From: boutell@cshl.org (Tom Boutell)
Subject: TB: More Poems (*Gasp*)
Organization: Cold Spring Harbor Labs
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 14:37:27 GMT

The only cure for poetry: more poetry.

K (9/20)
-

I am beginning to understand
Where she saw things from,
Knowing how deep the hole was and
Hoping she wouldn't be asked to do heavy lifting,
Thinking maybe this setting or that promise
Or clenching her teeth
Would make it possible, make her possible occasionally
In the way I was always possible. And then knowing
It wasn't enough, and knowing
How frighteningly suspended in a foreign space
She was, and knowing
She had brought her familiar demons along.
The worst of both worlds, and always knowing
It was all going to end badly, and always knowing
The wrong turns were taken too early
To escape by mere distance.

People Steve Knows (9/22)
------------------

I can't do it.
I can't hide in a corner at parties
Dressed all in black,
With Robert Smith lipstick
And a military sack,
Wearing a noose seductively around my neck
And saying, "I'm so depressed.
Take me home."

I want to be as plain as rain, 
As obvious as a bottle under a shirt,
As obvious and plain and welcome
As a hard-on on a lazy Sunday morning.
I want to be well-used and well-remembered,
As readily available and well-received
As a good cheap pizza,
In 30 minutes or less.

"I'm so obvious.
 Take me home."

So the next time your closet Republican boy
Tiptoes on the television like a fascist sex toy,
I beg you, sweet lady, resist.

Corrupt me, not him,
For hell hath no fury
Like a liberal not recently kissed.

Immediate (9/25)
---------

Were you there?
Did you see it?
When they pulled her out of the driver's seat,
Still breathing?
Barely breathing. It was a miracle.
It wasn't enough of a miracle.

Were you there?
Did you see the other driver,
With tears in his eyes?
It didn't change what had already happened,
It wouldn't change what was going to happen,
It didn't change his blood alcohol level.

Were you there?
Did you see him carried off, saying
"It was an accident-
I'm not going to lose my license, right?"
Still clenching an invisible steering wheel?
Did you see the beer can on the dashboard?

An expensive machine,
With extensive controls,
Set into motion, by choice,
By a sober choice early that evening, by
Taking his keys into the bar.

A watchmaker
A blind watchmaker
A blind idiot watchmaker
A blind idiot watchmaker raving blind god
Made him
Made all of us
Made him, I am told, in his image.

House (9/25)
-----

Many years after I made an echo,
Sleeping upstairs in a frozen bedroom
And clearing the backyard, doing
More damage with strong innocent hands
Than I was able to repair-
The towel rod was held up by plaster dried
And kept dry since 1970,
No match for a slight tug
From a nascent teenager-

Years afterward sitting in New York
Wearing a tie I almost never wear
Reading a story with old brass faucets in it
In a theater lobby smelling faintly of cigarettes
It occurs to me that children grew up in that house
And played with a three-stringed toy banjo
And who knows what else
(Because I can't remember seeing another toy in that house
That wasn't a Christmas gift to a new generation)
And that the hulking old television was new once
Very new and just barely within means
And Grandma hated her name with more enthusiasm
And people occasionally ventured into the basement
And children grew up in that house
And got to be whatever they wanted enough
And got to be women
And got to be the way they are
And that one of those women is my mother
And, like so few I have known, is whole
Like my sister and brother are whole, like I am whole

Glassmaker (9/25)
----------

You wonder why I don't grind light dust of glass
Make lenses early in the day see further and the reason
I don't is that I respect glass respect shards of glass
Respect loss and prefer to lose myself one night at a time

Sodom NEA (9/25)
---------

An overused saltshaker I am intended
To be liberally used to garnish all thigns and I
Have gradually stopped up in my own defense and now
I pour unevenly and in strange quantities to prove
I am not empty and not free either perhaps you should
Have asked Lot's wife you could have made a killing
I stayed behind in Sodom to run a clinic
They stoned me anyway and cut off the grants
They will cut us all off eventually dance
While you can still dance

Words Into (9/26)
----------

When I first read I had no consciousness of words
Fitzgerald was terrified of consciousness of words
When I first read plays I saw only plot,
Political intent and other irrelevances
Now I read slowly much more slowly
And I hear voices and on a good day
I can even see rooms

What I still can't hear are interruptions
Interruptions and pauses
Meaningful space
Long building anxieties like
Like wondering where light will come from
After the sun goes down

I first found tears at a bad pop opera
A very PC very bad pop opera
They were tears of recognition
And then of relief
That recognition was possible,
That tears were possible

-T


-- 
Tom Boutell, boutell@cshl.org

Clausthaler is the best non - alcoholic beer in the known universe.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems