Born in the Year of the Butterfly Knife: 1

by Derrick Brown

  It’s so quiet, you float.

  It feels the way cotton candy tastes.

  I say to him…why do I call you God?

  He says ‘Because Grand Poobah sounds ridiculous.’

  (Who knew he was so witty?)

  I ask him ‘Lord, so many poets have tried to nail it

  Ginsberg, Corso, and missed,

  what is holy? What is actually holy?’

  At that moment,

  the planets begin to spin and awaken

  and large movie screens appear on Mars, Saturn and Venus

  each bearing images I have witnessed

  and over each and every clip flashes the word

  holy.

  armadillos—holy

  magic tricks—holy

  cows’ tongues—holy

  snowballs upside the head—holy

  clumsy first kisses—holy

  sneaking into the movies—holy

  your mother teaching you to slow dance

  the fear returning

  the fear overcome—holy

  eating top ramen on upside-down frisbees

  cause it was either buy plates or more beer—holy

  beach cruiser nights—holy

  the $5.00 you made in Vegas

  and the $450.00 you lost—holy

  the last time you were nervous holding hands—holy

  feeling God at a pool hall but not church—holy

  sleeping during your uncle’s memorized dinner prayer—holy

  losing your watch in the waves and all that signifies—holy

  the day you got to really speak to your father cause the television broke—holy

  the day your grandmother told you something meaningful

  cause she was dying—holy

  the medicine

  the hope

  the blood

  the fear

  the trust

  the crush

  the work

  the loss

  the love

  the test

  the birth

  the end

  the finale

  the design

  in the stars

  is the same

  in our hearts

  the design

  in the stars

  is the same

  in our hearts

  in the rebuilt machinery of our hearts

  So love, you should know what to look for

  and exactly where to go…

  Take your time and don’t worry about getting lost.

  You’ll find me.

  Up there, a finger and two dots away.

  If you’re wondering if I’ll still be able to hold you

  …I honestly don’t know

  But I do know that I could still fall for

  a swish of light that comes barreling

  and cascading towards me.

  It will resemble your sweet definite hands.

  The universe will bend.

  The planets will bow,

  and I will say

  “Oh, there you are.

  I have been waiting for you. Now we can go.”

  And the two pilot lights go zoooooooom

  into the black construction paper night

  as somewhere else

  two other lovers lie down on their backs and say

  “What the hell was that?”

  HOW TO KISS THE BOYS AND THE GIRLS:

  FRENCH AND PROPER!

  When I hear lovers saying ‘my lady’ or ‘my man,’ it makes me think that ownership is kind of a romantic notion, especially when associated with hell and French kissing.

  1.

  introduce yourself and say excuse me ma’am/ sir,

  did you fall from the sky?

  no, why do you ask?

  because the same thing happened to my friend,

  Lucifer.

  2.

  take her/him by the hand. make sure to interlock fingers with her, keeping

  one hand free. say you will never leave her/ his side. moments after, you may

  uncross the fingers on your free hand.

  3.

  slide your fingers across the nape of her neck, gentlemen. feel the spine.

  know that it is yours.

  4.

  bring your lips to her neck. do not kiss. whisper a promise into her neck. keep

  a straight face.

  5.

  true ladies, rest your hand to the center of his chest. search for a heartbeat.

  disguise the look of horror that comes over you.

  6.

  kiss his mouth, ladies. let the tongue glide along his teeth, signaling his tongue

  to meet yours. feel the shape of his canines. know that yours are greater.

  7.

  let her kiss fill your ear, fellas. ignore the echoes and gnashing of teeth

  that whisper your little secret. they know your secrets, gents.

  go pussycat. you can’t overdo it. you can’t undo it.

  WHAT I LEARNED IN CHURCH

  This poem came out of a feeling of fondness for the failures in human beings.

  Grace is a child’s head

  buried in a pillow

  or asleep in the dugout.

  Grace is two lovers

  hiding in the theater

  as it closes.

  Grace is an adult

  asleep at the bar

  or behind the wheel.

  Hallelujah.

  MISS LAKE MICHIGAN

  I put on the persona of someone who had been underwater too long and driven mad. This is what came out. Please don’t sue me for the Disney reference. On second thought, go ahead and sue me cause I am all about Knott’s Berry Farm.

  I miss Lake Michigan.

  You were right Mona.

  The mellowing process worked.

  I like the white men in white.

  I don’t kick them in the stuff anymore.

  I tell them I had a bike!

  I say “Oh Mona, where is my 1973 Triumph cycle?”

  Of course they don’t answer.

  None of them are named Mona.

  I know it is loaded with rust.

  I know I launched it into Lake Michigan in front of you.

  It was a very humbling experience…

  when you didn’t dive in to save me.

