160 Illness poems

I hustle upstream. I grasp. I grind. I control & panic. Poke balloons in my chest, always popping there, always my thoughts thump, thump. I snooze — wake & go boom. All day, like this I short my breath. I scroll & scroll. I see what you wrote — I like. I heart. My thumb, so tired. My head bent down, but not in prayer, heavy from the looking. I see your face, your phone-lit faces. I tap your food, two times for more hearts. I retweet. I email: y es&yes&yes. Then I cry & need to say:no-no-no. Why does it take so long to reply? I FOMO & shout. I read. I never enough. New book. New post. New ping. A new tab, then another. Papers on the floor, scattered & stacked. So many journals, unbroken white spines, waiting. Did you hear that new new? I start to text back. Ellipsis, then I forget. I balk. I lazy the bed. I wallow when I write. I truth when I lie. I throw a book when a poem undoes me. I underline Clifton:today we are possible. I start from image. I begin with Phillis Wheatley. I begin with Phillis Wheatley. I begin with Phillis Wheatley reaching for coal. I start with a napkin, receipt, or my hand. I muscle memory. I stutter the page. I fail. Hit delete — scratch out one more line. I sonnet, then break form. I make tea, use two bags. Rooibos again. I bathe now. Epsom salt. No books or phone. Just water & the sound of water filling, glory — be my buoyant body, bowl of me. Yes, lavender, more bubbles & bath bomb, of course some candles too. All alone with Coltrane. My favorite, “Naima,” for his wife, now for me, inside my own womb. Again, I child back. I float. I sing. I simple & humble. Eyes close. I low my voice, was it a psalm? Don’t know. But I stopped.

