my ginsberg flower

ledzep.doc

I can’t quit you
Microsoft Word

but I think I’m gonna
minimize you
to the task bar
at the bottom
of the screen
for a little while

I said you messed up
my happy home

all I’m getting is
an hourglass now

web folio of my poems

Tom Koontz of Barnwood Editions has created a web folio, or digital mini-book, whatever you’d like to call it—Tom calls it an “e-chapbook”—of a bunch of my poems: “Le secret de l’univers.” I love the layout! I am so so thrilled!! The photo is one I took in north St. Louis.

So anyway, Tom is doing a whole series of e-chapbooks—“Great Finds.” Cool, eh?

I’d love to hear people’s opinions about the relative merits of publishing in this way.

ben

If I were to die today
I would die a happy man
on Monday my cousin Ben
ran the Boston Marathon
way faster than Lance Armstrong

and it’s April
there are tulips
lining the sidewalks
of Saint Louis U
and the fountains around
the clock tower
are producing a fine
mist that can be felt
as far away as the commons

today I could fly
to the moon and back
and land gently
on the soles of my Tevas
anywhere I wanted to

how to write poetry

How to Write Poetry
(1) Write down everything you think of, as you think of it.
(2) Take a five minute break.
(3) Erase what you’ve written.
(4) Send what’s left to Poetry.

How to Write Poetry
(1) Think about nothing.
(2) Write down whatever you’re thinking about.
(3) Make sure the meter and line breaks are correct.
(4) Tri-fold and mail that bad boy with an SASE to The New Criterion.

How to Write Poetry
(1) Locate a golden quill.
(2) Find a honeyed scroll.
(3) Use the quill to write a poem upon the scroll.
(4) Roll, place in postal mailer tube, and send to The Atlantic Monthly.

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important message for the people of los angeles

By now you have probably heard that sometime during mid to late July I will be moving to the greater Los Angeles area. Although many of you are delighted, I know that for some of you it will not be an easy transition, having lived for so long in a city without Aaron Belz, the poet, in it. You’ve grown accustomed to a certain status quo—you’ve known what to expect, day to day, for your whole lives until now. What will it be like with me living there? Will things change?

The answer is “yes,” but I hope not too dramatically. The biggest change will be that you will read poetry more often. You’ll get to read new poems about life in your town! Here is an example of what you may expect:

      LOS ORANGE

      O cow, holy strawberries—
      Orange tree in my yard. Los Mexicanos!
      Let’s all go to the movies.

This is only a small example, and perhaps not even a very fine one. It draws on the kind of imagery I perceived when first visiting your fair province (when I came to interview for the job which occasions the move).

It’s OK, we’re going to have some fun. Things are really different in St. Louis. I’ll tell you about it in July, when I get there.

-Aaron

P.S. I’m bringing my wife, three kids, and dog Georgie (who’s kind of barky).

kevin bacon, deacon

Kevin Bacon, deacon:
we never dreamed
joining this Orange County
Presbyterian
congregation
would mean having
you as a spiritual beacon;
earnest, yes—and young looking—
we were planning
to hate living
in SoCal but then
you showed up
at our apartment
with a men’s retreat
pamphlet
and we felt
the Lord beckoning—
sunshine, traffic, the mountains
out here. It’s a new season.
Thanks for easing
the transition,
Deacon Bacon.

kindness

How many people are
as beautiful as you?
Actually there are a few,
possible a lot, depending
on what you mean
by “beautiful.” If you
mean “has a nose
and a mouth,” then yes,
billions. If you mean
“has hair,” fewer—“is kind,”
many fewer, but still
a considerable number.
People want to be pretty
and friendly, acceptable,
and a lot of people
are relatively successful
at it, like you. So are
you one of a kind? No.
Are you one in a million?
Not even—you’re
in the top thirty percent
of the whole human race,
maybe. But you hold
a distinct advantage
over other human beings
in that you’ve given
me the time of day.
That’s a figure of speech
meaning you have paid
attention to me, even
if slightly. Look, I am
glad that your face
wasn’t sliced off
by a psychopath—
I am—but what I truly
value about you is
that you said hi to
me last Friday. I have
a really big crush on you!

our relationship

There are some things
I cannot talk to you
about, or talk you out of—
heights from which
I cannot talk you down—
ways in which, I guess,
I am not meant to talk
to you at all, to really
talk, that is—to listen.

