Myself to Blame

I only have myself to blame
For you, my victory, my downfall,
My need, my hunger, my flame...

I only have myself to blame,
Hoping endlessly, as my mother
Waits for my dad, against hope
For you to change,
For you to become
What I want, to be
Somebody else...

I only have myself to blame
For this, the burn that is my life,
This lie that I insist on telling,
Waiting, against the odds,
For me to become
Someone I want...

From "The Seasons: A Quartet" by Joe Bolton

I can remember as well as September does,
And what music remains inside of me
Is muted over with memory, strains sad
As the seed that spills from the withered okra plants. 

The best days of summer are the days of summer gone:
Something cooking, a wash of light on the water...
The music dies, and what I hold is the world.
One leaf falling would break the spell. It falls.

-from "The Last Nostalgia"

I’ll Be (Nothing)

I’ll be nothing, that’s what I’ll be
I’ll be the limbs breaking on the ice
I’ll be desire melting onto itself
I’ll be the longing that possesses me
That I’ll never possess

I’ll be nothing, that’s what I’ll be
I’ll be the vicious hope that rides me to death
I’ll be just another breath, another step
To nowhere

(originally posted on December 06, 2004)

Life on a Beautiful Day

It is eleven years today, Teta, and I do miss you more than ever on this beautiful day...

Sometimes life is so ruthlessly beautiful,
It’s unfair;
Sometimes life is so devastatingly perfect,
It makes me want to cry.

Yesterday I heard a report about a country burying its dead,
A family burying its dead,
A woman burying her dead,
And I thought
The dead are never buried:
The sunshine wakes them
And the raindrops dig their graves.

Today the sun smiled at me,
The breeze smiled at me,
And I smiled back.
Today I missed my grandma more than ever
Because she is missing this beautiful day.

Yesterday a breath of fresh air
Wrapped around my face
Like a mouth gag,
It stripped me of my pretenses,
My vacant melancholy,
It slapped me like my mother’s kiss.

Today I fell in love with you
And I couldn’t care less
About the sound my heart will make
When it’s breaking.

Yesterday I wished I was young
And then I realized
I am.
Yesterday I wished I was alive
And then it hit me
That I am.
I should have wished more wisely,
Wished better,
Wished for what I didn’t have.

Today I smiled.

(Originally posted on April 16, 2003)

"Laguna Beach Breakdown" by Joe Bolton

You had come searching for a second chance,
But trying to break through, merely broke down,
Until at last any sense of purpose
Seemed nothing more than something else to lose.
You let it go and, seeing no reason to mourn
What you could no longer name, kept silence
Under the vast vacuum of heaven
Someone had nailed stars up to to hold in place.
You were hoping maybe a change of season
Might help, but there was none. You woke at dawn
Shuddering in the indifferent embrace
Of your own arms, unable to turn or return,
Dreaming of drowning, neutral as a seaweed in the war
The sea continually waged against the shore.

-from "The Last Nostalgia"

"Death Will Come and Will Have Your Eyes" by Cesare Pavese

Cesare Pavese's "Death Will Come and Will Have Your Eyes" was among the poems found in his desk after his suicide. Considering the circumstances, it's strikingly haunting.

Death will come and will have your eyes—
this death that accompanies us
from morning till evening, unsleeping,
deaf, like an old remorse
or an absurd vice. Your eyes
will be a useless word,
a suppressed cry, a silence.
That’s what you see each morning
when alone with yourself you lean
toward the mirror. O precious hope,
that day we too will know
that you are life and you are nothingness. 

Death has a look for everyone.
Death will come and will have your eyes.
It will be like renouncing a vice,
like seeing a dead face reappear in the mirror,
like listening to a lip that’s shut.
We’ll go down into the maelstrom mute.

--Translated by Geoffrey Brock

Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), a poet, novelist and critic, was a major Italian author of the 20th Century.

(Reposted from 
http://poem-of-the-week.blogspot.com/
2008_06_01_archive.html)

Quartet of Endless Grey

Wipe your foggy breath off the cold bus window;
the snow-covered scape outside is darker than your breath.
Watch your faint reflection in the streaky glass;
the bus' harsh fluorescent lights do you no favor.

