Cal,

For Elizabeth Bishop


You are American gossip,
Didn't anyone have the heart to tell you?

You said yourself, you are fantastic
and uncivilized, in the way the intellectual ape

conveniently forgets to use his razor.
But how could you forget?

Lately you have been using it to split hairs,
and to perforate others out of your life.

Some of us are not among the dead,
and don't have the luxury

of spinning in our graves.
But you are making quite a living now

doing that. Thank you again for the compliment but,
Why do you lavish me with help?

I am doing quite well for myself,
for someone who prefers to live the way I do.

Whatever happened to the cake knife
I gave you, and the recipe you gave me?

You should have three of those trifles by now,
one for Jean, one for Elizabeth, and one for Caroline.

I bet you are now wishing you were not so lucky in cards
Aren't you relieved the last one is over?

When I said to you, your star couldn't be brighter, I meant that.
I meant stop trying to outshine, everyone and everything!

And another thing,

Just because you tower over me,
doesn't mean you can use me as an arm rest.

And just because you are made of limestone,
doesn't mean that I use you for a paperweight.

I swear to you, Cal, if I get one more
letter from you asking me to follow you out

to Amsterdam, or Yaddo, or have lunch with you in New York.
You say to me “you can take your time”

and then you say “for heaven's sake hurry up!”
When will you learn?

I am content where I am.

Day 29

The tops of trees

for Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

Some men are weak
and some men are strong
yet some reach the tops of trees with their song.

Some women have large hands,
and some women have small
yet some women stand on their hands, till they are no use at all.


Some words will run
and some words will fall
Tell me, friends, do these words make any sense at all?

Because the world did not.

That world was a leaf
that world was a stone
that world was just creatures stuck, or drifting alone.

I once was a child
but before I could speak
I was coerced to be well-versed, in Latin and Greek.

I am now scattered Polaroids
I am now a silly dream
I am now a peachy sherbet, covered with whipped cream.

And the leaves they make patterns
where the sun hits the shade
and the sun is now hiding, where you dig a hole with a spade.

You look at the tops of trees
while children play in traffic
avoiding watercolor images, so choreographic.

You songwriters, and poets.

You rise to the tops of trees
are you still looking for love?
Here I am “realizing self, an octave above.”

Day 28

in August

for John Keats

I didn't die unrequited.
I took a wife in August.
My wife was wearing silky white shoulders
holding out her boney arms held
my name close to her spine.
I knew that there was a warmth
wherein that carved out broken shell
I was melting in the silver sun.

In July she let me sing
a song to every single
gorgeous figure in granite
every star that was bestowed to us
in the Medi-terrain, fall to their
knees pointing their palms to
the North where the medieval
tricksters still dance on top of
Stonehenge and tell stories
And every turning ball is still
just floating around the sun.


She spake, the beauteous, she
my wife in August. Forgiving,
and for only six months was
she mine, and now she mourns.
My lovely white goddess, she
Gushing a luscious sob.
Painful veil of oblivion seals her eyes
She strives to search wherefore I am so sad,
melancholy numbs her limbs;
she sits upon the grass, moaning.
She burns up in the sun.

She, who once had wings.

Oh, Hyperion, you unfinished gem,
She still sobs
You went on for ages, and now
nothing is left.

Day 26

La Jolla

for Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)


Barefoot on the coast
after burnt toast
from the long-nosed stove
on the cove.

I will escape the pointy shoe
of you.

I did vow to love you all my life
and keep you always as my wife.

Spinning 'round to turn the ache to something humorous
But you just wanted to be posthumous.

So you clung to the reef
Then hanging by your sleef
Fell down-
with a bumping sound.
Thump
thump
thump

How could you?
I must escape your too tight shoe.

I and you
once under that pinky-blue
You said, "Yes."
before I said "Do you?"

Then you tried on my shoes
that were too loose for you.
That burning hole chew-
you stumbled into.
How could you?

Oh, what a difficult haul,
you, woman, with shoes two sizes too small.
With sharp teeth that bite
stuck in me everynight
How could you?

So I found a rough Diamond, Stone, pure,
So I said "Do you?"


and she said "Sure."

Day 25

Dick

for Sylvia Plath

Some will read our story,
and will not understand,
why I left you, so selfishly
At your most uncomfortable.

I really was in a state,
where I had to limp away,
And limp it became yes, I was.

There was no steel pin in this heart.

I hope it is clear to you friend,
how dear you were to me,
A friend, my Buddy,
Some will not glean that,
from our story.

