Brick

Ben Folds and Darren Jessee

6 am day after Christmas
I throw some clothes on in the dark
The smell of cold
Car seat is freezing
The world is sleeping
I am numb

Up the stairs to the apartment
She is balled up on the couch
Her mom and dad went down to Charlotte
They're not home to find us out
And we drive
Now that I have found someone
I'm feeling more alone
Than I ever have before

She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly

They call her name at 7:30
I pace around the parking lot
Then I walk down to buy her flowers
And sell some gifts that I got
Can't you see
It's not me you're dying for
Now she's feeling more alone
Than she ever has before

She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly

As weeks went by
It showed that she was not fine
They told me son, it's time to tell the truth

She broke down, and I broke down
Cause I was tired of lying

Driving home to her apartment
For a moment we're alone
Yeah she's alone
I'm alone
Now I know it

She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly
Off the coast and I'm headed nowhere
She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly

©Ben Folds Five

A Dentist Tries His Hand at Poetry

Brent Fisk

First, numb your pages. Have a mint
on your tongue and keep your nose hairs trimmed.
Ideas will come like sleep, catch you unaware—
a sudden scrawl of pen across a legal pad.
Do ideas have sound? A scrape of tool,
the high whine of a drill?

In the parking lot wrens occupy
a shopping cart lodged in the junipers.
What is there to write about, my fingers
always in a stranger’s mouth? My secretary
in the bright yellow lobby, a smile pure Muzak,
dust motes dancing through the light.

Perhaps as she unbends
paper clips, doodles on memo pads, she’ll daydream
of dentists, hot sex in the linen closet, laughing
gas cracking up the rubber tree.
Goldfish swim upside down in circles
collecting flaked food and stray thoughts.

Tell me why you grind your teeth, why you fail
to floss. Are bodies buried in your basement?
Does a mistress snore on a vibrating bed? Hold the cotton
close and don’t panic at the sight of blood.
Wait at least an hour before you eat
your regrets. Some days I drill holes where I shouldn’t,
fill molars with radio signals, dumb down wisdom teeth.

I wait for a Tuesday I’ll remember forever,
the day the police find the tooth fairy in my trunk,
mason jars of milk teeth beside her.
I’ll barricade the door, turn the nitrous on full blast,
and with one little bent mirror,
eyeball you from behind my desk.

© Prick of the Spindle 2007

Backseat Delirium

Dan Nowak

I am your dead lover
tonight, lit candles burning
in your old Cadillac. Saturdays
were never this much fun.

Remember my body, my skin –
it hasn’t missed you. It’s missed
us, our leather and our need
to burn ourselves at the feathers.

We aren’t blue jays, just flightless
angels stuck. I’m on my knees behind
the driver’s seat and your love.
Please make me work for it –

my wings still need a down payment.
Tonight we are more than ourselves,
than our pasts. We are satellites
carrying our galaxies in our mouths.

© Blood Lotus, February 2006

Bartender

Regina Spektor
Come on bartender
Won't you be more tender
Give me two shots of whiskey
And a beer chaser
Love will be the death of me
Love is so fickle
Cause it starts with a flood
And it ends with a tr-tr-tr-tr-tr-tr-tr-tr-trtrickle

Come on bartender
Just a little more tender
I ate all your peanuts
Return me to sender
I've been too candid
Now I'm barely standing
Just call me a taxi
And prepare me for landing

Ooh, you have got to kick me back out
Into the cold and nasty weather
And maybe if i sober up
I will stop pretending that love is forever
Love is forever
Come on bartender(x3)
(x2)

Love will be the death of me
Love will be the death of me
Love will be the death of me
Love is so fickle
Cause it starts with a flood
And it ends with a tr tr tr tr tr tr tr tr tr tr trickle
Trickle
Trickle
Trickle
Trickle
Trickle
Come on bartender
Come on bartender
Come on bartender

Passage from The Sixteen Pleasures

Robert Hellenga

Where was Margeaux, my second self, the traveler who'd followed the road not taken? She was climbing into one of the limousines with Jed, bending over provocatively, waiting for him to pat her fanny. And suddenly I realized something I should have known all along:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Mama alwasy maintained that anyone who'd heard Frost read "The Road not Taken," as she had, would know that the last line was ironic, a joke, but I'd never understood what she meant till now. There is no "road not taken," there's only this road. The road not taken is a fantasy. My mysterious double had never made love to Fabio Fabbriani on the beach in Sardegna; she'd never gone to Harvard; she'd never been near the Library of Congress; she'd never been profiled in a Dewar's ad: "Latest accomplishment: restoring the Book of Kells." She'd been right by my side all the time, filling my ear with might-have-beens and if-onlys, encouraging me to feel sorry for myself. And look where it landed me. In bed with - I didn't want to think about it. A man who wore Harvard underpants.