1 The sky is alone tonight — the moon and stars seek some presence in the firm quiet, in the hard lack. A meteor falls in the empty dark. Someone is absent, the universe is bare listen, God, are you there? Sand silts the world — dockleaves in the yard, broken teeth eat sadness in the hayless barn. Silence knocks on men's doors and silence answers it — but music is heard in space. Lichen eats the stone, old arrogance eats peace: female salt eats being, angry rust eats blood. Beetle and seal are dead, poisoned children in lakes — but music is heard in space. Weak whistle-music moves beyond Orion's Belt, silk threads in a cave float in the dark. Some player in the solitude with a hopeful song but destruction still goes on. Lard made from whales, coats from the seals' fur — shaving brush from badger hair, burnt chicks are henfood. God's lovely creatures last though we eat them, trout and lamb — there's a use for the whistler's tune. I saw a nest ablaze, living wood sawdust. I saw a bird on fire fall soundless from the air. I saw the ancient ramparts downed and silence in the plover field. I saw the killer's belly feed. A tongue hangs on a tree, the magpies' might is right: a noise of glossy black and white. I heard their loud artillery. My ears are withered leaves from their cacophony, the discord shuts God's eyes. But a new musician plays and music's heard in space. 2 Listen, father, wait a while — stay alive with me until the universe's gown, once as fresh as cabbage-heart, is clean again. Do you remember mothers' milk like pigeons' milk that feeds the flock? It will pour again — wait on. I saw it last night in the northern sky whiter than any blood dripped from the moon's pap and every parched grave opened up and the dough of milk and earth made a bread forever fresh. Listen, father, listen close — though the sky's a tambourine danced on by an iron fool there's harmony beyond his noise. Take time and slow your pace — the dark drink waits for you and strange music out in space. Did you see them last night, night's-eyes brilliant bright in the black grass and dandelions en masse, guineas on velvet once on an old god's shoulders dead since the ancient magic passed? Remember the age of the seed, kingdom of creatures, power of air? (Man was not alone, man and his household.) Waterfall tumbling from eldertree, foam on pools like feather capes? Remember pollen from grasses' ears? Listen, father, cry no tear for evil seed, for history's débris, for the cold eternal stones, ruined towers, groves of graves. Listen: a bullfinch sings sweetly (musical anvil in forge) his harmony's all history. So, my father, wait a while. There's no music after dying, no inkling of a human sigh — just worlds falling into suns. Earth will be the brightest bride, star-necklets on her gown — tinwhistles cracking tunes, platform dances in each town. Easy, father, wait a while. But he did not wait. 3 One day when hope was ill I took dangerous medicine and hope died out and left me there, a naked surgeon, my patient dead. Like a hen at grips with death my bill dumb down a well, my plumage drowned in hate. I turned my back on Glendarock, walked for a drink to ease and to obliterate pain and fear and grief. Rats laughed from every hedge, bones embossed the road — in the wind a grey crow screeched. And then I saw the sign that led my heart to peace — barley like a green fire, sheets of barley in live waves quivering its thousand ears, swaying flames of green as quietly restless as a child asleep. I knew then no victory would go to iron axe or spear: our mother which art on earth conserve us safe and clean. Gale and 'quake knock flat all laws, all walls, all treasuries — bindweed chokes the telegraph. In spite of joy this peace waned and ice ran through every vein: all my pores were locked and my heart turned, a piglet on a spit, his blood steam, panting like a dog's tongue; the scythe taught the corn its dream. Caterpillars squashed on the roads, the swallow snapping back flies, frogspawn dead in pools dried up, the horsefly craving blood. Prick in a vice, a man screams. The scythe taught the poet his dream. Barley, cover me up, let me lie in your field. I ask of you a green death in the quiet milk of your stalks. Yes, the world will survive with neither you nor me alive. Damn you, death, I will not then experience the new gown of the universe — just lie manure on immaculate earth. 4 Once a perfect standing stone, fame engraved on my side, my statement unambiguous, I had nothing to hide. But the wind of curiosity blew with its what? and how? and why? and blunted the edge of my dignity. The cow of love rubbed its flank against my sides and frost burnt: the grain inside me shrank, I flaked on the grass bank. A flock of questions came seeking food and the mother in me said 'chook, chook' though I was dumb and mere rock. The anxiety mason chipped at me with his heavy hammer, carving his own design: his chisel gouged my grammar, engraved no notices of mine and every passing stray has read words not engendered in my head. And the lichen letters came twisting the bare word and their grey crust grew on me and concealed my shape. I lost all courage and desire, my voice was just a shard and all the silent world had ears. My body like a dead elm — dumb lightning upside-down — inquisitor's file eroding me, wedges wearing me out. Before me, in my mouth, restraints and oaths — but my poem stayed, I still stand. But where are they? The sky stands on my tip, stars flow through me, inside: I tame the sun and moon, harnessed to my pride. No friendships flourish in my shade, no herb of love, no mint of help, and I'm incapable of prayer. Now merely a lump of stone smashed in the field of scythes, a circle of calves around me staring with silly eyes . I lonesome like a hawtree while lichen hones me down and a lizard-brooch sleeps. 5 In Hammer Glen there's blood in milk and a goose complains on an empty hearth: a cat swells in the churn, dead and full. A flitch of bacon hangs itself from rafters: a tongs stands like a bull. My first trip to the house of thatch — home of the Slaughter Lad who condemned his own kind — a hammer-vision showed him how to escape the bird-lime. I was called, no scalpel packed. I threw a saddle on the dark and galloped to the threshold of his mind. Knots of briars slid from their nests, each poisoned eye a blackberry. I was pelted with a shower of fruit from a bare blackthorn tree. I heard the chick sing in the egg, and the straw in the mattress grew, the raspberry cried in the jam. But I came safe from these shades, out of the battle-noise gales, until I reached Slaughter Lad's and saw there under the moon's eye a hedgehog milking a jack snipe, a goat beating a drum in the sky — I had crossed over the borders of the live. I walked into his head — no knife, no healing herb — helix of a snail's shell, into a complex corridor. Prayers of hate, echoes of roars fell from the faceted walls — his father's face was carved on the floor. 'I hit him hit him hit him again — the goose drank the juice of this brain, I made a pig-trough from his skull and put his eyes under a hen. One did not hatch at all, the other shook and cracked. Out walked a chicken's claw. 'The claw still sticks in me — it tortures and exhausts: contrition runs from my nose, surgeon, give me peace.' I refused. And left the place. I threw away all style and craft, my heart was ash and chaff, my soul was a gravel bed — a naked surgeon, and my patient dead. 6 The one-eyed monk sits, half prays where millstones turn. His body comes to life, a need to travel grinds him up — a need for pools full of hope, a need for wells of honey and sweat, a need for hills where torches burn. He walks the white-flowered field looking for a ferny place clad in sparse purple light (a foxglove round a bee) to a mild meadow of sheep, to soft dark, root of history — peace to all who walk this way. But only silence from his bell, dead butterfly his manuscript — unfinished, unrevised — he is addicted to this trip, this drug called pilgrimage that kills all dignity and skill and still's his reason to exist. And when the monk grows weak, clumsy, worn, aged — no more desire to roam, wanting his bell and page. But he can no longer illuminate, has lost the power to pray, lost his interest in the everyday. This travel's an enormous act, a trip all have to take, and meadows and mountains lure all who want to escape with coaxing honey, coaxing kiss, 'Do not search for new things, do not search for new things'. I will drown all my books in that honeyed well and play like a foal in the brownest fern. I will swim in the pool of hope, I will walk till night in the bright fields. But in the splendid dark I'll hear wings of parchment shake and bells weep.

