Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch by Diane Wakoski

Foreword to “Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch”
This poem is more properly a “dance poem” than a song or chant because the element of repetition is created by movements of language rather than duplicating words and sounds. However, it is in the spirit of ritual recitation that I wrote it/ a performance to drive away bad spirits perhaps.

The story behind the poem is this: a man and woman who have been living together for some time separate. Part of the pain of separation involves possessions which they had shared. They both angrily believe they should have what they want. She asks for some possession and he denies her the right to it. She replies that she gave him money for a possession which he has and therefore should have what she wants now. He replies that she has forgotten that for the number of years they lived together he never charged her rent and if he had she would now owe him $7,000.

She is appalled that he equates their history with a sum of money. She is even more furious to realize that this sum of money represents the entire rent on the apartment and implies that he should not have paid anything at all. She is furious. She kills him mentally. Once and for all she decides she is well rid of this man and that she shouldn’t feel sad at their parting. She decides to prove to herself that she’s glad he’s gone from her life. With joy she will dance on all the bad memories of their life together.

for my motorcycle betrayer

God damn it, 

at last I am going to dance on your grave, 

old man; 

            you’ve stepped on my shadow once too often, 

you’ve been unfaithful to me with other women, 

women so cheap and insipid it psychs me out to think I might 

ever 

be put 

in the same category with them; 

you’ve left me alone so often that I might as well have been 

a homesteader in Alaska 

these past years; 

and you’ve left me, thrown me out of your life 

often enough 

that I might as well be a newspaper, 

differently discarded each day. 

Now you’re gone for good 

and I don’t know why 

but your leaving actually made me as miserable 

as an earthworm with no 

earth, 

but now I’ve crawled out of the ground where you stomped me 

and I gradually stand taller and taller each 

day. 

I have learned to sing new songs, 

and as I sing, 

I’m going to dance on your grave 

because you are 

          dead 

          dead 

          dead 

under the earth with the rest of the shit, 

I’m going to plant deadly nightshade 

on your grassy mound 

and make sure a hemlock tree starts growing there. 

Henbane is too good for you, 

but I’ll let a bit grow there for good measure 

because we want to dance, 

we want to sing, 

we want to throw this old man 

to the wolves, 

but they are too beautiful for him, singing in harmony 

with each other. 

                   So some white wolves and I 

will sing on your grave, old man 

and dance for the joy of your death. 

“Is this an angry statement?” 

                            “No, it is a statement of joy.” 

“Will the sun shine again?” 

                            "Yes, 

                            yes, 

                            yes,” 

                            because I’m going to dance dance dance 

Duncan’s measure, and Pindar’s tune, 

Lorca’s cadence, and Creeley’s hum, 

Stevens’ sirens and Williams’ little Morris dance, 

oh, the poets will call the tune, 

and I will dance, dance, dance 

on your grave, grave, grave, 

because you’re a sonofabitch, a sonofabitch, 

and you tried to do me in, 

but you cant cant cant. 

You were a liar in a way that only I know: 

            You ride a broken motorcycle, 

            You speak a dead language 

            You are a bad plumber, 

            And you write with an inkless pen. 

You were mean to me, 

and I’ve survived, 

God damn you, 

at last I am going to dance on your grave, 

old man, 

I’m going to learn every traditional dance, 

every measure, 

and dance dance dance on your grave 

                                                    one step 

for every time 

you done me wrong.

The Archipelago of Kisses

We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don’t grow
     on trees like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you’re sixteen it’s easy – like being
     unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There’s the first kiss.
     The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we shouldn’t
     be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
     The I wish you’d quit smoking kiss.
The I accept your apology, but you make me really mad
     sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my hand kiss. As you get older,
     kisses become scarce. You’ll be driving
home and see a damaged kiss on the side of the road,
     with its purple thumb out. Now if you
were younger, you’d pull over, slide open the mouth’s ruby door
     just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances together, you get
     a smile; rub two smiles, you get
a spark; rub two sparks together and you have a kiss. Now
     what? Don’t invite the kiss
to your house and answer the door in your underwear. It’ll get
     suspicious and stare at your toes.
Don’t water the kiss with whiskey. It’ll turn bright pink and explode
     into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it’ll be ashamed and sneak out of your body
     without saying goodbye,
and you’ll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
     on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Dim the lights, notice how it illuminates
     the room. Clutch it to your chest,
wonder if the sand inside every hourglass comes from a special
     beach. Place it on the tongue’s pillow,
then look up the first recorded French kiss in history: beneath
     a Babylonian olive tree in 1300 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The intersection
     of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I’ll love you through a brick wall kiss. Even when
     I’m dead, I’ll swim through the earth
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.