So when I saw the limousine drive off down the Lungarno I was glad. Glad to be rid of her.

I say I was glad. But it was hard, too. She was my oldest friend, my closest companion. She knew me better than anyone else, better than I knew myself.

(Blogkeeper's note: go buy The Sixteen Pleasures. Now.)

Don't Write a Poem About Rape

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

For the editor who told me

rape is not a fresh subject

(he knows who he is).

Rape is a cliché.

Unless it happens to you.

But don’t write a poem about it

or the editor might say

it’s just not fresh.

Rape is not fresh.

It’s been done too much.

It’s too emotional, confessional.

There are too many words.

People are not shocked anymore.



Don’t write a poem about it

especially if you were in the dark

university parking lot, a little more than tipsy,

and he forced you into his car with a gun.

Dark parking lots and guns are so overdone!

Don’t write a poem about it

especially if the digital time on his dash

was 12:00. It’s too much like the Twilight Zone

especially if those stiff red numbers

still ring in your brain sometimes

when you’re in the grocery line

and you drop everything you got, and the tomatoes

and the peaches, and the can of cream corn

go rolling down the aisle.



Don’t say he drove you down a dead end road.

Don’t tell how he bent your fingers back,

slammed them with the door over and over.

How heavy-handed can you get?

Don’t tell how he took the right to bare your arms,

your legs, your goose-bumpy little nipples,

and when he ripped your shirt in loud red shreds

you were trite enough to worry

what people would think about you.



For God’s sake, don’t say you were a virgin.

Honey, save it for the Movie of the Week.

Don’t tell about the fistfuls

of sand and gravel in your open mouth,

your open face, up your open legs.

It’s just not fresh.

Maybe try a different point of view.



Don’t tell how he held the gun so tenderly

in your ear, under your tongue,

deep inside the stretched-out skin

of your nostril, and you could smell the click

as he cocked it, and you could taste the click

in your throat as he made you call him Lord.

With the right music, it might work for a porno flick

but not for a literary journal.



Don’t tell how you looked up at the full moon

with its mouth torn into a little o

as you waited for it to be over.

Don’t you know the moon is overused?

And there are inconsistencies if you say

you almost laughed out loud

cause you were a stupid little twit who thought

who actually believed the first time would be romantic.



Don’t write a poem about it. Just don’t.

Especially if you went crazy when it didn’t end

and the only defense you had was to black out

and dream the damnedest dreams about a book

you used to have when you were a girl

and you dreamed a little song about the silvery moon,

the moon on the breast of the new fallen road

the Carolina moon that kept shining, shining,

shining on the one who’s raping you.

And when you woke up, it wasn’t over

but the Goodnight Moon was gone,

and you saw an old woman in the distance

come out on her porch to hear

what all the Hell raising was about,

turn out the light and go back inside

and you might’ve thought Good Night

to the Old Lady Whispering Hush,

but that’s too obvious, and anyway

we’ve heard that story before.



Don’t say he dragged you down the road by your hair,

the gravel chewing your back to bits.

Good Night Bowl of Mush, it’s just

the caveman syndrome. Get over it.

We’re sick of wenchy women poets

who are always bashing men.



And the part where he was gentleman enough

to drive you back to your dorm

just doesn’t fit the character.

Don’t say he told you he’d kill you if you breathed

a word, then asked your forgiveness, told you

not to worry and go get some sleep.

Would he really say that?



Don’t say he drove off in a limp line of smoke

as the sun came blinking over the horizon

and you staggered and puked your way back to your room,

knowing you wouldn’t make it to Psychology class that day.

Don’t talk about the guilt for not turning him in.

Take your ass to a talk show or a support group or a priest,

stop throwing the reader around.



Don’t tell the never ending end

of your whiny little poem. Get a grip.

Especially if your roommate laughed and said

Why would anybody want to rape you?

And the counselor said you’ve got to take control

of your life, and your boyfriend tried to understand

why even his understanding would never be enough,

why even his softest fingertips would always be too much.

So you drank yourself into a quiet rage

and now six years later it’s backed up in a corner

of your throat, bristling, sideways, ready to lunge

at the thickest, closest, slickest, hardest vein.



Nobody wants to hear about it anymore.

And the editor doesn’t care that

you’ve already cut half the words

and many of the details.

It’s still too sprawling, too baggy,

too talky, not fresh.

Go tell it to Ginsberg, we’ve

got a comma to perfect.



But if you’re that damned stubborn, go ahead.

You’ll write the poem alone

and it’ll live in a junk drawer

swelling up like a belly

under a pink pile of rejection.

Serves you right.

So stop acting like a bitchy female poet.

It just won’t work. It’s just not fresh.

On food

Edward Abbey

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialistic, otherworldly, New Age spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu and seaweed slime.