  I held the handlebars all the way in!

  You didn’t think I could.

  Your ugly boyfriend didn’t think I could.

  You dared me, Mona.

  I got so cold and I wondered if you were cold too, Mona.

  The exhaust pipe kept me warm down there.

  The headlight only worked for about a minute

  and I tell the white men in white what I saw.

  Fishing lures dangled like medals

  from the strong feesh? fishes? fishies? mouth.

  They trailed clear strings of 20-pound test behind them.

  Bridal manes of fishing line—HAH!

  That made me laugh cause everyone knows fish can’t get married

  unless they’re arranged marriages

  cause all fish are Japanese.

  Down there, I saw the bodies of the mob.

  Atlantis was there (just a suburb).

  Thingamabobs? You bet!

  I saw a beautiful crab named Bruce.

  He was talking to me like he had a secret. Maybe about women,

  but I didn’t understand.

  It was all in Japanese.

  It sure was neat.

  I miss you Mona.

  I have a dress I stole for you I still need to give you.

  It’s worth 600 dollars.

  I think you are worth 600 dollars.

  I am worth a cool 150—

  Bazillion.

  Can’t you see that Mona?

  I miss your well-flossed smile.

  I miss the pictures you would tape to my hands

  to remind me of the things

  I used to touch.

  The
steel table has a pole on the side.

  It feels like a handlebar.

  Vrooooom.

  I miss my triumph Mona.

  I do.

  CURSING JEFF BUCKLEY

  CURSING JEFF BUCKLEY

  Only the deaths of Johnny Cash and Jeff Buckley made me weep. Most celebrity deaths feel like a publicity stunt and never touch me; Jeff had so many lines about shoes filling up with water and nightmares by the sea. What does it mean if your art tries to tell you how you will die? I read this poem in Munich and the bartender took me to the place down in the basement where Jeff had signed the wall a year or two earlier. He let me sign right next to it and it was an honor as much as it was strange.

  “I couldn’t wait for the nightmare

  to suck me in and pull me under, pull me under.”

  —SO REAL, from the album Grace

  J. Buckley, three years before his drowning

  You sultry poison.

  You angeldust donor.

  You American gunmetal tongue

  stealing the power from women.

  You said the nightmare sucked you in

  and pulled you under.

  The muck of the river filling your wide shark-toothed mouth.

  You cried out into the hard Southern night

  and the moon is still helpless.

  You held your breath

  and went down.

  Young body convulsing in the brackish water

  shaking for life,

  moaning for the surface June bugs.

  Bubbles roared from your throat

  filled with swirling notes of terror—

  The last melody—the most beautiful.

  You said the nightmare sucked you in

  and pulled you under.

  You died brilliantly.

  …but how did you know?

  SPARKLER

  I once had a girlfriend who got so upset she got out of my car so I drove off. To me this is the best thing to do for a person who never got to experience the joy of walking 22 miles.

  Driving on a 70 mph asphalt,

  my woman’s voice comes out like a spit-on drive-thru speakerbox.

  “We’ve lost focus, I feel the spark is gone.’

  I look at the windshield instead of out of it.

  I pull over,

  remove a snow chain from the trunk,

  tie it to the bumper,

  let the end dangle on the blacktop.

  From the driver’s seat

  I tell her ‘For the sake of clarity

  could you step from the car for a moment?’

  She does.

  I drive away.

  She focuses on the chain and

  it looks like the fourth of July.

  PUSSYCAT INTERSTELLAR NAKED HOTROD MOFO LADYBUG LUSTBLASTER!

  This poem was inspired by a Sparklehorse song and a Pavement song. Hence the sparrow reference for Sparklehorse and the 66 shades of black for Pavement. ‘Be cause there’s 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack…” Mine is 66 cause of a road trip listening to that album. Never ask your lover to write you a poem. It’s like asking sperm to hurry up and be a baby.

  pussycat interstellar naked etc etc.

  how silly i get.

  how lost and silly i get

  unravelling my fingers

  to where your arms connect.

  i come to your body as a tourist.

  endless rolls of black and wine film in my fingertips

  documenting the places that change your breathing

  when touched with the patience of glaciers retreating drip by drip.

  it reverses your breath back into the places

  that trigger subtle curls in your purple painted toes.

  the breaths are not worth hundreds of sparrows

  they are worth all the gray air sparrows die and wander in

  there are things about you i collect and sell to no one.

  i journal them in a book you gave me with the inscription,

  ‘don’t leave your ribcage in the icicle air. something will break.’

  i wrote about the courage my hand would need

  aiming down the worn comfort of your hair,

  hang-gliding across the summer slits of your winter dress,

  searching the perfection in your rock-and-roll breasts,

  stealing the heat off the drug of your stomach.

  let me die a White Fang death

  trembling on the snow and linen of your shoulder blades.

