everybody lives

Everybody Lives, a beginner’s guide

To babies freshly born
Welcome. Relax.
You’re feeling nervous,
upset. It’s understandable,
naked and covered in muck as you are
but do not worry.
Odds are
it only gets better from here.

Babies, you must know
the sun rises every
morning, it sets
every night.
There are stars
no one has yet found much use for
but people are always trying,
and they are surely pleasing to see.

Humans like to find use for things.
They like things to have meaning
in hopes they too will have use.
Humans like use more than hope
(all the uses of machinery
vs.
the hope of human understanding).
But you are human.
I hope
you’ll be ones with hope.

The world is round and very crowded
mainly wet and often dangerous.
Live near the sea,
in the desert,
on a mountain
but live openly

as open as the sky that is always everywhere.

Saying “God bless you”
after someone sneezes
is the easiest
and most proven way
of saving a person’s soul.

Babies, there is so much to do
but at most you’ll have about a hundred years
to do it in.
Understand Shakespeare, if you like.
Find all music wonderful.
Hate Westerns, love cricket,
hunt wild boar, sew quilts, prefer the color blue.
Start a revolution or
watch one (they’re lovely
to watch, how they rise up and burst
softly
like soap bubbles).

You will find a hobby, spend
most of your life wasting time
and going to the bathroom. Only
half of you might do something great.

You can all do something good.

The word to know is “sublime”.
You should know it, it is the everything.
It’s an ancient globe left by the side of a trash can:
the whole world’s gone to garbage and
still so fantastic to see.

Think of something
beautiful
at least once a day, like
the way grass can move like the ocean
if it’s long enough
and the wind is just right.
It’s hot in the summer,
atoms are too small to see,
it’s never not okay to love
and to be kind
and to smile
and puddles exist
only
to be jumped in.

But there is one thing to remember
one guideline
one rule
that I know, babies:
“Goddamn it, you have to play nice.”

amphibians

Amphibians

There are feet on the dashboard, toes
wiggle like the bouncing hips of hula girls.
There is dirt on the toes, the feet, the legs.
An ancient dirt, the kind alligators skulk around
in on the hottest afternoons.
On the radio Canned Heat sings “On The Road Again”
the steel strings of the guitar twang like the
accents of the men at the Springs, harmonica
fast and strong, moving with the speed of them
like a shadow.

The trees canopy, stretching high
their branches spreading out like family.
The driver changes the song
to something she can sing to,
some mullet rock not even their parents would hear.
One arm is easy, one hand is out
the window, waving at the canopy-road,
asphalt both as soft and rough as
the padded paws of canine feet.

The legs on the dashboard cross,
the girl they’re attached to shifts:
her back is still aching from the cold water that
stabbed like a butter knife, that
soothed like butter and made her heart pound when the
yellow of the mud
and the
slime of the floor
brushed against those feet which are
drying and dirty on the dashboard.

Dog hair dances around them  — sawdust disturbed
by boots and abrupt wind.
The car hums, the trees shimmer like mirage water on a hot road,
the girls shine like the sudden light through those trees,
are as cool as the shade of their leaves.

– o7.o1.o9

stupid stuff

stupid stuff

When you swallow whole oceans, dear Jamie,
it’s no wonder you’re as tall as the entire sky.

Think of our parents and thirst
and think of their stories, a toast to our bloodline.

Drink ale and chase it with our blood.

Like the tale of dad at fifteen in France
and the blonde in the red pants who spoke no English
and he, who spoke no French, smiled and
handed her a condom instead of bubble gum.

He’s felt her slap every day since then.
Drink up, Jamie. sling ‘em back.

Or of mum’s dead lover, the hairdresser
electrocuted whilst on the job, she
meet his parents for the first time at his funeral
somewhere on that island is a tombstone

with her name on it, without her underneath.
Chug. Chug. Chug.

Think of me, think of us that one night as children
late at night our skin sticky and red from
that all day music festival, starved
we went to Denny’s, ate breakfast and wobbled.

