Even If I weren't already on my way to nowhere
I wouldn't bother with a map.
I wouldn't waste my lips
sounding out the syllables
to ask forgiveness for my foolishness,
my directional stupidity, my need to arrive
anywhere instantly. I wouldn't wait
or agonize for coordinates
condemning myself to memorize landmarks
or pop a hill of corn to mark wrong turns.
I shouldn't have to
travel such great distance
so often
to simply be somewhere
familiar
alone
confused
wondering what the sidewalk has in mind.
I've heard them whispering,
cluttered on the corner,
hoping to find themselves
so obvious beneath the streetlight,
deep within their dreams
awake. And we just lie here
among sweaty flannel,
hollow bottles,
sunken candles,
guitar and xylophone,
the things we recognize
as you and I, the objects
that tossed us into shape,
throwing ourselves together
into one, yours and mine
evaporated into ours,
slipped into a calm wake
after such disastrous flooding,
into a new insomnia.
I don't know where the bed begins
and the kitchen ends. I don't know
where my lingering fingerprints
become your nipples.
If we soaked this place in Indian ink
and rolled ourselves around
like a thumb on remote control
and found a liberal bailiff
with a supply of blotter paper,
we might identify our identities,
confirm them with the DOJ
hang that black and white wallpaper
on the inside of the closet door,
turn the light inside the closet on,
slam out the whispering
insomniacs
and get some rest.
Twenty-five years after
my grandfather's broad shoulders rose
and collapsed beneath the final cardboard box
he'd have to carry into retirement,
to a calm Nebraska plain,
I strapped his scratched up Bulova
around my wrist.
I adjusted the band
four notches down, wiped
the age away
with a cotton bandanna
and wound it
past Mao's delicate characters,
Libya, Lebanon, Lyndon Larouche
straight through disco
to the rise of the stadium wave
the hands of that watch stretched
beyond a crumbling Berlin wall
beyond droughts, floods
bankruptcies so common
outside that Nebraska basement
where 1965 choked and wheezed
behind a yellow and orange floral print.
The wallpaper my grandmother lay beneath,
silent after 25 years of staring at it alone,
counting the petals of her protection.
My mother said, "she was ready to see him again,"
(grandma thought she was ready for another cup of coffee
and a cigarette, bent down to grab her pocketbook
and her heart never bent back up). I accepted it
as time to meet a family I'd never known:
Aunt Eloise who dealt blackjack in Vegas,
her sister Fay with the transistor police radio
blaring constant at her ear, an uncle
with a removable glass eye.
We played Yahtzee, poker, spit-in-the-ocean
and drank some Swedish stuff I still can't pronounce
made from eight kinds of alcohol.
Sometime in the night when I had slipped out
to survey the 80 yards of town for any local girl
with thirst for big city stories,
my cousin Jackie fell backwards
from a rocking chair into the hollow slap
of door behind wallpaper,
her big handled purple comb wedged
between hinges (like a thorn in an inner tube
that never lets out air until removed).
Prying it out, she jerked the thing wide open
and shrieked.
No one noticed.
No one could blame her, she figured,
slammed it back shut and fell asleep
beneath the front porch swing.
By the time I got back the upstairs was empty
except for a drunk at the door
(who insisted I call him Uncle Bill).
I asked him what time it was.
He snatched the watch from his pile of loot
and hurled it at my forehead.
That was it.
That's how I was chosen to keep the time.
To keep track of the hours of her basement,
her cellar of cigar boxes steeped in Swedish coins,
yellowed crumbling testaments of celebration
for a midnight sun, grandfather's spectacles
in an empty bucket of white enamel
he had left on the walls of someone's home
and his brushes immaculate lined up
tall to short along the inside length of the footlocker
he had traveled with to America
when he was just 14.
I finally understood
why every holiday
we'd mail her a Harlequin romance
or two and still she felt
she never had too many.
Just as I began to think
there would never be enough
time on this watch.
I gave up sleeping, studying,
everything I couldn't do while moving,
punched my hereditary irregular heart
with an unforgiving, endless fist of coffee,
slammed gears all night
every night
bound nowhere I knew
yet I had to go
until the hands dragged
me down to a shoulder.
Now they've stopped completely,
and I'm just as still
in this riverfront town
unchanged yet dwindled
like the promontory that disintegrates
beneath me as I watch these two rivers
grumble,
shake hands,
curtsy
and merge.
