Kerouac, I Think I'd like to Believe

Kerouac, I Think I'd like to Believe

(Thoughts and notes during 242 Choruses)

"This tree just told me

            See eternity

            Is the other side

            Of the other part

            Of your mind

            That you ignore

            Because you want to"

-Kerouac, 156th Chorus

I'm running out of places to stash

These discarded crippling hearts.

Kerouac, I think, I'd like to believe

That we are all reborn,

            Over and over;

We are all scholars,

            Responsible for teaching our souls.

And we’re all Buddha and Christ

            To be aspiring saints

Lost in Limbo.

Death's equal is the womb—

            I think that's what you tried to tell me,

And that soft souls know no equal.

 “What’s been buried inside me

            for sure?

The substance of my own father’s

            empty light

Derived from time working

            on dirt

And clay bones.”

-Kerouac, 204^th Chorus

I won't be left with

The crickets forever,

But Their soulless song is soothing;

Teach me to see like you do

Into the valley heart of shades

Rounded by a black rainbow

By the moon that never sets.

That I may see passed the Jewel of Fate,

Emerge from boundaries—you and I.

Learn to not suffer the wicked;

But also tell it apart from the innocent.

Heaven, I have another side—

What's wrong with that?—

Don't send me 'way like the others.

Heaven we're all impatient,

What are you hiding?

"I'm an idealist

            who has outgrown

            my idealism

I have nothing to do

  the rest of my life

            but do it

            and the rest of my life

            to do it"

-33rd Chorus

I bear the language of the romantics.

I have a full heart and empty pockets.

I can appear awesome as a phantom.

I believe there are colors I have not seen.

I’ve spent eleven lives

            Trying to perfect the spontaneous sonnet.

I’ve Seen my silver soul; a speck on the mirror.

“Being in selfless one-ness

With the such-ness

That is Tathagatahood,

So is everybody else

Lost with you

In that bright Sea

Of non-personality.”

            -194^th Chorus

In a crystal-nothing jar

            Nirvana sits empty.

Wait, I have my own ballad;

It’s in my pocket,

            It’s a telephone number,

   It’s a name,

It’s an answer—

Yes?

Wait, my Nirvana,

Why is patience a life-long lesson?

            I’m done waiting for mine.

No, there’s nothing spontaneous

            ‘bout a sunset.

The ecstasy of nothing

Abiding, pleasing, pleasuring,

            Feeling, grieving, having

                        nothing,

            No____thing.

Pure light is always seen

            Even in the no____thing of smoldering

            dark

Even now in the Divine Secular Nothing,

            Ultra Ecstatic Reality.

                        (a pause)

A secular God has only genitals.

"Therefore", she said, "Goddess is a redundancy."

silence

"So the children rush out, saved,

            And he gives them

            the incomparable single Greatcart

            Of the white Bullock, all snow"

-126th Chorus

The dance of the little boy’s anger

            So unforgivable

Mired down in the recess of

            Frogs, flowers, Scholars

An age, and fifty thousand breaths

            later,

Still a washed out vision

            Ambient surreal emotion

And a small diamond is made

            To be a third eye’s prism.

Me and a half-dollar spider watch

            a caterpillar dance slowly on a twig

“Wow, I thought reading that,

            When I start falling

            In that inhuman pit

            Of dizzy death

            I’ll know (if

            Smart enough t’remember)

            That all the black

            Tunnels of hate

            Or love I’m falling

            Through, are

                   Really radiant

            Right eternities

            For me”

-184^th Chorus

Have all my choices been made

            Before I even know them?

Have I written this already—hundreds of times before?

            Once drunk, once high, once sober,

            Once in ecstasy, once alive, once

            Frozen stiff, once in anguish,

            Once after the Rapture, once in

            Fear of hell, once in unending

            Anticipation of heaven and light,

            Once in pursuit of Perfect Gain

And still now while pouring over

The Snake of Eternity.

“Seeing that all’s illusion

You lose your mind

In meditation

And heal yourself well

            (AND WHAT’S BEEN HEALED?)”

