The Young People With Their Instant Children

ISN

groovematic....I commend you on your fictionalized version of otherness.....but I can tell you madness is a lot worse than this.....

Scores of us populate the world;
So many of us, in fact,
There are houses and magazines
Set aside for us,
Whole towns of us.

There is the defective
Who cannot swallow one caplet
Of Tylenol with Codeine
Without being lost to the world
For months;
A domino effect of staggering size
Being tipped and running it's course
Through woozy alleyways,
Poorly-lit basements,
The naked paying arms of strangers,
Ending at last
In any number of sanctioned
Sanitary humorless barricades,
To be taught how to not start it
All over again
When left alone.

There is the defective
Who cannot be trusted to eat a steak:
The glinty cerration of the inevitable
Knife to them a siren's call,
Promising moments of actual emotion,
Something truly felt.
And when all the dinner guests
Have left, to the hall closet
They'll retire,
Blade and bandages at the ready
To pierce and puncture in a wholly
Sloppy yet methodical manner,
Taking pause to ensure
It is nothing a long-sleeved shirt won't hide;
And again and again over years,
Drawing maps of mended sensation.

There is the defective
Who cannot rent certain kinds of films;
Movies in which folks disrobe and exchange
Closely personal things, heaving
And gasping as though in shock.
Upon viewing these images
The defective person would be set upon
By a precise personal demon
Which will force them to force themselves
Upon any number of strangers
In a rippling series of carnal escapades,
Finding closure perhaps
Within a cold set of handcuffs
Or the sights of a perturbed father's shotgun,
Never quite reaching that hightened plateau
That the films so clearly showed as possible.

There is the defective
Who cannot imbibe a drop of the wrong
Cough-syrup lest they be thrown
Into the oubliette of self-pity and rage,
Seeking out and certainly finding
Syrups suited to illness beyond coughing,
This journey taking them through the simplest
Daytime restuarant to the scourges of the night,
Anything with running liquid,
Money fleeing pockets faster than they can swallow.
They'll dream about it,
About running from it and into it,
Until substantial reality fades to be replaced
By a hyper-subreality of smoke-filled places,
Sweat issuing the odors of brand-names,
Their insides churning the pain of death.

Scores of us populate the world;
So many of us, in fact,
That we are quite everywhere.
We are not to be pitied or feared,
Merely expected.

I hope you never experience what it is like to be 'different'.....but until you do....I like your peom.....

grooveamatic

ISN wrote:

groovematic....I commend you on your fictionalized version of otherness.....but I can tell you madness is a lot worse than this.....



I hope you never experience what it is like to be 'different'.....but until you do....I like your peom.....

perhaps your madness is unlike the one portrayed here, ISN, but I can assure you many do experience madness quite like it. I know I have. The fourth big stanza--the stanza of the alcoholic--is of my experience. The others have been experienced by many close to me. Read my "The Merits of Life" for a bigger picture. Thanks for the kind words also!

(o:sam:o)

grooveamatic wrote:

When I see the young people
With their instant children
So happy they nearly cease to exist,

brilliant poem what beautiful imagery

i wondered if it might also be a reference to how comfortable life has become for so many of us in western society. so much so that many people go without experiencing real life, but on the same thread believe that they are. there is so much going on in the world, a lot of it bad, but this whole idea about protecting ourselves and others around us is preventing us from having real experiences.

just a thought, but one that is quite prominant in my mind at the moment as i too am living this comfportable life and womndering what is outside this western middleclass planet.

love sam

grooveamatic

(o:sam:o) wrote:

brilliant poem what beautiful imagery

i wondered if it might also be a reference to how comfortable life has become for so many of us in western society. so much so that many people go without experiencing real life, but on the same thread believe that they are. there is so much going on in the world, a lot of it bad, but this whole idea about protecting ourselves and others around us is preventing us from having real experiences.

just a thought, but one that is quite prominant in my mind at the moment as i too am living this comfportable life and womndering what is outside this western middleclass planet.

love sam

some really interesting thoughts, Sam. Truthfully, I had never thought of the poem in those terms before; now that you've brought it up, I don't see any way around it. That most certainly is an element of the poem, even if it wasn't in my mind when writing it. Thank you.

grooveamatic

5 molars, 2 incisors, 1 canine

scattered seemingly random
through the rain glazed gutter


blood, liberally Rorschacked


screaming

sometimes, when you glide
thru life,
the fat hand of Chance

reaches down

to knock the shit out of you.

grooveamatic

The dog runs away when I come near,
Like it always has.
Off to the garage somewhere,
Or to nose around in the garden,
Maybe.
The skinny gray cat, however,
Allows me to stroke him.
I like the cat, with his rough,
Sandpaper coat and vibrating
Contentment.
The cat meets my gaze with honesty,
Commiserating over the heat,
The long days
And the loud cars
Which are ceaseless.

