Three Poems About Death

Ok, well, I'm officially finished with writing for a week or two. I'm exhausted. However, the three poems I'm going to post, I have entered into another contest. The prompt, or prize award, is the 'best collection of 3-5 poems.' So, I wanted to give the three poems I entered something in common. The best concept I could think of was death. For the first time, I used a voice which I was most comfortable with, and I think that's why I'm actually proud of these three pieces. Tell me what you think.

Art of Dying


Lately, the news hasn’t been good.
On and off, she’s been dying for months.
It started with a single spot on her ovary,
so they cut that piece out.
Then it started with a follow up appointment.
Turns out, the cancer had spread,
and at the least, she can’t have children now.

Now that she has it full blown,
her mother tells her that it is genetic.
Her mother tells her that she had it,
and that her mother had it.
They found the cancer before it got bad though.
Something then passes between them,
mother and daughter,
which they don’t know what to do with.
Sure, the mother is supposed to go before her children.
We all know that.
What if, as a subject, death is impossible to avoid?
Confronts and makes friends with you,
like a mother does when you’ve grown up.

The change that comes over a mother,
as her child comes into adulthood,
is the change that’s now come over you.

You’ve breathed a sigh of relief,
because as the deformity was cut into,
then taken out of you,
it left you disfigured and impotent.

You, the woman who loved being
the woman pregnant with death,
has now given birth to it.

This dying art,
of living the death
we are born into,
has now accompanied you.

Thus, you are unafraid.



Death As Life-Affirming


The diagnoses is not good,
and I would know.
I work with dying people every day.
Her blood is too thin, and her liver is failing.
They are considering pulling the plug.
There is me, my husband, the five of them, and a doctor.
They’re discussing the possibilities around a table.
They argue: “She would not want to live like this.
She is only alive because of the breathing machine.
And she can’t do dialysis.
Dialysis will kill her,
because her blood is too thin.”
People spend days, at most a week, in the ICU:
She’s been here for three and a half weeks.
They argue: “Do you want to pull the plug?
She’s a fighter, she would want to fight.”
There is screaming and shouting and crying,
and extreme sadness.
Then, there is silence.
I realize the husband
has been silent up to this point.

I don’t know why I’m here,
and I don’t want to be here.
I ask my husband why I’m here,
and he takes my question the wrong way.
He’s been debating with his brothers and sisters,
and is worked up.
He whispers to me: “If I ever get to this point, please,
just shoot me.”

Misery is something
he wants me to put him out of.
I’ve seen that look before:
Death as life-affirming.
And I’ve seen the look that
my father-in-law quickly gives me:
Death as the final breath of his wife.



Rooms


There was a time
when I thought I couldn’t die.
I didn’t think that far ahead.
No one close to me had passed away,
and I also hadn’t died yet.
But, still, even when not thinking about Death,
He was thinking about me.

I was born blue-faced, with the umbilical cord
wrapped around my neck.
Later on, I flipped my Honda three times,
from hood to underbelly,
into a ravine.
I opened my eyes, alive,
and climbed out of the window:
Much like I did when being born.
My father told me: “I don’t know,
I just don’t know. Freud would say
you have a death wish.
Do you want to die?”
This was not my first serious accident,
but the third or fourth.
I went through three cars
during my first two years with a license.
It got to be a farce within the family.

Then, years later, something happened.
It was not a suicide.
Please, stay with me now.
Every second,
someone is born and someone dies.
You open your eyes, alive,
astonished and confused.
So goes my on-going relationship with Death.

In a room,
the midwife takes out a child:
Much like what happened during my birth.
Subsequently, another room
is lowered into the ground.
In my room,
I am belted to a bed,
with a catheter, IV, and breathing tube.
I open my eyes,
alive and confused.
My immediate family hovers above me,
in this small room.

Finished Poem

Well somehow I finished a poem. This first poem has been submitted for a particular contest. Please tell me what you think. I think this is all I'll post for now.


The Conceit That Unravels Into Meaninglessness


In the meantime, I'm living here,
keeping the house in order for showings.
Everything, from the paintings on the walls,
to the furniture on the patio,
has been tagged for sale.


