my fabled atomizer

the run of beasts and trees and stranger things than books can right in lines and o's, the farther things that blow wild at the end of eyesight, longing, wakeful dreams, the sender things, the wonder and freedom of falling down the faerie well, will you ever find these things in me, ever come to grief and turn to take my sleeve, turn to fall in me rather than face alone your deep, and strip and pray and dance and fall to bed awake and hoping, no corners, no fields off on a shelf, no halting reins, burnish the next moment bright as new brass, orgasm plummed from souls and dams and the place where you kept your flying knotted, and if i cannot make you mine, i will leap into the darkness there, make you yours, or lie down as part of the old stone road, and let my rising be a flag of peace, and welcome the fatal flood of instinct.

not to fling the real away as seaspray, the shiny color of a pair of shoes, the leather pressure on the toes, the garish mail puzzling secrets against the fingertips, springloaded with deadlines and disappointments, or the underwear unraveling here and there, one more worry stacked against next payday, the new haircut that's too severe, the ominous click-click-click on the turn of the ignition key, the frustration of the cell phone bought at discount that doesn't quite ever work, the employer who spins your backbone like a revolver clip, the weather wet explodes your hair, the weather dry makes you scratch your arms wretchedly, the here and now in facets, paints, glints, sides, points, fabric, material forged in embarrassing threads and alloys of hope, in clumps of boorishness and tinfoils of glamour, the perfect eye shadow and the overflowing recycle bin.

Commentary:

One of the things this poem is about, I suspect, is providing the reader with a way to negotiate faith. With some years of experience, the foreverness of I Love You is so trampled upon that the time frame for faith is reduced to zero. However, it's the poet's duty to produce faith the way a stage magician yanks the silk off sudden tigers.

Faith is such an arduous task now, in addition to grand lust and rapture, that the poem begins in fairy tale. It's a way to reset the reader's clock. Let's remember that poetry, like love and orgasm, often seems to be a brute attempt to express this huge, hardrunning thing that takes up the size of a grand piano in everybody's little skull, but we can't even discuss it. It's as if poetry, love and orgasm are not real and holdable, but this other thing is. We have it, but can't bring ourselves to pronounce it. While poetry has been ruined by college middlemen, fairy tales still allow us to put the unsayable up on a shelf for brief discussion and long bouts of awe.

The second stanza acknowledges the simpleminded unreality of fairy tales. We have to address all the ropes that tether the blimp. After adolescence, we're machined into shape with the dire, daily needs of taking care of business. Romance, is, well, complicated and time consuming, frightening and disappointing, and then you can never get rid of the person, and you know how it is...But, the stanza ends with a declaration of how dreary all our little details are, and ultimately, how little they contribute any real value to our lives.

So, now, we're drunk on fairy tales. And the little daily nagging things have been briefly listed and put in their rightful place in a dusty corner of the closet. Women should sense the challenge at this point, as a familiar dread, "Oh, I hope this guy doesn't say something that melts me..." And it can't be a simple thing, a straight I love you and I'll always be faithful, because that's middle class 1950s myth. So, what happens?

The narrator boldly expresses some "other" knowledge of women. He could only have the confidence to do this by truly studying them...worshipping them? Women guard against calculation, but his boldness seems to be rooted in a love and appreciation of women for how they're different from men, different from anything else, beings demanding of our wonder. She wants a lover to move straight to announcing her existence in all its complexity, conflicts, strengths, purpose, heart, desire and fear. How can we talk about anything else? He does jut this. Now, there is one final question...is he too good to be true. Then, the narrator announces all that he's not, all the stupid things that guys fall for that aren't a part of him. He's still a fearful thing of physical and psychic strength, but it seems to be in a holy way. More like a wandering monk, although clearly devoted to something other than the airy mysticism of aesthetes, buddhists, christians, etc.

So, what do we do now?

He poses the notion that they leave for highly enthusiastic, creative sex, rather than moving straight to the I love yous. There's no gentle warmth here. But, there's also no signs of possession. It's as if these two, at the end of the poem, are merely fabulous creatures of myth, with greatness in them...and isn't this the truth of things? The reader is left with the decision of what morality is...the whole psycho-physical intensity of the guy, or the bits of tin and shriveled crumbs of nourishment we typically house ourselves in, nourish ourselves with. Perhaps, a self-aware intelligence isn't meant to guard us from animal lust, but guide us through it.

In other words, when everything goes just right, and there's a perfect night of conversation, passion and sex, what else equals it, and why do we misdirect ourselves with other endeavors, like, er, religion?

Is this the stuff of fairy tale? Or, without the notion of possession, in a pure gift economy and culture, can we be spectacular? Can we simply be gifts to each other?

Anyways, that's the narrative part of the poem. The language has to be the true voodoo. Myself, at this moment, I believe the poem hinges on the line, "not to fling the real away as seaspray." It turns the reader so sharply, I think, that they become the member of the audience at the hypnotist's show. The line is poetic and frank. After this line, I think most readers belong to the poet.

Then, there's the sumptuous last few lines that deliver the goods. Readers are slow to put their faith in a poet. This poem ends with its best line, providing a final impediment against any intellectualizing about whether this is a good poem or bad. Just take the hit.

Seduction is what the poem is about, and how it is capable of moving us to the light as quick as any prayer. Well, maybe the poem is mainly meant to disorient the reader, but that's still a step in the right direction. I believe that if a poet writes the poem well enough, he deserves to have delightful physical moments with the reader. I think all poetry should be written and read in the construct that the poet gets laid if he or she writes well enough. The title reflects the writer's reclamation of the poet's role in our lives, for which the poet demands recompense to continue. Poetry, after all, is the fabled atomizer.