The house towers above us,
Is taller than even our cars.
It is lit up like a ballroom,
And tonight it promises
To keep all wild things out,
Like it always has.

shiftlesslayabout

grooveamatic wrote:

The large oil tanks
By the side of the road
Mean that we
Are close
To grandmaw's house.
Once we leave
Grandmaw's house
The large oil tanks
By the other side
Of the road
Mean that we
Are close
To home.

THe simplicity of this one blows me away every time I read it, groovy.

christmascleanlove

grooveamatic wrote:

5 molars, 2 incisors, 1 canine

scattered seemingly random
through the rain glazed gutter


blood, liberally Rorschacked


screaming

sometimes, when you glide
thru life,
the fat hand of Chance

reaches down

to knock the shit out of you.

wow...this is unlike anything I've ever read.

grooveamatic

shiftlesslayabout wrote:

THe simplicity of this one blows me away every time I read it, groovy.

thanks so much, shiftless. i was going for a simplicity that became more complicated after you read it--i hope that's what hapened.

grooveamatic

Richard Simmons is a terrible man.
He seems to be more happy than
A sleeping, lazy, noiseless cat
Which doesn't mind being fat.

dreamncolor

SweetRelief wrote:

When I read it I took it from the perspective of an older person who has been trying for years to have a child, looking at young people...teenage or otherwise...who get pregnant so easily...and not caring or even thinking about the young people's possible uphill battle...to the narrator they *must* be content...but the narrator is clouded with his/her own frustration.

Just another perspective.

Probably wrong.

wow.......that is such an interesting slant to it. grooove - i appreciated the *anger* in it - if that makes any sense.....even if i myself don't identify/agree with it. well done.

grooveamatic

Rising from my bench, pretending to stretch,
Glancing around, this thinly veiled caveman excercise
I practice with pastiche, cunning,
Undoing a button as though only to let my fat breathe,
Instead bringing fully to light the tip of my plumbing,
Smartly quieting nature's alarm clock.
It trickles slowly, among leaves and needles,
Rivulets finding a new path once expelled.
One always wonders just where it goes:
Into the air with the heat, or the cool ground with the roots?
How much of me is in this thunderstorm,
Or that Dogwood's branches?
Will they come to chop me down, long after I die?

grooveamatic

for R.G.


