedones, mywriting, poetry