No, I am just a selfish girl,
Leaving you, so vulnerable,
so fearing of death, so
dismayed. Limp,
and limping away.

Crawled under that heavy mortar
with each pound about to fall onto me,
I took each pound like an ounce
down my throat.

Compared to the shocks
whizzing between my ears
(Like the sound of the ocean
But not nearly as soothing)

Ray Brook at Saranac
Wasn't such awful place,
But I was, as you know,
too splintered, almost broken,
So I split.

Well now you know where I went.

I wrote our story in such a way,
my dearest friend, so that I would
always seem the villain. While
some equally selfish girls
young co-eds on the prowl
will champion me,
I will tell you, I never meant
for that.

I only meant for them to hate me.

Day 24

Not about the Moon

for Edna St. Vincent Millay

Paris, or New York?
Summers at Vassar
That one gorgeous, dog-eared,
dogwood Summer.
Our flushed cheekbones
brushing up against those pink
peonies, and breathy groans
For both of you, everything would grow.
first you Thelma, then Edmund,
while I was writing about the moon,
you both at your leisure begged,
asked, would the truth come very soon,
Not your place, lover, not your place.
I, angered, with an upturned brow,
stormed off to weekend trips in the Village
“Don't tell me what to write about!”
I'm very good at saying no,
I told everyone to call me Vincent
everyone said no, to me,
and no one ever listened.
Confessions, Confessions, Confessions,
I just do not have the time.
There is not enough paper,
and there is not enough rhyme.

Day 23

Brick by Brick

for Gwendolyn Brooks

I was never a King-
but that didn't mean
I didn't have a dream.

No one asked me.

They would just say,
“How do you do,
and how do you do that
on cue?
Sing the blues
In your new shoes?”

They knew this woman had stories
Sitting on top of seven stories,

Wrinkles, lines, and worries,

But this chicken in the coop,
Looked like a Bronzeville beauty from the stoop.

Brick by Brick
those young men tried to climb
up the prison wall of that tenement
gnawing on gummy spearmint
they would lean in close and pull a line.
They'd shine their watches and ask for the time.

They could not see the dream had floated,
they could not see my bare feet were bloated,
This mother hen in the coop,
Looked like a Bronzeville virgin from the stoop.

So Brick by Brick
those young men tried to climb
to reach that floating dream a second time.
To catch my reason from where I sat,
yes, I was aware of all of that.

Day 22

Fragmented

for T.S. Eliot

Just cut me in two, will you?

Or

Staple that stain to my sleeve, Barbie Q.
burger shack in St. Lou.
And then tie a rolled trouser leg around Oxford.

Or

You could just set ablaze
the war zone I had paved
and all the muck I sorted through-

Ruin me.


Me.-
Fragmented but vaguely familiar.
Stagnated but achingly delicate.


I hear the words of silly women
traveling in hives, buzz, buzz, buzz
what are they saying about me?

“...birth, death, and copulation”
I say under my breath.
"That is all there is."

So just cut me in half- fragmented.

Me.-
Fragmented but vaguely familiar.
Stagnated but achingly delicate.

Some would say I loved myself too much.
Whoever that was.
A man who feared women in drawing rooms.

Me.-
Fragmented but vaguely familiar.
Stagnated but achingly delicate.
A “self-conscience and make-believe Englishman.”

Day 21

Junkies

for Ogden Nash

Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
Don't pass
on the grass
just 'cause powder
Is louder.

What just went up your nose
Everyone knows
and it's not just the Liquor
that makes you bicker.

Day 20

Telegram

For William Carlos Williams

To{Florence Herman
RECEIVED DIFFICULT NEWS /stop.
ARE YOU AT ALL AVAILABLE?/stop.
JUST BOUGHT THE HOUSE IN RUTHERFORD/stop.
ALL ALONE HERE./stop.
YOU KNOW HER BETTER THAN MOST/stop.
CONSIDERING RUNNING AWAY TO EUROPE/stop.
I SHOULD HAVE ASKED YOU FIRST/stop.
YOUR FACE/stop.
YOUR YOUTH/stop.
YOUR LACE STOCKINGS/stop.
SEVEN O'CLOCK ALRIGHT?/stop.

