Writer's Block

Circa 2000: I was trying for humor :-)

Under the desk,

still warm, hides

a mechanical pencil,

the point lost

inside the barrel, the

eraser rubbed flat.

Next to the desk,

still cold, spills

a stockpile of

crumpled white paper:

cannibalistic snowballs

eager to feed

on the next litter.

On the desk,

still ambivalent, rests

a single sheet of

lined white paper,

blue lines creating

row after row

of tiny, empty

shelves waiting

to be filled like Old

Mother Hubbard’s

cupboard.

“The children are hungry,”

cries the paper

to the pencil,

“But Mother is too poor

to feed them,” answer

the gluttonous snowballs,

mockingly.

Revelations

Circa 2002: The result of navel gazing, not a formal writing prompt.

One linguistics course

and one manic summer

later I discovered God

is Universal

Grammar and

I am

just one more

imperfect speaker,

uttering one more religion,

one more dialect, one more creole,

at home only in my own vernacular.

Returned to Sender

Circa 2001: I was asked to write a found poem. I supplemented instructions from a packing label.

No strapping tape allowed.

There is no standard 
conventionalacceptablenormal

Form    for this            content.

Inspect and ensure the shipping label is addressed properly.

Why               do we              try        to put _____ in            a

box?    Is there            only one                      variety of _____?

Why                are there          so         few      boxes

from    which to         choose?

Use bubble wrap or foam peanuts and secure properly to prevent damage or loss.

How much      will I    have to pay  to            deliver

this?     where has it                delivered

me?                             

Oh,      no,       did I    forget

to use the foam pea-

nuts?

My Child's Eyes

Circa 1999: I was asked to write a haiku.

Two brown suns rising
slowly above my kneecaps,
my waist, my own eyes

Fine Tuning

Circa 2005: I assigned a name acrostic poem exercise in a creative writing class I was teaching and had fun creating one of my own.

Just don’t call me Dee Dee— or beware the

Anger buried beneath layers of lace and laughter

Nearly purple but not too blue, my rainbow, an

Inch or two too short, heavy with candles,

Cosmetics, compound sentences, Coca-Cola with crushed ice and a straw

Easily too much chocolate, but never enough when

Cats escape and turn into tigers, questions escape and turn into

Avalanches. The answer, I discovered, decked out in

Renaissance-style Stevie-esque handkerchief hems and high-heeled boots:  

Everyone suffers—even Eric, my

Love, whose Tibetan singing bowl I covet. Some days he finds me

Lingering in the aisles in Barnes and Noble,

Ogling books instead of grading, imagining possibilities.

[Extinguishing] The Lamp on the Stand (Luke 8:16-18)

Circa 2001: the year of the mid-life crisis and bout of depression. Though I was only 31 at the time, and I plan to live past 62, so I suppose "life crisis" is more accurate than "mid-life crisis."

“No one lights a lamp and hides it in a jar or puts it under a bed.”

You keep the anti-Christs

in your make-up case,

swallow eight pink pills

twice a day

as directed:

Take and eat. This is your body.

“Instead, [s]he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light.”

You forage to find

the right shade of red

lipstick that will make flesh desirable

to flesh, to find the perfect flesh-

colored concealer to shade

the scars and blemishes.

“For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed

 that will not be known or brought out into the open.”

Prescriptions are spiritual

cosmetics: FDA approved faith

healers/ concealers/ stealers

pitching a sale

you can’t refuse.

“Therefore consider carefully how you listen.”

Listen carefully: the script

calls for cosmetic sponges,

but instead of applying

they’re trying to absorb

an insatiable desire.

“Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what [s]he thinks

[s]he has will be taken from [her].”

I had the light of God in me,

you said. Refuse the wine,

refuse the bread, they said:

This is the only communion

you need now:

A bit of Lithium, a dram of Amitryptiline,

and a pinch of Valproic acid too—

a custom pharmaceutical brew 

to conceal the witch in you— 

burned at the State,

if you don’t swallow

as directed:

Take and eat. This is your body. 

Engendered Pyrotechnics

Circa 2000: I have no memory of what inspired this poem, just a memory that one of my female profs avoided making any comment on it. 

His anger

like a wildfire

ignited

consumes

every convenient combustible contiguous object

violent flames

reach reach

resist yet invite

bodies to quench the rage

Her anger

like a fireplace

fueled

savors

every twig branch marshmallow

smoldering embers

linger linger

resist yet invite

fire irons to tend the flame

Their anger

like a firebug

growing

greedy feeding on

every firecracker firework, firing line

powerful pyrotechnics

play play

resist yet invite

rhetoric to raise the blaze

Cleaving

Circa 2000: In response to a writing prompt that challenged me to use the structure of a published poem to create my own poem. I used Etheridge Knight's "My Life the Quality of Which" as inspiration.

Two strangers

whose fervor

from their first

spoken syllables

created a desire

to marry two pasts

two presents

two futures

whose words have made them

ONE

cleave in Silence

but you have to listen for it 

Answer

Circa 1999: Based on an exchange I had with another student while I was working as a writing tutor at SUNY Brockport

 “Two kids,” I say

and you, unable to see

the wrinkles in my face,

suggest a poem about

dirty diapers.

“Nine and Twelve,” I say

and you, unable to see

my face in their faces,

require proof.

But I say nothing

Belgian Beer is Best

Circa 2003: In response to one of those writing prompts where you are given a few random words and  integrate them in a story. Platypus and Belgian beer were two of the words. I forget the others.

“Belgian Beer is Best.”

This time the slogan had been scribbled on a slip of coffee-stained stationery and slid under Ania’s front door. Lavazza. It had to be. It was the only brand of coffee Davin drank. This month. He was so obsessive about his beverages. That’s what had started the Belgian beer campaign in the first place.

