Poetry Flood

[jakebe]

What I'd Like to Do

The dream is always the same.
I'm in a bookshop, a labyrinth of shelves with old tomes
stacked from floor to ceiling, with piles more ending each aisle
and I'm alone, and naked,
with nothing but an empty suit for company.
It's grey and stylish and antiquated --
tweed elbow patches, a matching fedora, a pocketwatch and penny loafers,
all of it, bobbing down the aisles, turning corners
so I only glimpse it most of the time.

We meet at intersections, and I nod to it and it bobs to me,
and sometimes we leave suggestions for each other.
I'll teach him about the things he forgot to make room
for the maintenance of his clothes, and how to walk through walls:
Where the Wild Things Are and Momo and The Wind in the Willows,
and he tells me about the things I'll need to learn
to find clothes and my sense of direction:
Steppenwolf and Invisible Man and The Stranger,
things I feel are all hints to his identity.

It's only a matter of time before we begin leaving notes for each other
in the margins of books, in receipts we find between the pages,
and his handwriting is spidery, elegant, his critiques full of references
to other stories, other books, that send me scrambling away
from my comfortable sections, into deeper, unfamiliar twists of the maze.
Mine are simpler, peppered with personal anecdotes, hints of how ideas
could possibly apply to real life. Finally, we develop our language,
a synthesis of ideas both personal and worldly, each reference and counter
leading us to the heart of the maze until, on a pedestal at its center,

there stands the perfect book.
Awed, the suit and I turn its first page, and
I wake up with a phrase on my lips
that I rush to write down, hidden in the shelves I've constructed
to surround them, littered here and there
like so many books,
like so many books.





Why I Sit Down

Because if I'm going to think about it,
I'd much rather it be something
I do on purpose.

Because I don't like following my thoughts
down the dark alleys of my mind,
and jacking them up against the walls,

mugging them for insight, trading their teeth for clues,
turning out their pockets and spilling their intestines
to see my future steaming onto the concrete.

Because watching them come and leave
as they please is more illuminating
then hijacking, then obsession, then stalking.

Because it's easier to be home when the worst ones come,
because then I invite them in for tea, sit them down,
converse until they've discovered that I see them

for exactly what they are.





Holiday

The house is not good for parties,
but they're held there any way,
just because it's always been done,
because the aunt has formed her identity around it.
There are too many bodies in the hallways,
and the kitchen and the living room,
in the breakfast nook, on the stairs,
in the yards, but especially in the basement
where the bar is set and the smell of whiskey
and cigarettes and gossip is thick in the air.
The house is dizzy with bodies, groaning
to hold them all, the walls buzzing with
a hundred voices, all related, all catching up
to one another, all loud and sure.
The afternoon becomes evening becomes night,
and in the moonlight, more cigarettes are lit
and stories are told, voices lowered,
drinks sipped more slowly, heads heavy with food.
And, finally, there's sleep and home,
yes, in that order,
the whole thing a dream
shared with everyone else, in pictures and stories.





The Bus Stop, Early Tuesday Morning

The bus is late this morning,
and the streets are almost empty.
There are a few cars strolling the roads,
leisurely, drowsily, but certainly, their drivers
knowing the way, I think, from muscle memory,
not thought.
There are men in the parking lot,
waiting for their breakfast,
there are birds warbling softly in the trees,
waiting for theirs,
and then there's me,
at the bus stop,
at the Godforsaken hour of six,
waiting for the bus
that is always late.
When it finally arrives,
I'll pile on, and smile to the driver,
and put in one dollar, three quarters.
I'll walk to the middle, and take the window seat,
so I can cover my ears
and watch the stores turn into homes and back again.
In my seat, gently rocking,
it feels like I'm sitting still,
and the world is changing, changing
without me.





The Enemy

He gets on the machine because he has to.
The numbers on the scale have crept up month by month,
the inches, too, and the pants sizes,
and the calorie count, always marching higher.
Numbers, he mutters to himself, marking one setting to
5, and the other to 1, it's always about the numbers.
The machine starts, and so does he, sweating,
sweating, thinking
How many cookies is he earning right now?
How many jelly beans? How long must he move
until he's worked off his cheeseburger?
A parade of food marches through in front of him,
each with its cost, in the energy he's expending right now,
and he promises himself, if he can make it through
this relentless tick of numbers, he'll treat himself
as a reward for a job well done.

But the thing is,
back when numbers were small,
the movement was the reward,
and it was never thought that distance could be covered
only indoors, with surfaces that spared your feet.
You moved because you had to,
because it was your birthright and privilege,
because it was the one sure way of finding greener grass
or any grass at all, for that matter.
Movement was life before,
but now,
it is only a distraction, a necessary evil,
a punishment for numbers
that have gotten dangerously high.