The waitress was unfazed;
you cannot faze a Denny’s waitress
not even in your Kiss Me I’m Shitfaced t-shirt.

You were fifteen, your dimples already hidden.
The waitress frowned, if her scorn were an element
it’d be lead
Are you kids drunk she asked, tap tap taping her pad

We had walked miles and miles with
sand stuck in our boots, dirt stuck in our teeth,
songs stuck in our heads –
I’m not undrunk you said and ate your eggs down

Can you recall that night we were dragged
kicking and screaming to that country club
and watched our grandparents marry again?

You slid me screwdriver after screwdriver
when the bartender wasn’t looking and
we two stood swaying with poles in our hands

as our ancestors looked at each other only
and the rabbi looked at us sternly saying
steady kids steady no one likes a saggy chuppah.

What of our sister, that kid
who reads too much and
digs graves on the playground
for all her friends who fall down
(and how we laughed at that, how proud)

Will she have these memories of you of us
of your eyes setting like the sun as kids
held me back,
held you down
with their fists?

Will she know how you swagger
through mosh pits, across barbeque pits
as hot as the pit of hell air of life?

No answer, no need for it.
Cool it down with beer, brother, with beer
and the whole world will melt like these lullabies:

fall to the floor, you are yourself I am myself and
our blood is thick with liquor,
and if you tell me stories I’ll nod along  with all the
certainty of a drunkard, or of a holy man

–o7.26.o9

crazy cat lady

Crazy Cat Lady
(the childhood years)

i.
I are seeking French cuisine.
Eternally, I am seeking French cuisine.
And cake.

Sitting in my bedroom
unmindful of my sister
stumbling from room to room
talking about the Free Masons
and black shadows and the
truth of Elvis’s continued existence.

My room is painted the color of angel ecstacy
or so says the happy, happy creative team of the
Kilz Casual Colors Company;
this color should relax me.
Make me unafraid.
Angel semen cures fear.

In my room I’m thinking of
the food I can make, the food I can’t,
my skin which is still soft and white and smooth
as the marble of a mausoleum,
as the hands of paramedics
paramedics, my shepherds, to whom I pray
lay your metal hands on me and weep and save
save me with electricity, with a kite and a key.

ii.
Rumbling in balls of dirt and weed
are kittens outside who need me.
I have so many cats.
They strayed. I can relate.
I give them names:
Big Head, Baby Big Head, Skittish Grey, White Face, Big Head Cubed
(the Big Heads are family, father to daughter,
mother to son
mother to daughter oh damn oh damn)
they have fragile heads and Yoda-ears and
wide unblinking eyes
and they all need me and
that’s good for a while.
My mom knocks on the door,
hands over the phone, hovers outside,
looking small and like she did
in Tennessee, before the madness,
growing up on Forget-me-not Drive
where people met on bridges and ended up insane.

iii.
My only friend is miles away.
She laughs a laugh like my own
and we talk about our kittens
(her’s one, mine many)
and the sweets we want to make and
the boys we love to love each other.
School is just gone like always and we never talk
anymore of all the diseases I think I have.
(I know I have goddamn it
why else would everything be rotting
like I’m in the ground, like I’m worm chow
like I’m suffocating on the graveyard dust already)

iv.
(“Fruit rolls downhill,” I say and
she says, “Not bananas.”
She says, “Bananas are good.”
“Bananas are still bananas,” says I.)

v.
I think of the produce I handled today.
Today there were people I didn’t speak to.
There were cats that I did.
There are hollowed shells of water bottles:
fallen soldiers in the war against ozone
against unloving headstones and my mother’s brain,
against wizards with giant ears and my own brain.

I told my friend once that Cancer
Cancer
is scientific proof that math kills.
Cells multiply rapidly, destroy the tissue.
Just a ratio really, ordered pairs of
(Body, Mind), x and y of human mortality
emphasis on the “ex”.

vi.
Math kills, I said
and so I stopped learning.