I've been here for weeks.
Just today, I answered the door,
told telemarketers so-and-so don't live here anymore,
made coffee, smoked a half-dozen cigarettes,
had a beer, and walked the rooms trying to hear a sound.


A friend once told me
(First, prefacing the advice
by liking it to tombstones
above dead bodies)
what she does when entering a strange place:
she imagines each new face
to be a face of her past--
the young girl who looks up to her mother to speak
or the teenager with a mouth full of braces bagging groceries.


But what happens when the faces inside the rooms I enter are owned by dead people?
And I find myself walking past photographs
of this deceased elderly couple,
and past their son's collection of paint-by-number pieces
hanging on the walls.
I catch glimpses of myself
from the small mirrors on every wall.
No one is coming here unannounced,
so I can act this way.
Everyone went west after the funeral
and I find that I can't remember
the original placement of things.


I know the date
only from the newspaper.
I leave the shower running
and fall asleep nude.
Nude, and asleep with the shower running,
I am the pretension of a misplaced object
that has become a conceit
which unravels into meaninglessness.

Eye for an eye, mother fucker

   Things seem to be happening all at once concerning writing. A fellow UC english student approached me with a cool idea about a publication, along with a few other UC undergrads. The idea is a publication of UC students by UC students, in the form of an e-book (Im not sure what the 'e-book' is, but I get the idea its a little more relevant than a chap-book.) Among the myriad of details I was given about it, it sounds pretty serious in the sense that you'll be able to buy it online, and we would have to give a % of the sales to UC for the use of their name. Anyway, its supposed to be due for publication in mid-June. SO BUY IT, when I'm able to give more of the who-and-what about it. Also on the writing front is the yearly UC writing contest, May 1st, where the winners are given pretty good cash prizes. Soooo, my backlog of writing seems to be coming in handy right about now, although I really only have one poem ready-- I have a short story, short play, and about fifteen other poems in the works. First, I wanted to post the one full poem I have finished . .

The Price is Right

Water from the metal shower head
Beats like a heart-murmur
Against the glass door,
Though the shower is unoccupied.
Above the ivory sink

A square mirror collects condensation.
Small drops supplement, then fall,
Leaving a clean trail.

Under a canister of shaving cream
Is a perfect circular rust-ring.
Its morning in southern California,
And a breeze comes in through the window's open screen.
Behind the bathroom's wooden door
I hear Drew Carrey commentating
On The Price is Right
From the living room television.

From the canister, I apply lather--
To the temple
And down the cheek,
Under the jaw line
And up to the temple,
Under the jaw line
And above each half
Of the upper lip.

Shaving is like skating on ice
Covered in six inches of snow.
The razor parts and takes everything.

Like a heart beat
Water beats
Against the shower's glass door,
As steam rises to the ceiling.
Its as if I'm skiing
Through the eye of a heavy blizzard.

Above the sound of running water
From the faucet and shower head,
I hear old women, in the distance,
Nervously guessing the price of a cleaning product.


Here.. is... the... beginning of a short story I've been working on. . .

In a sunlit park 10,000 small, blue and silver, Independence Day wind-mills, spin in perfect circles, while in perfect 100 x 100 lines. Sunlight catches the silver, and breaks apart reflecting infinitely into no particular direction. A three year old girl, in a pink dress, jumps up and down inside the array of moving wind-mills. Its Sunday, and traffic procedes as normal along the outlining streets. Its spring, and people procede as normal with picnic-lunches, frisbees, and kissing. My dog, half-beagle and half-husky, timidly approaches the myraid of rotating, planted wind-mills. She is two years old.

