Contingency in Event of a Monumental Collapse

CONTINGENCY IN EVENT OF A MONUMENTAL COLLAPSE​

I. Preliminary Years

nor does this waning winter
sun warm faces
and love is everything
that it is cracked up to be

dog-ear the page and cut the letter “g” in
shadows

(so permanent a stain) day seeps the liquid cloud, can
crack the month-old ice on front porch railings – such January glass
forgets the sun.

Appears a moonlit space – so men can wander
the final bastion of an undivided life

In color’s subjectivity blue becomes midnight to
beholder number two and each minute stands
isolated and seconds
that are blue (irreconcilable to white or non-white seconds)

when all the fossils between us would
become
the room in which I stand,
small, facing up
the long, twisted staircase

a shattered yelp warped jowls
teeth like trunks of solid ivory trees

A landing drenched in halogen.

where is time, in my dreams and in my night-time wastes
cloaked in white like polished paper
or new canvas – painted concrete stained by morning sunshine

when I awake unrestored by night’s engineers–
their processes that flood the land with skies and cities where men sleep, or move
like painted protozoa
broken bridges regenerate like lizard’s tails suspended over rivers over
sweeping air that pools and curls

formerly I bathed in open oceans (the deep cobalt expanses) with a shelf of living coral to support my
weight, over years cracks eliminate the step and continents expand/contract to break and build
peaks then grinding them to dust,
day leans upon my eyes,
lost in isotonic rain

the breezes drape over sparsely collected spires,
spiraled points out of granite
callusing the net of winter, ice cascades in fountains
retching dusty remnants down to streets, shattered beams won’t support the high
peaked roofs
that tumble,

now


it is graphite, not the moon through a filter, but
ordinary graphite, dulled and full of fiber
you shook

in breezes,
the epoxy of a city as it reforms to slag and
crooks toward your fingers, claws

read the slender delineations – arcs that crawl about on cracking
earth, substantial
or some markings colored khaki like a prince

I am careful – each hour rises out
of sequential digits hovering in

and I spot the snow out basement windows,
thinking along lines like
snow and art
spattering like blood
or the discharge of mucous when we look closely enough (meaning to hold
up the head of your guest, his eyelids
barely move) after he charges down
the staircase
believing it to be
vertical in the strange horizontal way that Ithaca
was an island
yet owned cattle, men, and tongues.

Also sad is the speech of humans fusing (in
fundamental honesty)
with various household objects, a category
containing Clorox wipes, broken chair legs
my notebook where I write
That drafty rooms are James Tate’s future ghost explaining he will only stay
in town another week before blowing
smoke rings over the space-time continuum




II. The Landmark Tumbles



Sending tools like a dram of white whiskey
to a place where tools are useless
as the tram trundles about on iron islands

freezing occurs
during the final entry
(the softest stone)

Contrasting the bones of megafauna in my bathtub
sums the category of hills
that twist to turquoise galleries:
escape from knowledge and hives full of eyes
openings in the earth act as portals, the way-station window
exposes stones and glass
like a watercourse trailing a mountain’s ridge

A room suspended in the city
glossed cement block is wearing its hair like a metal bunk and toilet
like rays of
glass exploding, the sun
rubs sore tendrils over windows in observance
as a child dons an adult skin
and sees the dying day through double panes.

Enter: the retrograde motion of planets and
the son of celestial phenomena
exploding giants and their radiating black night

I send a hollow eye
extend a screen that is silver, unsupported
across supposed stars

If the chalked lines above spelled out
the suggested colors for weaving (now
called animation) turn,
spin as bobs of thread attached to
planetary axes

No more light, only
color spreads

the room is full and smooth as a motor locks and whines
sliding shut the door
dividing the street,

An overlap, when the clandestine grey cement

existing
like language
in a vacuum

 

Hey everyone,

This originally came from an exercise based on Bernadette Mayer's Midwinter Day which she created by writing without stopping (except for the ocassional sandwich/bathrom break) for an entire day, and then edited the result.

I wrote for about 12 hours without stopping and came up with some 15 pages of raw text which I then edited down to this. Unfortunately, it wasn't originally left justified. It spread out upon the page in order to preserve the sound quality I was searching for, but when I entered it in to this thread, it forced me to justify it. Oh well.


This poem was written to try to answer a question with which I am rather obsessed: what can we do to cope with things when eventually our lives/our world/our ideas/our dreams come crashing down around us?

Hope you enjoy.

-V

 

Hi V. I'm not sure how old you are, but that question about coping with life's reality (look up learned helplessness - a poem topic I've been wresting with) seems to be something that a lot of folks are focused on. First of all: applause. Wow, what a feat and what a chore! My favorite part (and trust me, I didn't do you justice! I read it here online and then finally printed it out and then spent another 20 minutes or so... reading parts of it over and over as I was folding laundry). It was impressive to think of you writing this over a 12 hour period and then getting it down to this. There are lots of good images/thoughts... so far my favorite is: "when all the fossils between us would/become/the room in which I stand" - now that is awesome! I wish I had some helpful advice. The only thing that comes to me is "coordinates"... That's a Billy Collins point in getting a poem to work better for the reader. It seems to need some kind of thread to link it altogether. Not sure if the thread could be your use of water kinds of words, you use "liquid, ice, drenched, flood, bridges, rivers, pools, coral, rain, etc." So those images are strong and maybe you can grab those and strengthen that throughout to tighten it up. Again, wow! Keep writing, you are great!