Jeffrey McDaniel

Dear Man Whose Marriage I Wrecked

If it’s any consolation, when your wife took me
in her mouth, I closed my eyes and pretended

I was a piece of wedding cake. I was the instigator,
bringing her flowers so often her co-workers

nicknamed me carnation hands. At night, I’d look
at the stars and slither my petals through her hair.

It was like we were on Mars–me staring over
her skull at one moon, her gazing at another.

What I’m really trying to say is I tumbled into her
arms like a thousand reluctant dominoes.

I mean, isn’t it odd–how you can buy a lap dance,
phone sex, or blowjob in a snap, but can’t

pay a person a dollar to just sit next to you
on a park bench and simply hold your hand?

Jeffrey McDaniel

The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy by Jeffrey McDaniel

Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice
the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive
insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end

of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt
in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds
of women—those you write poems about

and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you
a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.
My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction

lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,
whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked
within the confines of my character, cast

as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much
as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power

never put to good use. What we had together
makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught
one another like colds, and desire was merely

a symptom that could be treated with soup
and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,
I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,

as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune
to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed
antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long

regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.
I don’t know how many paper towels it would take
to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light

of a candle being blown out travels faster
than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit,
but I do know that all our huffing and puffing

into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick
birthday candle—didn’t make the silence
any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses

I scrawled on your neck were written
in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you
so hard one of your legs would pop out

of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press
your face against the porthole of my submarine.
I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years

to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding
off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding
over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate

to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy
of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph
from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.

❤

Some More Light Verse

You have to try. You see the shrink.
You learn a lot. You read. You think.
You struggle to improve your looks.
You meet some men. You write some books.
You eat good food. You give up junk.
You do not smoke. You don’t get drunk.
You take up yoga, walk and swim.
And nothing works. The outlook’s grim.
You don’t know what to do. You cry.
You’re running out of things to try.

You blow your nose. You see the shrink.
You walk. You give up food and drink.
You fall in love. You make a plan.
You struggle to improve your man.
And nothing works. The outlooks grim.
You go to yoga, cry and swim.
You eat and drink. You give up looks.
You struggle to improve your books.
You cannot see the point. You sigh.
You do not smoke. You have to try.

Wendy Cope

"She knows when to say no."

no more alcohol.

no more tobacco.

no more unhealthy relationships.

A Letter in October by Ted Kooser

Dawn comes later and later now,
and I, who only a month ago
could sit with coffee every morning
watching the light walk down the hill
to the edge of the pond and place
a doe there, shyly drinking,

then see the light step out upon
the water, sowing reflections
to either side—a garden
of trees that grew as if by magic—
now see no more than my face,
mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

startled by time. While I slept,
night in its thick winter jacket
bridled the doe with a twist
of wet leaves and led her away,
then brought its black horse with harness
that creaked like a cricket, and turned

the water garden under. I woke,
and at the waiting window found
the curtains open to my open face;
beyond me, darkness. And I,
who only wished to keep looking out,
must now keep looking in.

flim·sy

ˈflimzē

adjective

1. 1.

   comparatively light and insubstantial; easily damaged.

   
    

"REVENGE IS NOT A FOOD TO BE EATEN HOT"

Revenge is not a food to be eaten hot.
Cool it a generation, even two.
Sniff at it, fan it softly with your hat;
but give the coals a bit of poking too.

However, in this case we wait too long.
Pus works in a wound that must be trimmed and cleaned.
We are a hydra-headed monster, strong
but aimless, and our eyes of hate grow blind.

Revenge is not a food to be eaten cold.
let us chop some of the heads off, be one thing
before our anger starves and dies of mold.

Our very patience proves this wrath broods deep.
Shall we be one: one mind, a multiple king?
Or shall we sulk and rot and fall asleep?

C.F. MacIntyre

more motherland thuglife chronicles

Touching Each Other's Surfaces by Carol Jane Bangs

Skin meeting skin, we want to think
we know each other scientifically;
we want to believe
it is objective knowledge
gives this conviction of intimacy,
makes us say it feels so right.
That mole below your shoulder blade,
the soft hair over my thighs—
we examine our bodies with the precision
known only to lovers or surgeons,
all those whose profession is explication,
who have to believe their own words.
And yet, having memorized each turning,
each place where bone strains or bends,
each hollow, each hair, each failure of form,
we still encounter that stubborn wall,
that barrier which hides an infinite vastness
the most sincere gesture can’t find.

Nor does emotion take us further
than the shared heat of our bodies
aware of themselves,
the flattery of multiple desires.
We rest in each other’s arms unexplained
by these currents of feeling rushing past
like ripples over a pool of water
whose substance never changes,
reflecting each wave, each ribboned crossing,
without being really moved.
We search each other’s eyes so long
beyond our own reflections,
finding only the black centers,
the immeasurable interior we’ll
never reach with candle,
never plumb with love.