Fiddling Around Another Desperate Affair
I had a lover who navigated my life
by violin
through tender suggestions
and head on collisions
with a furious splaying of hairs,
upon the narrow jagged straits
I always choreograph
inevitably she strung me out
beyond the lifting of a veil
any throaty trash
or fleshy gyration
a siren of myth and mathematics.
I grew entranced
began to feed her by hand
bathe her waltzing frame
in alcohol and sponges
massage her forgotten muscles
through the pains
of amnesia: anything
to delay intermissions
to lengthen the embraces
of escape. We all get caught
loving
what claws at our ears
whispers to our eyes
promises elevations
and predicts obituaries.
But without that thing she was so strange
so grotesque I couldn't look
all callouses and crimped neck
ugly and awkward
as everything had become.
I wanted desperately to shine
in solo
to eliminate her
to mimic her fingerings
step through her whines
into a waltz of my own
a beauty I could claim,
but I had no other instrument
and I could hardly hold her
even when she played
when she cradled
that one thing
I understood.
I ran along an oak leaf
trapped in wind
down sidewalk
racing
and the world was so acute
as if only that leaf
and myself existed,
as if all I'd ever have
to do to prove myself
was move faster
than that leaf
and I couldn't
and I watched it
whirl past.
And I remembered that General
of a tree in my frontward
how tall it truly is
how it clutches and commands
the sky
lingering far beyond
anything I'll ever touch
and I wondered
what did I think
thinking I could race that leaf
that immortal finger of earth
that is bound to endure
any downpour
any blizzard
all boot heels
backhoes
disease
decompose
and find itself
an ambitious sapling
patient for the sky
it is sure to embrace
while my bark and pulp
rots in stone
unable to touch
even roots.
Leaving the Korean International Meditation Center after three months of devotion
sucked.
All the motivation for disappearing
into the corner of a squid's eye,
into the sweet starvation
of a mountain basement, all the hot air
scurrying to find an ego to inhabit, all the fury
of the subway waiting to collapse
by midnight, each pimpled nose
and Walkman scream
each slave laborer's cane and tourist yelp
every expatriate hunch and cellular deal
rubbing up against me in the crowd
almost sent me running back into the empty
hands of nothing that will ever be, the promise
that I will never need
to worry, never work
myself out
of myself.
I forget about the time
I can't make up, the hours
I'll need tomorrow, to teach
and file and wind my way through
piles of bills. I forget the sirens outside
haunting, whispering armageddon. I forget
the third cylinder in my second hand engine
that misfires and spits me into intersections
I might never escape. I forget the sharpness
of the knot in my back that rarely vacations,
reminding me how young I ought to be. I forget
that I can't hear a thing
when these distractions choke me
as I insist on singing
through the hours I can't
simply watch her sleep.
I'm nothing but a voyeur
in the mountain nightclub
licking my lips
to keep my pulse down
as I ascend into her timberline
striptease
where switch backs unveil
moist reminders of spring
as her ridges reveal
fleshed out peaks
valleys, meadows
and crevices
begging to be noticed
carved so intricately perfect
by the supreme plastic surgeon,
Dr. Glacier.
She knows well enough
how to tempt me,
how to douse herself
in pine and honeysuckle
sassafras
sage
eucalyptus
perfumes
aphrodisiacs
irresistible.
And I accept,
furiously climbing,
I must share her
with so many,
but her intimacy,
her caress,
her willingness to guide me
through fury and embrace,
around avalanche,
straight through the soft
powdering of mustard meadow,
are the only language she has
to say one day she'll belong to me.
I pick up her scent
from beyond the highway
past the all night liquor stores
far along the concrete
deep inside the smoky haze
and odorless confusion
of concrete and machinery,
what I know as home,
and I lose all other sense,
break into a sweat
rummage my sophisticated closet
of cardigans lapels and cufflinks
all worthless, nudged aside
to clutch bandana,
backpack,
rope,
compass
and every half cracked excuse
Ican gather into the heap
of why I must return,
why I must put my foot
and tent stakes down
at the base camp
to peer up
each morning
from behind breakfast fire smoke
ecstatic to live
in the shadow
of such beauty.
It's so painful
to tighten the necktie
when I run across needles of pine
Monday mornings
as I whisper my promise
of monogamy,
solidarity,
of future weekends
and our eloping
in her distant ear.
When I was fifteen years old and slipped
legs through a boxcar ladder
luck's distance from a wheelchair
for a free ride to the zoo, thinking of nothing
but black jacket girls I might meet
with breasts training to fit my palms
thighs I might have sacrificed myself for,
if only a view
jogging my anxious time,
I saw everything I'd ever need.
