prayer

there's only one prayer and it's
"please"

A Field Study of the American Male

He hated the dowdy sweaters and frumped hair, the strategic dishevelment.
He hated the Grover Cleveland beards and whispy mustaches and whispy arms and legs of the men.
He hated the big plastic glasses which had no glass and he loved the black leggings and neon attitudes so much and he hated them.
He hated the muffin tops foaming from drawstring pants and the overestimated legs sensationalized in pouty dainty shorts.
He hated the immaculate indifference and the eyes permanently zoned in on the screen, the body's premonition like a tuning fork waiting for the keening of the next text.
He was curious about these people and wanted to know why they did what they did and why he was not one of them. He was so close to being one of them. Why did they wear these stupid things that they wore and why did they behave in these offensive ways that they behaved.
He wrote all of these things into his notebook. He kept finding new ways to say them. It was what he did when he was alone, and he preferred to spend as much time alone as he could.

He sat at a table by the window in Philipp’s Luncheonette eating a breakfast of two Coney Dogs and fries while trying to figure out who these people were by writing about them, why he was apart from them. 
A pretty blond woman in jean shorts came in with a bearded man who had a camera looped around his neck. He was disrupted by the presence of other young attractive people in a place frequented mostly by vagrants and old-timers, and he adjusted himself in his chair, trying to get comfortable with their invasion of a place that he considered his. They murmured to each other for a minute and then the woman approached him.

            “Excuse me,” she said, “I’m from Marie Claire magazine. We’re doing an article on men around America, sort of a field study of the American Male, and we were wondering if we could take your picture.”

            He sat back from his red notebook. “Sure,” he said. “No problem.”

            The photographer got down on one knee and pointed the barrel of the lens at him. He was nervous, but flattered to be considered an American Male, as he didn’t see himself as exemplifying either of those things, “American-ness” or “Male-ness.” He handled his body comfortably before the camera.

            “Do you just want me to do what I’m doing?” he said.

            “Yeah, just write in your notebook,” the photographer said.

            He looked back at his notebook, trying to reconnect to his concentration. The photographer snapped a few pictures.

            “Could you look up?”

            He looked up into the lens. “I’m a little nervous.”

            “That’s okay. Everybody gets nervous," the photographer said. "You’re good at this. Have you done it before?”

            “I’ve done some modeling for some ex-girlfriends. They were photographers.” He smiled.

            “Okay, now, can you maybe look out at the street?”

            He looked to the side and furrowed his brow, trying to appear contemplative. “Where’re you guys from?”

            “We’re from New York,” the reporter said, “We’ve been to Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and New York, of course. We’re going to Portland and L.A.:

            The photographer took his eye away from the viewfinder and began to check the pictures on the screen.

            “So what do women say about the American Male?” he said.

            “Actually, if you’ve got a few minutes, maybe we could interview you and you could tell us what you think about Columbus girls,” the reporter said.

            “Sure. I’ve got nothing to do.”

            “What are you working on?”

            “Oh, you know, this that and the other.”

            The photographer aimed his camera again. “Okay, can I just get two more?”

            “Sure, sure,” he put back on his romantic face.

            “Could you sit back?” the photographer said. He sat back. “Maybe lean up on two legs in the chair?” He pushed against the table and the front legs came off the ground. “Perfect.” The photographer took two more pictures. “Great. Now if I could just get you to hold this up so I could white balance. I could probably use your shirt but—“ He was wearing a white V-neck t-shirt. The photographer handed him a board with a black square, a grey square and a white square on it. “Just hold it up in front of you. There you go.” He took a picture. “Great. All done.” He went and sat on a  vinyl stool and checked his pictures. The reporter sat down where he’d been sitting.

            “And if you could just sign this release form,” she slipped a paper in front of him and he signed it. “So, if I were to ask you what is it that makes a Columbus girl, if I were to put you in a room with girls from all those cities I mentioned, how would you pick the Columbus girl?”

