poetry notebook

[This will insert before the final stanza as it currently sits at http://bit.ly/av7ibr]

[I've also decided to reverse many years of practice and capitalize the first letter of each line. The idea is to emphasize the line more.]

You believed in experience, didn’t you?

You believed that experience would refine you,

Augment you, exalt, enlighten, enrich, liberate

You from your pathetic self, the over-sensitive

Sensualist, naked-woman obsessed

Ignorant boy with a bad complexion

And no social history.

To know work only as a means

To an abstraction of what work would be

If you were to become the work,

If the work accomplished you as much as you

It. You began to break rank with your childhood

Coterminous with your first, unexpected orgasm

Fantasies of heroic action, Odysseus, many minded,

Concept of pure science, and the scientist

Part Odysseus, part Oppenheimer, part Homer part

Mickey Mantle and part Don Juan but not Don Juan

Just a fantasized sexual encounter with virtually every

Female he ever met, because he was the great protector,

The hero, the champion whom they all wanted.

He read manuals to learn how to control his mind

But preferred the one he read about where one could

Absorb all knowledge while sleeping by placing books

Under the pillow. And then there were social contexts

For which he had no road map and, besides,

He was too tall and his face covered in boils

Even though he had been an almost pretty boy

Who undressed many girls just to look at them

Now became nervous, self-conscious, aware of

Limitations he hadn’t imagined before. So you strove

To imagine a time when you would no longer have to

Be you, where you could become a digger of fields,

Harvester, irrigationist, tractor driver, grunt

In a restaurant in a kitchen through the splattered

Food as dishwasher and splattering food as the cook

Then, as a waiter, carrying it back and forth as you became

Fascinated with factories, you could work in a fast

Hot kitchen on a couple of hits of acid, and got around by

Hitchhiking or driving or bus only to discover that his skin

Cleared up, it was the treatments that were prolonging

The problem with his face, but then got hit pretty hard

In the head, fracture of the temporal bone through

The ear, so that his eyes popped out (only one

With a damaged optic nerve) and the Vth facial nerve

Broke into mid-saggital paralysis with cerebro-

Skeletal fluid dripping out of a slightly damaged ear,

Which slowed him down, but as soon as he got out –

You remember, right?

–Of the hospital, when he should have still been resting

He got a job in a factory silk-screening substrates

For digital clock and watch faces. It wasn’t easy to

Get the job because of his out of phase look and his

Eyepatch, but he convinced them to give him a try and

They did so he worked as hard and fast as he could,

Tripling the output of the next-highest producer,

But it was only pride, and he didn’t really feel good about it,

He just felt that he needed to prove that he could

Do it but before that, as a young sophomore,

Sitting with a girl he just met in the back seat

Of a car while her sister drove he just put his arms

Around her and started kissing her as though they’d

Always been lovers, pulled her blouse up,

Unsnapped her bra, and licked and sucked

Her nipples on the way to his house after which

She was his girlfriend but he was afraid

To penetrate her with more than his fingers

Because he was sure she’d get pregnant so they

Wound up breaking up, but that didn’t stop him one day,

When a big-hipped blond girl smiled back

At him as he sat at a table in the strip mall

And he pushed a chair toward her with his foot

And told her to sit down, and she did.

The next day, with his cock inside of her he

Stopped and asked, “shouldn’t we use a condom?”

To which she replied, “don’t worry, it’ll be ok”

And getting it together for her to have an abortion

A month or so later, with much familial angst

And polarization, she lived with him later when

He made 12,000 watch faces a night at a

Pedal-operated machine and then lost focus

In an assembly plant after which he was hired

To work on pianos, disassemble them,

Repair them, refinish them, move them, pose

As the boss’ wife’s son to buy used ones

So they wouldn’t know she was a dealer.

When they said, “it took 5 big guys to move it”

How were you going to move it and she

Pointed to you they didn’t believe it until

You had it tipped up to drop onto the dolly

Rolled it out through the front door, tipped it up

Again, turned it to come down flat on the bed of

The pickup truck, then grab the bottom handle

And lift and heave ho to shove the upright piano

Up onto the truck and tie down…

[Once again, a temporary end. I'm not really sure where this is going. It wasn't meant to be so linear. But this is how it came straight out. I had a ghost of a drift in mind but I've departed radically from it, may elaborate and return to the drift, may delete it all and start over]