August 28 (Ode To – -)

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                              I

‘Tick-tock’- the hands of the clock cruelly sound

Like a blade held against the whetting stone

Each second seems some new spark now rising,

Vaguely phosphorescent, disappearing

Like souls passing into infinity

Striking the hearthstone, then- into nothing

 

Streetside the scarlet-colored cyclamens

Sway with the weight of the wind’s warm whispers

While the slow fall of the night’s first fireflies

So strangely flickers in the vast expanse

Of the ever-darkening western sky,

Flitting like your recently struck match heads,

Blooming, instantaneously beyond

The pale recognition of their blossoms-

Those freshly plucked petals, faintly falling,

Lingering like fingers of heat lightning

Surrounding you in a velveteen gale

 

Darkness creeps in like a quiet lover

To brush away the pale blush of blue sky,

The delicate cobwebs of the last clouds-

White fluff, intricately woven with jewels,

Where each star hangs like a frail drop of dew

Encroaching night whispers a wine-dark flush

Along the expanse of the horizon,

Kisses the day into unconsciousness

(All is enveloped in this quietness

While we hold our breath for the moon to rise)

 

                              II

I get so god-damned depressed when I drink

That sometimes I could just drop dead, except

There is something hidden in your sly smile

And the way you dance makes me feel relieved

Just to know you are breathing I suppose

(Although a hundred pairs of hungry eyes-

Lights dimmed by the virtue of drunkenness-

Stare straight through me to steal a glimpse of you,

To somehow satiate their cold desires)

And there are of course your glimmering eyes,

Glinting with the mischievousness of drink

 

Your body sways like the hypnotists chain

So I stand transfixed, tapping out the beat

With my free hand as the band rambles on

(The other is still tight against your hip-

Two fingers through the belt loop of your jeans)

As I watch you sip your whiskey and coke

And smoke cigarette after cigarette,

The blue haze of your exhalations hangs

In relief against the late-summer sky,

Each breath falling like boats in a harbor

Rising again with each whim of the waves

Ebbing to and fro amidst the moonlight

Floating me headlong into elation

(My heart swells up like a birthday balloon)

 

(This somnambulist strains his tired eyes,

Opening them like a revelation:

I know that I shall spend my future days

Waiting to climb into bed beside you

Dreaming only of the way you would kiss)

‘My Sister’ (A Poem)

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(‘Play that old allegro in E-major’
‘The one rendered incomplete by his passing,
The passing of insouciant youthfulness
Into the embittered arms of old age?’
‘The one he was writing as he went insane’)

The valley echoes with lamentation
Daffodils sway with windswept heavy heads
In the dying light of this days decline
Swift hoofs strike the tired earth like anvils
The dust rises skywards in amber plumes
As the dolorous shades, the blues and greys,
Dissipate in the cold light of evening
So that the fog hanging amongst the reeds
Is reduced to a frail lingering dew
Retaining the prints, the ghosts of your tread
Held in such suspended animation
Pale memories to outlast the monarchs

My sister shot herself three years ago
But I still cannot begrudge her the act
For I know what it’s like to be alone
I guess I was just sad to let her go
To recognize all the joy we will miss
The summers at the lake house in Norway
Riding bicycles in the countryside
Cutting paths through the freshly fallen leaves
When the weather turns, bundling up inside
With our favorite books by firelight
Gazing out into the star-riddled sky
We whisper our plans for the future and
Each season go berry-picking in Maine
As the afternoon spreads out before us

From the volume ‘And Persephone Turned To Him Weeping’ 

‘The Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Concert (The Buskirk Chumley Theater, Bloomington)’: A Poem

