revised poems

Okkervil River Poem

Mr. Sheff, I’ve been thinking about all that you’ve sung about,

The poet who held a book in each hand,

while jumping off a bridge.

That is the way I want to go,

but will my pages be feathered?

You leave me troubled

wanting to mine ore,

sulking in a train’s catbird seat,

 lost at the end of the dairy aisle.

What about the murderers,

mutilating bodies and stuffing them

with frozen yogurt, and I couldn’t help

 but to sing along.

That was a punch in my stomach

that sent the butterflies down there

camouflaging onto the walls my intestines

so I (or the canary) couldn’t find them.

I built a mine shaft in my throat

and sent a mirror, and that canary, down.

They searched and stared, but

only the poem  stared back.  

Have you listened to my iPod?

Have you listened to the troubling stories the river has sung?

Have you heard about the poet who jumped off a bridge with a book in each hand?

Have you heard the secret chord that David played to please the Lord?

Have you left flowers for Hitler?

Have you hymned with bearded foxes?

Have you turned the snow red as strawberries in the summertime?

Have you thrown golden rocks?

Have you dropped out of high school to go join a Balkan band?

Have you always loved short story form and new pornography?

Have you stood on a muscle car with a four foot sword?

Have you played bingo on Friday nights in a drive-in?

Have you been asked by a lesbian to be her beard?

At 2 a.m.

I couldn't find the scissors anywhere.
Blood was drying in my hair.

The front door's lock twitched.
A motorcycle was being strangled in the alley.

That night, I walked, and a car past

and its engine hiccupped.

I’ve been that car, when my ignition twitched

and I shuddered and threw back.  

 
You always forget to breath

and then you jolt up.

I abandoned the covers, switched on the light.
Scribbled the scissors are in the basement sink.

Played #2

I’m playing a trumpet on a cliff

diver’s back, falling into the ocean’s

foam that is boiling up and through

the coral that really is just a desert.

I pick up sea weed, and see heroes

that are only reeds, and the trumpet turns

into a saxophone, and my fingers begin

to run beneath my breath.

I begin to blow and my front teeth begin

to loosen, and then they fly off and ramble

down the slope, and clunk in the bottom

before trailing out, as if out of an exhaust pipe.

I feel my tongue starting to slide

against the reed. It snakes through

and my intestines stampede to catch

up and shoot out as confetti.

My bones turn into powder and paint

the sky ash, then my blood sprays pomegranate

ambers to where the sun had set higher

in the trees, swelling into the empty nests.