                        -203^rd Chorus

The Saints say:

            The universe began in a garden

            All speech was meaningless before being named

            Everything was perfect and sane

(I think

            Blessed are those without a tongue

For they have never disturbed the hymen of Universe.)

Say They:

            Without morals none were judged

            Haloed cherub beings robed only in serenity

            Governed the careless creatures

(I think

            Blessed are those without reason

            For all others shall inherit their sins)

“It is not moot to question how a dream

                                                ends”

                                    -216^th-B Chorus

When you've proven the universal redundancies.

When moved by faith to:

            Confirm all rhetorical doubt,

            Put to sleep a thousand dragons,

            Silence the sirens in the sky,

            And strangle all lonesome thoughts.

Wont you lie down with me,

have a drink, retire

            Stoic

                        nirvana

split my side once more.

Patrick Conners Jr.

Preface to a Poetry Reading

I would just like to start out by saying that this poem is amazing
It is the vision of the next world, the new world, and the old
It is the marriage of Thomas and Donne
It is the Modonna and it births a slick and bloody infant
Who walks when it is born and pronounces himself king
It is the agony of war as it rises to its haunches and beats on its chest
gifted with thumbs, it can think of no greater pleasure than masturbation
It inspires riots, revolutions, the burning of flags, schools of philosophies, new generations, divorces, abortions, years of therapy on an overstuffed couch to remember just why my parents fucked up the world and most of all myself
It presumes that there exists truth, justice, peace, love, harmony, a savior even for the damned, angels to lead home soldiers, sovereign nations still accepting refugees, open and receiving minds, the ability to procreate without forever staining our souls from the act of fucking, but most of all that the thought of conception hasn't entirely been abandoned as only a failed contraceptive
I can see this poem moving the cloulds to reveal mountains, to dethrone the pope, the silence Buddhists, herald the end of politicians, make corporations beg for mercy while looking at the edge of a guillotine
I want the words to act as gasoline and burn the whole fucking town down
I want to see how many times I can say fuck before someone stops me
I, I, I, I, I, I,
the poetic I, the historic I, the non-existent I, the I that realizes I...
And I don't know
The funny thing is that I am not even a poet--I do not even write well
I can't spell eclusiastical and I don't know the meaning of transfiguration
But I got this whole idea when I heard a poet read one of her poems
I got the idea she was reading it from the sky
Her words were so precise and intimate that I knew she knew everyone by name
She led the audience around on a leash
The audience she turned into poets for only a brief period of time
before they left and felt the concrete under their feet again
And when they returned home they found their balls had not become anything more holy than they were before and that acid still burns the skin and that they still kiss with saliva and they are still never really sure what to say or how to act and when they realize that the angel is missing from their heads they rip out a peice of lined notebook paper and they try to sketch an image of what she looked like, and not being a particularly talented artist they try to describe her in the fabrication of their words, but they know that these would never be words that she would use to describe herself, and she would be unlikely to spend so much time on her breasts and her hair, she wouldn't say such ubsurd things as, "Be still my beating heart", or pretend that references to the "Coney island of the mind" were of biblical magnitude, and would leave out all references to the fragile nature of skin, and she would probably prefer to talk about the smell of alcohol on her breath or create an ode to the natural divinity of murder--
And it becomes clear that I am not writing a poem at all but am only ranting on with my imperfect words and unclear speech
And I'm a mangled beast, and I've spilled coffee on my shirt, and I havn't shaved in a week, and my nails are getting long, and I'm a little bit too old to start poetry now anyway, and these readings are always suffocating and my stomache reels, and I'm not very clear about anything, and I rely too heavily on the word And, and my vocabulary has been stunted since I was ten
I could never be her--I could never be a poet, I should stick to stories, short clever stories about the very serious and real world of work and suffering, and leave the world of poetry to the angels
I should make an apology speech and promise to write no more poems.
-Patrick Conners Jr

My Son

My Son

"Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been my darling one?"
-Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain's a - Gonna Fall

My blue-eyed son

My dimple cheeked son

My son I should have had

My son I should have been

My illuminated son

The feeble Nyquil high

                Suicidal son

My Crocodile son

My son with blonde hair

                Who is off to war

My son who wept at himself

My bloody handed son.