            “Umm, gee,” he said. He didn’t want to make her wait while he thought about her question, so he just started talking. “It seems to me there are generally two species of Columbus girl that I generally encounter: There’s the kind of Hipster girls that you might find in New York, with the big glasses and the bangs and the flannel, except like a Bush League version,” he said, “And then there’re sort of the campus girls. Those are the ones I’d most associate with Columbus probably. The girls in the hoodies and the athletic pants with the—I don’t mean to sound judgmental.”

            “Oh no,” the reporter said, “I don’t think you sound derogatory at all.”

            He went ahead. “The girls who get the Tan-in-a-Can stuff. They’re orange. Which is sad, because they’d be pretty without it.”

            “I know what you mean.”

            “I guess a Columbus girl is the kind of girl who wears a football jersey and drinks a beer and tailgates and all that stuff.”

            “Okay, and how would you describe the dating scene around here?”

            “I would say-- I just spent a month in New York and New York is great if you’re a single guy. Beautiful, sophisticated women in an endless supply. I heard a bum on the train say ‘New York: where the girls are pretty, smart, and they all got jobs.’ That sounded right. Not that they aren’t that way around here. It’s just there’s less of them. Columbus is better for the girls I think. The ratio skews more to their advantage.”

            “Okay, thanks. I think that’s all I need.” She stood up and shook his hand and told him they’d call or e-mail if they were going to use him. It’d be in the August issue which would hit newsstands in July.

            He felt important because someone valued his opinion and it was now going to be validated in a national publication. He hoped he didn’t sound too judgmental in print. He hadn't said what he really thought. He'd watered it down and it still sounded judgmental. He thought maybe if he got famous the article would serve as an interesting footnote in his biography, like an early television appearance of a now established entertainer from when they were just starting out: “Three years before his first major success he appears in a piece in Marie Claire magazine. The interview reveals a frustrated, alienated young artist trying to escape his roots…”

We keep death deep

in our closets. We take

death out when our loved ones

are away for an

afternoon. We put it on

and stare at ourselves in the

mirror.

The father takes an empty

gun out of a shoebox

under his bed. He puts it 

to his temple and 

pulls

the trigger.
The mother tries on
the black lace 
dress. It is most
becoming. It fits quite 
well. 

Archaic Torso of Me

You must change your life.
You must change your life.
You must change your life.
You must change your life.

You must change your life.
You must change your life.
You must change your life.
You must change your life.

You must change your life.
You must change your life.
You must change your life.

You must change your life.
You must change your life.
You must change your life.

Eating Breakfast at the Table in 257 12th St Brooklyn NY 11215

I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life. 
I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life. 
I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life.  
I have wasted my life. 
I have wasted my life.  
I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life.
I have wasted my life.

LIFE'S WORK

- a play on words

Writer Struggling at the Page:
What the hell did John Donne
do all day?
It didn't matter.
He woke up
and he was Donne.

She carries suspicions about the dark ocean waves, the intended meanings
                of their slosh and tackle,
the way they fold and unfold themselves         and mop up the moon's kindred gravity.

She's never been given an explanation for this, only heresay and conjecture.
Still, it is her favorite thing to do         to go down to the pier and speculate.

She renounces any expertise, sending her incorrect sentimentality into the waves.
She is the back of a playing card, the side that represents mystery, anonymity.

                          The one without a face.