W.C.W

Day 19

Jeanie

for Robert Frost

I added to my Litany of Misdeeds,
8 dollars in my pocket, minted.
My little sister had hinted,
to bathing naked beneath the reeds.
And mother before her,
bore her everything bare,
and then slowly lost touch of fur,
the feel of her hair.
Well father was known for his anger,
the lout.
Not knowing her,
or how horrific the bout.
And with no sympathizing,
the illness that what would come,
was not surprising
at least not to some.
So they wrapped my sister in starched cotton,
and they bound her arms.
I have not forgotten,
the hills of those farms,
where she and I would scout,
we would chase the dogs,
we would fish for trout,
and feed the hogs.
And I just a raven,
at my writing table
I am clean-shaven,
reading the deed for the gable,
and my mind has done it's share
of highs and lows,
and I hope that God knows where
her little mind goes.

Day 18

Urine and Lilies

for Pablo Neruda

I had an early love for Walt Whitman.
I did.
He was not by any means a concrete idol,
jutting out over the deserted lines.
he seemed, to me, to simply be
a Man of Truth.
And I've wanted to tell the truth,
since the age of seven.
Flipping through a tattered copy
of Ecran at the age of sixteen
I found my namesake.
I wanted to fall into the creases,
and disappear into the little folded pages,
smelling of urine and lilies.
Whitman sang of America
and I sang of Despair,
which is everywhere else.
Once I learned the supernatural
impressions of word pairings,
I wrote a love poem for every
year I was alive.
I don't think anyone appreciated that.
The love I felt was too naively erotic.
And though I am no, Walt Whitman,
I am the voice of the exotic,
of the psychotic, neurotic.
The Quixotic.
See, I can make rhymes too.

Day 17

Private Edgar Perry

for Edgar Allen Poe

I reported for duty,
a Bostonian, surly, moody,
unsteady.

Twenty and two,
not eighteen,
Yes, twenty and two
and not eighteen-
scratching words on the wall
of the latrine.
for five dollars a month.
Obscene.

Yes, I was only eighteen.
The Artificer of Carolina,
my explosive words
proved themselves less lucratively
than the edifice
of shells and artillery.

And at twenty and seven
not twenty and two
yes, twenty and seven
not twenty and two-
reached highest rank and then was through.
But they would not release me.
From the shells and artillery.
My last chance at worldly victory.

I was only twenty and two.
My name is Poe, not Perry.
I wish to marry.
Home, I wish to tarry,
My hardened heart I will carry.
Again, refused.

Heavy, heavy cry.
Heartache, heartache, sigh.
My half-closing eye.
And to the deep trumpet- the wild
Of human battle.

I would chronicle my voice,
"My own voice.
Like, a silly child!–"

Day 16

My dearest Lavinia,

for Emily Dickinson

You, ever my confidante-
I hoped that you might be
available, fingers interlaced,
with my boot step atop-
ready to boost me up.

Mother, in the kitchen, was at an audible distance,
and I tried not to let my dark red-
tea spill on my lap when I felt it,
she cannot stand to see me stained.
I should know to not hurry to her-
when I am troubled.

And father and brother, ever-sober
stoically cast their eyes aside-
away from me and my feminine zeal.
My heart breaking, but bound up in lace.
My blaspheming, unlovely thoughts-
of keeping the Sabbath at home.
They just see joggled-
weary eyes stuck inside too many books.
They do not hear me.


My, dear, dear sister,
you know I am always alone, and
always willing to endure it-
I am still sweet as honey,
But lately bees are few-
and all I have are buzzing memories.

As I write this letter you cannot see-
this true look of agony, on my face.
You soft, cherubic creature, my sister.
As you know I have not made any marital commitments,
and as you know my heart is once again broken,
But I will continue to stand upon my toes-
Even though no man had ever instructed me.

Day 15

At age 25

for Sir John Donne

Down went San Felipe.
Crimson and pale, rippling,
clinging to it's mist.
Oh, how that flagship
hurled itself starboard
into this ventricle.
San Felipe, the sight,
the sight of the loss of you,
Oh, I will never recover.
My heart was never betrothed
to any fine cloth, or gold coin.
Not any jewel or peach loin,
at age 25. I lost them all.
I swam at lengths to reach the horizon
with inherited estate as my compass.
What did I find there?
Several tongues inside my mouth.
Señor Guardián del Gran Sello,
Lord Custode del Gran Sigillo,
Lord Keeper of the Great Seal,
I have returned to England
with my mother's tongue,
full of experience,
but with the sickness of too much travel.
With itchy, rambling bones.
Now my only thoughts,
all of my dictation,
is the guardianship of squaller.
And now the privation of Anne.
This succulent dish,
resting at ease on my silver platter,
but only at a price.
I will serve you willingly, but
I will woefully,
serve up the innards of your status quo.
And gut men of your stature,
like a sheep.