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Then as the lights dimmed in the theater

a hush began to fall like a first snow

and silence soft and cool like eiderdown

blanketed us all in every row

As we sat there waiting in the darkness

for the players to emerge from the glow

that lingers like fog when the curtains part

I could not help myself once from stealing

an intermittent glance of your profile

from the safety of my periphery

In all these interminable moments

my heart brimmed with adoration until

it overflowed and made my palms perspire

I longed to reach out for the tiny hand

that you had rested upon your left thigh

to enclose it and clasp it in my own

like a locket hides a wordless promise

but i burned with the question left behind

by every word we’d not yet spoken

or had thought of but swallowed hard to hide

thinking ‘we’ll get around to it…in time’

but we never did and then here am i

wondering to myself ‘have i the right

to even dream of all that skin of yours

i’m swimming in each time i close my eyes

and even when i open them to find

that now every moment of my life

only feels like i’m drowning in your wake

catching fragmented glimmers of your smiles

from below the waves while you pass me by?’

We sat there like tourists among natives

at times chattering away with the air

of insouciant explorers, but at times

eyeing each other through the silent haze

only staggering suspicion sustains

all the while harboring a winsome hope

that the words we were leaving unspoken

would not now and forever want meaning

We were stunned, somehow ashamed that our eyes,

two tiny lights misting like windowpanes,

served as our foremost means of expression

And so we hung our heads abashedly,

stunned schoolchildren flush with embarrassment

caught in the act of uncovering that

It’s for a rare breed to savor silence

So silently we let that remain that

Though this is all I’ve ever thought about

Poem: ‘The Shower (You Are Never Really Alone, Are You?)’

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She shall sing the song of my arrival

Like an old sea-shanty as she showers

And I am left alone to contemplate
The mysterious nature of her room:
The thread count of her blue cotton bedsheets
Why falling water, whether from faucets
Or the clouds on high, reminds me of rain
But I hear the handles begin to turn
I am stirred from my evening reverie
Listening for each stray drip as it drops
Drainwards from the top of the shower head

Your form is still faint and fragmentary
As you take two steps across the threshold
The steam rises, and billowing above
The vague outlines of your bare arms and face,
Follows in your wake like a graveyard ghost

Now you stand disconsolately before
The cold, dead stare of your own reflection
In the impartial glare of the looking glass
You gaze through the mirror towards your epitaph:
Perhaps ‘Here Stands the Fairest of Them All’
You turn around to ask my opinion
As if you did not possess the foresight
To finger my stops when I move to speak
To pull from me the words you long to hear
As if I would not say them anyway
But we both know before they leave my lips:
‘You look wonderful with your towel and robe
Your eyes are twinkling like two falling stars
But perhaps you would look better without’

Your hair hangs bright-brown like sycamore boughs
Concealing your chest like a waterfall
Behind whose curtain the buds of your breasts
Rooted beneath the damp soil of your skin
Have bloomed from the bulb of your beating heart

Rouged to red by the birthing doctor’s hand
Something of your skin relies on fever
A flush creeps across your cheeks when we touch
Lip-prints linger upon your still-wet skin
In all of the places I have kissed you

I cup your breasts from behind like a thief
Or a schoolboy afraid to meet your gaze
Still embarrassed by his own nudity
Blushing for the sake of both our bodies
(At least for now as the lights are left on)
In the dark I develop my senses
Letting the tips of my fingers tip-toe
Down each vertebrae of your naked back
Like each is a step on a walking path
I fit your body like a puzzle piece
Like a hand slides into its winter glove
Let our tongues twist like two sleeping serpents
Hidden away from the dry heat of day
Buried below the depths of desert sand

After the eagerness has abated
Sleep rolls over you like a gentle tide
As your breath begins to slow and settle
Into the tender cadence of a snore
You dream something deeper than my madness

I leave a note where you’re sure to find it
In the breast pocket of your suit jacket
So at least you know that I think of you
Each and every time you go away
Whether for the few moments when you bathe
Or for the eight hours of the working day
(‘You are never really alone, are you?’)