–o7.15.o9

the pan-galactic villanelle

the pan-galactic villanelle
In the black there is only light and rhyme
and stars that take shape across the night sky:
We are attempting to survive our time.

Is that enough – drifting by with our prime,
watching cosmos never change, then we die
unlike the black with only light and rhyme?

The sun is a perfect circle. God climbs
star clusters that bruise the heavens; can I
even attempt to survive such hard times

when men like black holes suck hope, commit crimes
against mankind, to hear scientists cry
that there’s nothing in space but light and rhyme.

We are alone, so Earth tilts back and I’m
spiraling, lost galaxies saying “Good-bye,
we cannot attempt to survive your time.”

Hear it, the song of the universe chimes,
we are here, we thrive, we are standing by
in the black with the lights and with the rhymes,
just waiting for man to survive the times.

–o8.o3.o9

old poems, part three

poems for parents!

mother
“belle ou rebelle”

she once told me this story
carelessly rolled from her tongue like
brushing a dandelion spore off her
tanned familiar nose

it started off with a boy
like most of her stories do
she told me he was a bouncer
in germany
& his hair & his eyes & his smile
& how wrong it felt that he was
a german

but as she spoke
watercolors spilled from her eyes like bohemian tears
& all i saw was
purple & hazel & starlight & shadows &
red flashing disco bulbs

old poems, part two

after the flood

there was a little girl, and her mother was crazy
there was a little girl, and if she wasn’t careful her blood will
turn to butterflies and her net
will snap in half

we once got high on the edge of town
trying to find which bus would take us
to miami to mercury
we kept passing newly-made street-signs
that licorice smell of tar creeps the roads like fog
and the signs said things like
HOW ARE YOU UNITED to the mystical body of christ
And things like
que voy hacer? je suis perdu
and things like
if ive said it once, ive said it a thousand times…who are you?

and I turned to her and said, “I think I should start smoking”
and she turned to me and said, “I think I should kill myself”
she always wins that game

old poems, part one

fevered

i.
   --spotlights waltz on stormy weather as
lou reed sings “perfect day” and constellations wage war
          against drunken wunderkind mythos
    with splinters made of paper waste and glass

just:
            jam louderscream harderswing higher
      sweet chariot
nobody’s coming to carry you home
you’ll have to rollrollroll with the rest of the
      cosmos until your
slaves high
                        on
             apartheid rage
crush your stokes and burns your wheels until
             electric umbrellas flash
                    before your eyes

a shade of purple I want to dance around
 

kid

fight kid, bite kid
holier-than-the-night kid
kid of sawdust and crop circles and raised scars
kid of carousels your hair is wilder than the scarlet horse
untamed as the whale’s eye
blue-eyed kid with brown-eyed goals
and yellow-eyed dreams of white-eyed men:
these are not your dreams.
blue-eyed kid you dream of bruised kids on
bright bicycles with wheels that burn spin sing
bounce like saturn’s rings for you to ride around.
of king kids, king of the mountain kids, hiding kids,
seeking kids, hunting kids, hopping kids, boogie kids,
dancing with a feather kid, catching fire in a jar kid

blue-eyed kid you are their dreams.
(the dreams of the ancient, the aged)
everyone looks younger when their eyes are closed.
and in them they chant the mantra of the creator
the reasoning behind all things
the only thing that could possibly make any sense:
just kidding.

kid your daddy’s music alive
kid your mama’s bottled spice and light
kid you are untouched by the rain, it cannot reach the depths of your hope
kid your mouth moves, I love you.
kid your voice is covered and I love you.

you are all kids and
all kids run together, run from nothing, run to everything
run to where the weather is always hot
and the clouds are stacked like reams of paper
with the words just kidding on ever line
kid, you are the spaces in between the trees.
you are the age where those trees are still so amazing
and you are right and i am right and we are alright.
wild kid, kid of cats, kid escaping the rays
the sun rays that whisper with the wind
in those spaces between all trees, just whispers,
“oh, kid, kid, kid.”
­–o5.18.o9

most of all I like to mold and create things.

