Thank you for the vote of confidence in machismo. I can’t stand sissy poets… Most men aren’t manly enough to Read poetry, let alone compose it.
Much less to live in a world worthy of feminism’s few victories.
Poetry / Early to bed.
EARLY TO BED.
(c) Jake Spatz
“Live as though it were morning,” goes the saying,
and you know it means beginnings are your friends,
and sounds like something really worth obeying,
whose promise might be kept, and keep repaying
the investment of your time, with dividends;
but it’s almost morning now: you lie and stare,
as you have for hours; you know each crack in the ceiling
like the back of your hand, and read your fortune there:
the freakish nerves, the wide sheet of despair,
that caught-beneath-a-lid-as-it-lowers feeling;
and the blistered water-stain from the bath above you
foretells your future drenched with alcohol,
the stimulant you soon will need to shove you
into the work you do, which does not love you,
and makes you wonder why you got in it at all;
but you’ll keep on at it, as long as you can drink,
and the more you drink the more you’ll start to like it:
you’ll bitch about it nights, and days a wink
will ride in your face, till colleagues start to think
when you get your cup of morning joe you spike it;
till walking home one evening, frail as a feather,
you pass a storefront, and watch it cut the grooves
too deeply beside your nose, and wonder whether
you look like a shattered pot glued back together
when the man on the inside waves that he approves,
and you realize you’re standing in front of your liquor store,
and you wonder whether it might not make more sense
to kiss New York goodbye, and live less poor—
you can’t remember what you came here for—
and after all, who needs to pay these rents?
Meanwhile you hear the rustle of bags outside,
and the clink of someone picking out the cans
from people’s recycling; and it hits you in the pride
to imagine yourself there, knowing how you’ve tried,
and fought for success, and made successful plans,
and knowing it all might fail by dawn tomorrow,
like it must have once for them, the way you dream them,
since no one lives who wants their share of sorrow,
especially if you’re hard-up enough to borrow
another man’s empties, just to go redeem them;
and you sit up to look, flinch at the window dirt,
but look down into the street to see the person,
and watch that shuffling mass of checkered shirts
scraping its cart beside it like it hurt,
like each short painful step just made it worsen,
but soon they’re out of frame and out of sight;
you sink on your heels, and rub a tired eye,
thankful you still have somewhere to sleep at night,
although you haven’t slept, although you might,
you can still squeeze in an hour if you try,
though already you see each cloud, like a gentle cough,
and the buildings dark below them, as tiny, shivery
songbirds dunk their heads in the gutter’s trough,
then scram as a car-alarm cries its crisis off
at the truck that flew past, late for its next delivery;
and just as the blare gives no sign of abating,
some ass leans into his horn, and shouts for Jorge,
who’s keeping his carpool’s station wagon waiting;
and you hope his building’s not the one with the grating
where a drunken shadow props to pee in the doorway;
when the next door down bursts open, the engine moans,
and Jorge ducks in the car to angry sighs;
meanwhile you notice how much lighter it’s grown,
there’s daylight now; you can see the chicken bones
in the patch of dirt where the block’s one sapling dies;
and all the neighborhood’s now begun to awaken:
in the opposite wall, people spread the curtains,
look out and gasp, as though they had a stake in
the upholstery shop that suffered a quiet break-in
or at least some petty vandalism, for certain;
and the steaming rooftops crowd as pigeons compete,
like thugs on a corner, to prove they own the place,
while down below, where neighbors never meet,
trash-trucks arrive and the men spill trash in the street,
each one with a surgeon’s mask across his face,
and those on their ways to the office step around it,
eyes on their shoes, or else completely vacant,
wishing the world no better than they found it
in this dismal hour of tired blear compounded
with a sick unease that’s slowly being awakened:
a feeling of guilty conscience, of getting fined
for putting your life on hold to make a living
day after day, pretending you really don’t mind
neglecting passion to nurse a world unkind
as it is unfeeling, unthinking, and unforgiving—
no one likes the morning: the humid throng
packed in the subways, the smells of bus exhaust
that cling to the rolls, the temperature all wrong
in the rushed routine that always takes too long,
before the day gets up and going and lost—
no one likes it, failure, drone, or success,
not the clear one, not the misunderstood one,
the absent-minded or deep, the blank or obsessed,
the insomniac or the passed-out-fully-dressed:
“Live as though it were morning”—that’s a good one.
================================
NOTES.
1. “Live as though it were morning” is one of Nietzsche’s epigrams. I don’t remember where he wrote it; quick guess: it’s in his notebooks, edited & published in English under the title The Will to Power.
10. “that caught-beneath-a-lid-as-it-lowers feeling”—Cf. Dante, Inf. X.10-12; 111-113 (the heretics sealed in their tombs on the Christian day of judgment).
Twice I read this poem publicly: first in June 2002 as part of a benefit concert at the Williamsburg Publik House (Brooklyn), and then a month or so later at some bar in Manhattan during the release party for Good Foot issue 2, which had published a much briefer poem of mine (“Study of nausea 1”) rather less suitable for recital.
The stanza I modified from Baudelaire’s “Madrigal triste.” The long sentence structure is due to its nature as an unbroken rant, less than to any prose-based strictures. The speaker is not me.
Generally speaking, the piece is in a vein quite similar to the lyrics of E.S. Discépolo, although I didn’t start reading or translating his work until late 2005.
—26 Dec. 2006.
