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Karl Gluck |
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February (Poem to Myself) Lie, if you will, on your mattress hard as stone, imagine yourself to be Jesus, cross your legs as he did on his crucifix. Dream a sign that says "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum" above your head. This is that bad. Because life is out there yet your fingers cannot reach it, something prevents you every time you try, each day is a brand new chance at martyrdom. Remember if you will, no one promised you paradise, now, that's hard isn't it, to contemplate, as you watch the latest mystery on your HD TV, sipping your little something that always makes you feel so much better, as your mind spreads out to typhoon victims and victims of landslides, you know you are the lucky one, so arise, oh sacred idiot, go make coffee, for Christ's sake. Get off that hard board you pretend to sleep upon, go into the world, separate the waves before you, run your fingers through the Mediterranean mud, find a fish for some kind soul to eat. Book Shelf Poverty, a novel of one angry sentence on a paper bag just big enough for one beer and smelling of sweat. Isolation, sun-bleached to the color of a clam, with sand in its binding, when flipped rapidly, its pages moan like a seashell. Triumph, a deceptively large log, Illuminated with too many seraphs, too few words. Thinner than you would expect, Love was written by a clever Bohemian who knew what heartstrings blank pages can pull. Enlightenment, a volume of air on silk whose pages sound neither like the bells on a dancing girl's leg nor the shake of a witch doctor's rattle. Written on the skin of a human heart, Jealousy has been crinkled by many shaking hands with bulging grey veins. A primer with a brass cover shiny from the rubbing of sweaty palms entitled The Kitchen Sink sits heavily on the shelf. Its washers worn thin, each day readers pull and twist and are given nothing more than a few drops. Finally, dwarfed into anonymity by the overbearing oilcloth-covered parchment Tears and crushed flat by a gargoyle-headed bookend, Contentment, with two roses from a long-ago high school prom, still fragrant, pressed between pages fifty-eight and fifty-nine, lies forgotten in a place where my fingers are too thick and chubby to reach. Rare Moment Glass table glowing like a portal In December sunlight cold as stars. There are things to be read, Pondered, translated. These moments should be days. Yet all I am ever given is a fragile, fractured peace disturbed by conversations Laid on top of conversations like bedrock. In time it all gets compressed, mummified. My mouth becomes a desert Filled with howling wind. Anything, oh anything To stop checking my watch, To let an hour go by Without some worry About how the past moment was spent. Anything, oh anything To let all the questions Disappear, be at peace. Live free of the fear that I will be Chastised, scolded, humiliated. To sit at a table, Glowing like a star in the depths of Queens On the shortest, coldest day in December, To move the world outside With the firm stroke Of a cheap ballpoint pen. [Index] |
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Thunder Sandwich #26 - Summer/Fall 2005 |
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