tomorrow is our permanent address

Driving, Not Washing

It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same
                                       running from something larger than yourself story,
shoving money into the jaws of a suitcase, cutting your hair
         with a steak knife at a rest stop,
and you're off, you're on the run, a fugitive driving away from
                                                 something shameful and half-remembered.
They're hurling their bodies down the freeway
                                                 to the smell of gasoline,
which is the sound of a voice saying I told you so.
                                                                       Yes you did, dear.
Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from kingdom
         to kingdom through the wilderness,
                    where you learn things, where you're left to your own devices.
Henry's driving,
         and Theodore's bleeding shotgun into the upholstery.
It's a road movie,
         a double-feature, two boys striking out across America, while desire,
                   like a monster, crawls up out of the lake
with all of us watching, with all of us wondering if these two boys will
         find a way to figure it out.
                                                            Here is the black box, the shut eye,
the bullet pearling in his living skin. This boy, half-destroyed,
          screaming Drive into that tree, drive off the embankment.
                                                                          Henry, make something happen.
But angels are pouring out of the farmland, angels are swarming
          over the grassland,
Angels rising from their little dens, arms swinging, wings aflutter,
         dropping their white-hot bombs of love.
                                        We are not dirty, he keeps saying. We are not dirty...
                   They want you to love the whole damn world but you won't,
you want it all narrowed down to one fleshy man in the bath,
                                       who knows what to do with his body, with his hands.
It should follow,
         you know this, like the panels of a comic strip,
                   we should be belted in, but you still can't get beyond your skin,
and they're trying to drive you into the ground, to see if anything
                                                                                                   walks away.


- Richard Siken

Clotheslines

You were carried on your father’s shoulders

marching in Detroit’s picket lines

in the same year you were learning to run

from the word “union”.

That is only half of the reason

I am writing this from another city,

remembering Detroit,

the 12th story window of our hotel room

where you pointed to the square

where the crowds would gather their signs in 20 below weather,  

gray coats, gray hair, even on the young folks

but red hearts, engines built to outlast any factory design.

You always said the word “Michigan” like sweetest prayer.

Driving through the back roads near Lansing

I knew you would murder anyone in the car who made fun

of the plastic deer lawn ornaments.

You taught me good taste

is respecting good people

who keep the oven open in the winter to fight the overpriced cold.

We both believe good poems should come with that kind of heat.

But yours can convince a room full of 500 anarchist queers

to feed the plums of their hearts

to an old man who wakes at 6am every morning,

drives to the public school

to watch the janitor raise the American flag.

Everything I know about class

I learned from your lipstick color: Red State.

I still find it on my neck sometimes, pooling near my collarbone,

a lake big as the ocean

without the tide to bring you back to the shore.

You were never sure about me.

You watched all my pick-up lines drop things.

But I don’t play that game anymore.

I spend all of my time learning to bake a casseroles

in case the neighbor gets sick.

And I’ve already hung all my secrets on the clothesline.

You can look out the window

and see the last time I lied through my teeth

my jaw wouldn’t let me sleep for six months.

My conscience buzzed like one of those

terrible mosquito killing zapper machines.

I’ve finally learned love is a screened-in porch.

I’ve finally learned love is knowing everybody’s name

in the town of your reasons to run.

I’ve finally learned love prays

it won’t always live paycheck to paycheck,

but it always does,

even when it’s got “forever” on its lips.

Forever ago you gave me a doorknob as a gift.

I am still learning to be an open road

to the tree that can be climbed to safety.

I think we’re both still learning to believe

the union can always win. Michigan,

we all have hearts that wanna be old pick up trucks

permanently parked in someone’s front yard.

I’m gonna keep fixing mine up,

and someday you’re gonna be sure as the sun

it’s never gonna run.


- Andrea Gibson

Steps

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much


- Frank O'Hara

Thought we were done with people who can't leave their cities but can't stay, either? You thought wrong, we will never be done.

---

Motion Sickness

Rain in New Jersey devouring the landscape
like those mythic dragons of another time,
another country. The train window frames it

like ink scrolls of brooding masters,
and now the shingle-roofed towns unroll
one after the other, panoramas

of domestic assurances, warm rooms,
nights with beer and TV. I’m only looking in,
and fictive homes are turning on their lamps,

and I remember mother taking me on the train
out of Manila–I was four or five, and we sat
at the station and she said you could hear it coming,

first the thunder and then the charged heat
and full stop to stillness. We were running away
but never too far nor too long, because each time

there was nowhere far enough to go.
Her face was purple with bruises, which she hid
with paste the color of early sky. In a day or two

father would be weeping in her arms,
then we’d be home watching TV. Here you feel
the pull of perpetual motion, the blunt gunmetal

of the tracks and the empty stations, the fierce
rush towards and away from absence.
In Eliseo Subiela’s Hombre Mirando al Sudeste

an alien has chosen to come to an asylum
to study the earth, and wonders why so much beauty
leaves us emptier, more solitary. And when he finds

no answers, he dies like humans do,
numb with morphine, unable to dissect
the filaments of love. Mother and I always came back

on the same train: the same fake leather seats,
the smell of condiments and rotten produce,
the landscape unreeling backwards. Thirty years later