Pop Culture Reference

I am fully antic.
The Carlisle Luxury Time-Piece awaits
your wrist, just as the pencil-thin mustache
vanishes from your lip,
indicating renewed sobriety
and the total diminishment of artistic merit.
Jellyrolls appear in the snowbank,
lovingly mended by the winds of anomaly.
Gruesome dismemberments of logic snorkle
through a razor-reef of air-quoting fingers.
I stand in solidarity with the many
faces I've assumed throughout
my non-union lifespan.
The airport terminal, wearing a pair
of Android's wings, receives the lesser men,
the ones who have cried
at the athletic shoe's slogan
and in the dim light of flagship's marquee.
Towers clang, ruffling up the cowlick
at the back of the raven's neckhair and
I am morbidly regretful as the shockwaves
of denial parse the quick evacuations
of daylight. A squirrel clambers up
the spine of a drainpipe beneath
the reawakened night, which caps the sky
like a blight. Refusals of pained love cry out
into fugitive moons offering little more
than the abandoned light
of the 12 Chambered Hours in return.
A crucial blizzard shucks the clouds
as the great blade of the plow
bullies the slush to the sides of the road.
My refined stupidity makes an appearence
in the wake of an especially poignant birthday.
Fireworks startle the atmosphere
and souvenir kazoos are fellated
in next week's very special episode,
which was filmed before a live studio
audience comprised entirely of
disinterested and foreign-tongued manques.
The broom of the fire's longevity crumples
our aborted template and lobs it
into the sewage wastebasket.
I should've died that day in Paris
but my hat was too far askance.
The malleable heartscape
of a doughy blonde carries her
to the apex of Mulholland,
where the phallic clocktowers deny recollection
of any antecedents in medieval numbers.
Somebody has to take dictation
for the insane, however,
I plead Sanity, Your Honor:
this man was required to receive
the benefit of death at my hands:
A blind man better understands
the cold chamber's embrace.
Senorita falls to the dust in her finest serape.
Deserts abound beyond the fringes
of the unschooled township
of Bonewater, New Mexico,
Est. 1803 on a tepid foundation
of impassioned misinformation.
In the old Spanish Mission
I hear the Clergy murmuring:
Forgive us this day our daily bread
as we forgive those who trespass against us
forever and ever    Amen.

Reasons For Living - January 2014

Movies
Blackfish
The Joneses
JFK 
Mister Lonely (Partial)
Julien Donkey Boy (Partial) 
Before and After Dinner (Documentary on Andre Gregory)

TV Shows
Mad Men (entire series)
Orange is the New Black (Ep 1)
House of Cards (Ep 1)
Wonder Years (Ep 1, 2, 3)

Books
Libra - Don Delillo 
The Wild Swans at Coole - Yeats
Taipei - Tao Lin


Plays
Circle Mirror Transformation - Annie Baker
The House at Falling Hanging - Frank O'Hara
The Mystery Chef Mystery: A Play for Two Pianos - James Schuyler
Our Late Night - Wallace Shawn 
Women of Manhattan - John Patrick Shanley
Infrared - Mac Wellman

The Snow

The snow outside is so beautiful
I wish I could write a poem describing it
So well that it would be there
later if I needed it.

The snow is bunched in ample tufts,
held in the fingers of the branches. The snow shoots
in streaks close to the window screen. Further away,
the snow dawdles down to the yard in clumps.

We are going under again.
There is no one in the room with me.
The bed is white and so is the wall.
I try to keep them that way but it is hard.

Oh, it is hard. The snow enacts its great migration,
the entire white country of the sky
landing softly on the brown and grey earth
like a blanket. The little white envelope of your

text appears on my screen. I've yet
to open it. I received a package:
My mom has sent me another harmonica
for my birthday. I am being gently held

hostage by the snow. I haven't left
the white desk beneath my white loft-bed
for a week. The snow looks harrowed as it falls
a tribe of mothers searching for lost children.

We were supposed to Skype later, but I don't
really want to. I have talked to no one
but the waiter all day. I like it that way.
Off in the distance, the city has been

partially erased by snow. I am trying to learn 
to be a simpler man, to say simple things in simple ways, 
to not invent complexity in the attempt to understand
things that cannot be understood.

Warned of others who were buried under their efforts
to figure it all out, I'm doing my best
to simplify, to let my mind be silent like
The mouths of the creatures closed by the snow.

I've been given a simple life
and I want to see it through.
Spring is rounding

the horizon. Little by little,
the snow will melt, and the world will once again
begin trying to explain itself.