Note To Selves

There she reclines

Plagued by devotions

She makes a good screen

The Burning Psychic Siren Child

One hand on your lap

One hand on her list

I know how they scramble and
Claw to be near you

I know I do it, too

I know how huge the earth seems
As seen from the moon

& I know what I have to do

As our song squirms in the sky

Something is swimming in my eye

& every night

I’m lost in my own room

While the whole damned river is in bloom

I would eat you up with a spoon

But I’m lost in my own stupid room

(to be continued…)

I like unkept women and long string beans

I love to drink and drive and to write things

To sing, to you,

The worst thing I’ve ever seen

I swear to god you’re going to ruin everything

So get the fuck outta here

With all your gorgeous tits

Go dangle your soul

Before a dude who gives a shit

Who has a clue

Beware the young man who has nothing to loose

He’ll do anything for you

Balance

by Adam Zagajewski
Translated by Clare Cavanagh

I watched the arctic landscape from above
and thought of nothing, lovely nothing.
I observed white canopies of clouds, vast
expanses where no wolf tracks could be found.

I thought about you and about the emptiness
that can promise one thing only: plenitude—
and that a certain sort of snowy wasteland
bursts from a surfeit of happiness.

As we drew closer to our landing,
the vulnerable earth emerged among the clouds,
comic gardens forgotten by their owners,
pale grass plagued by winter and the wind.

I put my book down and for an instant felt
a perfect balance between waking and dreams.
But when the plane touched concrete, then
assiduously circled the airport’s labryinth,

I once again knew nothing. The darkness
of daily wanderings resumed, the day’s sweet darkness,
the darkness of the voice that counts and measures,
remembers and forgets.

Encounter

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago.Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

It’s not that simple
To intelectualize a girl

But if you’ve got the bug, man
Go ahead, give it a whirl

Lock on every gesture
Call her when you’re drunk

Write sarcastic poetry
When you can’t handle it

It won’t even be a scandle, dude
In the idiot wind

The mystery of faith
Will bring it back again

Were it to be, if
Though you only got a whiff

The world would wander on
Without your math

& With nothing of its own

Possesions are nothing much
Yet even they can break your bones

It’s a phantom that you name
And wrestle in your bed

Wait for the real girl
Don’t make one in your head

Feel free to think of that one often
But don’t shove it up her ass

You’ll loose yourself again
In that maze of dumb and glass

Where she will watch you flailing
If she even finds the time

Since a lot of boys have done it
Even the ones she really liked

Your confusion’s no new entertainment
She wants one who won’t whine

Come on and just enjoy it
Come on and grab her hand

Don’t have a cow
But don’t ignore it

This is the why and how

watch?v=56Iq3PbSWZY

Two Campers in Cloud Country
(Rock Lake, Canada)

In this country there is neither measure nor balance
To redress the dominance of rocks and woods,
The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds.

No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention,
No word make them carry water or fire the kindling
Like local trolls in the spell of a superior being.

Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens: one wants a vacation
Where trees and clouds and animals pay no notice;
Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses.

It took three days driving north to find a cloud
The polite skies over Boston couldn’t possibly accommodate.
Here on the last frontier of the big, brash spirit

The horizons are too far off to be chummy as uncles;
The colors assert themselves with a sort of vengeance.
Each day concludes in a huge splurge of vermilions

And night arrives in one gigantic step.
It is comfortable, for a change, to mean so little.
These rocks offer no purchase to herbage or people:

They are conceiving a dynasty of perfect cold.
In a month we’ll wonder what plates and forks are for.
I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I’m here.

The Pilgrims and Indians might never have happened.
Planets pulse in the lake like bright amoebas;
The pines blot our voices up in their lightest sighs.

Around our tent the old simplicities sough
Sleepily as Lethe, trying to get in.
We’ll wake blank-brained as water in the dawn

We will go swimming
If you don’t chop your hands off in a fan

When I read aloud my lovely poetry
I want you to be my bestest fan

Please, lady. Get your damage done.

Do what you need, wake up the sun.

There is a night that’s spinning

Beyond ever-loving control

It would be a real big deal

Were it not the most natural thing in the world

The obvious is difficult
To prove. Many prefer
The hidden. I did, too.
I listened to the trees.

They had a secret
Which they were about to
Make known to me–
And then didn’t.

Summer came. Each tree
On my street had its own
Scheherazade. My nights
Were a part of their wild

Storytelling. We were
Entering dark houses,
Always more dark houses,
Hushed and abandoned.

There was someone with eyes closed
On the upper floors.
The fear of it, and the wonder,
Kept me sleepless.

The truth is bald and cold,
Said the woman
Who always wore white.
She didn’t leave her room.

The sun pointed to one or two
Things that had survived
The long night intact.
The simplest things,

Difficult in their obviousness.
They made no noise.
It was the kind of day
People described as “perfect.”

Gods disguising themselves
As black hairpins, a hand-mirror,
A comb with a tooth missing?
No! That wasn’t it.

Just things as they are,
Unblinking, lying mute
In that bright light–
And the trees waiting for the night.