In that elastic instance
of rubbery limbs and rolling ore, killer bees
were unleashed, hummingbirds fell
still, pollen needed no assistance
and those worthless bees circled
shards of railroad gravel
glistening with the ruby fluid
of life. That was the first day
of what I hoped to know
hoped to understand
as enlightenment, the ability
to see
to touch infinitely
beyond the primal programming
of humanity, beyond the amputation
of appendages
blistering of insteps
in hope of walking faster
further.
on the other side of the Pacific
I can't slow down
for the taxi on the sidewalk.
I can't turn around
to wave to the women
giggling at my purple socks.
I can't count my change
correctly in the subway
as I head somewhere uncertain.
I Wouldn't refuse to wear the seatbelt
if I didn't think
preparations, precautions,
preventions
like all pessimistic acts,
confirm I'm asking for it,
strapped full of conviction
mortality is only serious
when you're not white,
not wealthy, not western,
not demographically adjusted.
I'd rather unbuckle
wiggle and speed away
from the waste of time
part-time job
the mortgage
no-smoking office
cholesterol/fat-free lunch
the etcetras that belt us secure
into buckets of survival,
immortal denial.
If it wasn't the law
dictating my actions,
predicting my demise
confirming my weakness
for paperwork, I might consider it
sensible. I might not mind
being a captive in my own car.
If I didn't salivate over a fiery escape.
If it weren't necessary
to wave my head out the side-window,
mouth wide and relaxed,
cheeks ballooned with highway gusts
and the dust of backroads
choked full of liberation
filling in the gaps
these busy city lives demand
with a constant diminishing
of significance in oral breeze.
For My Father On The Day I Remember He Has A Birthday Also
We have shared so little
so much
shuffled,
stumbled
around each other
around confrontations,
moments we should have
known each other better,
should have worked together
but we both work our best
at distance.
Yet for all the separation
unmeasurable and pinpointed
I can't caress anything
with these callused hands
that you don't also touch
for these fortresses of defensive skin
won't let me rest behind a desk,
give orders,
climb skyscrapers
to glance down
upon the "others,"
the "smaller,"
the "simple,"
the workers.
That nothing can have meaning
unless it rests upon a risk
of being lost.
The constant itch
that only a hurl of security can scratch
for the slightest chance
of an infinite armful of who knows what
or nothing,
that I can only relax
after a real day's work
is what I understand
as I recognize our birth.
As I ambled away
dizzy
from the catacomb
of suburbs,
from the years
of crawling,
pausing
to steady myself,
I found a scrap of paper
from a flyer
on the sidewalk
at a bus stop
advocating umbrellas
for every child
in these stormy days;
adults can dry themselves
well enough,
but children
should never know
thunderstorms.
Along the walls
on the inside of the bus
temptation drooled
glossy invitations
of lightweight homes
on Mississippi banks
where sycamores grow
as they're designed,
and levees never break.
Nature is nothing
to fear
when ornamental.
You can always vote
which roots are evil
there are no mistakes.
When you wander
past the boundaries
of subdivision
remember every beast
named Fluffy or Satan
is good
as long as it's leashed
as long as it hungers
only for the simple things
we offer.
Only people
should have thirst
to devour people.
If we don't hunger
we should starve
unless we labor hard,
unless we offer money
to the popular party
then we should be admired,
never hungry
never sleep outside
as long as we work
each other over
diligently.
And we will know
we
will never deserve
homelessness,
will never
have to observe
the grumblings of stomachs
we're not lazy,
we've made no mistakes,
we never will.
We will never
accuse ourselves
of loving too much,
of clinging to another
so tightly
as to desolate ourselves
from independence.
We will dream
of wild adventures
unbound by insurance,
suffering
and endangerments
so common
to the foolish
who step outside
remote control
chemicals
too curious.
It's all meant to be
so easy for us.
I grew a little hitler
moustache just to kill
the boredom
when all I could look forward to
was endless news of levies rising,
rats ballooning, rocks becoming animate.
I finally felt the tickle
to strut around shopping malls,
public parks, grocery stores,
all the sterile shrines
of consumerism
indifferent yet amused.
A Simple Means of Identification
Just as the cactus
tired and thirsty
stretches out
its sticky hand
to shake
wiry knuckles of eucalyptus,
I have a need
to throw my arms around
congressmen
to confirm we're the same things
somehow
regardless of our fruit.
