So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

If you had told me that a Beyonce visual album would have introduced me to my new favorite poet/poem, I might not have believed you. But here we are, and thanks to "Lemonade," I have discovered this poem by Warsan Shire. Let's just say it hits very close to home.

for women who are "difficult" to love

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn't you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

 Warsan Shire. She looks pretty easy to love to me.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Hello friends....

Per usual, I'm busy and blogging has fallen by the wayside. I thought I would take a moment, though, to post a poem that I just discovered, thanks to a student! In my Introduction to Creative Writing class, I asked my students to send me a poem they are fond of and briefly explain why they like it. Most of the poems I have received are familiar to me, but this one wasn't and I am quite taken with it. I think you will be, too.

Famous         by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.  

A Poem For Autumn

The English department at UW-Eau Claire is lucky enough to count Max Garland, Wisconsin's Poet Laureate among our current faculty. Max is an incredibly talented poet (obviously) and also one of the nicest people I have ever met. The choir I recently joined, The Master Singers, commissioned Max to write a poem for our composer-in-residence to set to music for our upcoming Fall concert. It's just starting to feel like autumn here so I thought I would post it. It's beautiful and if you want to hear it set to music (with a gorgeous cello accompaniment), come to our concert on October 12!

October Song

Show me the changing light on the river
And I’ll show you a portrait of time
Its blessings and burdens and blurring of borders
Between what’s yours and what’s mine

High in the arc of the waning season
The wild ragged flocks wind their way
By reckonings older than roadmap or reason
Moonlight, starlight, the land’s old sway.

Pay attention to this, cries the moon
How time pares the light away soon
Though deep in the sky, constellations and I
Will tend to the darkness’s wounds.

Rapids are the water wanting to sing
Wind is how cottonwoods earn their wings
Intimations of snow in the field’s afterglow
Tell more of what’s coming than we want to know

There’s wealth in the mill and the market
And a singular wealth of mind
There’s a wealth of gold in the tamarack
That the lucky among us may find

For the silos wearing sunsets like crowns
And the oak leaves changing ruby to rust
For the marshes on the outskirts of castaway towns
This is a song for the fugitive dust
A song for the fugitive dust

Another poem

I know it's unusual for me to have back-to-back posts with poems, but I am too emotionally spent to write/reflect, so I must use Dean Young's words instead. It's been a doozy of a summer -- I had major surgery and my heart broken all within a month. The healing from both events has been complicated -- allergic reactions and one incision that refuses to close up, and my heart, well, it continues to beat for the one who destroyed it. 

I am teaching Introduction to Creative Writing this fall and the task of selecting poems for my students to read has proved daunting only in that there are SO MANY I want to share with them. Some, like this one, I don't think fledgling writers would necessarily be able to really "get" - it breaks a lot of rules (which is why it's great) and it's hard to get away with some of the things Young gets away with here unless you really know what you're doing. From a craft perspective, the takeaways might be inscrutable for beginning creative writers.

Some of this poem, I would argue, is filler, is clutter -- but very intentionally so. The effect is that the astonishing lines and images (and there are a lot of them) seem to burst out from the din he creates with the frantic rhythm of his very free verse. And those moments in the poem become all the more transcendent because of how they explode out from the white noise. They are, literally, arresting. Read it and I think you'll see what I mean. Is every idea in this poem "essential"? I don't think so -- except in how the non-essentials make the drama of the jaw-dropping lines all the more impactful. This poem has the power to stop you in your tracks. Enjoy.

Whale Watch

Sometimes you may feel alone and crushed 

by what you cannot accomplish 

but the thought of failure is a fuzz 

we cannot rid ourselves of 

anymore than the clouds can their moisture. 

Why would they want to anyway? 

It is their identity and purpose 

above the radish and radicchio fields. 

Just because a thing can never be finished 

doesn't mean it can't be done. 

The most vibrant forms are emergent forms. 

In winter, walk across the frozen lake 

and listen to it boom and you will know 

something of what i mean. 

It may be necessary to go to Mexico. 

Do not steal tombstones but if you do, 

do not return them as it is sentimental 

and the sentimental is a larval feeling 

that bloats and bloats but never pupates. 

Learn what you can of the coyote and shark. 