I should be happy with my lot: A wife and mother – is it not Enough for me to be content? What other blessing could be sent? A quiet house, and homely ways, That make each day like other days; I only see Time’s shadow now Darken the hair on baby’s brow! No world’s work ever comes to me, No beggar brings his misery; I have no power, no healing art With bruised soul or broken heart. I read the poets of the age, ’Tis lotus-eating in a cage; I study Art, but Art is dead To one who clamors to be fed With milk from Nature’s rugged breast, Who longs for Labor’s lusty rest. O foolish wish! I still should pine If any other lot were mine.

Comes sarcastic November in mummy garb, hauling, same old same old what laid bare what totaled. Sees thru the estimated costs, stench collisions, inanimate dregs, remembers the bruised figures, their numerology as stars.Up up, down down is how she counts as the hunters begin to hunt. This is the plot of erasure, this the lavender bath. Truth be known, the dark won by a landslide. Yet friends in far January await news of the front, cycling up the snow-clad hills. They are to be exhumed from the grail of the keeper, he who heralds what’s here. To them, send dreams that pop open when breathed on and ask them to complete this sentence: If God is in the details, then ... But in the end there was only a chair covered in velvet and the sibling, dark as a forest, turned into words. There were the stamps with monsters and the stamps with flowers, there was a dumpster of old paint. Even the egalitarian whimsy of the gold rush is in partial view: harbor’s sleek hulls, willow disintegrating in drapery and nonce. What others did taking us to task in the field, into archival maps along a bank. What is it they wanted? Among strangers, beyond the stamina of pictures —the dancer on stage, his ruined feet, as they would flail crops when the spring comes, and flood, and tassels rise, as my head—

I wanted it: arc of red and blue strobing my skin, sirens singing my praises, the cinching embrace of the cot as the ambulance slammed shut and steered away. More than needle-pierce or dragging blade, I wanted the swab of alcohol and cotton, the promise of gauze-covered cure. My mother saved anyone who asked, but never me, never the way I wanted: her palms skimming my limbs for injury, her fingers finding what hurt, her lips whispering, I got here just in time.

Home from school at six years old, first grade, And uncle there to tell me Mommy Gone, Mommy not be coming back any Time soon, Liam, Mommy had to go to Mental hospital. Nervous breakdown. Years later Mommy, when she gets out Of mental, often says, “If you’re A bad boy for me Liam you’re Going to send me back, back Into mental hospital, like you did First time.” At 13 I find out Mom had been doing years In a federal prison all that time, For stealing, so no mental hospital for Mommy. Breakdown ours alone. I was on my own.

yours is not the majestic Gypsy the Codling    Luna    Wax or grander Atlas with the appetite of a plague     entire fields succumbing to them    whole generations of bees    this is the unseen    closeted    unassuming gray that seeks out last winter’s cloth    another season    drawn to the body’s scent    what was its heat    to consume early    that scant much of you    fragile    lace-like the constellate    erasures    of the coat it makes for you to wear

All we know of history we learn from scenes in the mosaic of bone on the Senate floor: The Flood makes graves of the fields, and the angels harvest enough suffering to live for another thousand years. Moses pulls off his beard and lights a cigarette, I’m tired of pretending. He pushes his box of spare commandments under his bed, and as he drifts to sleep, his eyes, like caves, fill with paintings of woolly rhinos. Sailing ships forest a small island. One light shines from a caravel — captain’s quarters. It’s Christopher Columbus. All night he’s been sewing shrouds as arrival gifts for the natives. Little Chris presses his bleeding fingers to his mouth and cries quietly,No one appreciates me. God and the devil tuck him into bed. It’ll get better, they say. Together they complete the shrouds for him, while he dreams of golden nipples. As it was, it is now. Spring translates the earth into hope — tongues of grass taste the sea salt on the west wind and the blood on soldiers’ boots. This morning, one of the old poets — unkillable cockroach — cycled past me, yelling, You have the brightest light in America! Ha ha! On my dresser, a spider makes a web along the contours of my bra. We lie on the bed together; I run my hand up the muscles of your leg and feel its eons of evolution, now outlawed by the Senate.

