All poems © copyright by J. Michael Mollohan
All Rights Reserved

• Anniversary Song
• Antipodes
• I Was Born In a Hole
• Carnival
• Night
• Pre-nuptial
• Duchamp's Ghost
• What Month Is This
• Nirvana is Samsara Properly Understood
• Shattered
• A Rebuttal of Passionate Intensity

  ---

  
  
    Anniversary Song
  
  
  She walks me like a familiar trail, 
  every root and rock anticipated, 
  adjusted for, 
  and deftly avoided, 
  My tan is mere dirt,
  my hair the mutated stubble 
  beside the path altered by repeated trauma, 
  my eyes the bits of blue shining through the trees.  
  
  She eats me like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  
  She caresses me, but with a dull knife.  
  She spoons sweetness, but it's only grape, 
  nothing even quite exotic as blackberry jam 
  (she doesn't like the seeds).  
  
  She plays me like a compact disc, 
  all shiny and digitally discrete, 
  not the rich analog sound 
  of an old vinyl platter, 
  the scratches lending character .
  but not the low-fi quirkiness 
  of an 8-track tape either.  
  
  She tastes me like spoiled milk..
  
  Copyright © 2000
  

  

   

  
  
    Antipodes
  
  
  nathema!
  nathema! nathema!
  can't get along with it
  don't want to protect it
  
  Let me slip along this
  slidery trail
  scuffing buttocks
  as I will
          skinning knees
  and rabbits (maybe cats)
  deep fried in peanut oil
  
  nathema!
  proclivities aside
  I don't like it
  won't touch it
  
  Falling is easy
  getting back up is hard
  or maybe pointless
  or maybe a sharp stick
  don't run with that
  you'll poke your I out
  
  and now it comes to me
  to be what I was so             what I was supposed
  opposed to be as me             to be
  in a time when
  we had no heart for 
  such things
  
  nathema!
  nathema!
  spilling hot oil
  burning great red
           patches
  on my thigh
  always doing something
  
  painful
  
  always seeking ways
  to make the pain stop
  to make the endorphins kick
          in
  to get the shades pulled
  down over the bright
          light!
  of consciousness
  shining so hatefully
  through the Venitian blinds
  with the broken cord
  why doesn't someone fix
  that?
  why doesn't someone replace
  it with one that works?
  there are dozens of the
  damn things all over the
  place, the enamel starting
  to peel, the cords stiff
  and yellow-toward-brown
  
  nathema! nathema!
  kiss me with your red
  tongue, your wet pouty lips
  those lungs that pull
  the air in through
  your teeth, trying to
  suck my tongue tied
          tongue
  into your oral cave
  to mingle with your
  friendly soft wet tissues
  
  ,
  
  nathema!
  tighten the hold
  the lid
  the only thing I own
  and can manage
  to make it through
  life without misplacing
  it
  breaking it
  selling it
  giving it away
  losing it in my bankruptcy
  kiss me deeply
  all down to my toes
  and fuck me
  like you don't care
  and I'll say so long
  because goodbye
  doesn't convey the sense
  of permanancy I want
  to express
  
  nathema!
  
  Copyright © 1999
  
  

  

   

  
  I Was Born In a Hole
  
  
  I was born in a hole
  it had streets and traffic lights
  stores signs and houses
  it had a name and thirteen
  hundred souls
  but it was still a hole
  a place to be climbed out of
  
  No matter how I tried
  no matter how far I got
  out of that hole
  somehow it managed to hang on
  clinging to my ankle
  holding tight to me
  being dragged along
  an inescapable thing
  an anchor weighing me down
  holding me back
  making me self-conscious
  of the stares of people 
  looking at that hole 
  I drag around with me
  
  Sometimes I close my eyes
  and see that hole
  bluer than black
  a glowing darkness
  radiating rage and shame
  fringed with the light
  of promises broken
  potential wasted
  a life not lived
  to its fullest
  
  Had I been born some place
  else not in that hole
  maybe things would be different
  maybe I'd be a doctor or a 
  lawyer from a flat place
  like Indiana or Kansas
  maybe I'd be teaching at
  the University of Oklahoma
  or making movies in California
  maybe I'd be a stock broker
  in New York or Chicago
  or a junkie dead from an 
  overdose in Seattle
  
  The weight of that hole 
  is considerable and
  sometimes it seems that
  it gets heavier with each 
  passing year
  it grows like a giant fungus
  spreading and reaching new
  parts of my life
  the stink of it 
  swirling like cigarette smoke
  in my nostrils making
  me pull back and try to
  avoid it
  but I can't
  
  I was born in a hole
  
  Copyright © 2002
  
  

  

   

  
  
          Carnival
  
  
  I guess the sawdust is there
  to soak up spilled liquids
  and to cushion the footfall
  of the company pickpockets
  sneaking around to lift your wallet.
  
