Resolutions

So, January plods along in Beantown. Wintry mix sounds like it could be a good underground album from DJ Green Lantern featuring tracks from Dr. Dre and members of the G-Unit, but alas it is not. Wintry mix is the weather Boston seems to be stuck in. Rainy-snow; snowy-rain; ice. The kind of weather that gives you the sniffles. Half of Boston looks like they spent too much time in a bathroom stall with Robert Downey Jr. in the movie Less Than Zero. Red noses and sniffling.

I’ve been putting in my articles for Examiner.com which is a lot of fun, the show at 12 Farnsworth is still going strong, I’m wrestling with a canvas (think me versus The Rock—the canvas is winning), and I’m even working on some poems. What more can you ask from January?

Also came across an artist who is new to me today. Guy named Dean Styers—stumbled across his website and was very, very impressed. It’s one thing when Lichtenstein is kicking your ass from the grave, but the live ones are even worse. Check his site. Great stuff there.

As for the poem I’m working on…. It is crazy to say, but I think it is partially inspired by the graphic novel Batman: Dark Victory, as well as a poem-a-day calendar I wish I never bought. Plus, I have this thing about technology and poetry lately, so the digital cameras, etc., make sense.

In the Batman graphic novel, there are murders on each holiday with the killer leaving clues with a bloody game of hangman. In the Eidsvig graphic novel called poetry, I referenced Arshile Gorky—who killed himself by hanging—and then it turned into a question of mixing words and pictures, and seemed a bit like Batman after I was halfway through. The pic above is a famous one of Gorky, and is what I am referencing with pleated pants and arms extended, dancing at a party. It's borrowed here from slideprojector.com.

As for the poem itself? As most of you know, I don’t usually post poems here. Especially poems that are in progress. And this is definitely in progress still. Thought today of adding a section about my optometrist, who was my soccer coach, adjusting lenses… this one, no this one…. and me quitting the team since I hated running laps. It reminded me too much of George Michael getting the wrong glasses on Arrested Development since he is so indecisive, so I didn’t put it here yet.

And, so, even though I don’t usually post poems, I feel I need to earn my keep on this blog. So, here goes. Oh, and the Robert Downey Jr. photo above is from American Movie Classics, AMCTV.com.

RESOLUTIONS

For Christmas this year I bought myself
the poem-a-day calendar. Like my mother
always says, When shopping it’s one for you
two for me and so on. And squinting
to make black words sharp I was already
disappointed by January 3rd. This one, this one,
and this one: There were none for me.

Turning to the photos for Valentine’s
you sent me, with you wearing the coal-
black corset. I adjusted tint and saturation,
sharpened up your curvy edges
over and over again. My mouse against
chromatic flesh; first pink, then green,
then black and white (to match my memories),
all the contrasts changed to protect
the innocent. This year I’ll buy
my girlfriends better cameras.

Flipping through the calendar; the words
a blur. Different speeds helped nothing
so I stopped
at a few exclusive dates: Our first kiss,
The Ides of March, Groundhog Day, Eddie
Van Halen’s birthday. The words,
a blur. I stared at certain lines, how they said
nothing else at all. A whole year. Like that.

Click, click, click, Claude controlled
remotely his latest flat-panel TV. See
the difference? This is regular; this
is HD. You could read the plays
on Tom Brady’s wrist as easily as picking off
Gisele’s engagement ring from a mile
away. And when you watch porn, he said,
you can smell the cheap perfume soaked
through glass, as vivid as anything else
you’re afraid to admit.

Turn the knob against resolve; adjust
the resolution, click, click, click.

All my lovers look better with their eyes
closed. I say, Imagine it’s an umbrella
or someplace else you feel protected.
They smile when looking, as if paintings
were cameras or mirrors, something
to be captured in. That’s right, I say,
Give your hair a shake, a flip, the camera
clicks. This year I’ll paint one hundred
better paintings, each the model of insecurity
and sex. Impressionism and pop: Blurred edges
and nostalgic time-stops. The obituary
of our handholding. The memory of you and me
in bedrooms in the morning. Look now
I say, and of course, each word understands it,
flipping through our sheets.

Think flashbulbs flashing, popping soundlessly,
as we all know that light can crush teeth
into bottles cast out empty at the end of any
lonesome pier. Think Memorial Day, beach glass
and waves, these are days that glance out
toward open sea, wave tops sliced and creased
by light and wind. Think taking pictures
to mean something else: A coal-black corset;
A group of words against canvas; Wordless;
Worthless. Broken and crushed against the shore,
shore yourself for every day and stretch phrases
soundlessly through the weeks. Seeking solace,
I rubbed my face against your neck, wished
I bought a razor as opposed to poems for this year’s
Father’s Day. Look what you created: These
places the two of us meet: The seams of
this bed, the stapled crease of bent pages. The sun,
through blinds, resolving itself to become the day.