I am still watching tracks, I try not to look back
too much, I believe beauty is a hint of storm
but it could be anything, the way the alien found it

everywhere, in Beethoven or a frozen brain–
dawn, the perfect ink of it, the nervous arrival
of familiars, and the stillness recurring without fail.


- Eric Gamalinda

Since I was quoting her anyway. The anthem for every LJ/Tumblr girl lived being raised eyebrows at for overthinking/overreacting/caring too much.

---

for women who are "difficult" to love

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him traveling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.


- Warsan Shire

The City

You said, "I will go to another city, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, a better one than this.
Every effort of mine is a condemnation of fate;
any my heart is - like a corpse - buried.
How long will my mind remain in this wasteland.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years destroying and wasting."

You will find no new lands, you will find no other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. You will age in the same neighbourhoods;
and you will grow gray in these same houses.
Always you will arrive in this city. Do not hope for any other -
There is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have destroyed your life here
in this little corner, you have ruined it in the entire world.


- Constantine P. Cavafy, trans. Rae Delven

Montage

Monday jolts and she bogs down, a ragbag
Splayed off at tangents. Windows
To the outside and flecks of faces
Spring the morning clear to set her
Into her old dimensions. Piece by piece
She puts on eight o’ clock, pillows
And bedcovers in a tumble pat her
In place. The clearest outglass
Of grapefruit juice teetering on a silver
Tray for breakfast-in-bed exigencies
(Both for effect and effectivity)
Is for a fact but fictive in the mind.

Which holds the moment a little longer,
Stalls the stupor of the previous night,
Images of her beautiful in blank spaces,
Wandering truant like in a private region;
Clouds of night jammed in one wicked
Corner of sleep. She hoards them
Like a child and triumphantly pieces
Them into a total singular perspective;
Splayed-off tatters of mornings,
A dark undisciplined of clouds settled
Right into the atmosphere recreating
Her Monday-world, jolted suddenly
Into the teeth of everyday people
And cluttering pans of slapdash.
She exudes it now becomingly
As she glides and putters about
Alternately, spreads it as a haze
Enveloping her form, perfectly
Dissolved in solid tones and chromes.
A jewel durably ensphered in mist,
Old gold etched in ever-emerging shades.


- Ophelia Dimalanta

Sure, poetry month again. Why not?

---

all ignorance toboggans into know

all ignorance toboggans into know
and trudges up to ignorance again:
but winter's not forever,even snow
melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?

all history's a winter sport or three:
but were it five,i'd still insist that all
history is too small for even me;
for me and you,exceedingly too small.

Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave
merely to toil the scale to shrillerness
per every madge and mabel dick and dave
—tomorrow is our permanent address

and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do,
we'll move away still further:into now


- E.E. Cummings

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance


1. If you work hard, and become successful, it does not necessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you are tall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald.

2. “Fortune” is a word for having a lot of money and for having a lot of luck, but that does not mean the word has two definitions.

3. Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.

4. People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.

5. There may not be a reason to share your cake. It is, after all, yours. You probably baked it yourself, in an oven of your own construction with ingredients you harvested yourself. It may be possible to keep your entire cake while explaining to any nearby hungry people just how reasonable you are.

6. Nobody wants to fall into a safety net, because it means the structure in which they’ve been living is in a state of collapse and they have no choice but to tumble downwards. However, it beats the alternative.

7. Someone feeling wronged is like someone feeling thirsty. Don’t tell them they aren’t. Sit with them and have a drink.

8. Don’t ask yourself if something is fair. Ask someone else—a stranger in the street, for example.

9. People gathering in the streets feeling wronged tend to be loud, as it is difficult to make oneself heard on the other side of an impressive edifice.

10. It is not always the job of people shouting outside impressive buildings to solve problems. It is often the job of the people inside, who have paper, pens, desks, and an impressive view.

11. Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.

12. If you have a large crowd shouting outside your building, there might not be room for a safety net if you’re the one tumbling down when it collapses.

13. 99 percent is a very large percentage. For instance, easily 99 percent of people want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and the occasional slice of cake for dessert. Surely an arrangement can be made with that niggling 1 percent who disagree.