I never thought hunger could grow larger than the body,
but you never miss a chance to prove me wrong.
Never did I look so large as I do through your eyes;
never have I felt so small.

I once said I'd never regret a thing--
I regret it all now, even the regret.

It's done:
no more happy endings,
no more new beginnings,
no more looking forward,
no more then...

It's all been done:
there's no tomorrow here;
there's only an endless now,
not interrupted by night or day--
an endless drone, an endless hum,
an endless pattern of downward eyes and hunched backs,
an endless silence syncopated by the static of the everyday,
an endless fog, an endless grey,
no one to save...

I forgot the taste of skin,
I forgot the smell of hair,
I forgot the feel of anticipation,
I forgot what it was all about...

Last night god killed himself;
he obviously wasn't divine enough.
Pity us men with rolls on our sides,
scars on our necks, and morning breath.
Pity us, mortals,
You, who's never lived...

Synthesize

When all is said and done,
what have I given
and have you taken?
When one day we sit across the room from each other,
legs crossed, the silence suspended in the air
like a ray of light on a late winter afternoon,
what will there be to say to each other?

There will be the fleeting memory
of that evening in Florence,
returning home from the supermarket,
plastic bags of cheap wine in hand,
there was a dirty-blond guy our age
sitting on the sidewalk,
right across from the automatic doors,
begging for money or food.
I gave him my half-eaten focaccia,
and he thanked me not knowing
how much more than a grazie I wanted.
You weren't there.

Or the time that,
walking back from the same supermarket,
in that underpass beneath the tracks,
two guys were attacking a woman,
and I just dropped my head and hurried by,
hoping they wouldn't hassle me.
I pretended not to understand what she was saying,
even though cries for help in all languages are the same.
You weren't there.

When that day we sit across from each other and look back,
will it weave together in a sprawling tapestry
just coming to light?
Or will the strands and loose ends only clutter the room,
piling like dust bunnies underneath the couches
and in the crevices of their folds?
Will we look back thinking,
Yes, that was a good life we lived together.
Or will we despise one another
for having wasted each other's?

Now, late at night,
as you and the animals lie asleep around me,
and I scramble for a coherent thought,
for meaning in your pattern of breath,
for something to sink my teeth into,
I wonder as I push sleep aside...
And then, exhausted,
I let it take over me.

(originally posted on August 02, 2008)

"Tropical Watercolor: Sarasota"

Summer sings not far away, and we both know
The errors we've made. The sloped shoulders
Of those palms in the middle distance
Darken; the palms stand solitary as guards.

Summer sings, and against those walls
The late May light has sweetened, the palms
Sigh a little, fronds swaying in the breeze,
Making a sad watercolor of the square.

A mackerel sky frames the square, the square
We dreamed failed us in this place we'd come to
To find ourselves again as in a mirror.
Love, this is the square that failed.

I broke myself trying to make myself strong
For you. Dusk gilds white buildings, and smoke
From my cigarette floats toward the stars
That aren't there yet, the stars we used to desire.

They are a vast absence, reminding me
I don't believe in anything anymore except
The difficulty of everything for men and women.
Your remembered ghost is the ghost of my grandmother

Walking here endlessly in a black dress,
Shadow lost among the shadows of palms
On this square that failed, blocks from the sea.
I have run out of life, for what?

I have run out of life from the repetition
Of our moving only from mirror to mirror,
Catching our reflections in shop windows
And finding them less real than mannequins.

- by Joe Bolton, from "The Last Nostalgia"

Looking In

Nothing much changes when you’re back:
dishes still need to be done,
animals fed;
only there’s less room in the bed.
I won’t say it’s lonelier with you than it is without you,
but it is far less convenient.

Scenes of domesticity gone stale:
your constant complaining of dust,
the dog turning her back and looking longingly out,
and my silence.
Rescue what you can!

I am starting to weigh my 30 years,
piling others’ lives across the scale,
making sure I’m always on the losing end.
So what if it comes to this?

Forgive me if I don’t see you as the victory you might be,
but your smile doesn’t count if it’s not for me.
Besides, I’m too busy looking in.

(Originally posted on March 24, 2007)