by Ryan Adams
silently
without an end
and yet
this springtime scare
it is inevitable
and something inside the gray
it is growing
if the rest of the world were as selfish as you are
regardless of heaven or hell
or an afterlife, where a soul is judged
you would not be here
for your lack of faith
in the service of others
and for what is decent
and the waitress smiles
and goes into her station
where you can’t see her
and cries
I am not doing myself or anyone any good on this fucking earth, fuck
fuck it all
giggle
I bet you see me
right now
writing this
and think
“I want that vacuum”
the one on the t.v.
in the window
but
if you knew her
and knew me
would you
you know
want it still
or see
I am going to trace your outlines with my fingers
even though the maid will come
and remove us both
by sundown
this is how it is
I am kind of investigating myself now
in a thick stab
of openings
and I guess
all it took was that look
between
you
me
and this time machine
revolving
around the moon
before
I knew what it meant to feel something again
that didn’t
feel like diving through a mirror
or falling through a burning river
I will sleep tomorrow
then awake
and shiver
and be alone again
with only me to fight the dark of day back against that wall
but somewhere
I
will hear you giggle
say something
don’t just stand there
say something
say something
27 Steps
Robert stood on the docks, his favorite shirt stained with fish blood, the wire mesh nets behind him, over him like spiderwebs, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his arms a boxer’s size. At this age a man does not do this type of work, the old men must have thought, as they peeled the gloves from their hands while the younger fishermen dumped the flinching silver diamond-eyed fish into the once-green buckets, now more filthy white. The boats surrounding were older, and beaten alive by salt and war winds and however many times it had been beached for the scraping of the coral. Robert stood on the docks.
His eyes upon the city behind the pier, and the organized messes upon the beach seemed more like chaos to the wanderers and to the fishermen too, probably sometimes, but so did this skyline. And somewhere inside, somewhere, he would find the bookbinder who crafted for him a sheath to protect his words. Twice did his notebooks go down, or so to speak, when sailing through a storm, everyone calm, and aware of each wave only as a heartbeat inside a chest on a busy day.
Some of the writing was damaged, but not really, you could read every word but he was fickle and alone out there. A man is only what he has to say, you know, inside, and that was Robert anyway. From day one. From day one he knew his name. And that was a good spell ago but not exactly forever from yesterday.
“Oh, Robert,” his sister’s only friend Claudia said, half cheeped or yelped, in her funny voice. “Oh, Robert, I am over here, over H E R E,” hand waving madly through the air. As she ascended the foot of the pier.
A simple yellow dress with a handkerchief, slightly orange, tangerine orange, and bright blue eyes also. Not even 25.
“Hello, Fruitface,” Robert said, kneeling as he knotted a bag of clothes, a pair of simple black shoes, atop the cloth sack. A dark blue cloth and a small white rope like pair of lines ran directly right and left and his hands, they were huge, with fingernails beaten slightly around the base and only a few of the smaller ones showing signs of being recently bloodied or bruised with blue gold copper—looking wear. His hands were the size of good and bad ideas, like two for one, or separate. Claudia liked them.
“Hello there, sailor, ha, who says that? Right, I mean, it’s funny to say that, I suppose, so how are you, or, are you ready to go? We certainly better put a push on it if we want to get a taxi before 4…” Claudia’s voice mumbled through, in a steady up-and-down notation, almost a bird’s song with words really. And you hear the coffee in her.
“Yes, yes, let’s get going. I believe I am as tired as I have ever been,” Robert laughed. “How are you, lovely?”
Claudia removed her gloves (she wore gloves, don’t ask) and leaned against the wooden telephone pole—sized beam which rung the last few steps of the pier before it hit the concrete mess, a few of them side-by-side impromptu loading ramps, with wet sand (gray) and loose sand (bottle-blond and white) bunched up beside and blowing smoothly over, as the wind was only below the streets above and the roar of the West Side Highway and it could be the traffic maybe that replaced that quiet roar of wind, but you imagined they were making the sound, you thought it would have to be one or the other, but above, behind them, that was a wind of only noise and motion and the bending of time. That is what a person does when they live in there, inside the fault lines of a thousand buildings with as many windows multiplied by however many times.
She leaned her neck back to take in the sun from the simple blue sky forever shining light off the waters, put her hand to her side, and let out a sigh. “Some- times, Robert,” she paused, “sometimes… sometimes a woman doesn’t need the weight of a man.”
Then she turned as she removed her glasses and smiled.
“That day is not today,” Claudia muttered through a set of almost shut lips, her mouth as straight as any line.
Robert stood up now from collecting his few things, a simple dark blue cloth bag and a few books to be rebound and covered in plastic or a binding shell. And he smiled, as they together lunged into a laugh, her arm reaching over to his side, and off they jutted like a painter’s line up the dull gray colors of the rocks, to the orange burst and light explosions above them, on the other side of the boats, 27 steps up.
