At First She Don't Succeed

I.                   Try

            That night, she 17. She ready. She into him. She love him. He milky white, skinny and gentle, the boy, he feel good. Oh, do the girl have it right, have it tight, have it rough. She feel white tonight. Milk on milk, and cute red pimples – they 17.

            It’s hard enough to sneak him up to she room, dark on a Saturday night, Mama in her bed, Saturday night’s fire only a mile from where she stand on the stairs. Way down there: the howls and the thrills of the girls and the boys. He climb up behind, loving she sweetly. In she room he love she like the moon. Clothes on the floor, not from tonight but from the night before. She safe. She with love – she at home.

            Past midnight in a trundle bed, snow white sticking to the witch window, leaving the room cold but for they bodies. Suddenly she feel she black hair between she limbs. “You don’t have to shave your legs,” he say. She love him, him because he love she curls. She exotic. She like hot whiskey. She a noble savage in Vermont. She a savage in the city.  

            “Ready?”

            In winter she white on his white skin. He move slow. She tight, and he know.

            Woman give birth. Woman bleed month to month. No man ever compare sex with getting kicked in the nuts. They stop and she cry and he stroke she hair, say “it’s alright. I love you.” She too tight.

II.                Try again

            This night she 18, again fire smoking and friends’ cigarettes. Summertime and they dance, she squeal sharply, every beer, they high school graduates! He say he wouldn’t have made it, but for she. Blue Spruce and Silver Birch celebrate with every gust, blue night at the fire pit. In June she hot, she wear no shoes – she in Vermont.

            Like every night, they first to go to bed. Last to sleep. She set up the tent after six or seven beers when it began to rain. She stole a blanket, a rain cover, a tarp, she brought sheep skin from the house. She ran around the tent in a thorn bush, she all scraped up in she legs. Inside she hear the rain but they stay dry, so dry and no air break through she layers. He say “I love you,” he say he know he get slapped if he ask to marry she. She laugh. She more afraid of getting married or of getting bleached? He blond hair sticking to his forehead, he big darling nose like a hook in she heart, he crooked teeth, he pale, pale skin.

            She browner than the winter. She drunk in the summer. She feel good. She got a tattoo. She know pain. He gentle, he slow. She tight and he know.

            “Baby, we did it!”

            But it don’t even last a minute.

III.             Try, Try Again

            They break it all up for college, but they a Christmas present. She come home from Chicago, he take the bus from Kentucky. She invite him to she house, with she girlfriends. They all take vodka shots in the living room, they in college now. She girlfriend read her poetry, make she girlfriends cry. He wait upstairs.

            Night black as winter because they in the North Pole; the NEK; the Northeast Kingdom. They see themselves in she sliding glass doors. She sliced in half by the white snow pile. But she know she not black from the waist up. She just looking at the nighttime. Yellow sun about to come up.

            She bring the bottle upstairs and he smile at she, melt away she worries and smile at he love. She close the door and he grab she waist, she laugh, she drink up. She have nothing to fear. She yella’, she free, he pink and he love she.

            Past midnight in a trundle bed, snow white sticking to the witch window, but the room hot for they bodies. She kick the bottle to the floor, vodka in the carpet never smell so good. She trying to be proud of she curls, she hair, she light skin. But Chicago only make she wish she a little more mocha... He gain muscle in Kentucky, he lift she up and he hold she down. She feel safe, she feel open, she know pain without him. She love pain with him.

            She lie down giggling, she ask for a cigar. He hold out his hand, and she slap him five. They warm bodies touching, and she sigh. They relax in she lumpy bed, they home, skin soft like only lovers grow. For a moment she envision a snow white child, chill from the outside creep up she legs. Through the window shines she friend the yellow sun. She say, “I’m happy.” But she cold, and she know.

Wink D'alantern in the Shed

When we fell in love
Chicago compressed

with heat on my lips
dry as some red worms

charred hips bricks they oscillate
against this cracked brown curb

you heated me up ts-ah kept me orange
with just a little black

breathing sulfur under my tongue
if only I didn’t have asthma on nights like these

we were under Van Buren
trying to push 2am into the coals

“blow on it baby” and I know
it sounded dirtier coming from me

three is a crowd tonight
beside the elevator all hot blooded

men have forgotten a lighter a dollar
have forgotten their script on the 29 bus

forget rats hares glazed brown and white
drip salt over their little sweater teeth below the street

I know there are a lot of good things to say
about the way shins burn under jeans


but please can we talk
about anything else

the daily reminder of free ice skating
in the park never got out in time

the night we turned the river around
barehanded and bellies out

took a big gulp as we pumped
all our shit into the Mississippi

the begetter
Old Lady Leary

the way we all get singed
when Obama and Oprah decide to come home

I want to take it like it’s mine to ignite
but damn if I just got here

and yet there he is Rahm Emanuel
turned like an angry escalator

he’s indulging all the locals
burning me with a hand underground

still I never really got what time to stop getting off
at Harrison on red

you and me and the sulfury walls of Van Buren
still curling around with good fingers

knuckle-less and no one in the room
knows where they’re coming from

In March is the breathless emerald flood
of everybody who showed up for Flogging Molly

I am not drunk enough
I crumple my legs with the whip-lashed outside

when the gray sky cracks hard and hot
the concrete is crowded by rusty headless legs

they stampede
and I sit inside them

wait for your crooked arms
to strike the Sears tower

I always liked to watch
you sink your teeth into it

you start the garden I am in
irons as the buildings drip with wet clay

finally safe
from the old cow in the barn

drowning is something
bad that can also happen

to us it seems like Van Buren
will just barely be engulfed

If I only stayed there you’d be in me now
like coals slipping into soot

The Value of Education

            I am an education enthusiast, but I do not believe that college is for everyone. We as a nation have gradually formed this idea that one cannot contribute to society without a college education. But I would challenge anyone to tell me what exactly a college education is in this day and age. We have generalized it so much that the level of education being provided by most colleges and universities has severely decreased. The focus is more on this idea of the college education than on early education and high school, the foundations of learning.