  I want to buy you a black car

  in 66 shades of black

  to match the wandering walls of your heart

  filled with the mysteries of space and murder in space.

  let me spend my days on the shores of abalone cove island

  collecting bottles that wash ashore

  and burning the messages inside

  to fill them with new messages like

  “send more coconuts” or

  “send more coconuts and wild boar repellant. i’m re-reading lord of the flies.” or

  “wow, I’m actually on an island. please send my five favorite albums.

  I’ve already built a Victrola out of sand and eel poo-poo.

  It’s the MacGyver in me. this volleyball won’t shut up.”

  I will float the armada of messages towards the atlantic

  and wonder if a pale girl in new york spends time at the shore.

  I will wonder if she can see the stars i carved our initials into

  when I got sick and weightless.

  lay in bryant park and look hard into the air.

  your last initial isn’t up there

  for it is worthless to me

  since I had dreamed of changing it.

  this is the love of mercenaries.

  i’d kill an army of sleeping cubans for the rum desires

  in the clutch of your tongue.

  touche to your lips!

  touche to your way!

  touche to your ass!

  you are an electric chair disguised as a la-z-boy

  and I find comfort in you.

  my clear bones take shape in the mouth of glassblower with asthma

  for there is no perfection in me

  but maybe clarity.

  crush me with the satisfaction of your black misted, unclocked breath.

  I always come back to the secrets and wonder of your breath.

  It is something for sparrows to wander in.

  it’s not that i wait for you

  it’s that

  my arms are doors i cannot close.

  QUARTER SLOTROCK

  This is death when I close my eyes and speak to it until it speaks to me. I read this onstage at the National Poetry Slam finals and took second place. People said the parts when I was silent were more amazing than the poem. I don’t think that’s a compliment, is it?

  I left my wallet in the afterlife.

  I am a quarter dead.

  I am 75% bottled water, 24% Death Valley, and 1% ‘I found a dollar.’

  I sleep on my eyes and move across dream state women like a hovercraft.

  I wake and my inner child has wet the bed.

  I am the executive producer

  telling you that most of you will die on national television,

  and the bad news is that some of you will only die on cable.

  That’s the breaks.

  I am the one man in the firing squad

  who can feel that his rifle is the heavier one today.

  I am the reason you need to pray.

  I am the shaking in the closet that you hide from

  that your mother used to call the holy ghost.

  I am the fear that sexes your darkness so hard

  you forget how to sweat.

  I am vivid wild plastic trinity broadcasting network

  in the hands of children who need to blow me up.

  I am the cigarette smoking your birth certificate.

  I am
the tears extracted by Johnson and Johnson.

  I am the blood in the fists of Mr. Charlie Bronson.

  I cannot be stopped.

  I am the eighty-year-old couple raptured from the dance floor.

  I am their third wish

  a last rite

  their first kiss

  just last night.

  I am the rocketpack in the back of Boy’s Life you could never afford.

  I am the cops and fathers battering down your door

  and the esteem that got stuck in the commode.

  I am one man in the firing squad

  and my rifle is 1.65 ounces heavier today.

  I bruise from shadow boxing,

  the voices that died on the sidewalks in my head

  begging for more quarters

  for more time in the meter.

  I am the father lying over his son as the plane goes down.

  I am their mothers…

  I am the enemy’s trigger

  I am the embassy you run to

  I am the bottle in the back of the cabinet

  I am the space between a boot and a landmine

  I am the dash in between the dates on your tombstone

  I am the wind as the Injuns faced it.

  I am the last thing JFK tasted.

  TRIGGER AND HAPPY BELONG TOGETHER

  How honest do you really want someone to be? I hope you get this feeling in your stomach at least once in your life.

  If I tell you

  ‘you are a riot’

  it doesn’t mean you are funny.

  When your eyes slink across me,

  I get that feeling in my stomach

  of a man with his new love at the pier

  as she sees her old lover—

  they wave to each other

  and in that brief instant

  you know she will never stop

  missing his touch.

  Love is truth

  and truth comes easy

  like a drill bit in the larynx.

  You are a riot.

  UNSENT

  It’s probably O.K. to tell this story since I don’t know where this woman is anymore. It’s a bit too self-aware and revealing for me to love this poem. The short of it is I cared for this female. I had a crush on her for years. She finally started to date me. Months later she told me she was pregnant. I wept while ‘Shot in the Arm’ by Wilco played. We had never had sex. It was over.

  I am a relational botch job and horror trophy.

  I wanted this one to go right

  I don’t want a relationship that simply comes together out of crisis.