new poem
Ryan Hunton put together a little poem book called dream(s) and this is the poem of mine that is going to be in it. I'm going to read this poem and another one at BnB on August 13th ( I think) I'd love for you all to come.
The Live Show
M.E. Sparr
I watched a television program on survival and a man crawled inside the
carcass of a big dead buffalo and survived a blizzard that way.
When we were in bed at night, and you put your hand on my shoulder
and asked me to be closer to you,
and I shooed your fingers away and said I was asleep,
and you said you just wanted to get warm;
I was dead, wasn’t I? Dead as that big buffalo.
Do you suppose that, while that man was in that buffalo,
he ever thought about what it would be like if that
big beast came rearing back to life? What would happen
if puffs of breath snorted from that buffalo’s nostril,
what if his decaying jaw flopped open and released a sigh
of life that was like a sweet little cloud in the cold air. Shew.
I should have known better than to shack up with a guy.
My father told me it was a bad idea to do that
because the kind of guys that want to move in with you
always have an angle.
My father saw you and knew you were that type of guy
because after he shook your hand
he rubbed his palm hard down the front his jeans
like you were dirt. Like you were just rot.
He asked me on the porch later,
while you and mother cleaned up the dishes,
why are you with that dweeb?
and I had the nerve to tell him
I couldn’t live without you. You were everything I ever dreamed of.
(Remember that night? We had sex in the guest room, right under my
parents roof,
needy, fast, animal sex, on an afghan that my grandmother knitted.)
I believe that man must have thought about the buffalo coming
back to life. He must have. I believe it would make a man too nervous
to think about his own life in that instance, in a blizzard like that,
when you’re so cold, when you’re afraid you’ve let everything slip away,
you have to get your mind around something else. I bet that man
thought about that buffalo’s frozen entrails dethawing and pumping
blood all around him. Squirting little red drips all down his parka.
Its funny how you make things up in dire situations.
We both know love is like that, you love
when you need to, and then you love even when you don’t
because you remember how much it hurt when you needed it.
I can’t go to sleep with you breathing on my neck like that.
I don’t want your hand on my hip like you own me.
I have dreams about the bag of lawn clippings that needs to be
disposed of and getting my oil changed when you do that.
Its like your hands are healer hands, but what they cure
is sexuality, optimism, and luxury. I can’t drive a convertible
when I wake up in the morning because I drive a compact car
that’s good on gas. I can’t drive a convertible when I’m asleep at night
because I grab for the gear shift and there
are your ruddy, desperate fingers at my waist,
reminding me that the litter needs scooped.
I wonder if that man in the buffalo had a wife at home waiting for him.
I wonder if she leaned against the kitchen counter
with the phone in her hand, the weather channel blaring,
where is he? where is he? Finger rapping on a terracotta pot,
top tapping on lemon-scented linoleum. I wonder if she had
finally thought about him being dead, and at that moment, the hospital
called
and said that he wasn’t dead at all, just frosty. very frosty.
I wonder if she grilled him up a ham and cheese on sourdough
and got a big V8 at the gas station on the way over because he likes that
and I wonder if when she got there, he saw the jug of red
and the gooey yellow and the meat and he threw her offerings
at the wall and said Now How Do You Like Being Inside a Buffalo?
Nobody wants to die, I wonder if he added that, Nothing wants to die.
I slept late one Saturday and you got up to take your jog
and in that time alone in bed, I dreamt that I drowned
and I woke up with an ice cube in my mouth, and I turned
to grab your chest for some reality, and you’d made up
your half of the bed. I spit the ice cube on the duvet,
and it slid a little ways and I watched it melt and sat up in bed, frozen,
until you came back.
When I told you what happened, I pointed wildly to my pink tongue
and said there was a cube of ice in here! And you said you’ve been
with me a long time, that I don’t need to make up stories, and patted near
the wet spot on the bed like I was a baby that had made a messy
and said Shew I should take a shower and you’d change the sheets.
And I touched the spot too, and I touched my tongue
and went to the bathroom and under that hot water, I realized that
the man in the buffalo wasn’t crawling in there to get away from the
blizzard,
I don’t think he wanted to survive
so much as that he just wanted to find a place that is between
what you want, what you need, and what you can’t get away from.
