sidereal patriot

Retrograde

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 21:03:51 -0400

When Saturn first

warned us about the perils of combustion,

I made a list of things I would slough

out my window in the final few seconds

before the holocaust baptized the whole house:

one frayed photograph, a letter from Port-Cartier

but stopped there knowing that I can do

without better than your average monk

and after all, my most prized possessions

come in packs of twenty and I wish for those

to be ablaze always.

There is a history of fire in this home —

my grandmother’s mind was lit

with the wicks on her eightieth birthday cake

and did not stop burning until each

framed memory was wrought with cinders.

She was no more aware of her writhing

recollection than Saturn

is of his eternal permanence

far above our heads, spinning on his axis

like a spool of thread, never amounting

to anything but billows of dust

that unravel to resurrect in our

bluish blood. I am a true descendent

of these suspended bodies –like my father’s

mother, I shed memory quicker than

the fledgling viper sheds her scales,

new skin emerging while she

sidewinds through strange terrain.

Like Saturn, I am tilted in space with

nothing to believe in, not even gravity

and I wonder if any stargazer would notice

if I should catch fire.

i choose between being happy and writing well. i take breaks...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:19:07 -0400

i choose between being happy and writing well. i take breaks from writing to be in relationships, to feel normal until i miss writing too much and crawl back to her, leaving my fugitive lover a missive that ends in, “i’m sorry.” she takes me back every time, but it’ll never be like it used to be. i will never leave you. this poem is unfinished.

Photo

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:02:00 -0400

Untitled (or If This Has a Title, I Don't Know It) by Jack Slattery

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:45:52 -0500

I want to purify my body
in an inland sea of alkaline,
after everything has been made poison
from an irrevocable blow from the sky.

After all,
just for there to be anyone around
to make cave-paintings and calenders
the entire world had to go away for a while.

Before there were whales, there were
little dogs with hooves, that decided,
on bad information, to just keep walking into the ocean.
Time made them titans who could never go home.

Even chickens can still remember
walking around, roaring and shit.
They dreamt of flight;
now they have wings.

And when the flicker of flowers peek from the eye socket
of my calcified skull in the lakebed,
I wonder how long before they get bored,
and what will they’ll exchange for their ennui.

eighteen

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:56:12 -0500

each version is vague about which fruit

tempted man, so i picked an orange as

my offering. you peeled back the rind

like primitive man who came upon an

ostrich egg, godlessly marveled its form

then sunk his itching teeth into its shell

to feel the yolk drip down his chin.

the citrus corroded your lips just as

they found their purpose and you

thought these slices were meant to be

sweeter but you ate as much as i fed

you, half. enough to fill you with

the bitter tinge that comes from

eating oranges or raw eggs or living

secular or living at all. and it’s true

i haven’t been able to rid the smell

of oranges from my impure hands but

i’ve forgotten the taste.

"We splurged ten pounds on a sumptuous Chesterfield Of Prussian blue velvet. Our emergency Kit of..."

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:32:17 -0500

“We splurged ten pounds on a sumptuous Chesterfield
Of Prussian blue velvet. Our emergency
Kit of kitchen gadgets adapted
That rented, abandoned, used-up grubbiness
To the shipyard and ritual launching
Of our expedition. One mirage
Of the world as it is and has to be
Seemed no worse than another. Already
We were beyond the Albatross.
You yourself were a whole Antarctic sea””

- Ted Hughes, from 55 Eltisley (with regards to B. Nicole)

A Poem for April 12 OR Having Six

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:34:27 -0500

Engorged with the crimson

of Christ, the Mexican postulants

rest in procession,

common cannibals full-up

before the stakes

of sainthood

ii.

We too are gravid

but with godlessness,

so in the place of salvation we

scavenge satiety and bow our heads

like saints themselves over the skin

of other sinners and prey and

prey and

prey

iii.

Six hands, three tongues

forking forward forking toward

one another, don’t you

count on, don’t you

ever pray for me

iv.

Three hearts, six lungs

pumping blood, pushing air

pushing it through and through and through

The boy sheds his lambskin

but does not grow fiercer and

at a nod, sidles out of her and steeps

for moments into me, into me

then wethers

vi.