Once I’ve finished dying, once I’m dead and gone and fertilizing grass, I arrive in Heaven and I’m told I get to ask three questions to the big man Himself.

Everyone gets to do this. I am not special in any particular way.

I didn’t even die a special way. It was cancer. Rotten luck!

That is a joke, because cancer is rot.

I told that joke a lot, while I was dying; no one laughed. I have always made jokes like this, lame ones. No one ever laughs.

Rotten luck, indeed.

Heaven looks like the world’s largest parking lot. This is an understatement. Heaven is, of course, bigger than the world and its largest parking lot.

God comes to me in the form of the actor James Dean. I pick the form because God had no form and cannot choose one Himself. He is fickle, God.

He is James Dean from the film Rebel Without a Cause. God has always looked this way to me. The significance of this has been lost to me for years now. The eternal youth, maybe? The brightness of life?

Either way, it is James Dean I see in Heaven, with perfect hair and a cigarette dangling from perfect lips. God in a red leather jacket.

God says to me, “Ask, then.”

He doesn’t sound impatient, but I know he has to be. He must have more important things to do.

My form, incidentally, is the form everyone has in Heaven. It is the form of how you looked when exactly one half of your life is over.

To explain: take the age you were when you died, right down to the last second. Divide by two. This is your age in Heaven.

This is because half the age you are is always the best age. If you were really old when you died, half your age is when you were the most successful. If you were middle-age, half your age is when you were bright and eager and starting your life. If you a young adult, half your age is when you were childish and playful and full of energy. If you were a child, half your age is still a child and still the very best.

They say one of the most important things in your life happens at this age, at this halfway point. Though not necessary at the exact second where half of your life is over. At this age you fall in love, graduate, get the greatest idea you will ever have. You kill someone, you get your heart broken, you try your first drug. You save a person from drowning, a dog bites off half your nose. Important stuff!

Should the important thing happen to coincide with the second halfway point of your life, it is merely coincidence.

Most people in this second were thinking of sex. Barring that, they were thinking of food. Such is human nature, I suppose. I myself spent a good majority of my life switching back between the two within my mind.

How many people in their seconds were either thinking of the word “hamburger” or the word “cock”? Too many to ever know, I’m sure.

Not in my second, though. This is what I had been thinking, in my second: “Tibet.”

I scarcely remember the meaning of this anymore than I remember what my important thing was at this age, or why it is James Dean in front of me, standing in a parking lot larger than the world’s largest.

He raises one perfect eyebrow, lights the dangling cigarette. What it must be like, to be the holy cigarette lighter of God!

Okay. First question. My feet shuffle nervously on the pavement, and road dust rises in a soft cloud.

I think about it. God watches me patiently.

I decide I want to know my ancestors. I want to go back as far as one might possibly go, and then go further. All the way to the dawn of  Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, monkey, fish, gelatinous ooze. I want to see all the lovers of my lineage, all the killers. The cobblers, the fishermen, the soldiers, the footballers, the Renaissance painters, the whores, the soldiers, the slaves. The leaders, the wives, the addicts. I want to know every child related to me, every bum, every sociopath that resulted in me. I want to see the lines of my life spread out like the roots that they are. I want to ask God, who was I, before I was?

Instead I ask, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?”

This is a problem I had when I was alive too. Nothing really changes.

People use to say I didn’t think before I spoke. This is remarkably untrue. I always thought before I spoke. It just so happens that what I think and what I say are often two completely different things.

So instead of asking “Will you marry me?” like I had been rehearsing all day in my head, what actually came out was “What did the man with five penises say?” The answer to one of those questions had been “Yes”, incidentally. The answer to the other had been “These pants fit like a glove!”

So when my doctor told me about the cancer that was eating me up and how many months or whatever I had to live, I didn’t say, “Why me?”, which is what I had been thinking a lot of at the time. Instead I said, “Rotten luck!”