My conformist son

                Came to Thebes and

                Plucked out both his eyes and is

My son in dreams

My son I'll call Paul

My son will weep at that

My son I'll keep naming Lazarus.

My son, my nothing son

My queer son

My intellectual son

Who died

                Sitting on the backburner of my life.

Patrick Conners Jr

invitational letter

To so and so and suchI like your blog on the poetryIt seems I too have a blog

here http://aprildorus.blogspot.com/ here http://aprildorus.blogspot.com/ and here http://aprildorus.blogspot.com/

Its kinda magical where words blend and run and form nothingAnd are ignored and trashed and occasionally elevated beyond themselveswhere fingers touch and form temples that the pope considers for apartmentsI invite you to invite me to your club of Angels

Empty

Emptiness

Her still, radiant green eyes tried to explain to me what she was saying. Her hand lightly pressed in mine, entangled, our fingertips having no end. I felt her steady pulse, breaking me more with every beat. My ears anticipated her every word. To my ears they were the entire world. It was an ongoing lesson that she’d been teaching me from before either one of us was born and that she continues to teach me now.

“Emptiness,” she said. The word frightened me then, “is what allows for love.”

I begged her to talk about anything but emptiness. Not now, there was no time for emptiness.

“It’s important,” she had a calm and peaceful look which I misunderstood. On the small white table next to her hospital bed was a book by The Dalai Lama.

“Ok, how is love…” I couldn’t finish the sentence then, and she knew I did not understand.

“Is it the color of my eyes that make my eyes mine? If I woke up tomorrow with brown eyes, would they still be my eyes? What makes them eyes? Are they only eyes because they allow me to see? If I woke up blind tomorrow would they still be eyes?” Yes, yes. She raised her right hand, and mine rose with it. She tightened her grip on my hand. “Without looking, where do our hands end? Can you feel my heartbeat or your own?”

“I don’t understand…what does this have to do with emptiness?” There was never anything empty about Clara, she was passionate; inspired madness.

“How did we meet?” She asked.

“Finnigan’s on St. Patrick’s Day.” It wasn’t the most romantic story, we’d sworn to change it for the kids.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Devan. He saw you at the bar and turned to me, and swore that if I didn’t ask you your name that he would. That hadn’t gone over well with his fiancée.”

“How did you meet Devan?”

“In high school, he moved from San Francisco when his dad left.” Why were we talking about Devan?

“And his parents had met in Boston, in college,” she added, “and their parents, and their parents, and their parents…”

“Ok, so our meeting was very circumstantial to a whole lot of moving. That is simple enough, but not empty.” I really suffered then.

“That moving is only a piece of the process. It is part of a process of choices, good and bad; a process of desires; a process of responses; a process of impulses; a process of flesh and mortality, of living and dying.” There was her passion, and we were both quiet for a few minutes. I hoped she would change the subject. “Its individuals and its whole nations. How did we meet? It cannot be answered without giving the history of every one of those ‘circumstantial’ movements and processes. If I were to ask you now, ‘who am I?’ you would no doubt tell me that I am ‘Clara Browne. You might say I am fearless, beautiful, intelligent, creative, compassionate, eccentric…’ and so on; only good things, of course. But I don’t think that is what I am at all. Last week I finished a poem. I am that poem. Above our bed is a painting I made, I am that painting. Everyone leaves an imprint in life. When you go home and go into our bed, there will be an imprint of where my body laid next to yours. That emptiness would not exist without the bed, without me, without us, without love. Don’t cry.” We were both crying.