Do not encourage small children 

to play the trombone as the shortness 

of their arms may prove quite frustrating, 

imprinting a lifelong aversion to music 

although in rare cases a sense of unreachability 

may inspire operas of delicate auras. 

If you hook, try to slice. 

I have not the time to fully address 

Spinoza but put Spinoza on your list. 

Do not eat algae. 

When someone across the table has a grain of rice 

affixed to his nostril, instead of shouting, 

Hey, you got rice hanging off your face! 

thereby perturbing the mood 

as he speaks of his mother one day in the basement, 

brush your nose as he watches 

and hidden receptors in the brain 

will cause him to brush his own nose 

ergo freeing the stupid-looking-making rice. 

There is so much to say and shut up about. 

As regards the ever-present advice-dispensing susurration 

of the dead, ignore it; they think everyone's 

going to die. I have seen books with pink slips 

marking vital passages 

but this I do not recommend 

as it makes the book appear foolish 

like a dog in a sweater. 

Do not confuse size with scale: 

the cathedral may be very small, 

the eyelash monumental. 

Know yourself to be made mostly of water 

with a trace of aluminum, a metal 

commonly used in fuselages. 

For flying, hollow bones are best or 

no bones at all as in the honeybee. 

Do not kill yourself. 

Do not put the hammer in the crystal carafe 

except as a performance piece. 

When you are ready to marry, 

you will know but if you don't, 

don't worry. The bullfrog never marries, 

ditto the space shuttle 

yet each is able to deliver its payload: 

i.e. baby bullfrogs and satellites, respectively. 

When young, fall in and out of love like a window 

that is open and only about a foot off the ground. 

Occasionally land in lilacs 

or roses if you must 

but remember, the roses 

have been landed in many times. 

If you do not surprise yourself, 

you won't surprise anyone else. 

When the yo-yo "sleeps", give a little tug 

and it will return unless it has "slept" too long. 

Haiku should not be stored with sestinas 

just as one should never randomly mix 

the liquids and powders beneath the kitchen sink. 

Sand is both the problem and the solution for the beach. 

To impress his teacher, Pan-Shan lopped off 

his own hand, but to the western mind, 

this seems rather extreme. 

Neatly typed, on-time themes 

strongly spelled are generally enough. 

Some suggest concentrating on one thing 

for a whole life but narrowing down 

seems less alluring than opening up 

except in the case of the blue pencil 

with which to make lines on one side 

of the triangle so it appears to speed through the firmament. 

Still, someone should read everything 

Galsworthy wrote. Everyone knows 

it's a race but no one's sure of the finish line. 

You may want to fall to your knees 

and beg for forgiveness without knowing precisely 

for what. You may have a hole in your heart. 

You may solve the equation but behind it 

lurks another equation. You may never get 

what you want and feel like you're already a ghost 

and a failed ghost at that, unable to walk through walls. 

There will be a purple hat. Ice cream. 

You may almost ruin the wedding. 

You may try to hang yourself but be saved 

by a kid come home early from school 

or you may be that kid who'll always remember 

his mother that day in the basement, 

how she seemed to know he'd done something wrong 

before he even knew 

and already forgave him, 

the way she hugged him and cried. 

Nothing escapes damage for long, 

not the mountain or the sky. 

You may be unable to say why 

a certain song makes you cry until 

it joins the other songs, 

even the one that's always going on 

and is never heard, the one that sings us into being. 

On the phone, the doctor may tell you to come in. 

It may rain for three days straight. 

Already you've been forgiven, 

given permission. Each week, cryptograms 

come with the funny papers. 

You're not alone. 

You may see a whale.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry: Happy Birthday, Nabokov edition

Today is Vladimir Nabokov's birthday and it's also National Poetry Month, so I'm celebrating both by posting a poem of my own (!) that was recently published in Measure.

Nabokov and his wife Vera shared a love of lepidoptery (collecting butterflies) - and he drew butterflies alongside his inscriptions in first editions gifted to her. 

Their relationship is legendary -- in a recent article in the Atlantic entitled "The Legend of Vera Nabokov," Koa Beck considers how Vera's support and devotion to her husband's career impacted his success. They are the original power couple; think Claire and Francis Underwood, replacing politics with literature and minus the murder and creepy threesomes.