Davin was no food snob: he savored a Whopper as much as smoked salmon, if he was in the mood for it. When it came to food, he was simply interested in exploring new tastes, new textures, new versions of old favorites. That’s how he had discovered the casual comfort of popcorn in tomato soup and the nostalgic gratification of frozen HoHos and fruit-filled snack pies devoured right from the freezer. But when it came to drinks, especially the potent potables, Davin was on an unending quest for the best.

Of course, the only way to determine the best is to try the rest. And Davin made it his life’s work to try every alcoholic beverage ever made. This was a full time job in itself. Not that Davin was an alcoholic. Or even that his desire was insatiable. It was a matter of experimentation, evaluation, trial and error.

Davin’s favorite explanation for his fixation was to quote Blake: “The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Without excess of rum how would he have learned that Black Seal was supreme and that Bacardi was better suited for mouthwash than firewater? Without excess of agave, how would he have discovered that mezcal was the finer cousin of tequila? So far, Lajita Mezcal had earned his vote, but he would need to become familiar with more gusanos before the next election. Unlike politicians, liquor didn’t lie.

In vino veritas: In wine there is truth. Davin was seeking truth. The only problem was that falsehoods came in too many enticing flavors: some tart, some sweet, some bold and sassy, some cool, distant, and refreshing. Unable to part with the past, Davin’s solution was to maintain a harem of hard liquor and a supply of wine concubines. When looking for a new beauty, packaging was certainly a consideration: a shapely, smooth bottle added to the allure, like lingerie on a mysterious woman. But a virgin display was not enough. Davin was convinced that truth lies only in experience, not in imagination. So he indulged in experience.

When I say, “Just looking,” I mean I am searching, I have my “eye out” for something. Looking is hoping, desiring, never just taking in light, never just merely collecting patterns and data. Looking is possessing or the desire to possess—we eat food, we own objects, and we “possess” bodies—and there is no looking without thoughts of using, possessing, repossessing, owning, fixing, appropriating, keeping, remembering and commemorating, cherishing, borrowing, and stealing. I cannot look at anything—any object, any person—without the shadow of the thought of possessing that thing. Those appetites don’t just accompany looking: they are looking itself.[1]

The only liquid Ania indulged in was body lotion. She collected new fragrances like Davin collected new flavors: Relaxing Anise, Stimulating Spice, Hot Toddy. Her latest acquisition was Concupiscent Cucumber-Melon.

Ania was also seeking truth. The only problem was that there were too many truths, too many interpretations. She wanted intellectual anarchy, not an election. She found fulfillment in formulations of fantasy and reality, in compositions of natural and artificial ingredients, in emulsions of lanolin and FD&C Red No. 5.

It wasn’t really an argument. And it wasn’t really about beer. It was about Ania’s refusal to participate in Davin’s elections. The problem wasn’t that she questioned Davin’s obsession or his distribution of superlatives. The problem was that she imagined.

She imagined that Davin was her lover. Sometimes. Sometimes she imagined that he was her father. And her child. And her friend. And her enemy.

Ania actually kissed him once. It happened at the State Fair. They had literally been throwing money away, trying to land dimes on glass saucers. It took Davin two hundred and forty two dimes, but he finally won the fuzzy stuffed purple platypus.

Ania wanted it. She was fascinated by platypuses, having read that male duckbills are the only poisonous mammals. Ania imagined that they used their poison as an aphrodisiac, when it worked, and as a tranquilizer when it didn’t. Davin offered to trade the platypus for a kiss. So Ania kissed him once and realized that Davin was also a part of herself. A part that petrified her.

Desire here is enacted as a restlessness reversing the libidinal economy of ownership; instead of wanting to possess or even “know” the other, we want to sustain the experiential excitement of not knowing, the seductive wonder we feel at discovering that the other is beyond us, unknown, inexhaustible.[2]

Ania actually kissed him once, but she imagined kissing him a thousand different times. She imagined she kissed him every time she found one of his notes, one of his not-so-subtle suggestions that she experience more of life. She imagined long, wet kisses in the living room where he slipped notes under the door; soft, stolen kisses outside, by the mailbox, where he wasted paper and 20 cent stamps sending her postcards; hot, breathy kisses in the laundry room where she found messages scrawled on used dryer sheets; full-bodied full-body kisses in the bedroom where he hid notes under her pillows. And after each imagined kiss she shredded Davin’s note and swore under her breath.

Explanation

 What if

I open my eyes

sing out my secrets

and those dreams drown

in your eyes?

By keeping my silence

I cannot disappoint

and the dreamer never dies[3]

Davin rejected Ania’s explanation. Ania continued to reject Davin’s intimations. Davin rejected Ania’s rejection and continued on his quest for the perfect drink.

“You want that on the rocks?”

“No, Sir, I take mine neat.”

Davin couldn’t imagine how anyone could dilute experience. Who would vitiate a shot of Oban with ice?  He didn’t even indulge in mixed drinks because he likened it to participating in an orgy. What might be gained in pleasure is definitely lost in control. Davin wanted control, so he stuck with serial monogamy.

Ania didn’t know how not to dilute experience. When you can’t manage experience with your hands you manage it with your imagination. What might be lost in pleasure is gained in control. Ania wanted control, so she stuck with masturbation.

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true.[4]

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[1] Elkins, James. The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. San Diego: Harvest, 1997.

[2] Davis and Schadle, “Alternative Research Writing and the Academic Act of Seeking,” CCC 51.3 (2000):  422.

[3] Janice Carello. 1993.

[4] Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.