‘How Will The Poets Sing of Suicide? (Eulogy)’

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Gilman chose chloroform over cancer

She picked the etherized rag over all

Tumbling into darkness like a dancer

 

An old ranch hand missing youths mystery

Hemingway took Chekov’s gun from the wall

And blasted himself into history

 

Rothko answered the Primitivists call

Slashing up his wrists in a rush of red

Fagan could fly, but in Rome chose to fall

 

Woolf stuffed the pockets of her overcoat

Worn atop her favorite dressing gown

With stones and drowned, fearing she’d missed the boat

 

Plath put out breakfast in old London town

Then sealed herself off with the gas left on

Sexton chose her car with the garage door down

 

Gros sank in the Seine like a yearling fawn

In like a lion, fished out like a sheep

How does one mistake Baron’s ease for brawn?

 

Poor Jeanne, despondent enough for two

Dove three stories into Stygian sleep

Days from the date her second child was due

 

While watching industry and commerce creep

Christopher Wood chose rustic scenes to paint

By train he gave his passage to the deep

 

Tchaikovsky toasted with cholera-taint

Amidst a Petersburg epidemic

The spectre of the failed sixth, his name saint

 

A man may break his bones with stone or stick

But van Gogh revolved around the quick sigh

Of stars burning to singe the vigils wick

 

Like Mayakovsky he died by the gun

The modern end to the everlasting

When the sun reveals what the moon has done

The bane of the clipper ships half-masting

As the daylight plays out how the war was won

Quicker than the pole rigged up for casting

Removed of worm so nimbly there is naught

Left with mind enough or tongue to be taught

‘Balloons (Sonnet)’

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the old coats of paint have started to peel
Cracking in sorry clefts near the wainscot
it’s a wonder what weather can reveal
secrets we hid and sorrows we forgot

most of these chores will bother me for weeks
Braving the swaying stairs to the attic
can wait until i’ve wrapped around these leaks
anything at all to soothe this static

with five senses to feel four seasons change
Each day you remain my single desire
still content to see the breeze kiss the range
sunsets go starless as our souls catch fire

with your name stuck in the back of my throat
filled like a balloon with your breath i float

The Confessional Poet, or ‘Son of a Bitch’

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addiction, Alexander Frost, childhood, divorce, drugs, loneliness, Love Anchor, lovers, memory, Norway, poetry, relationships, sex, time

“Everyone has his own way of mourning the passage of time”
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Resolution: Two haikus:
“Doesn’t matter whom
As long as your with someone
Like a parasite”

“The weight falls away
When you expose your slight breasts
It makes my heart pound”