It's his old house--
He lived in it
For a few years,
Just him and his mother--
That I drive past every day
On my way to work
That crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go.
I knew him while he lived there,
Although not as well
As I know him now,
But I drove him home
A handful of times,
Drove around that circular driveway
And left him by the enclosed front porch
Searching for keys
In the dark.
It seemed a nice enough place--
Perhaps a bit run-down,
In need of a few repairs,
But never destitute--
With a liberal sprinkling
Of shade-bearing trees
And inevitable critter-housing shrubs
That, as a boy,
I'm sure he loved to play around,
Imagining all kinds
Of bizarre world-changing events
Taking place to and because of him,
Right there in that shady lawn.
And inside
On windblown evenings,
Hot mother-cooked meals,
The smells of which one can never forget,
The textures and spices
Or maternal food and the kitchen
Where love made it
Shining through to his adult world
Always, especially when he couldn't
Fully remember it.
And then,
A short time after I came to know him
They simply moved,
Although I'm certain it was quite involved
For his mother and him,
To us--his friends--
It seemed they had just
Transplanted,
Picked all worldly things up
And trotted off to another home
In a nearby trailer park.
It wasn't so bad:
We still saw him just as much,
And it wasn't any further away.
Strangely, though,
The next people to take residence
In his old home
Were acquaintances of ours:
Party friends who approved of us
And liked to do
The kind of things
That we liked to do.
And so it was
A short time indeed
For my friend
Until he returned to the home of his childhood,
A very short time until he stood again in his old bedroom
(now belonging to a rancid acquaintance
with a poor moustache and stained skin
who had his bed in the exact wrong place).
The bathroom that had been
Ruthlessly spotless before
Now a colony for any live,
Microscopic entity that felt like moving in,
The sink now a brown problem
Instead of a pearly white altar,
The toilet barely flushing,
And the light bulb refusing to be changed
So one was forced to pee in the dark.
The kitchen now not that of the mother
But of unkempt communal
Post-adolescent living,
Issuing not aromas
Of hearty, oft-prepared
Casseroles and soups
But the microwaved plastic
And congealing trash
That comes with being awake all night
Or not knowing where your money is.
And no one eating their vegetables
Or drinking their juice,
But ingesting all varieties of terrible things,
From three-day-old chicken
To high grade opium
Which any mother
In her right frame of mind
Would surely disapprove of.
This is not to suggest
That we had anything other
Than a marvelous time there--
my friend included--
And after a few hesitant moments
Everyone seemed to forget
That he had ever lived there at all,
That it had ever been anything other
Than what it was now,
Or that it could ever be anything else.
Soon enough,
The acquaintance with the questionable moustache
And stained skin was arrested,
Followed quickly by all the others moving out,
And the house was out of our hands,
Forever to be becoming something new
For someone new.
But it still crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go
When I drive past it
On my way to work;
The way it stubbornly denies
That any time has passed for anyone,
The way it cages past
Like a commodity.
I imagine what my friend must have felt like,
Doing what we were doing
In that place;
Perhaps he was searching
For some sign that what he had once known to be true
Could always remain true,
That what had happened in his childhood
Somehow remained in that house,
Only to find that the more you examine
Things you have already done,
The less those things tend to acknowledge you,
And if you allow yourself to
You can end up in the center
Of a room that doesn't care about you,
Wishing for portals to your former self,
The loosing of clocks.
The less those

grooveamatic

ok, so there's an extraneous line at the end of the version I just posted. here's the real end of the poem:

grooveamatic wrote:

And the house was out of our hands,
Forever to be becoming something new
For someone new.
But it still crawls into my flesh
And won't leave go
When I drive past it
On my way to work;
The way it stubbornly denies
That any time has passed for anyone,
The way it cages past
Like a commodity.
I imagine what my friend must have felt like,
Doing what we were doing
In that place;
Perhaps he was searching
For some sign that what he had once known to be true
Could always remain true,
That what had happened in his childhood
Somehow remained in that house,
Only to find that the more you examine
Things you have already done,
The less those things tend to acknowledge you,
And if you allow yourself to
You can end up in the center
Of a room that doesn't care about you,
Wishing for portals to your former self,
The loosing of clocks.

FinsburyParkCarrots

You could divide this into sections and explore it still deeper and you'd have the makings of a significant longer poem. Try it.

FinsburyParkCarrots

grooveamatic wrote:

Rising from my bench, pretending to stretch,
Glancing around, this thinly veiled caveman excercise
I practice with pastiche, cunning,
Undoing a button as though only to let my fat breathe,
Instead bringing fully to light the tip of my plumbing,
Smartly quieting nature's alarm clock.
It trickles slowly, among leaves and needles,
Rivulets finding a new path once expelled.
One always wonders just where it goes:
Into the air with the heat, or the cool ground with the roots?
How much of me is in this thunderstorm,
Or that Dogwood's branches?
Will they come to chop me down, long after I die?

Again, I hear Larkin but this is great. I like the repetitive use of present participles and the strange significance of the description of rivulets of piss finding a new path once expelled.

Mighty work.

grooveamatic

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

You could divide this into sections and explore it still deeper and you'd have the makings of a significant longer poem. Try it.

I like the idea quite bit. I'll give it a whirl and re-post it at a later time.

Thanks for the idea.

grooveamatic

With fond wishes and intentions well
We parted on that sidewalk,
In front of the white house
With the L-shaped porch.
You essenced a smile, bless your heart.
I turned the ignition,
And wept until I forgot why.

Ali

I LIKE THAT alot....
thats the story of my life.

grooveamatic

Ali wrote:

I LIKE THAT alot....
thats the story of my life.

and as unpleasant as it can be...feeling things deeply and completely...it lets you know you're alive...