aayoungmy parents were screaming
at each other
in Baptist curses
doors slamming
phones torn asunder
sounds of a home splitting apart at the roofbeams
my father throwing the floor model television out the front door
and one frightened sister
smuggling me out a bedroom window to another protective sister
that may not have all happened on the same night
it was so long ago &
this wasn’t constant
not your average weeknight at the Young’s house
but it’s always the first time
that matters most
pictures of
young Virginia Woolf
cause me to weep
rivers
her features
seem as though
depression was her mother
pain her father
a mouth made to sigh
as if she knew
the moment she was born
she wanted to die
depression has a heart
buried beneath
pumice streets
of old pompeii
it has lost
all interest
in homeric greek
walled within
the house of the tragic poet
it doesn’t pretend
to engage in platitudes
it does not want to tell you
how it’s doing
it does not want
to be reminded
of how much it aches
how embarrassed it feels
or infect you
with its tragedy
it has forgotten its father’s birthday
depression can’t elaborate
regarding dreams as
a fool’s currency
lacking the wherewithal to say
i feel as though
i died years ago
the horses are dead
the dogs are unfed
the natives have ceased
their drum beat
Janne Teller,
a Danish novelist
of Austrian-German background,
wrote the line,
“From the moment we are born,
we begin to die.”
I, poet,
think to myself,
only a Danish novelist
of Austrian-German background
could possibly conceive of a line
that fucking morbid.
The following line should simply read,
“Why not avoid the protracted suffering
and slit your wrists, the proper way, now?”
Death was my business for many years,
Ms. Janne “I-Need-Zoloft” Teller.
I am pleased to inform you,
there is a prolonged period
between birth and death
which we warm blooded humans
refer to as, “life,”
and it is nothing short
of miraculous.
my father drove
through two kentucky counties
screaming
“It’s a girl!”
after twenty years
three wives
and four boys, one of which
he could not claim
just before the depression took hold
and dying by his own hand
became more appealing
than dying slowly
in front of me
“Do you think I want Alicia to see me like this?”
he screamed at her
while the garbage burned…
and she agreed
do you
poet
know how absurd you are
as it is critical to your survival
and the endeavor to be heard
ovid playing dress up
you’re not the first depressive writer
hell
you’re not even the millionth
the whining of the pompous is uninteresting
so buck up you sappy fuck
and look to the fundamentals
you should be boot kicked for using the word “very” in a poem
i cease to find your writing profound
if knowing when to use the words
that
which
who and whom
stumps the shit out of you
i may not be drunk enough to write this
but as you know
where
we
afflicted with the pen
are concerned
there comes a point
you no longer have a choice
that time came tonight
when the music came on all by itself
a ghostly moment alone in the dining room
when lou reed’s voice began to sing
turn to me
from an untouched stereo
the depth of your sadness overwhelmed me
and i felt myself failing you so
i must resist every possible cliche when i say
you punk son of a bitch
stop
counting your curses
the past is indestructible
i’m glad you never made it
i’m happy your kick ass band
was looking east
as culture crawled west
because you would be dead now
and i never would have known you
i wouldn’t have kept writing
and i’d be long gone too
when i consider all that you are
it staggers me to think
how many beautiful things
wouldn’t exist
he is off fighting in the war
on the other side of the world
as i wait at home
growing my victory garden
letters and postcards tied in ribbons
as the record player weeps
p.s. i love you
my wringing hands plead to mars for his safe return
in the knowing hope chests so easily
convert to coffins
his cause is the same my father’s was
a battle often lost
and here i am again
buying war bonds
the little girl in mary janes
pig tails sad brown eyes
and a sun dress
watching daddy die too soon
from too many pills too much bottled poison and black
cigarette in bed
depressions
so sure i can save
this one
from his invading army
mausoleum chambers
fill my mother’s house
the lavender room
with grandmother luvenia’s bed
and soft pink crystal light fixture from the old house on fishing creek
is where the spaw and bates families are entombed
the bed spread woven from funeral ribbons and loss
cherry framed antique portraiture
hang as illuminated death masks of my ancestors
behind the old convex glass
shoe leather faces
whip stitched lines
and battle scars
their backs curved
from bending to god’s will
their great depression was their existence
i look into the women’s changed eyes
who lost children
they had faded to a barely living shade of gray
known only to battlefields
and beds sickened with scarlet fever
country life is a sort more merciless than most
particularly to the feminine persuasion
mother swears the cicadas were screaming in the june apple trees
that pot steam august day meant for sewing bicentennial dresses
the day aunt lena jumped in the well
i often walked by the sealed haunted thing as a little girl
lungs filling with fear
wondering why that day
she chose to turn potable water into tears
was it the four year old daughter
named venus
born and died in the month of april
buried beside the church
had the clocks her late husband made wound her tightly enough to do it
or was it simply senility
i’ll never know
when had she stopped hearing the piano music
what had she suffered
that an abyss seemed somehow more comforting
than another day lost in the valley of stones
i close the memory of her with a crystal doorknob
cousin leland went into the well after the body
but her soul
never resurfaced
the evening
hears the chickens cluck
they eat tomato seeds
from an attentive keeper
the spider lady plants
lean against the old wood shop
lavender hookers
the sun is dripping
down the house’s western
grapevine growing side
and the wind chimes
are playing
counting flowers on the wall
by the statler brothers
the garden is in a state of grand decline
purple faced petunias
who don’t know
not to be beautiful
float upward after drinking rain
the picnic table
has a centerpiece
of foxfire
glowing
for the half august moon
the smell
of fall
a notion
harbored
within the breeze
upon my face
i fear the coming winter
and
for two hundred year old trees
roots weakened
by shifting soil
that remembers
native curses uttered
this earth parched for water
of provincial people
composed
and
carbon bonded
of a more
egalitarian
molecule