Tuesday, December 9, 2008

List


Here's a list of things to do, maybe to get you started:

Sing.

Kill.

Fuck.

Worry.

Walk.

Cry.

Stare at the sun.

Lift your arms up.

Urinate.

Sneer.

Hit someone.

Go up a flight of stairs.

Kick in a door.

Light something on fire.

Take something.

Ruin something that belongs to someone else.

Lie.

Sleep.

Sleep.

Kill.

Abandon something.

Break something.

Try flying.

Throw something at something else.

Perform.

Pervert somebody.

Take advantage of someone's trust.

Cause harm to a body.

Caress.

Examine yourself.

Make waste.

Cause an obstruction.

Free something.

Make a list.

Shiver.

Laugh at someone's unfortunate predicament.

Study history.

Pills.

Draw with ink.

Lie.

Sleep.

Put a foreign object in you.

Cut yourself.

Berate your neighbors.

Bemoan your own condition.

Scrawl.

Shit.

Expose your genitalia.

Make false prayers in church.

Break appointments.

Tidy up.

Lift something heavy.

Touch something dirty.

Flatter.

Fart.

Murmur.

Reject love.

Send messages.

Open your self up.

Preach.

Crush something small with your foot.

Endure something boring.

Poison.

Taste the roof of your mouth.

Feel your fingers.

Wait.

Worry.

Spend money you don't have.

Write something spectacular.

Quit working.

Split.

Eat sugar straight from the carton.

Bleed.

Push someone near you.

Stare at someone you don't know.

Show off.

Sweat a bit.

Grow weak in the sun.

Therapy.

Give everything away.

Go bald.

Walk for days.

Invent yourself.

Satisfy your most immediate need.

Nurture.

Laugh at your parents.

Scorn.

Spurn God.

Make something confusing.

Frighten a pet.

Leave someone alone for once.

Let something rot.

At the clothing optional watering hole near the Cummington Community of the Arts, 1993

That afternoon we had finally seen a bear,

I had walked naked in the woods, finally,

looked for Old Graybeard, felt the hair on my bottom,

felt it as I had never had, as it always was. 

 

I could see my color in the bark

and the wind moved branches I thought were other men, naked too,

superannuated Eakins reclining on Goshen stone,

their color in the bark, their skins and bottoms feeling,

I am sure, as it always was.

 

Back at the house I had a role to do,

the place making me an actor too, my voice voicing.

Commit, I was told during the earlier rehearsals. 

I could commit but I wanted cues. 

I was answered I didn't need any.  Need any?

 

I followed the path, the thousand paths in the woods,

saw my bear, played the painting in my skin,

brushed whiskers with Old Graybeard.

Someone here said they know someone who has his cane.

The very staff that poked the earth!  I committed.

Poem


Promise me I will be secret

my poem says to me before it

reaches the front of my head

and ultimately  my hand.

 

Promise me I will be a secret

or I won't come out at all.

 

It's a shy thing my poem,

shy things my poem and me.

 

We must grow a bit in hiding,

try on our wardrobe of revisions.

 

Soon it will be perfect, I say.

Soon I will be everything

That you will be.


In junior high we were all neuter.

We were neuter beyond our sex.

We were plain and rubbed smooth in all we did.

Differences began to grow on us

only

like the first gentle pimples

and whispers of moustache.

 

Now, though, on subways and sometimes passing by

on the old streets here I see what we've all become.

We have forked and split like the hydra we studied. 

Big boys now, women waisted and married,

angry career homosexuals, or fallen into sales and smarminess,

gone crazy or to California,

been addicted, diagnosed, driving, playing the game,

meeting the man, stooped with shame.

 

Then I think it's not the X caps,

the tattoos, china patterns, prescriptions,

the muscles, the nicotine patch,

the three hundred dollar shoes or the virus.

It's just the size. 

 

And we were never neuter, always lugging the tiny germ with us,

the difference between and or or.