The Live Show
M.E. Sparr
I watched a television program on survival and a man crawled inside the
carcass of a big dead buffalo and survived a blizzard that way.
When we were in bed at night, and you put your hand on my shoulder
and asked me to be closer to you,
and I shooed your fingers away and said I was asleep,
and you said you just wanted to get warm;
I was dead, wasn’t I? Dead as that big buffalo.
Do you suppose that, while that man was in that buffalo,
he ever thought about what it would be like if that
big beast came rearing back to life? What would happen
if puffs of breath snorted from that buffalo’s nostril,
what if his decaying jaw flopped open and released a sigh
of life that was like a sweet little cloud in the cold air. Shew.
I should have known better than to shack up with a guy.
My father told me it was a bad idea to do that
because the kind of guys that want to move in with you
always have an angle.
My father saw you and knew you were that type of guy
because after he shook your hand
he rubbed his palm hard down the front his jeans
like you were dirt. Like you were just rot.
He asked me on the porch later,
while you and mother cleaned up the dishes,
why are you with that dweeb?
and I had the nerve to tell him
I couldn’t live without you. You were everything I ever dreamed of.
(Remember that night? We had sex in the guest room, right under my
parents roof,
needy, fast, animal sex, on an afghan that my grandmother knitted.)
I believe that man must have thought about the buffalo coming
back to life. He must have. I believe it would make a man too nervous
to think about his own life in that instance, in a blizzard like that,
when you’re so cold, when you’re afraid you’ve let everything slip away,
you have to get your mind around something else. I bet that man
thought about that buffalo’s frozen entrails dethawing and pumping
blood all around him. Squirting little red drips all down his parka.
Its funny how you make things up in dire situations.
We both know love is like that, you love
when you need to, and then you love even when you don’t
because you remember how much it hurt when you needed it.
I can’t go to sleep with you breathing on my neck like that.
I don’t want your hand on my hip like you own me.
I have dreams about the bag of lawn clippings that needs to be
disposed of and getting my oil changed when you do that.
Its like your hands are healer hands, but what they cure
is sexuality, optimism, and luxury. I can’t drive a convertible
when I wake up in the morning because I drive a compact car
that’s good on gas. I can’t drive a convertible when I’m asleep at night
because I grab for the gear shift and there
are your ruddy, desperate fingers at my waist,
reminding me that the litter needs scooped.
I wonder if that man in the buffalo had a wife at home waiting for him.
I wonder if she leaned against the kitchen counter
with the phone in her hand, the weather channel blaring,
where is he? where is he? Finger rapping on a terracotta pot,
top tapping on lemon-scented linoleum. I wonder if she had
finally thought about him being dead, and at that moment, the hospital
called
and said that he wasn’t dead at all, just frosty. very frosty.
I wonder if she grilled him up a ham and cheese on sourdough
and got a big V8 at the gas station on the way over because he likes that
and I wonder if when she got there, he saw the jug of red
and the gooey yellow and the meat and he threw her offerings
at the wall and said Now How Do You Like Being Inside a Buffalo?
Nobody wants to die, I wonder if he added that, Nothing wants to die.
I slept late one Saturday and you got up to take your jog
and in that time alone in bed, I dreamt that I drowned
and I woke up with an ice cube in my mouth, and I turned
to grab your chest for some reality, and you’d made up
your half of the bed. I spit the ice cube on the duvet,
and it slid a little ways and I watched it melt and sat up in bed, frozen,
until you came back.
When I told you what happened, I pointed wildly to my pink tongue
and said there was a cube of ice in here! And you said you’ve been
with me a long time, that I don’t need to make up stories, and patted near
the wet spot on the bed like I was a baby that had made a messy
and said Shew I should take a shower and you’d change the sheets.
And I touched the spot too, and I touched my tongue
and went to the bathroom and under that hot water, I realized that
the man in the buffalo wasn’t crawling in there to get away from the
blizzard,
I don’t think he wanted to survive
so much as that he just wanted to find a place that is between
what you want, what you need, and what you can’t get away from.