****
Anyway, someone once told me the word 'myraid' is one of the top ten over-used and pretentious words in literature, and I just realized I've already used it twice in this post. I don't especially like the word 'myraid'. . . it reminds me of the word pyramid.
O.K.--a quick list of my favorite words
1. riven
2. beatitude
3. ether

The Last Five Movies I've Watched

1. The Painted Veil
2. From Paris With Love
3. The Ninth Gate
4. When A Man Loves A Woman
5. Sherlock Holmes

The most startling of the five movies has to be When a Man loves a Woman-- with Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia. A young meg ryan and andy garcia. If you're imagining meg ryan as a mother of two and suddenly becoming an alcoholic, then your exactly right. I think I really like this movie, but I'm not sure yet. It kind of came out of nowhere.
*****

I would listen to any Bill Simmons' podcast, rather then go out 'on the town' and see the opening of a Shakespeare play on Broadway. I would rather talk about it later, instead of talking about it now. Between cigarettes and alcohol, I choose cigarettes. Between hemingway and fitzgerald, I choose Hemingway. Between sports and literature, I choose literature. Between family and friends, I choose myself. Between College and High School, I choose to not attend class. Between Fiona Apple and Liz Phair, I choose Fiona. Between Nirvana and The Black Keys, I choose Joseph Arthur. Between Elvis and Andy Warhol, I pick Elvis. I choose dying on a toilet, rather than listening to one more expert.

Digression rather than progression.
Absurdity rather than creativity.
Zooey Deshanel rather than Katy Perry
R.E.M over Prince
Vignettes that make sense, rather than stories that make sense

*****

"How are you?" He said

"Good, good. Its been a long time. How are you?" She said

"Good, good. I know! You never answer your damn phone." He said

"I know, I know. I'm changing networks. I'm fed up with Nextel. My signal keeps dropping." She said

"Ah shit. Really? You should try Sprint. I haven't had any problems with it." He said

" Thanks. Really, thanks. Anything has to be better than Nextel. I'm caught in a contract, though." She said

"Ah shit. How long? Get a lawyer. I have a lawyer I know who can help." He said

"Lawyer. A lawyer? For what?" She said

"For the contract." He said

"My cell-phone contract?" She said

"YES. My lawyer is a cell-phone-contract-lawyer." He said

"Really?"

"Yes, really really." He said

"Its been a long time." She said

"A really, really long time, I would say. I've called you, though." He said

"I know. Its my fucking service. I don't know what to say. Its just the service." She said

"I know I know, that sucks." He said

"Of course, but I'll live. So, anyway, how are you?" She said

"I'm good, I've been travelling, but I'm back in town for the weekend. Are you back in town?" He said

"Ah shit. I was last weekend for a funeral, but only for the service. I'm back in Texas." She said

"Jesus. What are you doing in Texas. People rot, carry guns, and vote Republican in Texas. I never knew you lived in Texas?" He said

"Southern Texas." She said

"So you have a gun now?" He said

"Hell yes I do. Eye for an eye, mother fucker." She said.