“Do the tears of losing a loved one exist without love, or do we sob for the loss experienced in just that one instant? Is our love more than right now? Is it also eight years ago at Finnigan’s? Is it six years ago at St. Chelsea’s? Is our love all the arguments we had when we first got married? Is it three years ago when I was diagnosed with this cancer? Is it my beauty, is it my creativity, is it my wit, my youth, my eyes, my heart; perhaps it was just the perfume I was wearing? Is it physical, emotional, spiritual? How did any of those things come to be? Were they isolated incidents or did they continue to impact us, to guide us to this moment right now? Our love is tears and sweat and goodbyes. It is a drive that gives rise to egos and unions; to divisions and bonds. To one soul, to both souls, to all souls. Our lives are empty. Are we bodies on the life support of organs? Don’t our organs rely on our brain? Doesn’t our brain rely on our soul? Does our soul rely on God? Upon what does God rely? Are we passionate? I used to get angry when the supermarket ran out of milk.” She paused, laughed. Her tears left lines down her cheek.

“I am all of that. And tomorrow, what will have changed? If you love my creativity, am I only creative when I am painting and writing? My creativity is empty. It is inspired by something internal, or by some madness that you called it; and it is attached to something external. It changes constantly and it is not always the same form or the same expression. Whatever inspires it is there due only to a process that I myself am mixed into; what I create is a process that remains active in the world after I am finished creating it. What will you think of when you go home and look at my painting? What will you feel? Do those thoughts and feelings express, belong, and originate from the painting, from yourself, or from my mind, my soul, my life, my love?”

When I look at the painting now, I see it full of emptiness, but emptiness is not the same as accident. There is love, madness, and courage in that painting; that is all empty too. All of it coming from an inspired and passionate life. Conditioned by her friends, her family, her upbringing, the ringing out of her soul (I’m not sure if she believed in a soul or just used the word to make me understand). All of that being a result of a complex and interconnected history that stems back to…to when? To how? Every reaction, every desire, every heartbeat, every birth and death, all of it. Brilliant and beautiful. It’s complete because it can never be complete. It’s finished the same way that I am finished, the same way a wave is finished. It is empty as our love.

I knew you once

I swear I thought

I did       sweet u

and you lying there

worn out little flame

I remember how your

eyes danced with the game

I heard the loud

volume of your body

above your clear

whispering    eyes

and the moaning

song of your

       voice growing

[In the morning

the light      held

you hard and

            delicate

as you groaned

your early matins

your angelic body awakened

     With a reborn

innocence you rose

in        perfect nudity

which like the smell

of incense enhanced

              all the air

with a burning presence

still lingering there]

Achaean

Achaean! Achaean! A chorus leads you, Achaean!

You cannot, will not falter. Not your fate.

The sandy beaches, the blood warmed sea,

Plunder and all the wonder.

Achaean don’t forget your home,

Your stallions, your women.

Pure silk and soft spoils are yours here—

Don’t forget Argos.

Come home from Troy. Don’t stay buried in the sand

To have songs sung of your blood.

***

Fathers hearing the cries of infant sons from across the sea

The sons they’ve never seen.

A wave carried his first lock of hair

And it rests on his hero father’s grave.

Achaean be wise not brave,

Achilles learned as much—

Death’s grandeur deserts us,

            When life’s blood leaves us.

                       

                        ***

The rigid face upon the shore seeks you out,

Songs in the wind take hold of your cheek

Cunningly plain, though you would not be the first they ensnared.

You would not wear the wax,

Would rather see it come at you

Like the tongues of those spears you stared down.

In those ages you were young,

Guile was yours to spread.

You were the lion stumbling on an undefended flock;

But you returned with your scars as payment.

The tide took under with it your share of spoils.

You looked your adult son in the eyes,

Stranger’s eyes.

The sea poured down your face,

For never again to see your wife.

The son killed his mother for land and wealth

Though no crime was committed.

Achaean look at what you have defended,

The murders, the burglary, the rapes, the gods offended.

                        ***

The trickery in being Death’s mercenary:

His silver is never spent in this world.

The kingdom of the dead will hold marks for you,

A bronze shield is a hefty weight to for eternity bear

After your body, in kingly robes, is burned in a single flare.

Patrick Conners Jr