Vladimir died in 1977; Vera, not until 1991. I wrote this poem in grad school as I tried to imagine what she did with all the butterflies after his death. 

Vera vs. the Butterflies

The eastern side of every minute of mine is already colored by the light of our impending meeting.
All the rest is dark, boring, you-less. – Vladimir Nabokov to his wife Vera, 1937

She had already lost him
and now his winged darlings
were hers to keep or kill.

She shared his fascination
with fragility and flight,
but walking in the woods

alone, armed with the net
he had given her, noting
each abandoned chrysalis,

unusual flecks of blue
on a Parnassius apollo,
she knew they had to go.

A book suggested pinching
thorax between thumb
and middle finger to snap

the exoskeleton for a quick
death, but she couldn’t bear
their blood on her hands.

Suffocation in a kill jar –
too inhumane. She decided
finally to freeze them, let the air

do her dirty work. Watching
their wings pulse to stillness,
she imagined his delight

at the sudden flutter
of company, diaphanous
prologue to their reunion.

V & V

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

In one of my first grad school poetry courses, I came across a Muriel Rukeyser poem that struck me as rather perfect -- simple, elegant, and effortless-seeming -- the kind of poem you instantly understand and enjoy reading the 1st time and the 1,000th time. I've continued to read her and the more I read, the more it seems downright criminal that she's not more well-known. At the AWP conference last week, I picked up a nonfiction book by her called The Life of Poetry. It was published in 1949, was out of print for a while, and then reissued by the Paris Press in the mid-90s. I started reading it on the plane home and it's mind-blowing. Everything she says about poetry is so relevant, so topical for today even though it was written over 60 years ago. She makes a case for why poetry is a cultural necessity, something all human beings need, and might in fact be the very thing that saves us from ourselves. 

So I'll share two of her poems with you here-- the one I discovered back in grad school, "Yes," and one I read for the first time last week, "Coney Island," which is awesome because I LOVE Coney Island (I've written a poem about it as well, though it's not as good as this one).

Yes

It’s like a tap-dance
Or a new pink dress,
A shit-naive feeling
Saying Yes

Some say Good morning
Say say God bless–
Some say Possibly
Some say Yes.

Some say Never
Some say Unless
It’s stupid and lovely
To rush into Yes.

What can it mean?
It’s just like life,
One thing to you
One to your wife.

Some go local
Some go express
Some can’t wait
To answer Yes.

Some complain
Of strain and stress
Their answer may be
No for Yes.

Some like failure
Some like success
Some like Yes Yes
Yes Yes Yes.

Open your eyes,
Dream but don’t guess.
Your biggest surprise
Comes after Yes.

 
Coney Island

Coney Island, Coney island,
No need to let me know,
No need to tell me so
I need you now to show me…

Show me what’s under the counter,
Show me what’s under your skin,
Show me the way to get out
And I’ll show you the way to get in.



Show me life, show me lives, people in dives,
Show me yells, show me smells, and grimy hotels,
Clams, yams, lobster and shrimps,
Sand, candy, panders and pimps,
Show me bim, show me bam, bamboozle me,
Booze me and use me and foozle me,
Show me rides, show me slides, people in tides,
Show me money, show me funny, show me the sea,
                                                             You, show, me.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry: Slightly Political Edition

There's just so much going on in politics at the moment that it seems appropriate to post a poem that veers on the political, or as close to it as I'm comfortable with in poetry. I rag on free verse sometimes, but I adore this poem by Adrienne Rich. It has no recognizable form per se, but its logic is understandable and the shape the poem takes (somewhat fragmented, with some bursts of white space) feels absolutely right. The last stanza floors me every time I read it.

The story of how I found this poem is somewhat interesting. I had rented a Zipcar and upon returning it, I was checking the various compartments to make sure I wasn't leaving anything behind. In the glove compartment, I found a copy of Rich's The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004. I kept it (is that stealing? or finders keepers?) and this was the first poem in it I read. 