And we’ve discovered
talking, like touching,
kissing, or even going
for a walk is not all
it’s been cracked up to be:
“We never talk,”
we say, as if that were
the warp and woof
of our relationship.

let us no longer speak of love

Let us no longer speak of love.
Love is horseplay at its best
and good, I think, for just this life.

Let’s speak of something of ourselves
or of the way that we relate
that will endure beyond the grave—

but what? Your smart-ass comments,
no. Your anecdotes and hand gestures,
no and no. They’ll be the first to go.

And my rejoinders, punk-ass rhymes,
will soon be swallowed whole by time,
as will my money, my car, my keys.

Even our truest moments in speech
or touch, or listening to each other breathe
after making love and brushing teeth

and cuddling in blankets, spooning
habitually in our comfortable
nightly grave and rising like Jesus

to do it all again: All gone, and yet
without regret. When nothing’s left,
what’s there to mourn? Nothing itself?

Nothing will endure beyond the grave
(more wit), and nothing’s what
we’ll miss the most, I think (a trifle).

So actually let’s do speak of love
and horseplay, careless punches
to each other’s noses, awkward kisses,

dancing in our underwear near the edge
of the dumb void like the former
junior ringmasters that we are.

Let’s trounce the forbidden places
knowing that there’s less to life
than we had thought at first.

compliments

People said, “Hey. Cute face.” They said,
“Hey man, you have a pretty face.”
And, “That’s a really beautiful face
you have on the front of your head.

I bet you hear that all the time, though.”
Fact is, I did. I also heard, “Hey guy.
That’s a great big hairy red beard
you have on the lower part of the front

of your head, and your nose like a bird
poised on top of a bush, and your two gray
eyes—I don’t even know what to say,”
shouted from the window of a passing cab

from time to time when I was young.
At the clubs I heard, “What a face.
Could I lick the whole thing, like a plate?
Would it be okay if I hugged your head?”

Now that I’m older it happens less
and the tone is often moribund:
“Friend, you have a good face there.
Would you like to be my friend?”

They inspect the shape of my head
in silence now—keep to themselves
how they feel. They say, “Nice feet,”
but I can tell that they’re just being nice.

prehensile

I often grasp things with my feet
or tail. But you I grasp with my hands,
by the shoulders, then the hips—
and then you slip away into the night.

I’d like to take hold of you with my tail
and just keep you there, in its coil,
until the break of day. It would be cool
to see the sunlight on your fickle

face if just for once before I released
you and you ran, half dressed,
across my yard and to your car.
Obviously you have mixed feelings

about dating a monkey such as me,
but honey, just for once I’d like to see
your face at dawn, even if it were gasping
and my lower back was killing me

from holding on to you so long.

my bon iver youtube

At the Saint Louis University Billiken Club - I YouTubed “Flume.”

the butterfly fish

Imagine that you are a butterfly fish
approaching a sea anemone
because you want to nibble
its tentacles.

Then you see a clown fish
lurking in the darks
of the host reef,
and you’re like “Oh shit!”

and swim like crazy in the opposite direction.
A league or so down the way
you begin to reflect on what just happened.
You’re a butterfly fish.

You just crapped your pants
at the sight of a clown fish.
And yet, you think, this is life:
this is what it’s all about.

You can console yourself that way
for only so long, though. At some point you,
like so many other butterfly fish, begin to hate yourself.
Maybe you take it out in passive-aggressive ways

on other fish.
Maybe you become religious.
Maybe in prayer you find the “other”
that gives you a sense of purpose

that transcends the foolish soap opera
your life has become. You imagine going to heaven,
where anemone tentacles wiggle undefended,
and the reefs, they say, are paved with gold.

Ideally these transcendent thoughts make you a generous
butterfly fish, full of spirit and compassion.
But it’s possible, too, that you become self-righteous—
as if, in your supreme ability to contextualize

the whole clown fish thing, you are better than others.
But still. You are a butterfly fish.
It would suit you
to remember that.

nanny’s note to the fairies

Natalie eventually threw this away saying "they can just have the house."