Poetry from Adrian Louis

This is how a poem means, goddamnit. From Toe Good Poetry

In those years of your dying

I remember our little green

desk lamp, its chain broken

so it had to be turned off & on

by twisting the bulb in its socket.

Sometimes it went off by itself

& we’d be engulfed in the dark

poverty we were born into.

That was how I wanted it to be

when your breathing stopped.

Quick, painless, silent, poor.

That is how I wanted it to be.

I wanted to be unable see

your face & then I could lie

& tell myself I was too old to

be afraid of the dark, too old

to fear Satan’s python penis

splitting the atoms of our soul.

It’s been six years since you left.

I sit beside myself, brought here

to these Midlands of the mundane

by the shibboleth of the Chevrolet.

In the oncologist’s waiting room

there are little green desk lamps

just like the one we had, but these

do not flicker like my health &

the health of all in this room

seem to be doing this morning.

Across the room an old coot

with solid black eyes blinks at me.

Death smiles from the blackness.

Death is dancing in his skull.

Black bats flutter out from

his eyes & infect any hope

we might carry.

ARIEL Available on Amazon!

ARIEL now on Amazon. Kindle and NOOK to follow.

One Good Response to Edmundson and that Harper's article (you know the one)

from Julia Cohen at http://onthemessiersideofneat.blogspot.com/2013/06/open-letter-to-mark-edmundson.html

Dear Mark Edmundson,

I read your article, “Poetry Slam,” in the latest issue of Harper’sand I’d like to respond directly to your “slam” of contemporary poetry by offering the same audience an alternative perspective:
Using only brief fragments of single poems from only 9 living poets (including 1 Canadian, 1 Irish, and 1 actually dead)(endnote 1), Mark Edmundson lambasts the current state of American poetry. I think it’s important to bring to the attention of a larger readership the recent misdirected and lazy criticisms lavished upon contemporary poets that distract from the depth, diversity, and relevance of the work itself. Yes, some readers actually seek out and find poetry that is intellectually, emotionally, and relationally vital.
There are two basic cause/effect accusations in “Poetry Slam” that are worthwhile to dissect to show the dubious connections and terrifying implications:#1 Because contemporary American Poetry is too “hermetic,” “private,” “oblique,” “equivocal,” it consequently “has too few resources to take on consequential events”:#2 Because Contemporary American poets lack “ambition,” they do not “light up the world we hold in common,” i.e. they don’t reflect my own worldviews that make me feel like there is a singular “fundamental truth of human experience.”Unfortunately, what emerges in this article is a desire for singular type of poem. A poem that a) provides unique images that simultaneously relate to obvious cultural referents (“the TV show, the fashions, the Internet”), b) sublimates most poetic techniques to present direct arguments in the form of revelations c) that respond to “the events that began on September 11, 2001 and continue to this moment.” In sum, every poem should be a humanist poem of epiphany with blatant political/cultural references to post-9/11 living. Oh yes, this sounds like a great way to enliven all American poetry!

More:

Poem Draft

Revere at 92 Degrees

Cops swirl the rotary like feral cats or cock-
roaches while in the beachhouse bathroom

someone is fucking someone or having it out
with their violent bowels at 10:30 AM.

If I were a horse I’d be split-hoofed but sedate,
a little out of my field lathered with ocean

spume the dirt of a thousand filled diapers
abandoned to sand or caught in kelp

washed up from Nahant or the Back Bay
or fuck--the Azores? England?

On the road opposite the beach cops stop
a latino kid on a skateboard (I don’t know

why it takes three cars) and send him off
in a different direction. My kids are yank-

ing at my shorts so we hit the beach sand
and broken bottles with the occasional

needle or nip bottle. It’s a grand public
place America’s first public beach.

A horse cop trots along the beach but
the horse leaves a sodden dump in

front of kids who have nothing to
do but play with it while their dark-

skinned mothers scream in three different
tongues to stop. The horse doesn’t seem to care.

Another Draft

Perverse Cowgirl

Know what you’re saying before
you say it. Your partner of choice
may have an opinion. You must
efuckingnunciate carefully so

that when you hop on or your
partner hops on there needs
to be between spasms a careful
avoidance of cramp. That’s when

you’re talking about something
else. A perverse cowgirl, though
is someone you want to be next
to you in the firefights of life

and the enrapturing
of the erotic. They are evil
when you need them to be
and crushingly familiar

with your Eros and your Than-
atos. If you have kink in you
they’ll bring it out. Bells on,
and maybe a bit of feathers

and the bedroom door firmly
set against the eventual creep
of your children who will see
something that takes years

of therapy to unsee and never ever
gets forgotten. On your deathbed
they will remember and before they
cry will think of you in lingerie. O God.

Draft

Walking the line

I felt a stalwart black eye
of the hurricane blindside
me at midmorning. Tore
down the street 110 miles per

only to find my stop at
the end of the whine in
Gloucester where I dropped
off Olson’s now-fenced entry

to the Harbor.  A seagull
floated me down but
I rose like seltzer bubbles
all the way to the end,

where piers from three
centuries ago aggro’ed
me into submission. I
beat the oxygen

to the surface but flailed
in the face of the fish
company taken over the wharf
puked up my brunch

and decided to drive
up the Cape but lost my
way on Bearskin Neck where
all the protopoets go for ice

cream or to gig their hard
drives into submission.
Their poet hats are so quaint.
I’d like to bust them in the nose.

New Draft

Hi all. Did you miss me?

...

Liars. :-)

Here's a new draft in my new conversational style. Scatology and sexism optional, but you know, the fart joke always works.

One Last Crap

That’s ten pounds of weight I no
longer have to try to lose.

Do you know how long it takes?
To fill up? And I have diverticulisitis

or something which cuts divots,
fucking DIVOTS! into my colon.

I will forever be set upon by diseases
I can’t pronounce around my

spastic rolling tongue and the fine
root canals American dentistry

have provided lo these many years
but have not yet found a way to stop

psychosis. What kind of shit is that?
In the future dentists will cure their patients

of psychosis with drills and fine-breasted
attendants who intentionally brush you

as you turn your head to spit blood
and juices into the great gaping maw

of the American health system.