Please god love me and buy me Read this hillock and ride me Wraith typing all day for money. God bought me today for two silver fish in a can God bought me tomorrow for bland in a pan and a card an email from Rebecca Bought four hours of my control alt delete shut down Bought a new day-section with a headstand My commerce in shall Sky like a grandstand Transact God performed me today for a half minute lucky in locker room hiding my boobs from the kids and my hair is silky and my mane shot silk gold Bought a book on economy Georgie Bataille Called about plane tickets Georgie Bataille I bought my debt today Georgie Bataille hooray Debt off my God today God off my debt in a macular hole I dream of an end like a fount to this night Run thinner and thinner and then it’s all light Macerated in signal by my go I bought my ghost I walk my ghost

Sestina Jackson met Text-Deft James on 09/09/09. A Red Hook, BK dock party celebrated Otis Redding’s Birthday. Sestina mouthed along to “The Happy Song,” And TDJ smiled, baring his Cornel West-esque Teeth. Text-Deft’s chops whiter, but same gap. Cigs and java, then shake, as Battery Park Gleamed across the East River. Text-Deft parked His literary, rusty Lincoln Continental nine Blocks from the new IKEA, a small gap Between rusty bumpers scuffed with dings And marker tags. Sestina Solange-esque, Perhaps Solange times ten. All poet, song Lyrics fly from Sestina. She sang songs In Jackson Heights with Granny J parked By her side. This bash? Carnival masque. Now, they swayed to “6-3-4-5-7-8-9,” That’s my number! TD leading Sestina before long. No gap In the music. All Otis —no stopgap. The moon moved, drifted. The songs Kicked. TD whispered over fading Bass: “You wanna walk through the park? Talk about Zadie and Roth and (and and) nine Other scribes?” A nod. SJ: “I’m A. Rich-esque. Gimme Duhamel, Dove, a Clifton-esque Ode. Poetry owns me. I scan tales as a gap Between ghazals and villanelles. B. Collins’s Nine Horses, Espada’s Alabanza. Cathy Song Preaches to perceive heaven. Poet’s Walk Park In the other Red Hook, upstate — riding Up the Metro North — let’s go.” TDJ: “Send tidings My way. We’ll plan a soiree. A rom-com-esque Romp. As we travel to this Norse poet park, We’ll laugh and say ‘mind the gap,’ In droll Brit brogues. What will our song Be? An Otis classic? A dirge to survey Odin’s ninth World?” Nine times the voice and ding Sing, as monotone noises, robot-esque, Order them: watch the gap. Then? The park. Oh! Hucklebuck! Treat her right! Yes, you, Text-Deft James. He says, “I swear by the mud below my feet. When I read, I don’t grind. A great text has great beauty. A great horse, too, has great beauty. Horses, equine, all this Alan from Equus-esque worship at the altar, but then comes the eye spike. Like Odin. I guess we always come back to the eyes. They beat the horse to flies, above, inside, around. They write papers that grind horses into dog grub ... ” Sestina: “My rugged poetic sensibilities allow me to embrace 
extended metaphorical diction of disturbing, lurid carnage. But please, please. Spare your doggish death rattle. First dates occur once. Among the dates’ participants, that is; e.g, me, you. So, if you will, ax the horse talk. I prefer rubbery arms, Espada’s cockroaches, axes on frozen pond sludge. Sibilant rush. Gimme Yusef’s Orpheus. Or Ferlinghetti from Coney Island to North Beach. Gimme Wisława Szymborska (a name I can pronounce, FYI. RIP.) Please. Please, Text-Deft James. Not equinicide. I’ve seen bearded ladies whisper acclaim, whimper shame. Devil nuns. I whisper a clipped utterance of the ineffable. The untied united. Not only ineffable, but tangible ... ” (unsaid: I take my tongue, propelled by chemical soul, and I have a dirty, nasty, downright raunchy time with it. I’m talking sheets off the bed, candles tipped over, shower flooding the bathroom tile. T-shirt grimy from fun crust.That type of night. I, Sestina, won’t share such thoughts. Instead —) “ ... know my resurrected heart beats brick red. Know that I seek poetry in moose lodges, in homeless shelters, in candy shops. I do remember walking down Northern Blvd. with Granny J, begging for sour candy. Bears dipped in sugar: cherry, orange, lime mixed. Let’s hover above this grass. As a kid, I went to Shea Stadium, waved a foam finger, and I was sure I’d marry a Met, maybe Al Leiter. As we stand here in front of this rustic pavilion, I’d like to ask you on another date. The Mets have few home games left, and I’d love some BBQ.”