Perhaps it is just this ignorance,
this absence of certainty, lack of clear view,
more than anything, brings us together,
draws us into and through each other
to the unknown inside us all,
that gray space from which
what we know of ourselves
emerges briefly, casts a transient
shadow across the earth
and learns to believe in itself just enough
to believe in some one else.

Korean Movie Marathon

 

Going There by Jack Gilbert

Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.

Shit List; Or, Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity by A. R. Ammons

You’ll rejoice at how many kinds of shit there are:
gosling shit (which J. Williams said something
was as green as), fish shit (the generality), trout

shit, rainbow trout shit (for the nice), mullet shit,
sand dab shit, casual sloth shit, elephant shit
(awesome as process or payload), wildebeest shit,

horse shit (a favorite), caterpillar shit (so many dark
kinds, neatly pelleted as mint seed), baby rhinoceros
shit, splashy jaybird shit, mockingbird shit

(dive-bombed with the aim of song), robin shit that
oozes white down lawnchairs or down roots under roosts,
chicken shit and chicken mite shit, pelican shit, gannet

shit (wholesome guano), fly shit (periodic), cockatoo
shit, dog shit (past catalog or assimilation),
cricket shit, elk (high plains) shit, and

tiny scribbled little shrew shit, whale shit (what
a sight, deep assumption), mandril shit (blazing
blast off), weasel shit (wiles’ waste), gazelle shit,

magpie shit (total protein), tiger shit (too acid
to contemplate), moral eel and manta ray shit, eerie
shark shit, earthworm shit (a soilure), crab shit,

wolf shit upon the germicidal ice, snake shit, giraffe
shit that accelerates, secretary bird shit, turtle
shit suspension invites, remora shit slightly in

advance of the shark shit, hornet shit (difficult to
assess), camel shit that slaps the ghastly dry
siliceous, frog shit, beetle shit, bat shit (the

marmoreal), contemptible cat shit, penguin shit,
hermit crab shit, prairie hen shit, cougar shit, eagle
shit (high totem stuff), buffalo shit (hardly less

lofty), otter shit, beaver shit (from the animal of
alluvial dreams)-a vast ordure is a broken down
cloaca-macaw shit, alligator shit (that floats the Nile

along), louse shit, macaque, koala, and coati shit,
antelope shit, chuck-will’s-widow shit, alpaca shit
(very high stuff), gooney bird shit, chigger shit, bull

shit (the classic), caribou shit, rasbora, python, and
razorbill shit, scorpion shit, man shit, laswing
fly larva shit, chipmunk shit, other-worldly wallaby

shit, gopher shit (or broke), platypus shit, aardvark
shit, spider shit, kangaroo and peccary shit, guanaco
shit, dolphin shit, aphid shit, baboon shit (that leopards

induce), albatross shit, red-headed woodpecker (nine
inches long) shit, tern shit, hedgehog shit, panda shit,
seahorse shit, and the shit of the wasteful gallinule.

Born Yesterday by Philip Larkin

Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,
Or running off a spring
Of innocence and love —
They will all wish you that,
And should it prove possible,
Well, you’re a lucky girl.

But if it shouldn’t, then
May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull —
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

Self-Improvement by Tony Hoagland

Just before she flew off like a swan
to her wealthy parents’ summer home,
Bruce’s college girlfriend asked him
to improve his expertise at oral sex,
and offered him some technical advice:

Use nothing but his tonguetip
to flick the light switch in his room
on and off a hundred times a day
until he grew fluent at the nuances
of force and latitude.

Imagine him at practice every evening,
more inspired than he ever was at algebra,
beads of sweat sprouting on his brow,
thinking, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,
seeing, in the tunnel vision of his mind’s eye,
the quadratic equation of her climax
yield to the logic
of his simple math.

Maybe he unscrewed
the bulb from his apartment ceiling
so that passersby would not believe
a giant firefly was pulsing
its electric abdomen in 13 B.

Maybe, as he stood
two inches from the wall,
in darkness, fogging the old plaster
with his breath, he visualized the future
as a mansion standing on the shore
that he was rowing to
with his tongue’s exhausted oar.

Of course, the girlfriend dumped him:
met someone, apres-ski, who,
using nothing but his nose
could identify the vintage of a Cabernet.

Sometimes we are asked
to get good at something we have
no talent for,
or we excel at something we will never
have the opportunity to prove.

Often we ask ourselves
to make absolute sense
out of what just happens,
and in this way, what we are practicing

is suffering,
which everybody practices,
but strangely few of us
grow graceful in.

The climaxes of suffering are complex,
costly, beautiful, but secret.
Bruce never played the light switch again.

So the avenues we walk down,
full of bodies wearing faces,
are full of hidden talent:
enough to make pianos moan,
sidewalks split,
streetlights deliriously flicker.