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Gypsy_doodle reviewed Version 1 -
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Kathymel reviewed Version 1 -
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You have a very interesting voice and I love your use of language and image. The feelings of claustrophobia and isolation are vivid.
I was interested in the reference to Baudelaire so I looked at both the original and some translations to help write this.
Although you have used the same form of rhyme/stanza as he has, you haven’t kept to a similar metre and I think that metre when rhyming is important.
Now, let’s ignore the French original because the French language lends itself to a different style based on the number of beats to a line.
English poetry lends itself far more effectively to stressed metre. Look at this translation-
what care I, love, that thou be wise?
be fair! be sad! for tears contain
an added charm in lovely eyes,
like vales a river glorifies;
the rose is fresher in the rain.
This translation is written with 8 beats to the line and, with a couple of exceptions, every other beat is naturally stressed. Read the first line aloud and you’ll see what I mean.
What CARE i LOVE that THOU be WISE.
It has a lovely rhythm to it. Of course, this metre might not work for the atmosphere that you are trying to create. It would be worth experimenting to find one that suggested a bit more gloom.
I find it a good exercise to write in metre, it helps to discipline your voice and forces you to find new ways to express ideas.
I find I must now apologise for such a lengthy sermon. I think you have a powerful voice there. I shall now have to go and look for anything else you might have on here!
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Wytchcat reviewed Version 1 -
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This is very good, conveying excellent visuals with vivid wording.
Excellent use of poetic references.
It is is very nice to find a strong masculine voice in current poetry. All too often it feels as though the men I find who right write do so in a more “new age sensitive guy” mode.
Well on the road to goal
Mangsy reviewed Version 1 -
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finedani reviewed Version 1 -
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FinnessaWilliams reviewed Version 1 -
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flashbackbingo reviewed Version 1 -
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Wow. That is… wow. Haha. It’s so beautifully written, but it’s still straight-forward enough for the reader to be able to relate to it. I think the last stanza is my favorite, especially the final lines; they sum it up nicely. There’s nothing I can really critique about it, I really enjoyed every part of it. Jeeze, haha… well done!!
rashard4 reviewed Version 1 -
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Intense, sad, deeply personal, sounds like New York, souls consumed by Babylonian flames.
That is a good one: I was so mesmerized by the visceral impact a failed to notice how on point the rhyme scheme was—I should mention that I’m probably not the best critic since I read and write mostly fiction and journalism.
But these verses can be sung I’m certain: so many lines plucked so many chords I could empathize with: “the stimulant you soon will need to shove you
into the work you do, which does not love you,
and makes you wonder why you got in it at all;
but you’ll keep on at it.”
Good Work
Cavol reviewed Version 1 -
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Well firstly I must admit that I’m impressed. I can certianly appreciate the amount of effort this pice must have taken not only in time because of the length but I can tell that the lines were well thought through and agonized over. You’re by faaar more the authority on beat counts than I but I have to say that in my moderate control of the subject, I still found it irregular. I mostly go by ear and many of the lines just didn’t seem to flow musically as I had been expecting. In any piece, even more one of this length, I expect there to be varrioation as it’s so difficult to maintain a consistent beat but many of the lines (according to my hear) strayed. So I pulled out a piece of paper and called upon counting stressed and unstressed syllable patterns to see if there indeed was something I was missing (for the first stanza) and stil couldn’t find a pattern. For example, in the 3rd line I counted 5 stressed syllable in a row. I know the science of counting syllabels is actually not a science at all and it open for disagreement. As for content, I thought it was rich. As a New Yorker, I can certainly relate to absoultey everything in it from the drunks to battling becoming one yourself, to the anenimity of everyone around you to the blank states of yuppies to the business professional garbage men. Bravo! However, I think this poem has been written several times before accomplishing most if everything accomplished in less space. That may be our styles clashing; you may have noticed I’m particular on shorter pieces. The only thing I didn’t approve of were the use of the phrases, “back of your hand” and “day after day”. A pet peeve of mine is the use of commonly used phrases – cliches, such as “pet peeve”. I also read it has having pauses at th eend of each line for the most part but some lines enjammed (sp) for example, “especially if you’re hard-up enough to borrow/
another man’s…” and “the stimulant you soon will need to shove you/into the work” Again, in anything this size it would be difficult to reamin absolutely consistent and either way that doesn’t deter from the poem. I thouht the rhme scheme of ABAAB was smart as to not be obvious and sound nursery rhymey but there were a couple times where I felt like the lines were led by the rhyme. For example, “like each short painful step just made it worsen” instead of “worse”. In aother area, I felt the formatting of normal sentence structur was altered to force a rhyme, in “and the buildings dark below them” instead of “and the dark buildings below them”. Shouldn’t it be “and those on their WAY to the office step around it” and “eyes on their shoes OR completely vacant”. The ending was great snd cynical (the way I like it) and fitting of a poem partly on NY, no? Again, good job. Forgive me, I can’t read over or spell chick this at the moment so you’ll have to excuse the many errors.
Goddess2006 reviewed Version 1 -
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I felt involved with your second person, I don’t think I had a choice. I like most: your description of work, Jorge(laughed at that), New York (that’s the truth), and pigeon poop.
Your rhyme scheme, and I don’t think I’ve said this yet on this site, is very natural and works extremely well. Your style is amazing; I feel like you know me.
Gave it a perfect 10!!
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