CM-1 Design. Tamiko Thiel / Thinking Machine Corp. 1983.
I did not attend
the orgy. Not for lack
of invitation, sadly. I
was appalled by the
stories my mind refused
to relinquish. Also, I was
tired. Also, I was thirsty.
When an insect enters
your ear you could just
let it inside and see
how that works out.
How, after all, did
that work out?
In my early poems
I had been untraining my
self to loosen up the spells
from the foremost poison.
There were images, yes.
There were things you could
get to know in the privacy
of your locked home.
And when I look back—
I refuse something there
as perhaps this is the occasion
on which I allow that refusal,
black as sunlight, hollow as thinking,
to list back inside of me. I have
nothing really to say about it
having said already more
than I could, other than
a canned apology
to my dead forebears no doubt
not listening anyhow.
But we’re familiar enough
with those now, too.
North Dakota Badlands
Sadly, there too, the lure
of the devices had pierced
a hole in my concentration
that I was split or distilled
into a frenetic substance
hearing only Jane’s entreaty
in my dumb brain.
Unable to sit with my guitar
next to the fire at night
without being hunted down
by my own specious
conclusions. Like a
continual laceration of the
so-called present tense.
You can’t go home, they say.
Yeah, well, you can’t get back
to your new life once you’ve
ventured home either.
So, good luck with that.
My wife’s ex-husband
is essentially lodged in me
like snow. Simple, clean
air coming in swells off
the frozen coastline.
A ragged horizon, flocks
of peculiar shadows, he has
become many men to me.
Yet, not ever having met him,
they are—these men, laughing
inappropriately, too loudly—
burnished from the hatchet
that’s split open my skull,
each a doll of wind, each
from inside my fun dreams.
Only interesting people
fail a great many times in
their lives and perhaps
that’s what it means to
address ourselves to them.
Yet resistance has its shitty
way with us. To foist up the
old ego like a monk’s cloak,
render the carcass clean.
Apply the adequate
fragrances and so forth.
That should be a peony.
Or a bird. Not something
I’ve done inside myself
to get the better pieces
of shame to snap back
into place. Oh, there’s
a good deal of contempt, too.
If you want to confuse it
with that. I mean, self-hatred
as a kind of exploration,
a gamble in broad daylight.
Fuck the martyrs. They’ve
taught us too much. And
what have we gleaned other
than the work of forgetting?
I don’t care to venture
the words that will make
it all true. If I knew them
I probably wouldn’t have
the courage to type them out.
But you would. I know that
about you already. I trust you
to die well.
❂
Joshua Marie Wilkinson's new book of poetry, Bad Woods, will be out soon from Sidebrow. Next year, Fonograf Editions will publish Trouble Finds You, his debut novel. He lives in Seattle.