Red Light . . . Green Light

The heavens parted, and I haven't smoked a cigarette in three days. For some reason. But its 8 AM on a Saturday and I'm up, drinking coffee, and half reading a poem I wrote last night. I feel a little like Adam Sandler in Big Daddy when he thinks he's up early enough for McDonald's breakfast. Anyway, the Cavalier's first post-season game is today, so it got me thinking about my favorite basketball or sports movies. 1. Hoop Dreams 1. Raging Bull 2. He Got Game 3. Blue Chips 4. White Men Can't Jump 5. King Pin Sports movies are tricky, and I found when thinking of my favorite ones, certain borderline films had to be left out. Like Better of Dead, or A River Runs Through It, or even Caddyshack. All formidable choices though. It got me thinking about my favorite actors, and I really wanted to narrow the list down to one man and one woman. And then my favorite movies in general, and I wanted to narrow that list down to one movie. So, my favorite actress has to be Liv Tyler. I need to dedicate a post solely to Liv Tyler, and her ability to do nothing effortlessly. On the opposite spectrum would probably be Natalie Portman. She's pretty good too. I could watch Liv Tyler sit on a bench for an hour and a half. Then, my favorite actor would have to be Billy Bob Thorton. Something about him makes me laugh uncontrollably. Johnny Depp and Benecio Del Toro come in close seconds, along with Zooey Deschanel and Jennifer Connelly and Emmanuelle Seigner--and any other actresses with thick eye-brows. The least favorite actor award goes to Glenn Close and that red head from Sex and the City. My favorite movie could be Stranger Than Paradise. I also got to thinking about my hollywood crushes in chronological order. I think my first major crush was Willa Ford. And my current crush is that Beetle host from 'Sports Nation.' With Willa Ford, I went so far as to buy her address on a website. This was 8th grade, I think. I never got a reply though. That's not to say I never got any replies from famous people. I sent letters to Tony Gwynn, Patrick Roy, and Tony Hawk . . . off the top of my head. . . and received autographed photos or sportscards back. That was around 5th grade. But no response from Willa Ford. I wonder how many people wrote letters to J. D. Salinger and got no reply. Oh well. I sent an email to Scoop Jackson, about Spike Lee in Reggie Miller's documentary 30 and 30, and actually got a response. ********* Or, we begin, as is, in a good way. Then, there is a middle where we deviate and experiment. Finally, there is the beginning again, as it was at first--the middle, as it never could be--the end, which looks the beginning in the eye, and realizes it is the reversal. But there is no flashback. There is no meaning. There is no final answer or knowledge of where one is going. There is no supplication. There is no Time, because Time is Earthly. Time is a philosophy denoted by color. The End does have an exit, because I've seen a dead body. There is nothing there, absolutely. The corpse is something we see but only understand through our memories of its life. A dead body is an empty object. Stale blood and a dead heart that does not rise or fall. A heart that doesn't rise or fall is a useless object. We are born with a rising and falling heart, and we die with the same heart. So there is a beginning and an end. There is a stoppage of life. You stop a car, then accelerate again. There is no stoppage of life. To stop alludes to begin again. The heart does not begin again after it officially stops. Then what? The heart stops rising and falling, and exists as a useless object. The heart is the sun and the moon, when beating. How would you compare death? How do you compare something that you can only witness from your own perspective: You are bed-side. Your grandmother or grandfather are on their death bed. Slowly, their breaths are further apart. Minutes apart. Then the breathing stops, and does not start. You wait, wondering if the breathing will begin. But it stops, forever. Someone puts a gun to their head, and shoots. What can you say about it? The aim is to famously prove. The evolution of depression is suicide. The erosion of life is death. The connection is an evolution toward death. The word play of sound is universally despised. You die in childbirth, you die in your twenties, you die in your thirties. You die in your eighties. There is absolutely no way of expressing--we've covered and covered it--layer upon layer--the deed has already been committed--and we are a couple of first loves speaking a secret language . . . the obligation to express is like asking the question 'What's the occasion?' God is a hypothetical question. Faith is a suicide hotline. The metaphor is the occasion the simile must dress up for. Reality is the unstable, suicidal man calling the suicide hotline, and discussing philosophy.

Resolve Carpet Stain Remover

I try to vary it up when purchasing things at CVS pharmacy, which happens about every other day. Today, it was a combo of Resolve Triple OXI Advanced Carpet Stain Remover, a pack of Marlboro 27's, 10$ headphones, and a cheap fan for the apartment. That was this morning. The conversation behind me, at the cash register, follows (between Mother and Young boy/son) Boy: Mom, I want a Redbull Mother: Not until your in college. Absolutely not. Boy: Why college? Mother: You can have a Redbull in college, when you're cramming for final exams. Boy: (sigh) . . . (not understanding the words 'college' or 'exam') Cashier: (Black, young woman, two piercings above lip (in that strange 'no-mans-land' of the face) Do you have a CVS card? I've been to this particular CVS many times, and have had this particular cashier many times--each time the answer is the same--"no" Anyway, after this I drove home, and once again the tail-pipe of my car was rattling against my back wheel. Had to pull over, detach tail-pipe in Burger King parking lot, move into trunk, and drive home. These little conversations and events make up everyone's experiences, as well as mine, and everyone notices with a passing glance as they continue on. At a red light, the car infront of mine konked out as it ran out of gas. The emergency lights were put on, and he stepped out of his car, as the light turned green. He looked into the sky. He looked at me. He tilted his head and looked at the car behind me. Realizing no one was going to help him-- realizing the code of self-propulsion, the idea that all systems are self-sufficient-- the man waved ongoing cars by, and concentrated himself separate from the traffic.

