Young Poets

Pynchon Paranoia & Prose (Comp)

As I watch the rainbow disappear through four collapsing windows

The apartments fold algorithmically

Apocalyptic origami

Looking straight up at the sky

Like a period on paper

A doll gazing from her bedroom

A die spinning on its nose

I think of Pynchon and paranoia and prose

Burnt-amber on the brickside

Scraps of prisms on the floor

Eye Hauntology

The eye of the ceiling fan pulsing through its circular momentum, the black hole eye, the loose-sketch eye on notebook paper—red lines receding over white and charcoal-gray—daydreamed by a schoolgirl in a bored fugue, nowhere else to look but inward

The eyes on the back of my head, the concave teaspoon eye: the evil, the benevolent, the always observant eye—from above, all-around, within; the star-chart eye, the eye as cycle and spiral and prophecy and fate; the flying eye of the biblical angel; the pregnant eye, teeming with life—little red egg eyes

The eye of death and rebirth and empty man in the middle, the human race’s eye, the stranger eye, the eye of predator and prey. The earth as eye, and sun gazing down blinkless, the moon eye: the eye which winks at us as soon we look away, the eye of the dare, of the State’s dare, of a monkey paw

The clock eye ticking restlessly, inverted, a routine spasm. The apple eye. The ink blot eye. The eye of love winces in a flicker, opening anew with envy. The blossom eye, porcelain eye, the eye piercing the eye called the iris. The atomic eye mushrooming in its onlooking apotheosis—the bullet eye’s flitting immediacy, burrowing in chests

The eye-womb of mother, the eye of the empty void, the million-eyed abyss. The unseen camera eye, the screen eye, the abstracted, filmic, oppressive eye. The eye in the palm of the hand, the churning eye of industry. The alien eye, the eye of God, the telescope eye, through which we are watched, cheered on, derided by the dead

The tattling eye of younger siblings, the disapproving eye of the father. The imperceptible eyes of molecules, infinitesimal, virulent, amorous. The absent eye of night. The scandalous eye of day. The eye of the coiled snake, the vain eye in the mirror, the docile eye turned downward, elusive eye of the other—eye of the law.

The wound eye, the gash eye. The birth-mark eye of idiosyncrasy, the black eye of clogged pores. The fatal and the fertile eye. The eye of erection, of volcanic eruption, of grace, of gravity, of horror all too familiar, all too base. The forgetting eye. The pearl eye. The eye of return, returning. The eye of irony: the eye of all-consuming irony.

Moving On

The last plate broke today. It was nothing special.

Cheap, temporary junk that fills a flat,

a home, a life. I’ve always had a fear of losing

things before their time. I kept every card she wrote

even as her handwriting deteriorated and

she could no longer remember my name.

She downsized and downsized and downsized until

her whole life became impossibly small.

When your very mind turns against you

even a room of ones own becomes a trap.

She moved into the hospital and we moved her life into a skip.

I washed my hands and moved away. But

I kept her plates until life smashed them one by one.

I broke her last plate today. I’ve already packed the broom

so I pick up the pieces with my bare hands. Despite my caution

I started losing things before our time. I became too old

to climb onto her lap, she became too sick for Christmas.

When I did visit she had to ask for my name.

Before I even noticed it I had broken all her plates.

My hands are full of broken shards now and

I can no longer remember the way she’d

press her palms to my cheeks and watch me smile.

To Grow

The plant was a promise of things to grow
now rootbound and starved it refuses to grow

His Dad loved his lawn. Cut the grass every spring.
He taught him to love is to cut. You can’t let it grow.

Locked in a dark room a plant still dreams of the sun
though twisted and warped, towards the light it will grow.

I rehearsed for our dates by gripping hot stoves
all for a gash on my palm where the skin won’t regrow.

The sunrise colours my room in shades of pink and hope,
only not on the left behind plant that can’t grow.

On our last fight he played dumb, um ah ing as he cried,
yet to the smallest crack of sunlight, I made myself grow.

The Overlook

If these walls could talk, they’d bitch.
When I first came here I scattered breadcrumbs
as I went. Now I just go forward.
The only way out of the maze is through.
Silence is neither peaceful nor quiet.
I have dreams of dying that feel
like memories. If I died
would you remember?

He doesn’t answer, he’s spotting
ghosts through the lens of his bottle,
arguing with his memories.
They fight back with their teeth.
I don’t think I ever lived anywhere else,
my memories of otherwise are only dreams.
I wake up here every time.