Day 14

To my fellow poets,

for William Shakespeare

Discredit all that you will read about me.
Treasonous hands have bestowed difficult words
which even this immortal life cannot contain.
A life that could be credited to the entirety of
the dictionary, as I had intentionally rewritten
the English language.
And now those same words are accusatory.
Those of you who felt the sharp prick on Sonnet feet,
you knew that it was not true.
You knew without aid.
Intent, I was, to light the lamp.
Intent, I was, to lead.
So what of this man, Francis Bacon, you discuss?
In this meeting of true minds do you still distrust?
Take only my words, would you.
You wish I would make you privy to
the years 1585 through 1592?
- “to escape prosecution for deer poaching.”
- “minding the horses of theatre patrons in London.”
- “or that I might have been a country schoolmaster.”
Is a man not entitled to some secrecy?
There are some things even a Catholic schoolboy will not confess.
What of the hearsay?
My fellow poets.
They say we cannot be playwrights.
They say we cannot be storytellers.
But four hundred years prior, I had proven them wrong.
So what say they now?
And yes it is so, that I had said
“all the world's a stage,
and one man in his time plays many parts...”
So cast the final role, you in charge of my documentation.
What part now do you wish me to play?

Day 13

Letter to Kate

For William Blake

My Catherine Sophia,
as you would be known.
You were just Kate.
Child of Pity, full of mouth.
Widened but illiterate.
My ravishing apprentice,
who never refused me.
The first five years between us
may have been frightening, but
they were useful to you.
I turned you from a shaky
X
to a sturdy Mrs. William Blake.
Mrs. Catherine Sophia Blake.
My Katie Blake.
And your talented integers
covered with paint would
play like a girl on the
etchings of my heart.
No one would know,
you were my relief.
“Stay Kate! Keep just as you are –
I will draw your portrait –
for you have ever been an angel to me.”
Do not let those be the last words
I utter to you.
Let them be my first words to you.
“Do you pity me?-
Then I love you.”
Child of Pity, full of grief.
The five days after I had left you,
you stayed at my bedside,
doing what I asked of you.
Not as a pet-named lapdog,
But head resting on your hands,
head turned to the side
face slightly turned upward,
As I etched your portrait on the
sky of heaven.
And your mind filled it with color.

Day 12

River Crossing

for Langston Hughes


My descent
is to the South.

And it makes my pen itch
with anxiety.
For I have spent days
holding my breath
rattling alongside
white faces only
to enter a world of
brown.

I am following your gridwork
like a good son with
similar coloring.
But I know I would map
out those lines
ineffectually on large blue
carbonized paper.
You cannot edit mistakes like that.
I could have
been the man who connected
our two lives with this railway.
But the heat of that work
makes me want to undo my collar
and then never wear one again.

And instead, I will write pages,
for you.

Pages covered with stories
made of the black
and the white.

It will fill the time while, I,
a man of 18, come with news
of how I plan on charting my life.

I will write pages for you, Father,
will you read them?
This is what I wish to do-
This, is my livelihood.

Black letters rising,
escaping, transcending,
and then transmuting
to gold on the
barren, blank,
white page.
Why do you abhor us?


Sadness filling me,
I am remembering how you refuse to even attempt
an Exodus.

Your brown desert is a cut and dry refuge
from a world of black and white.


Maybe I was the one
who received the
sacraficial gene.
One that apparently
skips a generation.
and while you cower
in that shroud of denial,
remember that yours is not
covered with bloodstains
and bullet holes.


Excuse me, Father,
I must spend the last few
hours, busy at work.
The black blood
coursing through the
vein of my pen.
Escaping to,
and then from,
the two-sided
whiteness of you.
I, the Negro,
must Speak of Rivers
and crossing them.

Day 11

Pedi-ness

The awkward tomboy within me
hides in the balls of my feet.
Itching, rising up my leg
begging for a scratch.
"Oh, say something, please,
don't be so polite!"
It's because I am once
again trampled by a
little girl with
petty, perfect, pink
nails, and I had forgotten
to "pedi" at all.

Day 10

Dear, Run.

Arrows in your
belly and ribs
and rear
you were once
wounded, dear.
Limping,
Heartsick,
Struggling to
catch up
green from
my successes.
But I have never
been
hidden, easy,
in the shade.
Little did
you know I was still
clad in bloodied skins.
I was running,
still running,
still running,
still running,
from you.
Why do you chase me still?
Or are you trying to outrun
me once again?


based on Pocahontas, by Annie Leibovitz