The postulants look up

to see God, I look down to

see you to feel you both

beneath me and skin

receives skin

"Forty years ago, when I read his books on the back porch, I swore I’d be a medical missionary...."

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:12:56 -0500

“Forty years ago, when I read his books on the back porch, I swore I’d be a medical missionary. It’s too bad, but suffering is about the only reliable burster of the spirit’s sleep. There is a rumor of long standing that love also does it.”

- Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King

"I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not. I have..."

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 07:55:24 -0500

““I imagine, in other words, that the notebook is about other people. But of course it is not. I have no real business with what one stranger said to another at the hat-check, counter in Pavillon; in fact I suspect that the line ‘That’s my old football number’ touched not my own imagination at all, but merely some memory of something once read, probably ‘The Eighty-Yard Run.’ Nor is my concern with a woman in a dirty crepe-de-Chine wrapper in a Wilmington bar. My stake is always, of course, in the unmentioned girl in the plaid, silk dress. Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.””

- Joan Didion, on keeping a notebook

"When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red..."

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 07:25:25 -0500

“When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?”

- Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia

Alpha Depressus Majoris OR Finally One For You

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:49:00 -0500

If you are Misery

then I am Company,

I think as your ever-

brimming head boils

over my skin, staining

the olive with flecks

of black soot like

magpies moving about

come sundown. You

christen your curse Major

as though it were some

familiar constellation

strung up and circling

your head, dwindling

through bouts of lightness,

never long enough

for you to evade its

dusking clutch. You tell me

what it feels like to be

a paper doll, crooked and

telescoped at the whims

of one woman’s

preying hands;

lacerations laced around

your neck like a rosary,

like a noose. I want

to draw you into me,

sidereal patriot; paint you

onto my thick, heavy

panels, coating myself

in dreamed-up lucidity

like Bosch’s triptych, a

hinged new landscape grown

for reaping your own

revolutions, your very own

heaven and hell. I, too,

am of three parts:

morning, noon and night

and your stars, they’re the whole day’s

effigies, just sometimes burn less bright.

workspace, sometimes 01/10/2013

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 15:42:14 -0500

workspace, sometimes

01/10/2013

Up in the Air

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 22:38:26 -0500

When the sun feels farther

I grow fatter and keep my bloated

figure thawing at home where the

faces floating there look upon me

with the same disapproving eyes

that have been softened by years

of staring squarely into the whirring

black eye of the kitchen sink

waiting for the foam to dispel

as though it were a shaken magic eight ball

about to unveil a milk and honey fortune.

My congealing body was once satiated

by the coming of summer but now is starving

for a single inch of snowfall to lay itself down

unblinking before me like a brand new

bride and cover the tracks of who I became

in that mean heat, when my blood

was more fluid and my body more

fluent in the sudden tongues

of others. Now I sweat out

myself like a pioneer’s fever while

my wringing hands trace the familiar

curves of the moon mounted on top of me,

my constant suitor who keeps

well-dressed and requires no translation

not a single lick of tongue but still

causes me to rise and fall, to rise and

to fall at her pull and although

the ricochet makes me queasy,

I figure that all of this gravitational

persuasion is like being taken hostage

on an airplane that you feared flying on

in the first place and now you’re forty

thousand feet off of the earth’s crust

with a cold pistol digging into your temple

and in the place of terror comes relief that

it’s no longer up to you: your whole future

now hinges on the trigger hands of this

ascended messiah and the only thing

you can do is thank the gunman for

shooting down your albatross and

pray he doesn’t shoot you down next.

What Lays & Who Lies OR Jack's Poem

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:30:00 -0500

I much prefer being sick

to being well. I go for the uncertainty of it

all; the spasmodic retching and sudden chills.

I salute the skin-pervading hushed bug, streaming

through the blue channels of me, trying his best

to cast anchor. How far he has made it –

sad little sailor. My freckles should have

warned him, for they have seen it all;

nothing gets under my skin for very long.