Elipses

No matter how much I want to edit past posts with knowledge that I have today. . . I can't. . . because I don't think its necessary. Just like it seems that much of my life goes back to an axis of an event that is different every time. I wonder where it will all go. I was thinking of grad school today. . . no that's not right. . . I was thinking of school today. . . still no . . . definately I was thinking of Halloween 4 today after watching it last night--@ 3 AM and wondering about past autumns, and football games with hard aluminum benches, and death. . . then to the first stanza of James Wright's poem Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes. . . . . . then to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and the bookstore where I bought it in some mall in Lexington KY. Anderson went from Ohio to Chicago and then wrote about Ohio. Mostly though he wrote letters, more pages in letters than in fiction . . . think Gertrude Stein. Then to Woddy Harrelson, but that wouldn't do. I moved back to the hard benches of football games and compared them to the benches off the piers of Orange Country and the Pacific that I never had a connection to. Then to the famous people I have known . . . which resulted into thinking of Liv Tyler. And the famous people that I will hopefully know in the future. And Sartre's idea of being famous. Finally, I picked up a composition book, and began writing.

On Writing

I've been going to the Burnet Woods Park recently. More and more, I'm finding that I prefer a pre-determined, controlled setting--thus, I go to the park, lets say, an hour and a half before sunset. Late, late afternoon, or like, 8:15. This afternoon the highlight was the inspiration of "joggers at dusk" and the "woman selling potted flowers on the street-corner."

Ideas of poems I've been working on: something that involves the washer/dryer machines in my building and the quarter cartridges of these machines (they remind me of Chucky Cheeses, but instead, I would allude to the sound they make--cha-ching-- like the the sound of putting a bullet in a six-shooter, and the circular rotation of the cartridge in a Russian-roulette-like manner. Or Springtime in the city, and the changes it brings-- more street-walkers, people selling flowers in-front of gas stations, pools opening up...etc.

I can't get this Eliot line out of my head... "April is the cruelllest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead..."

This quarter, I'm taking a "Forms of Poetry" class, and I feel that I need to face my fear of talking poetry with peers that probably know more about the subject than me. I don't hang out with other writers, although I probably should. Do writers hang out with one another? Anyway, when I'm put into a group, or in this case, a class of peers, who I can see are similar to me in their genuine love of writing and the writing process, I tend to say 'Fuck it and fuck writing.' Its strange. O.K., I consider myself a writer and I dont think that this is pretentious. I used to think that writers who thought of themselves as writers were going too far. Now, I think that if a writer wants to be a writer, then good luck to him. This is after reading Stephen King's On Writing, and Rilke's Letters To a Young Poet. Especially Rilke's small book of letters. Everyone writes. Diaries, journals, blogs, e-mails, letters, etc. But someone who wants to professionally be a writer is different. Of course, the motives of writers are different. For me, I simply enjoy the process of writing, and the variables of the writing process--smoking and writing, waking up from a dream and writing, remembering something and writing. To me, writing for a living seems as sensible as my sister becoming a corporate lawyer.

So, I want to stop thinking "fuck it," when I'm sitting in my 'forms of poetry' class. I want to stop reading 'only authors who are dead.' Don't get me wrong, I don't want to hang out with other writers. Instead, I want to be friends with family and (some) high-school friends. I want be a sidewalk-pedestrian, contemplating, observing--who finds the atmosphere of a 7-11 less intimidating than a classroom. I want to think of writing as an athlete thinks of muscle-memory. Well, I already do. But I feel that I think of writing sometimes as something that classifies and separates. Really, my true understanding of Art/Writing, and other professions, is not separate---all are the same, all hobbies/professions necessary to provide for your 'real life' of laziness and relaxation.

So, when in my 'forms of poetry' class, I'm going to try my hardest to include myself as someone interested in poetry.

Also, eventually, I'm going to write a children's book with my sister.