Transparencies

That the meek word like the righteous word can bully
that an Israeli soldier interviewed years
after the first intifada could mourn on camera
what under orders he did, saw done, did not refuse
that another leaving Beit Jala could scrawl
on a wall:   We are truely sorry for the mess we made
is merely routine    word that would cancel deed
That human equals innocent and guilty
That we grasp for innocence whether or no
is elementary    That words can translate into broken bones
That the power to hurl words is a weapon
That the body can be a weapon
any child on playground knows    That asked your favorite word
                                                              in a game
you always named a thing, a quality, freedom or river
(never a pronoun, never God or War)
is taken for granted    That word and body
are all we have to lay on the line
That words are windowpanes in a ransacked hut, smeared
by time's dirty rains, we might argue
likewise that words are clear as glass till the sun strikes it blinding

But that in a dark windowpane you have seen your face
That when you wipe your glasses the text grows clearer
That the sound of glass crunching comes at the height of the                                                                                                                         wedding
That I can look through glass
into my neighbor's house
but not my neighbor's life
That glass is sometimes broken to save lives
That a word can be crushed like a goblet underfoot
is only what it seems, part question, part answer: how
                                                              you live it.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Summer is winding down as we head deeper into August, the Sunday of months (in my opinion). Like Sundays, August inspires lethargy and sometimes dread at the thought of being productive again come Monday/September. I, for one, am eager for fall, my favorite season. I'm ready to say sayonara to summer.

Late Summer

by Jennifer Grotz

 

Before the moths have even appeared

to orbit around them, the streetlamps come on,

a long row of them glowing uselessly

 

along the ring of garden that circles the city center,

where your steps count down the dulling of daylight.

At your feet, a bee crawls in small circles like a toy unwinding.

 

Summer specializes in time, slows it down almost to dream.

And the noisy day goes so quiet you can hear

the bedraggled man who visits each trash receptacle

 

mutter in disbelief: Everything in the world is being thrown away!

Summer lingers, but it’s about ending. It’s about how things

redden and ripen and burst and come down. It’s when

 

city workers cut down trees, demolishing

one limb at a time, spilling the crumbs

of twigs and leaves all over the tablecloth of street.

 

Sunglasses! the man softly exclaims

while beside him blooms a large gray rose of pigeons

huddled around a dropped piece of bread.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine posted one of my poems on his blog. I'd like to return the favor -- so here are two pieces I'm particularly fond of by Peter Swanson. Peter took my formal poetry workshop at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and decided to trust my feedback even after I misspelled "scansion" on the board on the first day. Since class ended in March, we've stayed in touch and continued to workshop poems in various bars around Boston. Fun fact: He also got his M.F.A. at Emerson. Currently, he lives in Somerville with his wife (the talented Charlene Sawyer, who designed my new website) and their delightful cat, Finty. Hope you like his work as much as I do.

First Day of Kindergarten

You will now be judged by those who do not love you.
The life you had before will be given new names:
recess, reading-time, the weekend, summer.
And the world will be divided into two—

into those of us who spend our years
attempting to undo that day, to find
the comforts of the book-lined nursery,
the ancient house that's filled with family,

And into those who try to replicate
the hour when the dullness of their lives
exploded in a thousand leaves of fire.

Jetsetters and the dream-besotted,
you will know them by their distant gaze,
their eyes, once yours, now fixed on trailing lights.


Dainty Curtains

"It was a room-shaped room with furniture-shaped furniture and dainty curtains."
– Ian Fleming, Thunderball

Our dreams, and nothing else, imagine rooms
Not shaped like rooms. We wake in bed-shaped beds,
And drag our human shapes through day-shaped days.
New shapes will never change our waking words.

Our love, be it ordinary, murderous,
Bestial, spiritual, always assumes the shape Of love. The words define themselves for us:

Give us this day our bread-shaped bread
And forgive us our dreams that come stranger
Than fiction. Forgive us our bodies
That wither like bodies, and give us our coffins

In their coffiny-shapes. For Heaven,
We know, is devoid of rooms and furniture,
While Hell is lined with dainty curtains.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

I was sitting at a bar having dinner by myself the other night (which now that I'm over 30, have no shame about doing and actually rather enjoy) and the two girls next to me were venting about the men in their lives. One girl asked her friend to hold on to her phone until they left the bar so she couldn't text her boyfriend. "I'm going to want it back after I have a few drinks, but DON'T LISTEN TO ME, no matter what," she instructed her friend. "I am not texting him until he apologizes."