A whole year like that? The bartender was all
questions while my ATM card was working.
We broke up for St Paddy’s and were back
by April Fool’s. A whole year like that? I choked
down another glass. Listen, I said, and read
another day. Neither of us could believe it
by the end, we couldn’t tell what we were
looking forward to anymore. The two of us. Another
one. And another one. They were all
for someone else. By then it was getting blurry
everywhere. This year I’ll buy myself
contact lenses, and cleaner glasses. Lift your glass
against resolve; adjust the resolution.

The best I could do was make the calendar
into a flipbook. It was far too late to re-gift it,
I’d already thrown out half of January. I looked
and looked for running, somersaulting stick figures
doing calisthenics or jumping jacks. Anything.
The poems were no one person doing anything
at all, the year flying through my hands, pages
flipping toward something else. Try again. Try
again and again. The year just flew right by.

Sure the numbers changed but the promises
were as empty as this glass. Gesturing, posturing—
more than permanence—those type of words. Like,
when I realized I had your home, your office,
and your mobile numbers waffle-pressed on the insides
of my eyelids. An elegy to homemade breakfasts
and broken-down communication. Those numbers
whizzing by; First time, second time, anniversaries
and deaths: an odometer of the used car we couldn’t
trade-in for anything, even during the Washington’s
Birthday Sales Event. Turn the wheel against resolve;
adjust the resolution.


What happened when she came back? My shrink
asked the questions she knew the answers to. I flipped
the calendar back and forth. Somersaulting,
jumping jacks and calisthenics. Can we talk about
something else? Her eyebrows agree to everything. Me,
I wonder who these poems were invented for? I stole their
answers; gifts—their everything. Turn the question
back against itself, and promise, agree, deny.
When will I arrive at Thanksgiving for the Christmas
gifts delivered every day? Even through this
fantastic flip-book, every day is the same;
Groundhog Day again and again, emerging from a hole.

Turn the pages faster now; adjust
the resolution, turn pages into numbers repeating,
days to weeks, to a stack of empty sheets.

These are quotes from a conversation in the future
that we haven’t had yet: I’m sorry, I’ll try, Never, No—
not again, I miss you; Only on Saturdays, After church,
Before dinner, During Lent, or On a full stomach. Hell,
all these poems are excuses: Tennyson bailing my ass out
with Circumstance on my birthday: “So runs the round of life
from hour to hour,” or on your birthday Joy Harjo
easing my way into your pants: “My mystery seeks to comprehend
your mystery.” And on Frank O’Hara’s birthday? All hell
breaks loose. Jack Spicer’s birthday? Forget about it.
For National Poetry Month the pages turn to cinnamon,
a sunset made of cookies before the oven opens. You’re
really cooking with oil now, Sam Walker would have said
and hell, he’s gone now too, like 300 some-odd poems.

Personally, I think I’d even prefer Monet’s water lilies
turned to placemats for our old coffee table. If I had a bird
I’d have the lining to a birdcage. Or could easily wrap a fish.
If I’d thought of it, I would have wrapped my gifts
with tiny paper squares this year, works like ocean waves
stretching mercilessly across the page. Here, I folded you
a bikini. Learned poetic origami. Watch the paper cuts. Fold
here, crease here, moan here. Here Here! Cheers!
and drowning in excess. If only Frank O’Hara had read
Edwin Markham’s Preparedness on his birthday, he’d have
been ready for the dune buggy. The first day we met? Wordsworth.
Our first fight? Something called Cradle. When de Kooning died,
Octavio Paz was mumbling in March, something about the marvel
of poetry. The flight to Iowa? Robert Graves. And of course,
of course, I miss you. Every poem is someone else’s excuse
for a resolution they wish they’d never broken.

Sam Walker clicking the control, turning the projector
lens to focus, and Arshile Gorky slides seeping into classroom
wall. Watch how he uses bodies to become the smudge
of eye shadow. A woman in hysterics as seen through
a glass of scotch and rocks—light as drunken contortionist,
somersaulting through the melting edges of ice cubes and unfiltered
cigarette smoke. Stay still for the entire year, a flipbook
through my hands. The ice cubes and scotch resolving
themselves to become figurative people’s promises. Let me get
my Sharpie to trace black lines, hold still, hold still. Check
the pose, check the pleated pants. Hold Me; Hold Still. I will
never melt again. Talks with missing letters like losing
in a game of hangman, the labels mismatched underneath
each day, body parts thicker and thinner than they should be,
all of us frayed at the edges and connected imperfectly: An apology
after scotch, after this year of flipping pages, after all
our anniversaries—every one for me. Every day turned
until there was nothing left of weeks and months but a stack
of discarded paper, collected in my hands. This year I’ll live
like poetry was never invented.