CAConrad

CAConrad Poems

butterfly on a tissue box
not a real one
a painting
...

2.

I'm going in for
a CAT scan i
mean an audition
...

what was it you
wanted us to
say after you died
...

by choking in
11 years
...

years of  practice for a soft
landing in the slaughter
we looked far off to
...

to be
gone a
constant desire
...

photo of United States from
outer space in trash
green fire held to
...

paint over the
dead end sign
are police writers?
yes they are writing into
books our
little cherub of
misunderstanding
a thinking to push us
back into body of the
whole
love yourself more next time
their reports read
stones sink as they please
everything expands at the very end
a lit cigarette into
our dark hello
...

hearing all bells at
once instructs the final exhale
Camelot in thimble of  the gods
Marilyn Monroe's ambulance
lost on the way to the palace of  temperament
a branch of government for the magical arts
punch wall of forest for
an oaken
desk
another dream we
needed agitating the
sentence as it rows across a
newly destroyed heart folding
following tormenting one another
we were all once young and
beautiful squandering everything
it's what we came here to do
cut off engines to the child
registering disposition of the
cat in the dark as the
size of the darkness
...

—For Penny Arcade

There must be a piece of art near where you live that you enjoy, even LOVE! A piece of art that IF THERE WAS WAR you would steal it and hide it in your little apartment. I'm going to PACK my apartment TO THE ROOF when war comes! This exercise needs 7 days, but not 7 consecutive days as most museums and galleries are not open 7 days a week. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art hands the Mark Rothko "Orange, Red and Yellow, 1961" a painting I would marry and cherish in sickness and in health, have its little Rothko babies, and hang them on the wall with their father. But I'm not allowed to even touch it! The security guards will think you're as weird as they think I am when you come for 7 days to sit and meditate. Never mind that, bribe them with candy, cigarettes or soda, whatever it take to be left in peace. For 7 days I sat with my dearest Rothko.

Bring binoculars because you will get closer to the painting than anyone else in the room! Feel free to fall in love with what you see, you're a poet, you're writing a poem, go ahead and fall in love! Feel free to go to the museum restroom and touch yourself in the stall, and be sure to write on the wall that you were there and what you were doing as everyone enjoys a dedication in the museum. And be certain to leave your number, you never know what other art lover will be reading. Return with your binoculars. There is no museum in the world with rules against the use of binoculars, information you may need for the guards if you run out of cigarettes and candy.

Map your 7 days with physical treats to enhance your experience: mint leaves to suck, chocolate liqueurs, cotton balls between your toes, firm-fitting satin underwear, thing you can rock-out with in secret for the art you love. Take notes, there must be a concentration on notes in your pleasure making. Never mind how horrifying your notes may become, horror and pleasure have an illogical mix when you touch yourself for art. When you gather your 7 days of notes you will see the poem waiting in there. Pull it out like pulling yourself out of a long and energizing dream.

ROTHKO 7

Whether things wither or whether your ability to see them does.
—from "The Coinciding,' by Carrie Hunter

DAY 1

it's
October
I pressed
this buttercup in April
I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK
call me it!
call me sentimental!
HAVE YOU SEEN THE HEADLINES?
spring is a
luxury
I hope
for another to
garden with my
bare hands

DAY 2

awkwardness of being insane
arrives
after
diagnosis
not before
remove description
from the splendor
do not hesitate

DAY 3

more of a ghost
than my ghosts
here I am

DAY 4

tablet on tongue
stray voltage catching
my ankles

ready to marry
the chopped
off head

while elaborate in curse
it contributes evidence
of life

DAY 5

he kissed me while
I sang
refrain shoved
against epiglottis

centuries of a vowel for
endless refutable corrections
puts mouth
to want

DAY 6

songs dying bodies sing at
involuntary
junctures of
living

EXIT sign
leads us to empty
launch pad
walking
maybe
walking
maybe or riding
the collapsing tower

big hands of
big clock missing
this is not symbolism
they were gone

DAY 7

I'm not tearing back
curtains looking
I know Love is
on the other
side of
town

burying the leash
with the dog was
nothing but
cruel don't ever
speak to me again
help me stop
dreaming your
destruction
...

—for Julian Brolaski

Sit outside under shelter of a doorway, pavilion, or umbrella on a park bench, but somewhere outside where you can easily touch, smell, taste, FEEL the storm. Lean your face into the weather, face pointed UP to the sky, stay there for a bit with eyes closed while water fills the wells of your eyes. Come back into the shelter properly baptized in the beauty of pure elements and be quiet and still for a few minutes. Take some preliminary notes about your surroundings. Try not to engage with others who might run to your shelter for cover. If they insist on talking MOVE somewhere else; you are a poet with a storm to digest, this isn't time for small talk! You are not running from the storm, you are opening to it, you are IN IT! Stick a bare arm or foot into the storm, let your skin take in a meditative measure of wind and rain. If you are someone who RAN from storms in the past take time to examine the joys of the experience. Remind yourself you are a human being who is approximately 80 percent water SO WHAT'S THE HARM OF A FEW DROPS ON THE OUTSIDE!? Right? YES! Pause, hold your breath for a count of 4, then write with a FURY and without thinking, just let it FLOW OUT OF YOU, write, write, WRITE!