In honor of those two girls, and girls struggling with men everywhere, I offer this untitled poem by D.A. Powell.

dogs and boys can treat you like trash. and dogs do love trash

to nuzzle their muzzles. they slather with tongues that smell like their nuts

but the boys are fickle when they lick you. they stick you with twigs

and roll you over like roaches. then off with another: those sluts

with their asses so tight you couldn't get them to budge for a turd

so unlike dogs: who will turn in a circle showing & showing you their butts

a dog on a leash: a friend in the world. he'll crawl into bed on all fours

and curl up at your toes. he'll give you his nose. he'll slobber on cuts

a dog is not fragile; he's fixed. but a boy: cannot give you his love

he closes his eyes to your kisses. he hisses. a boy is a putz

with a sponge for a brain. and a mop for a heart: he'll soak up your love

if you let him and leave you as dry as a cork. he'll punch out your guts

when a boy goes away: to another boy's arms. what else can you do

but lie down with the dogs. with the hounds and the curs. with the mutts

R.I.P. Diesel, who passed away on 3/28/2012

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Last week, the poetry world lost an icon: Wislawa Szymborska. A few days before her death, a good friend sent me a few poems, noting that she was one of the few poets he had ever connected with. Some good tributes have popped up, like this one from The New Yorker and this one on Slate. I will honor her, and my friend who admitted feeling personally affected by news of her passing, by posting the same two poems he sent me, coincidentally just days before she died.

Some People Like Poetry

Some people--
that is not everybody
Not even the majority but the minority.
Not counting the schools where one must,
and the poets themselves,
there will be perhaps two in a thousand.

Like--
but we also like chicken noodle soup,
we like compliments and the color blue,
we like our old scarves,
we like to have our own way,
we like to pet dogs.

Poetry--
but what is poetry.
More than one flimsy answer
has been given to that question.
And I don't know, and don't know, and I
cling to it as to a life line.

Funeral

"so suddenly, who would've expected it"

"stress and cigarettes, I told him"

"not bad, thank you"

"unwrap these flowers"

"his brother's heart did him in too, must run in the family"

"I wouldn't have recognized you with that beard"

"it's his own fault, he was always getting himself into something"

"that new guy was supposed to speak. I don't see him anywhere"

"Kazek is in Warsaw, Tadek went abroad"

"you were the only one with enough sense to bring an umbrella"

"so what that he was the most talented of them all"

"it's a walk-through room, Baska won't go for it"

"sure he was right, but that still isn't really the reason"

"and a paint job on both doors, guess how much"

"two egg yolks, one tablespoon sugars

"it was none of his business, why did he mess with it"

"only in blue, and in small sizes"

"five times with no answer"

"all right, I could have done it, but so could you have"

"good thing she had that part-time job"

"I don't know, maybe the relatives"

"the priest is a veritable Belmondo"

"I've never been to this part of the cemetery"

"I dreamed about him last week, something struck me"

"the daughter's not bad-looking"

"it happens to all of us"

"give my best to the widow, I have to make it to"

"it sounded much more solemn in Latin"

"it came and went"

"good-bye Ma'am"

"let's go grab a beer somewhere"

"call me, we'll talk"

"either No. 4 or 12"

"I'm going this way"

"we're not"

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Fun titles edition!

Today, I will select poems relatively at random to post here, based solely on the promise/awesomeness of the title. Titling a poem can be colossally difficult -- so difficult that I often wish I could make like Emily Dickinson and just forgo titles all together. The poems I'm pasting in below I only chose to read because of the title (I found them all on Representative Poetry Online ).

Up first we have....

A book a jug and a dame

by everyone's favorite timeless poet, Anonymous

A book a jug and a dame,
And a nice cozy nook for the same;

"And I don't care a damn,"
Said Omar Khayyam,
"What you say, it's a great little game."

Alright, so it's more of a limerick...but I didn't know that until I read it. And I only read it because the title made me smile.

The next one that caught my eye was

The eyes of toads are great

by E.D. Blodgett (b. 1935)

The eyes of toads are great
wells of sadness: where
do they gaze but into fate

to see nothing there?

