The Wall
Posted by Garrett Carey | Filed under Announcements
We were like colors
quickened from the palettes
of dreamers unfamiliar
in their own skin. We
grafted to flax and gave
back what we got
in shifted spectrums,
narrower, not
so final. I tasted
sunlight on your back
and knew nothing of who I was.
Looking back, I think
maybe I was as you drew me
all bundled up and still far
too big for my own skin,
bone softened with milky watercolor
and too well contained
on canvas to jut out
at uncomfortable angles, and maybe
you were just something
I dreamed about and tried childishly
to stick to the wall.
I too liked the flavor of black
paint. I spoke in the industry
of romance, smearing
sadness where I settled
to collect and whisper warnings
from crude, iridescent
puddles. We were artists
only in the sense that we knew
what the aftertaste of heaven
felt like on our tongues.
We were geniuses
counting on inadequate
tools, trying to cheat the science
of happiness,
painting our utopias
with colors that were never meant
to be pretty.
Epilogue to Youth
Posted by Garrett Carey | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
When I kissed you
the whole world came loose.
The avenues unwound themselves
before us, and clouds
slipped free of the heavens,
bursting like snowy molotovs around you
in the street.
The beauties of the world
were at war
at your feet. You confessed
that your love transcended
sex: gender roles were nothing but
curls in your hair, to be fondled
and flicked and played with.
Your finger, delicate as breaking daylight,
could crush capitol buildings with
a little pressure at the end,
you said you brought a friend…
and then
there was nothing left to say.
Warm like sweat, the awe-struck stupor
of youth soaked into my clothes
made them too heavy
to wear. The indignant innocence
emboldened me when you
told me I could touch you there, when she
told me you could hold her
with no one near. There’s no one here
but three pairs of closed eyes
and lips at secrect trysts with inner thighs.
I was brave enough to persist
but afraid enough to omit
that I liked the taste of her
on your tongue
when we kissed.
I was young. I bit into your melon lips,
and she watched the juice trickle down my chin
whispering rough draft sonatas
about waterfalls and Vermilion,
she was young- we were too young to withstand
the full force of heaven, waiting prostrate
like the sound of angels singing would not cave our
chests and blow our skulls open like flower buds
in bloom, you could pluck us from your garden
soon. We were young, and you
were always in control, always
a few steps ahead
but you were always moving
too fast, always leaving
no chance for anything natural to catch
you, but light flashes
and car crashes
don’t have to.
Early mornings and open roads knew you
better than anyone, you
took to familiar streets with her
in your passenger seat.
You knew better
than to slow down on the blind curve,
and so did the other SUV.
You didn’t even have the time to swerve.
You were young. You were too
young to withstand the force
of leaving, as metal
kissed metal, and fucked inertia
as your face kissed the tarmac on its way back to
the earth, your face burst like melon
and she watched the juice
trickle through her fingers,
holding a tangled hairy pulp
where your smile used to sit
you were young, and she was older than the dirt
pulling her last bloody romance
out of a shattered mannequin
that looked nothing like you.
They found her hysterical on the hot pavement
and ignorant as men are, they tried to calm her down
and ignorant as men are, they saw your crimson mess on her shirt
and checked her first, you seemed too far beyond reach-
it was not worth their time
your crumpled frame must have stopped
sputtering before the sirens turned off.
She was baptized in coagulating silence,
complete but for the harsh whisper
of eternity slowly easing away
from her, and death
sounding dumbly
like hollow metal, bent
into a shape almost suitable
for music, when rung
the vibrations shed the earth
around you. You were young,
and they were old enough to know
it was for you the bell tolled
and they
fucking heard it-
but your life was not worth
their time.
Your life
was not worth
their time…
You did not survive long enough
to see your mother’s expression shatter
like crystal
in the face of the morning news, she
would have died to hug you -
and she did.
Your mother never took another living breath,
but duty could not let her rest.
Forced to fulfill her post-mortem obligation
to bury her first-born child, she was young
and hardly human, but to keep up with the ruse
you shared your funeral, you in a beech box
locked up like a hope chest
and her propped up in the pews.
I wish I could let her rest, I wish
I could bring you back then we
could have one more Saturday night
dancing like mockingbirds
so I could spend Sunday morning
hearing your call
instead of bearing your pall.
The slow march to absolution tastes wrong
as rancid milk, your baby brother in a black suit
reaching his hand just high enough
to touch the casket, he always
looked up to
you.
He was young,
too young
to be stripped of infinity
too young
to lose his virginity against the rough metal
of realization that his sister
was not coming home today.
Who is to explain the truth
to him?
We all had our shot at youth,
we all had
our chance to bruise our lips
upon the fickle mouth of reality
and some of us took it,
but what
can we say
to him?
Against Gravity
Posted by Garrett Carey | Filed under Poetry, Print
I will love you for just one night.
There is a specific Thursday evening
for the sensation
of a browning leaf coming across concrete,
your navel lifting from the sheets
where your soul tried to leave the limits
of your skin, your ascension, the frenzy
of your promises to God, the scent of it.
There is one night
for my lips to put down their words
and rest on your temple, and I will
hold you closer than I hold anything
and I will ask that you not sit up
at 1:13am and ask me why
anything is where it is. You are
here because of this
moment. I am where I will always be.
We had our words and reasons
in the living room
and we left them there. You are in
my bed. Leave it
a chance to be beautiful.
Keep This Forever
Posted by Garrett Carey | Filed under Poetry, Print
[To Mr. Halliday]And yes, I was
that one time
the juvenile artist
at that cafe with all the necessary pretenses
and a waningly secret affair with
an older woman,
the poet with perfect skin
from Jersey
who hates people
who touch too much, but
buries her small light hand like an egg
in my cargo pocket
and slides her knuckle along my thigh.
Or maybe I gripped her unclenched fist
with just enough force,
the way I thought a man would,
and waited
for her finger
to trace the lines on my palm.
Anyway, aging white men talked
about youth
as if it was a Y/N note
that never returned
with its prognostications of love
or notlove,
and made clever references
to Rick James, and old women laughed
and we laughed
at this lonely disease of moribundity
to which we were,
of course,
immune. She was
grabbing my finger
with her whole small light hand
in what seemed (to juvenile me)
like long-awaited
infantine submission
and I was marvelling
at her perfect skin and
how this pretty cute poet
with all this unexhausted talent came
from Jersey
of all places.
I was wondering
what all this unspent life
had for her next,
this poet with perfect skin
who asked nothing more than to be
a passing fancy
at the edge
of someone’s sober wakefulness.
I was that,
one time. And then
I was something else.