Wow Moment by Alice Fulton

From the guts of the house, I hear my mother crying

for her mother and wish I understood

the principles of tranquility. How to rest

the mind on a likeness of a blast furnace

framed in formica by anon. A photo of lounge

chairs with folded tartan lap robes. An untitled typology of

industrial parks. The gentle interface of yawn and nature.

It would soothe us. It would soothe us. We would be soothed

by that slow looking with a limited truth value. See

how the realtor’s lens makes everything look larger

and there’s so much glare the floor looks wow

under the smartificial xmas tree.

After studying Comparative Reality

I began Die Polyvinylchloride Tannenbaumserie.

Turn off that tiny tasteful star, I commanded.

While you’re alive there’s no time

for minor amazements. Turn off the sallow pages of

your paralegal pad. I don’t need a light to think

of you. I don’t need a god to pray.

Some things are glow alone. I said one thing you said

you remembered I said. Was it will you be my

trophy friend? Or are you someone else’s

difficult person? I mean the more myself I

become the less intelligible I seem to otters.

I know what you mean you said.

It’s like the time I was compelled to speak

on hedonism to the monks and nuns.

Did I say most religion is devotional

expediency? Or religion doesn’t worry about being

religious, its wisdom corrupted by its brilliance as light

passing near the sun is deflected

in its path. Deep in its caprices,

the whole body thinks it’s understood.

To think otterwise is isolating. When I said

hedonism stressed cheerfulness,

there were disappointed groans. Look, I’m sorry

I gave you an ornament shaped like a hollow look.

I liked its trinket brightness. Just don’t give me

a water tower dressed up as a church steeple

or one of those silly thunderstorms

that hang around volcanoes. See how those teardrop lights

make every object jump? The memory does.

You made me love. Was it exile in honey

is still exile? Am I the fire or just another flame?

Please sell me an indulgence, I begged a monk.

And tell me what creature, what peril,

could craft that sound that night

dropped like a nubile sliver in my ear.

There is no freedom of silence

when morture forces us to speak

from organs other than the heart.

It was something about love. A far cry. It was come to me

unmediated, go to god lengths. In great things,

the attempt alone is sufficient. I think this

’cause I’m finite. That’s an understanding

to which reason can only aspire

though an entire speech community labored

for generations to say it in a fair hand clearly

dated and scented with lavender. My one and only only

a crass color orgy will see us through

the dusk ahead, the months gray as donkey.

See how it grows its own cross of fur

and bears it on its back? I showed you that.

Resume by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp;
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Self-Portrait by Edward Hirsch

I lived between my heart and my head,
like a married couple who can’t get along.
I lived between my left arm, which is swift
and sinister, and my right, which is righteous.
I lived between a laugh and a scowl,
and voted against myself, a two-party system.
My left leg dawdled or danced along,
my right cleaved to the straight and narrow.
My left shoulder was like a stripper on vacation,
my right stood upright as a Roman soldier.
Let’s just say that my left side was the organ
donor and leave my private parts alone,
but as for my eyes, which are two shades
of brown, well, Dionysus, meet Apollo.
Look at Eve raising her left eyebrow
while Adam puts his right foot down.
No one expected it to survive,
but divorce seemed out of the question.
I suppose my left hand and my right hand
will be clasped over my chest in the coffin
and I’ll be reconciled at last,
I’ll be whole again.

Kismet by Diane Ackerman

               “What can be said can’t be said,
               and can’t be whistled either.”
                                            – Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein was wrong: when lovers kiss
they whistle into each other’s mouth
a truth old and sayable as the sun,
for flesh is palace, aurora borealis,
and the world is all subtraction in the end.

The world is all subtraction in the end,
yet, in a small vaulted room at the azimuth
of desire, even our awkward numbers sum.
Love’s syllogism only love can test.

But who would quarrel with its sprawling proof?
The daftest logic brings such sweet unrest.
Love speaks in tongues, its natural idiom.
Tingling, your lips drift down the xylophone
of my ribs, and I close my eyes and chime.

This Close by Dorianne Laux

In the room where we lie,
light stains the drawn shades yellow.
We sweat and pull at each other, climb
with our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.
Wherever our bodies touch, the flesh
comes alive. Head and need, like invisible
animals, gnaw at my breast, the soft
insides of your thighs. What I want
I simply reach out and take, no delicacy now,
the dark human bread I eat handful
by greedy handful. Eyes fingers, mouths,
sweet leeches of desire. Crazy woman,
her brain full of bees, see how her palms curl
into fists and beat the pillow senseless.
And when my body finally gives in to it
then pulls itself away, salt-laced
and arched with its final ache, I am
so grateful I would give you anything, anything.
If I loved you, being this close would kill me.