            Why do we go to college? To acquire the skills needed to exceed in our chosen craft. But how many psychology majors work desk jobs at huge distribution companies? We can blame the job market, but I would bet that a huge number of those college graduates are not half as passionate about psychology as their transcripts indicate. They were told to go to college, so to college they went, accumulating debt as they did. They were told to choose a major, so they did, in order to graduate from that college they were told to attend. What we need are not more college graduates, but more specialists. We need to reacquaint ourselves with vocational learning. Even before that, we need to have motive for higher learning. Society must let go of the necessity to have immediate entrance into college, without any time for breath or meditation. One cannot be expected to know exactly what it is we truly want to study and practice for the rest of our lives after 18 years of simply being told, just as one cannot be expected to spend 40,000 dollars a year figuring it out. Personally, if that kind of dough is going to be tossed on something, it had better be something I’m damn sure of.

            Young people must have the utmost drive and desire to continue their education; otherwise we end up with useless, regurgitated information we find no need to remember, all for a piece of paper which somehow symbolizes our four years of “growth.” It’s time we stopped going to school for a diploma, and considered the real reason secondary education was instated: to be knowledgeable in the fabrics of this world we share, and to put that knowledge to use as we pursue our chosen career. But we cannot force our youth to be constantly hungry for knowledge. By telling them they must learn, and placing them in such facilities without giving them valid reasons beyond “to get a degree” or “to get a good job,” we are inevitably ridding them of their own hungers. It is time to dismantle the assembly line. Call it anarchy; call it whatever you want, but I feel an extreme anxiety hovering over the youth of our world. There are reasons for social norms, I think we like to believe they are the reason we can move together as a people.

The idea of secondary education mustn’t solely include colleges and universities, but all vocational and specified learning facilities. I’d like to see a time when a silly piece of paper from Harvard is equally prestigious as a technical apprenticeship, or four years in the actual field. We are a society obsessed with paper. Diplomas only exist because we believe they do. Money only exists because we believe it does. The entire concept of economy is just that, a concept. These are scraps of paper, not scraps of knowledge. And yet, paper is our motivation, give us more and more of it, and thus, we will be happy.

For Gaia’s Women of Endless Hills

A dreadful thrill

came up the hill

where you had slept for days.

In patient curls

you simply purred.

You listened so to wait.

Men surrounded

your empty bed,

but in your heart lacked haste.

Our fruit tree blushed

with blood and rust.

As you let out your breasts,

a grateful lull

came up the hill.

All weeping men around

took a pouch from

man’s powdered gun,

and bare feet kissed the ground.

A loosened string

allowed to sing

gives gifts of snow and calm.

And so our tree

ablaze with heat

could open up her palms.

So fell the fruit

on hill, and you.

Your breasts embraced each plum.

The cool hill blued;

all hearts were good.

Man hummed to string’s snow song.

Day to Day in Oil Pastels

4 months of work and here it is...

Production, Production....

“Who can know the heart of youth but youth itself?” –Patti Smith

We are all admonished by the hands of Time. They ring their own sharp tune, leaving us to leap at them like silly cats after a closed door. Foolishly we patter off to our food, or to the warmth of our fireplace, thinking soon enough the door will be opened by Master Time. It’s all a bit of luck, as they say. Now I am young, now strong willed, I haven’t had the door pressing on my nose long, nor the migraine of Time’s pandering hands. I indulge in these silly adventures, and for what? To write something meaningful? To ponder time as if I am a wise old lark? I don’t really have the right... Not yet. I’m not supposed to know anything now, as time tells us. Ignorant youth, we don’t know anything at all.

And even now, I have this middle-aged British voice in my head that isn’t my own. That or some prolific 20^th century poet. A Patti, a Sylvia, an old Brit. It isn’t as if I haven’t a voice, but its swimming in this unfathomable lagoon of literary thought. Mucky as my brain tissue itself. Philosophies have all been worn out, so where does that leave us? The talented youth of the new millennium.

But still I sit here and try to write my poetry, my philosophy, my “non-fiction,” my inspiration. Because in the end it’s all I have ever wanted. I have to wonder, is it too late? Can the world change any more than it already has because of me? Such a complicated mind in a simple life, I like to tell myself, oh wondrous me... But Patti and Robert give me hope, raised in suburbia, changing the course of their future. Still, they faced such hardships straight off the bat and that pushed them, but what do I have to grasp? And are all artists meant to know great pain before they can be called great themselves? What can I relate to the world with my words? Shall I write about food like I always wished, wistfully narrating the sounds and the smells of kitchens around the world? For what? To show what? To share what with this earth?

Anyone can read about morality, about change, about art, about politics, about food and culture and thought and creation. I can’t think of a single thing the world doesn’t have enough of at their literary fingertips. I suppose it must be all about invention. Well I don’t think I’ve thought of anything new before anyone else yet…

Maybe it’s the mundane that’s the key. “Mundane Living, a novel by Rachael Alexandria Meyers.” “Seeking Adventure in a World Pre-Created and Pre-Analyzed by Great Old Literary Geniuses.” Mine is a biography no one yet wants to read. I’ve got to do something great first. I’ve got to make some great statement, some great act, some silly kind of thing that’ll fame me and make people want to read about me. It’s the way these days. Writing can’t make you famous; it’s the fame that makes you a writer worth writing about. Now I’ll abandon this silly thing. Because, as Paul Valéry so wisely put it, “Poets don’t finish poems, they abandon them.”