Hell

The second-hardest thing I have to do is not be longing’s slave. Hell is that. Hell is that, others, having a job, and not having a job. Hell is thinking continually of those who were truly great.

Hell is the moment you realize that you were ignorant of the fact, when it was true, that you were not yet ruined by desire.

The kind of music I want to continue hearing after I am dead is the kind that makes me think I will be capable of hearing it then.

There is music in Hell. Wind of desolation! It blows past the egg-eyed statues. The canopic jars are full of secrets.

The wind blows through me. I open my mouth to speak.

I recite the list of people I have copulated with. It does not take long. I say the names of my imaginary children. I call out four-syllable words beginning with B. This is how I stay alive.

Beelzebub. Brachiosaur. Bubble-headed. I don’t know how I stay alive. What I do know is that there is a light, far above us, that goes out when we die,

and that in Hell there is a gray tulip that grows without any sun. It reminds me of everything I failed at,

and I water it carefully. It is all I have to remind me of you.


by Sarah Manguso

Mayakovsky

1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying, Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

by Frank O'Hara


Don Draper of Mad Men reads the 4th part.

No Direction Home

After a certain age, there's no one left to turn to.
You've got to find Eurydice on your own,

you've got
To find the small crack
between here and everywhere else all by yourself.

How could it be otherwise?
Everyone's gone away, the houses are all empty,
And overcast starts to fill the sky like soiled insulation

by Charles Wright

Tracks in the Snow

"How was it I did not see that lofty sky before?
And how happy I am to have found it at last."
Tolstoy

He lived in the house closest to the cemetery
and after a fresh snow
he liked to ski among the headstones.
New graves had an incline and a downward slope
that was gently exhilarating.
If people cared they never said so,
and his tracks were plainly legible,
a practiced signature
leading to and from his door.
He was as honest as the snow.

Old graves had settled and grown flatter
though he could still feel them under his skis.
Some years the snow rose so deep
that even the headstones were buried.
Then the quiet intensified, and he could forget
it was a graveyard
but for those rare occasions when, midstride,
he stabbed his pole into the snow
and struck granite.

Rarely, but sometimes,
he fell: a lapse in concentration,
and then he thought,
“That’s all it takes,” and lying there,
“This is how it will be.”
His skis formed an X at his feet
and the heart he seldom consulted
made itself known to him,
throbbing urgently in his ears:
Get up, get up, get up, get up.


by Connie Wanek

A Sad Child

You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that was done to you
the day of the lawn party
when you came inside flushed with the sun,
your mouth sulky with sugar,
in your new dress with the ribbon
and the ice-cream smear,
and said to yourself in the bathroom,
I am not the favorite child.

My darling, when it comes
right down to it
and the light fails and the fog rolls in
and you're trapped in your overturned body
under a blanket or burning car,

and the red flame is seeping out of you
and igniting the tarmac beside you head
or else the floor, or else the pillow,
none of us is;
or else we all are.

by Margaret Atwood