My best friend has an intricate tattoo
on the inside of his eyelids
in eleven distinct fonts and seven colors,
his wife is a formidable needle.
She massages out the migraines
and medicates the muscle spasms
until sometimes he can relax
but he can only close his eyes every fifteen minutes
so he keeps a spray bottle of saline in his desk,
in his car, in his pocket, within reach everywhere he goes.
And he can barely walk some days, palming the air
like a rabid cat in the glow of mid-afternoon
obscured by the visual echoes of his personal billboards.
He sleeps ten hours a night
burrowing deep into the vacancy,
the place where sleep dumps its satchel
for a breather, beneath the distractions
of predictable images.
He talks to himself, whistles jingles
hums and clicks his tongue
to break up the monotony
like punching buttons on an old car radio
to drown out a pop song on heavy rotation.
I've peeled his eyelids back for him
as he worked Vaseline
across a lumpy vibrant flap. I never ask
why he did it. Why he tolerated the burden
of the maintenance of that thing,
such a simple reminder,
"Howwasyourday,dear?"
Han River, Seoul, Buddha's Birthday, 1995
Windsurfers swerve
around bobbing garbage
and other windsurfers
while old women gather weeds
for tea and lovers mingle
over rice rolls beer and disco.
Soccer and kick volleyball
are the rituals of the day.
Boddhisatva is a referee
and everyone is cheating,
learning English to sell T-shirts
leather and women
to tourists and soldiers
from America Europe, Japan.
Bargaining is an enlightened state
no one should bother meditating over.
Just like the pedal
eases in
and pops apart
the holy unity
of sprockets,
leaving one wheel
to simmer down
into stillness
as the other
spins as fast
as ever,
unnoticing.
Like the bruising grip
of a desperate lover
torn from itchy fingers.
Substituting shiny parts
where friction has overwhelmed
originals,
always leaves a gap
where only memory can rest,
a lack of clutch
that will never move me
smoothly
among part-time jobs,
taxicabs
apartments
Styrofoam
dating. It's so easy
to toss away
what we grasp,
but new forms,
new bodies
never connect
exactly the same,
exactly the way
we remember
we need them.
can be beautiful.
My neighbor, Sergei
studies English
afternoons
on the steps
of his front porch,
until his wife arrives.
He welcomes her
with a new phrase
perfectly prepared
each day
and they disappear
behind the screendoor.
He needs her
and her language
he feels
submerged in both
so deeply
that the flames
and sirens
of crack dealers
and cops
engulfing the city
condemning us
to basement shelters
prepared to defend
our corners
our altars of freedom
are indecipherable
to him as he stutters
ecstatic
in his dependence.
If it were a small world
I could saunter across the street
into a real Japanese restaurant
not this sukiaki/teriyaki
"we have hamburger also" substitute.
I could speak Swahili
in the afternoon and click
about the beauty of a sunset
with some bushmen. I could reach out
and shove my neighbor
(who insists all Asians are shifty, Africans untrustworthy, Arabs greedy and dangerous)
on the other side of the curb.
I could get kippers for breakfast
gumbo for lunch
and siesta in Sao Paolo
with a bottle of cashasa.
I could Stumble from a Singapore sling
dog-paddle across the Atlantic
scream through Tienamann square
into the base of the Sphinx
with a couple Turks
and an Andean pan-pipe band. I could
skip across the great divide
shimmy over the international date line
wiggle along the equator
pin a tail on the Tropic of Cancer. I could
get out of California instantly. I could
lean over and be back in Chicago
with the blues
honest pollution
el train wailing
and a few of the faces
I've almost forgotten
bitching about the distance
they travel for a decent beer.
There are two kinds of animals
in this world,
those who like where they are
and those who don't. Every Ethiopia
has its cream, every desert
its mirage. If your environment
looks fine you should look around
you're bound to see something
bound beneath your feet
looking far away.
Thanks to Dana Ferris, Rodney Jones, Richard Russo and Dennis schmitz for their guidance. Thanks also to all who have helped to bring comfort to these rest areas--you ought to know who you are. Greg Kessler currently teaches English as a Second Language at Ohio University.
Some of these poems have appeared in Evansville Review, Black Buzzard Review, Pudding Magazine, Last Stand, Fresh Ground, and Apalachee Quarterly. Thanks to the editors.
I hope that you've enjoyed
your visit.
Email me @ Kessler@ohio.edu
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