Hmmm. This is probably actually untitled and just titled with the first line for indexing purposes. And the first line is sneaky because it's not that the eyes of toads are "great" so much as "great wells of sadness." I feel tricked.

Moving on.....

Recipe for a Salad
Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

To make this condiment, your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard-boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes,
passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give.

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole.
Of mordant mustard add a single spoon,
Distrust the condiment that bites so soon;
But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.

Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,
And twice with vinegar procured from town;
And, lastly, o'er the flavored compound toss
A magic soupcion of anchovy sauce.

O, green and glorious! O herbaceous treat!
'T would tempt the dying anchorite to eat:
Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,
And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl!
Serenely full, the epicure would say,
"Fate cannot harm me, I have dined to-day."

Really wish I had eaten lunch before sitting down to blog.

Oh, the Sexual Life of the Camel is another anonymous limerick too silly/vulgar to reproduce here, but click on the link to read it.

I can't believe this is for real; it's like the Onion version of a poem title:

On the Dark, Still, Dry Warm Weather, Occasionally Happening in the Winter Months
Gilbert White (1720-1793)

....I can't bring myself to paste it. It's a 44-line poem in rhyming couplets about mild weather.

Finally, I found this title intriguing and can't decide how I feel about the poem itself....but it's certainly interesting. And angry and gutsy. I think I like it? I don't know. Some of the line breaks feel really random (probably intentionally so) and that bugs me. After reading it a few times, I do think it's more sophisticated/complex than it initially appears. It's a rant, but a well-crafted rant and I guess it's got me thinking, which is a good thing.

Male Rage Poem

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco (b. 1949)

Feminism, baby, feminism.

This is the anti-feminist poem.

It will get called the anti-

feminist poem. Like it or not.

Dedicated to all my friends who

can't get it up in the night,

accused of having male rage during the

day. This is for the poor buggers.

This is for me and the incredible boredom

of arguing about feminism, the right

arguments, the wrong arguments, the

circular argument, the arguments that stem

from one bad affair, from one

bad job, no job -- whatever; fill in the

blanks _____ _____, fill in the ways

in which you have been hurt. Then I'll

fill in the blanks, and we'll send rosters

of hurt to each other, mail them, stock

them for the record to say: Giorgio Di Cicco

has been hurt this way x many times.

We will stock closets of Sarah's hurt,

Barbara's hurt, my hurt, Bobby's hurt.

This is where the poem peters out ... oops! -- that's

penis mentality, that's patriarchal bullshit,

sexist diction and These line lengths are

male oriented.

Where did he get so much male rage?

From standing out like a man for a bunch of

years, and being called the dirty word.

"When you are 21 you will become a Man."

Christ! Doomed to enslave women ipso

facto, without even the right training.

Shouldn't have wasted ten years playing

baseball; should have practiced

whipping, should have practiced tying up the

girl next door, giving her cigarette burns ...

oops! Male rage again! MALE RAGE -- the words ring out --

worse than RING AROUND THE COLLAR, worse than KISSED

THE GIRLS AND MADE THEM CRY, jeezus, male rage

in kindergarten. MALE RAGE. You've got

male rage; I look inside myself and scrounge

for all this male rage. Must be there

somewhere. Must be repressing it. I write poems

faster and faster, therapeutically, to make sure

I get all the rage out. But someone's

always there to say, Male Rage -- more Male Rage.

I don't leave the house, workin' on my male rage.

Things may lighten up. My friends may meet

fine women at a party someday and know

what to say to them, like "I'm not a Man and

you're not a Woman, but let's have dinner

anyway, let's fuck with our eyes closed and

swap roles for an hour."

I'm tired of being a man.

Of having better opportunities,

better job offers,

too much money.

I'm tired of going to the YMCA and

talking jock in the locker room.

I'm tired of all those poems where

I inadvertently used the word "whore."

I'm tired of having little blonde secretaries type out

all my poems for me.

I'm tired of being a man.

I'm tired of being a sexist.

I'm afraid of male rage.

I'm afraid of my male rage,

this growing thing, this buddy, this

shadow, this new self, this stranger.

It's there. It's there! How could it have

happened? I ate the right things, said

yes to my mother, thought the good

thoughts.

Doc -- give it to me straight.

How long before this male rage

takes over completely?

The rest of your life.

Take it like a man.