A fairy-tale:
I can’t live to drink, dance, and fuck. All I want now is peace. Peace for you and peace for me. I see couples holding hands and kissing, legs intertwined as they stretch out on blankets. They dote on each other beneath an infinite expanse of sky. But what is to be said of lovers? They do not contemplate the atmosphere and what lies beyond the blue. They are oblivious to the fact that the universe is constantly expanding, that ancient stars have used up the remainder of their fuel after billions of years and have collapsed under their own weight. They are ignorant of the laws of nature. They are selfish lovers. They have created their own universe, one without time, one without destruction, one without death. There is only the “now” they experience when they look into each other’s eyes. The only physics that governs their movements is the physics of love-making.
The gas giants are not as greedy as lovers.
(good god, i want to collapse you with my weight)
(when i see you i want to fill my lungs with your breath)
Some will say I am selfish for the way I think, but I have learned that it’s no use living your life for someone else.
I would say that I’m sorry, but I refuse to formulate an apology. I am a result of a sad distraction. Once upon a time, two people thought they couldn’t live without each other. They fucked. They exchanged fluids. The process of reproduction occurred. A baby gestated inside a mother’s womb. The baby was something they created together and they felt blessed. They got married to fulfill societal norms, to rid baby the displeasure of being deemed a bastard. The mommy and daddy tried to be happy, but mommy was sick of daddy’s little weenie and they started sleeping in different bedrooms. Baby grew up thinking this was normal behavior for two married adults. They never fucked because one baby was already too much of a financial and emotional burden. Maybe mommy’s little monster reminded her too much of daddy. Anyway, mommy needed something to fill her up on the inside. She started fucking someone else, someone different from daddy, but an idiot all the same. Baby had trouble sleeping. He could hear them outside laughing. (He would later grow up to be an insomniac). Baby saw him kiss mommy. He told daddy, but not without making sure that daddy wouldn’t blow mommy’s brains all over the walls. He didn’t want daddy to hurt mommy and then hurt himself. He didn’t want to be left all alone. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be so small and so alone in such a great big world. The thought of it made him cry and cry until he made himself sick. Mommy and daddy got divorced like the majority of couples living in America. Now mommy works too much. She is afraid of losing focus, of getting distracted, of falling into despair. She doesn’t want to think. Daddy tried to stop thinking in other ways. After bearing the impossible burden of adultery, he couldn’t believe that he had to start all over again.
He began to question free will. He took methamphetamine. He stayed awake for days and days and everything was beautiful. He was afraid to fall asleep, afraid that he would miss something, that maybe someone would invade his home and steal his livelihood once again. He enjoyed watching the warm, embryonic pink of the sunrise erase the faint light of the stars. He liked to wonder if his former lover was watching the same marvelous events unfold.
But he couldn’t stay awake forever. He found God in his isolation and God gave him peace. He sleeps in the arms of the Lord, blanketed by the fleece from the lamb of god. He walks in the sweetest, greenest, most beautiful pastures, guided by the soft hand of the almighty shepherd. He isn’t alone anymore. He is awed by the idea that he was never alone in the first place, that all he had to do was reach out his hands and pray.
I am jealous of his serenity.
Sometimes I wish mommy’s plane would crash, that there would be a mechanical failure or some act of pilot error. That way she wouldn’t have to work so hard for a selfish son, that she would never age, that she wouldn’t cry by herself in a hotel room at the sight of her crow’s feet. She is so afraid of getting old. She is beginning to look like my grandmother. I made sure to tell her that I thought she was beautiful in her last mother’s day card.
Do you blame her for her insecurity? Why wouldn’t you want to stay beautiful in this beautiful world?

Concluding Confessions:
Sometimes the images my eyes and brain process are so beautiful that it’s disgusting.
I reward myself with food.
Sometimes I miss you.
I take drugs because I’m lonely.
Sometimes I feel bad for other people, but normally I feel bad for myself.
I think about killing myself, but I don’t want to hurt my beautiful mother. She tries very hard for me. She works so much and never takes a break. I spend the money she gives me on chemical distractions. I’m living my life for someone else.
I feel like a selfish piece of shit.
I spent all of my time with you. I regret most of it.
I mostly used you for sex. You’re easy. We both felt better about ourselves when our clothes were off.
Thinking about how sluttish you are makes me horny. I still think about how you let me come inside you. I wonder if you let him do it too.
I’m so glad I didn’t get you pregnant.
Every day I am worried that my mother will die and leave me all alone. I am scared of living with only memories. I am afraid that someday I will lose them and have nothing. Memories of memories.
It’s depressing to be alone, but being with you was worse.
I hope that someday someone will refrain from using me and genuinely want to spend their time with me.
I am scared to death of sleeping alone.
I would feel elated to know that someone was thinking about me.
My heart would pound every time she called. Every time we kissed we would create an infinite spark. That spark would escape from the confines of gravity and drift infinitely through space. It would look like starlight on some other planet.
I am selfish. I want all of you. To me, your spittle is more significant than my sister’s master’s thesis project.
I want everyone to love me.
I know you don’t give a shit, but I’m glad that you read this far.
I feel closer to you. Here, I’ve shared a part of my life with you.
It all seems worth it when you share it with someone.
You have made me thankful.
You should feel humbled because the world would not be the same if one person did not exist.

.

Photograph: A. Frost, 1988. 2 Years of Age.