burrow

    by Natalie Belz

Let me go back to the earth
Let my body fall, limp and lifeless
To the ground.
Where the soft soil
Might swallow me.
Let the weeds and tall grasses
Grow up beside me.
Let their roots burrow in my skull.
Let their long blades
Weave blankets.
Slowly and silently
Wrap about my body
To hide nature’s work,
To leave life around me oblivious,
To let the world forget me.

Let my limbs decay,
Let me grow every day
Slowly deeper into the earth.

Let me go
Back to the cycle of life
Back to the roots of the trees,
Let me rest in the clay
Be at peace in the cool shade
For the rest of eternity.
Let me fall to the earth
And let the world go on.

 

unusable titles for a mike tyson biography

Reader’s Digest for Kids

Egyptian Architecture: The Early Years

Convergences: Message, Method, Medium

People Magazine

1938

This Crazy Thirst: Selected Poems

Five-Minute Mysteries

The Emergence of the Roulade

Navajo Legends of the Silver Screen

The Biography of Harry S Truman

 
 

 

list of weeping statues

“Multiple ways to avoid stuff but really
no way to actually not do anything,”

says my neighbor Daniel as he, once again,
fails to wash/wax his Volkswagen.

Daniel works for the eldercare police.
He says he’s also a novelist and essayist.

“Well, I need to go inside now. Your wife
has been sneaking over at night,”

I say, whimsically, almost profoundly,
my hands extended in a Christ-like welcome,

though no stigmata apparent. “Haha,”
retorts Daniel, occasionally onto me.

I amble into my shady hut, my thatched
domicile, my crappy bachelor lodge

to retrieve a Diet Coke from the oven.
Those were carefree days. Innocuous Dan,

his dull car, our banter, and finally
a baked no-calorie cola, bubbly hot,

the way clues lead into deeper mystery—
a half-tuned television on somewhere.

.

to the spice girls, to make much of thyme

Gather ye thyme, Spice Girls, before May
arrives with its common garden pests
like aphids and cabbage maggots,

for although you smile on TV today,
or at least you did about 15 years ago,
celebrity status is still a-flying, etc., so I

am recommending that ye gather thyme
and sell it out of the back of a lorrie
in one of those markets, and I don’t mean

Lorrie Morgan. It would suck to reap, dry,
bag and peddle anything out of the back
of Lorrie Morgan—country music singer.

 

trios of tercets

 
Claims As Questions

Claims are trickier
framed as a questions?
They’re harder to refute?

Do you ever do that.
Do you trick me.
How are you.

I’d like to hear from you
again at some point
because I miss you?

 

Statements Half-True

Today is amazing.
You are beautiful.
I’m feeling chill.

The past is behind me.
I’m excited about the future.
I know what I’m doing.

I’m thankful for you.
Such a great friend.
I’m just so happy.

 

a great man

A great man is like an oak tree,

his analogies like leaves

falling beautifully to the ground

of everyone else suddenly

understanding what he’s talking

about. You must rake them.

don’t overthink it

The interior layout of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon’s newest book, Word on the Street, is feckin’ shite.

However, it does come with a CD.

http://us.macmillan.com/book.aspx?isbn=9780374261085

stories

Once upon a time
they all lived happily ever after.

But that time passed,
and one thing led to another.

You know how the stories go.
One by one they stopped living,

sometimes in bunches.
So happiness was muted.

More than muted, it was fucked.
So they each secretly wondered

different things about tasks
and how to perform them.

They each sort of kissed
each other in different ways,

then stopped kissing each other
and left well enough alone,

as the saying goes. Drifted.
I liked them. They were good people,

the sort you’d enjoy wincing
over old tales with. They are

my friends. I miss them.
I still love them, in a way.

.
[after viewing John Dufresne's "How to Write a Short Story"]

starlight quintets

The poem I have myself inspired
over lo these dreadful decades
is too long and convoluted
to warrant retyping but does boast

a few interesting turns like when
you arrive on the scene, puff
around aromatically, then leave,
or when the motorcycle twists

too hard left, ends up spinning
on its foot-peg gyroscopically—
I mean come on, critics. Not
every human horror is a shock

novella. Some of us just crumble
inwardly until we become relevant
to the public. Publishable.
I’m no better than the next

firewood scout who came not back
to camp. I, too, am combing
these Adirondack slopes and gullies
for my sleeping form. They say

if Shakespeare styles it sleep,
it’s sleep. So if I’m sleeping in the loam
awaiting the waxing of my bloom,
paused among storm-wracked timbers,

call it suspense. Sell it wholesale
as the massive downturn everyone
was half suspecting, one eye open—
and yes, we do endure contractions

just as we await expansions if only
into starlight and æthereal frozenness
through which, they say, geomagnetic
storms sweep, sunspot-inspired.

You may read them as news items
and/or consume this as rumor—
famous tragic wreck of words.
I feel it as unpublished blessing.

some extent

    for Zach Ivins

So I finally managed to avoid the inevitable.
“Bound to happen at some point,” remarks Zach.
Finding this too clever by half, I end up either
denying that reality “works” in a “certain way”
or waiting for Natalie to emerge from practice.
Girls basketball: chorus of shoes squeaking,
sweaty ponytails snapping like wet towels.
You know what? I don’t even like having options.
I don’t even, like, have options. I’m as mortal
as a locomotive, beaming sunnily across
colorfully brand-marked bridges, Iron Rooster
shooting a red streak across the heart of China.
I don’t even, like, ever go to China, but I know
what it feels like to be crisscrossed against
my will, to be arguably overpopulated, overly
blessed in some ways and not only by
middle school athletes and their parents
but by concessions. Man do some dads get angry
while not spilling popcorn from overfull boxes.
I don’t want to be that way. Guess what I’m
issuing here is a warning, actually, that I
and my passel of young dribblers are about to
board your train; where it goes is up to you.
To some extent, at least. Can’t stress that enough.