Occupied Blight

It is usually between

the last of the brain's

end-of-day wane

and sleep we speak,

or I do.

Does he hear,

the landlord,

while I beg

for renovation,

if not eviction?

I exist between him

and the tenant who all day

prior to my pleading

I hear working

at survival.

There's a message in that urgent scurry:

the things I do to live

weaken the structure,

deteriorate the exterior.

There are breaches

in my breaches.

Everything's getting looser,

everything is less secure.

The jambs are warped,

the whole frame is leaning.

You are falling down.

Is this the way

every body ends:

a soul begins to panic,

to scurry more urgently.

With every chunk

of plaster that falls,

with every patch

of rust that rises

fear spreads

and the soul's breath labors.

Does anyone know

a good contractor?

Have I the resources?

Is there an authority

to appeal to?

              -J. O'Brien

Exoskeleton

Before reading Patrick Kavanagh's "I Had a Future" 

It's 1990 
I'm 26

the Cold War has passed

it's late afternoon but it was probably morning

off the 42 bus walking home from class -

in a sudden buffeting blow

of yellow fliers, pizza boxes,

butts, grit, dirt, the news.

Calling no one
for an hour I hid

in a phone booth 
to avoid
the pelting rubbish and dust

I watched in the gust
swirl
in columns
over Columbia Road.

At school I'd peeked
in my teacher's mailbox:

my story she'd liked, 
given to a colleague

returned to her covered in an angry hand. 
Mere miles away
SecDef Cheney's heart rate climbs
as he thinks of oil in sand

There, I've done it

I've plagiarized Patrick Kavanagh

and I hadn't even read him yet.
I''m not yet 27 and clear.
On my sofabed at S St NW
the cockroaches are unaware I'm near.
I had no exoskeleton mode

I hid in that phone booth an hour on Columbia Road.
                                                        - J. O'Brien

Area 52

The strangest thing she ever saw was her face

in the polished fender distorted.

The strangest thing I'd ever seen

half beneath the car that would end her

a girl I knew lying dead in the street

or off a bridge that stranger's body self-tossed

first responders milling when I was 24

or his bullet wound not visible

the victim under a wrinkled sheet

on a gurney in a mortuary backroom

or later naked high in winter trees

arms aloft in triumph over the torn

the birth of a week-long spirit lingering

by my sick old man hale for once

or scrubbed and made up him prone

in a chapel his false teeth gleaming

awaiting a greeting from some Beyond.

The strangest thing I ever saw was myself in a mirror

                                                             - J. O'Brien

Poem by John Berryman

The first time I read John Berryman I was impressed with his sense of humor and with the self-deprecation in his confessional poetry. I thought, "What a great outlook he has on life." Then I learned he had killed himself. He jumped off the Washington Street Bridge in Minneapolis. Into the Mississippi River. (I always imagine people who jump from bridges regret it mightily on the way down.) It was jarring news, jarring in a way such news rarely is for me. Usually, news of the death of a famous stranger doesn't move me much. And in this case I'd come to Berryman late, so the death was decades old. But it was the nature of it, I guess, the contrast between the despair in the act and what I'd interpreted as his healthy confrontation with his demons in the poetry. Berryman was an alcoholic. Eventually I read his novel, Recovery, about being in rehab, and I got a sense of the hopelessness, loss and pain he must have felt, and perhaps the powerlessness over his condition. I also read his joyful and singular books on Shakespeare and Stephen Crane, and more and more of his poetry, all the time thinking about how prolific he was, in act and mind, despite the pain he must have been in. What can I say about this poem but that I love its tone.

A Prayer After All

Father, Father, I am overwhelmed.

I cannot speak tonight.

Do you receive me back into Your sight?

It seems it must be so, for

strangely the Virgin came into my mind

as I stood beside my bed --

whom I not only have not worshipped

since childhood, but also

harsh words have said of, that she pushed her Son

before his time as come

which he rebuked her for, and leaving home

repudiated hers & her --

and for no reason, standing in the dark

before I had knelt down

(as is my custom) to speak with You, I found

my tongue feeling its way

thro' the Hail Mary, trying phrase by phrase

its strangeness, for the unwelcome

to my far mind estranged, awaiting some

unacceptable sense, and

Father I was amazed I could find none

and I have walked downstairs

to sit and wonder. You must have been Theirs

all these years, & They Yours,

and now I suppose I have prayed to You after all

and Her and I suppose she is the Queen of Heaven

under your greater glory, even

more incomprehensible but forgiving glory.

Even in the Bitter Core the Seed

If I should apply myself
tongue to skin -- but one should never
press too hard but only lightly
pass over until the object begins
to break down, lightly, so it barely knows
you're trying, until for your gentle persistence
it secrets its essence to you alone,
surrenders for having found finally
your subtle touch agreeable and true,

                                                             lightly,
because you must maintain your application
in duration, almost an apparition, so the taste
that stays sweet comes, leisurely and long,
lightly, so you'll recall that first bright smoothness
even as your (light) effort takes you
all the way to the core, so when you arrive --
and this is inevitable, you must believe it --
you will have come to understand
that even in the bitter core
lies the seed to which your long
and gentle plight has given light.

                                                 

                                                   - J. O'Brien

                                                       

Messengers

He said, “God is the light of day.”

Then what's the dark of night?

He said God is: the bright white wine

and the inky red that stains

the enormous void we bear

and the thing we bear it in

all we do not know and how we know it.

Tell him my mind flutters and flits

over a flaming field in mid-summer.

That deadens the soul.

There is no chance of rain

and the sun is set to remain

remote for years without dying.

Nothing will change, not direction

nor this weak weakening effort to alight

in shaded safety. Tell him this then,

approximately where I can be found,

on a field aflame in dead summer unable to land.
                                                             - J. O'Brien

That's How It Feels

While watching a fair-skinned autistic girl

On a playground beyond a fence and locked gate

Bend to touch the pavement and smile,

Touch the pavement and smile,

Touch the pavement and smile,

Touching the pavement and smiling,

Bending to touch the pavement and smiling brightly,

Touching the blacktop with her pink index finger

Then smiling, the poet was roused for perversion.

When he showed the authorities his notes they said,

“You ain’t no poet, friend, but prolly no reprobate neither.”

                                                                             -J. O'Brien

But first, a poem to get things started

The Lonely Goatherd
The charlatan,
A suicide,
He never really could decide:
Mountain goats?
Or whores with sores in their throats?