Pretty with Laughter Coming
Geologists
are they
dirty people?
tied to rocks. they know equations for what is what.
they probably understand
the rust
under your nails
our nails
Either way this afternoon was too boat-shaped
and
grew sails
and
off I went into
one of my spells
I couldn’t sleep
I never do
so well
so
there is thunder now in my fingertips
from orange paint
and I can’t tell
anymore
if I should be tired or faint
for
the rain outside
that blue
and
the coffee I made
it’s all
a
long
series of days anyways
and
I am happy
to
imagine a new set of legs moving
soon
where
I will not be walked over
or
trampled on again
like
so many rocks
on a mountain
made
of
bubblegum eyes, cotton insides
and
>
just a touch of man
in balance
in a wind
by
a single stick
in the sand
and
now we are on this beach so it is up to someone else
or I am for the taking in
taking home
or
left for the waters
to
carry me in
back
into the
dark black of the sea
where you cannot see your hand
two feet
just black
and
I’m hoping
I see
the shoes
when the hand comes down to brush me off
and hear a giggle
before that
it is not yet afternoon
and
there are plenty of
hours
in the day left
and
I saw something pretty
with
laughter
coming
By the Words
something funny happens
in the heat
under the fireball out west
I go to light my morning smoke
just one
in the morning
not one a.m.
a single stick of wake-up blast
to match my cup
of muddy frenzy
and I can’t see the flame
for the light
a coyote nest is in the brush
is it a nest of bones or paper?
maybe debris
from shopping gone wrong
or a lost
canyon sweater
turned article of questions
that part I don’t know
this is still me
and I am here but I am half dreamed
gassy and all man in the morning
cocked and loaded
and stumbling like a drunk
until I light that fuse
and submit myself
to the word
the morning word that is just this
a desert hides beneath the surface
its tree its flower its highway
congested like a face
of a child
melted into mexican and american indian
dreamlike where television comes from
and I only see her with others
in the last part of my slumber
after I wake up once
but decide for christmas again
I will go back to bed
to give my body a new present of rest
and peace
something funny happens
when I know I am now awake
even in the last bit
of my dreaming
I see you
and I choose your laugh with others
I pick ones, I know their names
always james, always zack
some hack
with a bank account and a phone
that rings like a rooster cooing hens
it is how I undo the ribbon
on the boxes of pain you wrapped for me
under a tree of pain
my mother planted
a long time ago
and just for me
but I can’t carry this for you
my arms are tired
my heart wasted
and a new body makes my wish
separates the fan from blade and grill
my fingers won’t go in
on the new watch
I am meant to heal
which I do
but from her laugh and her eyes
one at a time
I hear you say “no regrets” and I die
over and over
a single stick of wake-up blast
to match my cup
of muddy frenzy
and I can’t see the flame
for the light
so
I light that fuse
by the guesses we have in a single soul
and submit myself
to the word
the morning word that is just this
and pray
a prayer of getting up and being ready
to release the payload
of just
one more day
if that is all I have
this is how we pray
once we pass
through fire
if we do not pass at all
or only for one last time
in a stumbling block of dreaming
far away
in a memory
in a new way
locked down in a jail of old questions
and
time
then I am alive now
one by one
by the words
A Book of Spells
How to make a Book of Spells
is not the question exactly
is it,
but
How might one make a spell to outlast his mouth
and for the thing
inside the face
that makes it spit words like machine-gun fire
or
explosions needed
4th of July–esque
or just a spinning
and a self
How might one make that book
is what
and why
and
I guess maybe everyone should and we would know more
about why
why
why you say I hope you fail
as if by sharing I am trying to win a something
or
beat you to the metal where the apples float
because
once you open your mouth
and start bobbing
we are all an ass
whether or not
we are publishing
and
that is why
and how
Now
Poetry Is a Zombie
Poetry
What is that really
It is the closed Mall Where Zombies Feast on Brains
In my t.v.
When I lie in bed at night
And should be thinking about sex
Poetry
Outmoded
Taken Over and Ammended Beautifully
By Hip-Hop Culture
Made Useless by Napkin Commercials
Poetry
Dead Languages
It works for This
Did You Know
There are people out there, some women
Who read poetry
Who read
And who live by the word for lack of the touch or the word
Or someone to touch
Or that these books
Are
Much better than firewood
I don’t know anymore
Really
I am very very stoned
And it is mid-afternoon
And I am talking to you
And I don’t know
Who
Or
Where you are
This
Is
Poetry
Cinderella
Cinderella
between the legs where the balls are
that’s the wink
that’s the fucking subway rattle
so fuck you
and see it from the balls
and the place
where the fire is and where the hot comes from
because you are cold
and your fences are brittle
and the wires look a mess
and the chickens and animals run loose
out your sad gate
then tell me about that music in my mind
when you whistle out of step
tuneless in time
with a fe
athered cap and a gown
and a seeded palm
to seduce the ships from the safe waves
into the rocks
with your wicked lighthouse lights
shining black on water
in that fucking night
I am too young for this
I am too old for that
I am too weak for you
between my legs where the balls are
my battleships are pirated
my seas triggered with anger
and the wrath
of the day of the dogs
so cast your wicked eyes from mine
and be a child
but not to me
because I am further now than gone
and your feet give you away
with your dark heart path
and those shoes
so wrong
you are weaker than those drinks
with those girlyboys
fruit, seafoam, glass, and umbrella
chase it to the bottom of the pile
it’s trash
and I am glorious in my natural bottomless rage
and far too clean
Cinderella
Tonight, We Ride…
Tonight,
Tonight we ride into the collapses and see
Bring a torch
Bring a light
and a rod
for testing if the ground is water-signed
and
bring a book of mythology
be mythos bound or not
and
let’s go underground
on
these imaginary horses
we cannot name them
for they fall
easily
in such tremendous battles
with the army of spiders
and rats and
whatever that huge scary thing is over there–whatever you
call that
Tonight
Tonight,
We cast an arm above the water the size of what is too big
and too high up
like above the stories once falls
and laughs it off
even in anomalies at kentucky college keg parties
But really to be honest
there is much slowing down
slowing down
going on
I have seen it all around
even the dreamers, they look tired now
as those drugs, even
those drugs, even
do not work like they once must have
even if you wanted to
and
forget that
even the dreamers now are tired
and they,
they are the ones alongside me
as we say
TONIGHT
and shout that ever so naïve, us in the middle years
it comes off childish
but it is just pre-old