Lame jokes, nobody laughs. Nothing really changes.

God appears to be thinking it over. I guess I’m not allowed to take it back.

“The earth is an egg,” says God. “It hatches all things. But I made the earth. I made the egg. And there was nothing before me.”

I nod, understanding. God is a chicken.

“Next question?” asks God.

I try not to think this time. I am determined to blurt out something incredibly profound. My mouth opens and stays open, because without my consent my mind starts thinking again.

There are choices every person must make, and most are small and eventually lead to small changes, but some are large and lead to big changes. This is what life is. But I decide then I need to know all the paths I didn’t take and people I never met. What if I had been remained serious as a child and pursued my lifelong dream to be Superman? What if I had listened to my grandfather insist I would become a great doctor? What if I had turned left instead of right? What if I got beef instead of chicken? Who would I have been when I died, would I even have made it to the cancer that started at my lungs, or would the cancer never have touched me at all? How many opportunities did I miss, how many mistakes did I make, how many mistakes did I dodge? Tell me, God, tell me, who could I have been, who –

“What’s the meaning of life?”

Well. I suppose it’s a bit better than the egg thing.

God sighs, drawing on his cigarette. I’m embarrassed, even more so than with the chicken and egg question. I bet he’s heard this one all the time.

He sits down on the pavement, propping His hands up behind Him. He looks up at me, His eyes glinting in the sun, and for a second I wonder if He’s hot beneath that red leather jacket.

“You’re dead,” God points out. “Why should you care what meaning life has anymore?”

I must admit, God does have a point.

“I think I’d still like to know,” I say, not wanting to mention the fact that He didn’t technically answer my question.

He sighs again, pulling the cigarette from his lips. It hasn’t gone out, it hasn’t even ashed, though He’s been puffing away since I got here. “I give humans free will, and they spend all their time searching for the meaning of life, as if there’s only one. You should be asking, ‘What’s a meaning of life?’ or better yet, ‘What’s my meaning of life?’”

I open my mouth.

“Yes, that would count as your third question,” says God.

I close my mouth.

I sit down across from God, if only because looking down at Him makes me feel uncomfortable. We sit in silence, Him smoking, me swirling nonsense into the road dust with my fingertips, me and God hanging out like sneakers over a telephone wire. Such is death.

“You were thinking of tigers,” says God. I look up.

“In your second,” he clarifies. “You were thinking of the tigers in Tibet.”

“Oh,” I say, and “Thank you.”

“That’s not my third question.” Was it? is on the tip of my tongue, but I stopped myself, because that would have been my third question.

God smiles. “No. Just thought you might be curious.”

“I heard tigers were lucky,” I say after a while.

“Not if you meet one alone at night,” says God.

I can’t think of another question. It’s a horrible feeling, sitting here in Heaven, wasting God’s time. I think of the family I left behind and I wonder what will become of them, of the future generations I didn’t live to see. The thought flitters by like an old hat in the breeze; I feel no desire to chase after it.

This is an unfair game, I decide. No question can I possibly ask that will do me any good in Heaven. Maybe it brings people closure, but not me. Death was all the closure I need.

I guess death is just as unfair as life. Nothing really changes.

“I want to ask what comes after this.” I don’t, though.

“It would be a waste,” agrees God. “You’ll be finding out soon enough one way or the other.”

We sit there for a while. After a bit, I realize that maybe God isn’t so put out, sitting here with me, looking like James Dean. It’s not a bad way to spend the afternoon.

It’s always the afternoon. The sun hasn’t changed; our shadows have not grown any longer.

I decide to ask something along the lines of “What’s it like being God?” because I imagine it’s a curious sensation that I have never and would never know. But, because nothing really changes, that is not what I say.

What I say is this: “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

God smiles again, a James Dean smile. He stubs out his cigarette and stands, holding out a hand for me and helping me up. He’s got this look in his eye, like wondering what this soul’s deal was with chickens.

He keeps his hand around mine, still smiling.

“To get to the other side,” says God, and laughs.