They have winced at each strange fingertip,

tiny chisels tapping at my stone veneer;

sculptors crafting nothing but a tomb for us

both to lie in. If I cannot be safely crafted,

I cannot be solely conquered and my body,

an army of foxgloves is primed with

poisoned petals, daring any advancer to pluck

a single one and ask, “Does she love me?”

No,

all better is just a bore. I never could

swallow pills very well; they just get stuck

somewhere in the hollows of my head’s little

pedestal. I have to take everything in smaller

fixes – medicine, men — or else dissolve

them in some tea and sip them slowly until

nothing’s left but some loose leaves

bleeding out on the bottom of the cup.

It is my great sickness that I cannot lie

to people well but under them well enough

and it is this same plague that led me to expose

my stark boredom to you just after you slid my

shirt off and your hands on. I’m sorry for that.

What I meant was,

“I won’t be able to write about this.”

No sane or satiated woman ever once

begot a poem, anyway.

"Really being able to follow your whims is a talent requiring a long and secret gestation."

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:27:00 -0500

“Really being able to follow your whims is a talent requiring a long and secret gestation.”

- James Guida from Marbles

Alias: Lenore: a letter in a poem at a funeral.

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:11:35 -0500

Alias: Lenore: a letter in a poem at a funeral.:

five—a—day:

This is an apology letter for all the days

I didn’t love you.

This is for the nights I don’t hold you

tightly enough. This is for the awful things

I called you because they came easier

out my mouth. This is for the time I wore

the white dress into the lake; you seethed

because my…

was unaware that you had 2 tumblrs but now i have found you, everything is OK, thank you for liking it, i like you so sososososo much OK

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:04:54 -0500

i don’t post any pics on this blog but it is just as self-gratifying, if not more so. don’t worry. i’m glad we found each other.

verbatim et literatim: i drank 4 beers tonight and bent one of the rings on my fingers.i...

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:41:00 -0500

verbatim et literatim: i drank 4 beers tonight and bent one of the rings on my fingers.i...:

sarahjeanalex:

i drank 4 beers tonight and bent one of the rings on my fingers.
i suddenly felt immense control over all aspects of my life.
i thought of you, and then i thought nothing.

i stretched in bed this morning and felt my ribs
pressing against the skin on my chest.
i imagined a hammer tapping gently on…

sarah jean, i really like this

How to Pray & What to Pray For

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:41:00 -0500

You came through me

like the accidental prayer

of a faithless man bargaining

with the sky he calls God for

One More Chance, just one more

bet or one more breath – his plea

escaping his lips as swiftly

as his momentary savior

escapes his mind once the votes

have been counted or the wounds

are all mended. You came through

me in June, wanting to know

the proper way to pray for

forgiveness and I tell you

that the shape of penance

depends on your crime and think

if it’s prostration you choose,

laid out like a bed of carpet roses

then I’d like to be the soil

that cradles your roots beneath you.

You came through me in June

in the cold-hearted heat and we both

went out of our heads for each other,

out of our heads into each other

and into the houses of mothers

while they were away, too. I squint

my eyes in these fortresses and try

to imagine them as my own— the winding

staircases, the waxed wooden floors

seem more attainable to me

than the moonburned body

lying next to me, telling me about

Argentine ants or something else

I will forget before long and as I fall

asleep in someone else’s bed

I let out an accidental prayer,

Thank God you came through me

and stayed.

"And knowing it, that this was who we were, that we were no longer who we had been, those who were..."

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 23:40:00 -0500

“And knowing it, that this was who we were, that we were no longer who we had been, those who were innocent, who were sweetened by what they held on to, at that moment, I actually ached for the blade’s falling slice. I wanted it to end that life between us, to cut the tissue of our marriage so cleanly that our bodies would fall away, separate, and finally lie still. But Terskan was right about that: the blade, primed, doesn’t fall fast — that’s just the lie. Instead, I understood, there would be only this tiny, day-by-day gnawing, with a burrowing animal’s small, though sharp enough teeth. Turning and turning it over in little dirty paws. Holding on to it as it got smaller and smaller and smaller.”

- Marcie Hershman’s “The Guillotine”