Confetti Allegiance: Love Letter to Jim Brodey Poem by CAConrad

Confetti Allegiance

Is there a deceased poet who was alive in your lifetime but you never met, and you wish you had met? A poet you would LOVE to correspond with, but it's too late? Take notes about this missed opportunity. What is your favorite poem by this poet? Write it on unlined paper by hand (no typing). If we were gods we wouldn't need to invent beautiful poems, and that's why our lives are more interesting, and that's why the gods are always meddling in our affairs out of boredom. It's like the fascination the rich have with the poor, as Alice Notley says, "the poor are more interesting than others, almost uniformly." This poem was written by a human poet, and we humans love our poets, if we have any sense. Does something strike flint in you from the process of engaging your body to write this poem you know and love? Notes, notes, take notes.

The poet for me in doing this exercise is Jim Brodey and his poem "Little Light,' which he wrote in the bathtub while listening to the music of Eric Dolphy, masturbating in the middle of the poem, "while the soot-tinted noise of too-full streets echoes / and I pick up the quietly diminishing soap & do / myself again." Take your handwritten version of the poem and cut it into tiny confetti. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and toss the confetti poem in. Add garlic, onion, parsnip, whatever you want, pepper it, salt it, serve it over noodles or rice. Eat the delicious poem with a nice glass of red wine, pausing to read it out loud and toast the poet, "MANY APOLOGIES FOR NOT TOASTING YOU WHEN YOU WERE ALIVE!" Take notes while slowly chewing the poem. Chew slowly so your saliva breaks the poem down before it slides into your belly to feed your blood and cells of your body. Gather your notes, write your poem.


Love Letter to Jim Brodey

Dear Jim
for
those whose
acid trips were a success
only twice
I've met men who
are high exactly
as they are sober
both became my lovers

both died one like
you died Jim he
played music too
loud at parties to
gather us into a
single frequency feel
healed for the length
of a song

nothing works forever
there was something in
the air that year Jim
and you put it there

a rapt center in
pivot looking
to face
love again
learning to
accept what's offered
without guilt

to be reminded
of nothing
my favorite day not dragging
the dead around

they're looking
for Lorca in the Valley
of the Fallen

Franco's thugs would understand
"developing countries" means
getting them ready for
mining diamonds drilling oil
teaching them to make a
decent cup of coffee for
visiting executives

if I'm not going
to live like this
anymore I must will
every cell to
stand away

the History of Madness
725 pages is too much to
not be normal

scorn is very
motivating

I'm vegetarian unless
angels are on the
menu mouth watering
deep fried wings
shove greasy bones in
their trumpets

the cost of
scorn is
often unexpected

I see my fascist
neighbor from downstairs
"Did my boyfriend and
I make too much
noise last night?"
his glare the
YES that keeps
me smiling