poem for Jim Carroll on the winter solstice (xii.xxi.mmx)

poem for Jim Carroll on the winter solstice (xii.xxi.mmx)


“she plumbs to the purple earth
light rising into her features”
—Jim Carroll



it is the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s—
the boy falls in love with the woman he finds
naked and dying on the sidewalk, fallen
from a fifth floor walkup’s window
where dusk is rising—
he crouches into her last dark breath,
this day’s faint gleaming returns to him
for years, the midnight of the year
and the day’s deep solstice
is snowing—
(he thinks of how it is to be gone in an instant)
he thinks she’s not a junkie whore,
her face still beautiful,
her mouth rasping, “I let them—”
he holds her unbroken hand and he sees
her eyes at the instant of utter change—
(in an instant—as if she were
an ordinary nothing, now)


long after she is gone he is kneeling
in the year’s midnight and the day’s deep
heroin dream— it is snowing beside her,
and he’s rising as if—
as if he could lift her with his faltering high—
but he’s crushed by her smooth unbreathing skin


(in an instant she is gone, but it’s as if he
were an ordinary nothing, now—
as if, he thinks, I’m still falling—)


and the boy still falls
now, as he covers her with his jacket,
it is the year’s deep midnight, and the day’s—
the stadium fills with snow.

poem for Jim Carroll on the winter solstice

"she plumbs to the purple earth
light rising into her features"


—Jim Carroll





it is the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s—

the boy falls in love with the woman he finds

on the sidewalk, naked and dying after falling

from a fifth floor window—only dusk rises there—

he crouches into her last dark breath,

this day’s faint gleaming returns to him

for years—it is the midnight of the year—

and the day’s deep solstice

(to be gone in an instant)

because she was not a junkie whore,

her face still beautiful,

her mouth saying “I let them—”

he holds her unbroken hand until he sees

her eyes at the instant of change—

(in an instant as if she were

an ordinary nothing)

and long after she is gone he is kneeling there

in the midnight of the year and the day’s deep

heroin dream beside her and rising as if—

as if he could lift her with his faltering high—

but he is crushed by her smooth unbreathing skin,

he is someone else now as he covers her

with his jacket—

(in an instant she is gone, but it is as if he

were an ordinary nothing, now—)



it is the year’s deep midnight, and the day’s

chaoses

fill the stadium with snow—






******************************



See the poem "Living at the Movies" by jim Carroll and John Donne's "A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY'S DAY,BEING THE SHORTEST DAY."

Thanks to Larry Robin and co.

Because Hal Sirowitz and I had another great event reading poems together (at Moonstone Arts Center, this time 11/09/10), I just wanted to say thanks to the best indie bookstore owner in Philly, Larry Robin, for supporting me and my work with his Moonstone series, and thanks to our host Ray Garmin, and thanks to Aaren Perry for helping Hal Sirowitz and I after the event to do a brief interview for public access TV. And thanks to the nice small audience in the space, and thanks to the many dozens who were streaming it online.

two prose poems

Nacho Nirvana

On my way home from the gym I see a sign by the pricey steak house on Broad St.—it says,

“Experience Nacho Nirvana. $6.”

I’ve been a short order cook before, and I can guess that this is probably a blend of several diabetes-inducing cheeses, grated and melted over corn-flower chips with salt and grease liberally processed in. You might as well spin the cheese in a centrifuge, separate out the fat molecules and inject them straight into your heart’s hardest arteries. Sure, it would be a shock, but think of the time you’d save in trying to kill yourself with self-indulgent grease-coated fat-laden death-flakes.

On the other hand, they’re only $6....


In Just Fifty Years

For no particular reason, Broad Street has a garish pink, violet and blue lights display beaming up the tall buildings’ facades in a sort of a synchronized disco ballroom rhythm, but slower, like the whole thoroughfare is on major tranquilizers. In the display case of Borders Books I see a cover photo of an ultra-macho guy, and the title is something like In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks.

My earliest memory

My earliest memory

When my head was still bigger than both of my arms and I had to use all their strength to grab the crib bars to stand up in my crib, I looked out through the dark window pane while everyone was sleeping. Outside I saw bright red and white lights streaking beneath magically. The whole moon seemed magical, too. It was frightening sometimes how the lights would screech. They could stop or be so quick as they shined under the streetlights like the shiny backs of cockroaches under the glare of light bulbs in our home. The lights kept moving this way and that way every moment through all of the night I could remember, mysterious and beautiful.

They reminded me of my grandparents crossing the wooden floors downstairs, moving ahead slowly in the dim light from a farther room. They too seemed to see only straight ahead, almost traveling blindly, strange creatures in the night world.

{from a work in progress}


the thin blue thread of light


1. dysphoria after labor for eighteen hours

when the doctor pushed for surgery
—a C-section intervening
regardless of us as human beings
or our hope, our plan
for a natural birth—
there was the shock of falling
into that deepest gravity,
fear of all I could lose:
mother, infant,
and all the imagined future—

then there was anger at the doctor blackmailing us
with a release form
(releasing him from blame for deaths
if we waited too long)
paining her even more
at the eighteenth hour—

my anger grew acute in surgery
when the baby’s head was stuck,
seeing how hard he pulled the feet
of our infant’s body stretching so far
it must have hurt beyond
anything it ever felt before
—I wanted to pummel the surgeon,
but could only watch—

but then the surprise
was in the nurse’s hands
feeling the newborn
void, pee and cry
terrorized, it was clear,
in his first world-sized scare—
a folded football body,
sorrowful, slick, anguished
from the torture of being
yanked so hard
from the once-whole womb—

he cried in his first pain
as big as all the space his cry could fill,
but through his wrinkly skin,
he strangely linked
to my hands somehow calming
my small fretful son,
estranged from every
thing
except my voice
heard so often before he was born,
as if it registered,
he responded,
soothed,
like he knew his father.


and I wanted to live—against my will
because my son needed me to.

a thin blue thread of light through me
lifted my voice—I spoke to him

when I first held his infant self
crying in terror in the sterile OR

I wanted to live—against my will
because my son was born.



2. first impressions

Our son was only a few hours old.
The RN named Lisa was imprinting his feet
into little family photo albums,
and he was crying in fear and frustration
at having his feet moved against his will
over and over, again.
I explained to Lisa
these were gifts for his grandparents.
The baby cried even louder,
so I told him:
“If you think this is bad,
wait till you meet them in real life.”



3. the first night in the hospital

the instant he cried in the dark
I rose from the deep vinyl chair
without sleep,
without thinking—
hanging from a thin blue thread of light from the sky
holding up my head
walking me toward him
over linoleum
lit only by night-lights—
without effort at all
except a kind of submission
to the cry that rose
like another
thin blue thread of light
hanging from the sky

without knowing how I’d know
I lifted him, pacified,
changed and bundled him again—
then felt the ovular indentation encircling his head
—realized he’d been stuck so hard
his skull now had a dent-band—
cradling him on my forearm,
I paced so slowly
his breathing evened
in the near silence of the semi-dark,
and I set him down, deep in sleep.

Sinking into the stiff stuffed chair again,
I was so happy because of him
a smile lifted
every depleted cell in me,
and I was happy because of this
thin blue thread of light
(was it from the sky, or was it from us?)
that interlinks us
and out of pain brings joy.