Set an empty cup in the storm, hold a slic of bread in the storm. Then put a little salt and pepper on your storm soaked bread, maybe some oregano and garlic. With deliberate SLOOOWNESS chew your storm bread and drink the storm captured in your cup. Slowly. So, slowly, please, with, a, slowness, that, is, foreign, to, you. THINK the whole slow time of chewing and drinking how this water has been in a cycle for MILLIONS OF YEARS, falling to earth, quenching horses, elephants, lizards, dinosaurs, humans. They pissed, they died, their water evaporated and gathered again into clouds to drizzle down AND STORM DOWN into rivers, puddles, aqueducts, and ancient cupped hands. Humans who LOVED, who are long dead, humans who thieved, raped, murdered, were generous, playful, disappointed, fearful, annoyed and adored one another, each of them dying in their own way, their water going back to the sky, coming back down to your bread, your lips, your stomach, to feed your sinew, your brain, your living, beautiful day. Take your notes POET, IT IS YOUR MOMENT to be totally aware, completely aware!


One Day I Will Step from the Beauty Parlor and Enlist in the Frequency of Starlings



my favorite morning
is not caring if
blood on sheets
is yours or mine

a machine in
your station
rides me
tracks to snacks
snacks to tracks

I feel very fortunate
to know magic is real
and poetry is real
you can see it in the writing
a belief in one is missing

a mouse eating
the dead
cat our
longed-for
malfunction

I was born
in Topeka
otherwise
they would have
never let me in

they circle away holding this place
opening opening opening OPENING UP
I grope the tree down its root

if truth soothes
soothing was
not truth's goal

my goal
is to do what
produces
memory
as gentle
as vicious
can

one promise: when
I get to the bottom I'll
accelerate deeper
my small pile
of poems
surprising
everyone along the
open wound
"was there a
death" they ask
"a merger" I say

everyone paying attention
enjoy your visit
everyone else
good luck
...

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
...

13.

journeyman who
denies everything
even the journey
lost in a pile of
needles and spools
the only trees in this
desert are books
a bottle made of
ideas hits
the throat of the system
tell us about that gold watch you dropped into hot coals
shame's a balance beam
better off crashing to
the ground
stay there
stopping
the blood
a lot of blown-up
mountains to
keep the
lights on
...

the pearl starts over
a new grain of sand
we are going to find
in the planet of blue
a freshly written eviction note
a sash hanging off the horse
told the story without you
the kind of children we deserve who rob us in our sleep
we never need to believe in anything again
they take our car and money and head for the beach
...

another poet
apologizes at a microphone
weakening the hull of our ship
if you can't believe in your poems
leave them at home until you
learn to deserve them
this poem this poet
will not apologize
I'm tired of smelling my dead boyfriend
his swimming arms lost to my bed
it hurts to admit I love being alive
I broke and those pieces broke
and those pieces crushed to powder
things to avoid saying around me:
take it like a trooper
stiff upper lip
keep it together
don't let your mouth say these things
don't let your comfort be selfish cruelty
let them shriek
let them sob
don't be
a coward
about love
...

no one knows where I am in the morning and I like that
set my periscope on breath of dreaming tyrants
heir to a forest
do you mean fortune
no I mean forest caressing wound of earth surrounding it
twelve trees is a forest these days
clinging to dirt between
shopping malls and banks
everything gets caught clinging between
shopping malls and banks
ask your children
what the new
moon requires
...

everyone asks for the you they remember
I wish for no new way to feel alone again
America is
the wrong angel
a classic wristwatch
on the arm of a man who
thinks he owns himself
back to the borrowed
amount of living
here is a rough sketch of what
we look like inside when mortality
distracts us from how we destroy the world
I draw Odin's ravens
under the shelf of
teapots in the
department
store
may the tea bring us strength
may wings lift us to revolution
...

in the backseat a
portion of our music is
mucus flying into stillness
at what point do we submit
to the authority of flowers
at what point after it enters
the mouth is it no longer in the
mouth but the throat the colon
making sumptuous death of the world
this is what crossing the line gains
no need to pretend we
are the people we
want to be in
the next life
bone under
tongue drives
taste of snow to metal
sorry I threw up at your wedding
it wasn't from drinking it was from
thinking on mountain all night waking
tangled in spirits of morning light
our planet floats on emptiness
the undisclosed mirror
held to flame
pushed it into
a pile of ash
a trail of ash
leading us
toe to toe
with wild sides
what's emerging is
a grip we've been
reaching for please
grab hold with us
...

CAConrad Biography

CAConrad is the author of seven books including ECODEVIANCE: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness (Wave Books, 2014), A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon (Wave Books, 2012), The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009/Wave Books, 2010). A 2014 Lannan Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2011 Pew Fellow, he also conducts workshops on (Soma)tic poetry and Ecopoetics.)

The Best Poem Of CAConrad

Saturn.1

butterfly on a tissue box
not a real one
a painting
a monarch
one more sign
for anguish
poured and
poured a choice to feel or
stack bricks between
I was sad when my
talented friend started designing
television commercials
he told me to grow up
but the rocks in the desert I touch
signal an endless new place something
without money saying "never tire of
demanding love for the world"

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