  The cotton candy primes the kids 
  so they have more nerve to
  demand more from Mom and Dad
  and to stoke their desire 
  for junk and cheap thrills.
  
  The rides create adrenaline
  and other hormones, the smell
  masked by the ubiquitous popcorn.
  Popcorn smells different at a carnival
  than anywhere else, doesn't it?
  
  Cheap trinkets, quick thrills, money tossed
  at some vague goal are part of the
  rhythm, the cadence, the meter of
  the poetry and music of county fairs, 
  freak shows and carnivals.
  
   Copyright © 1998
  
  

  

   

  
           Night
  
  
  Night is for forgetting,
  for wishing and planning,
  for love and not remembering.
  Night is for the young with
  dreams and plans and all those
  yearnings.
  
  Night is for the old whom sleep
  has abandoned, for sighing and
  yawning and all those
  yearnings.
  
  Night is not for me,
  It evades my grasp.
  
  Copyright © 2003 
  

  

   

  
  
    Pre-nuptial
  
  
  Speak to me in metaphor
  and tell me lies I've never heard.
  Show me worlds of methane ice
  where life is still untried.
  Make me dream of finer things
  than psychics on TV,
  and go lightly with the Tabasco.
  
  Bring me the flowers that only
           bloom in Hell,
  and peel the gold from Heaven's tines
  to make a trinket for me
           to misplace,
  and maybe then I'll love you.
  
  Copyright © 1998
  
  

  

   

  
    Duchamp's Ghost
  
  He spoke to me from the plaque 
  on the side of the armory --
  the one that says it was built in 1913,
  the year "Nude descending a staircase"
  shocked the people of the Bronx,
  the year the elite who came over 
  from Manhattan went away
  with a greater feeling of superiority.
  He feels superior too, I'm sure, because
  she lives in his apartment a block or so
  from Duchamp's ghost, while I sit
  five hundred miles away, wondering,
  longing for Jerome Avenue and the sky
  over New York City.
  
  He spoke to me in pictures and dust
  and ready-mades, assuring me
  that I am not the first man to feel this way,
  but somehow it still seems to me that I am.
  The Bride and Man Ray's photographs
  haunt my mind like the memory of her
  lips and her eyes, the dust settling
  on the weeks and months as they pass 
  like silent proclaimers of Dada in America
  in the early twentieth century.
  The bitter taste of some forgotten root
  burns my mouth, a flagrant attempt
  to take my mind off something not yet
  spoken, something not yet done.
  
  Copyright © 1998
  

  

   

  
  
    What Month Is This
  
  
  I beg to differ Mr. Eliot,
  April be not cruel.
  April simply doesn't care,
  much like November or
          June.
  April does not piss
  statistical on the
  grave of indifference.
  The month, the name,
  the season, like any other,
          merely is.
  The fresh dirt exists only
  in the minds of those
  who choose to no longer
  suffer the imprecations
  this shufflable existence
  inflicts upon us,
  not out of malicious intent,
  but simply because
  that's the way it is, 
  Mr. Eliot.
  
  Copyright © 1998
  
  

  

   

  
  Nirvana is Samsara Properly Understood
  
  The memory of pain is not the same as the pain.
  The map is not the territory.
  Dragging names through mud only sullies the dragger,
            for the name is not the person.
  
  Bleating loud is a goat's way of protesting
            the fact he's a goat.
  A barking dog barks out of fear, loneliness, or boredom.
  The empty vessel makes the loudest noise.
  The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
  The prodigal is well met, the faithful forsaken.  
  And why was Cain's sacrifice insufficient to God
            who made him to farm instead of herd?
  
  Life's not a problem to be solved.  It's a mystery
            to be lived.  
  Sure it's unfair.  What are you gonna do about it?  Quit?  
            Oh. . . sorry Kurt.
  
  Copyright © 1997
  

  

   

  
  
             Shattered
  
    broken glass in her hair... her colors running
    water standing
                   standing dripping by the table
    jeanne you cry to me, you cry to me
            decry
                  retry
                    move the red around
    is that paint
             is that blood
                    is that you, Doctor
    have you brought the bandages
            have you healed the wound?
    the train is running right on time
    her thighs compressed and sallow
              like salt wetted and left to sit
    like milkweed sap
           another way to seep and
    sleep          nothing forms
         shadows
    edges clear uncertain how
       how did it come to be
    how did it come to me
       how                           how
               hair matted
    encrusted          entrusted
    brought to culmination painted
    dried in the sun
                             bled
                                       red
    to come
              to have gone
  
  Copyright © 1998
  
  

  

   

  
  
  A Rebuttal of Passionate Intensity
  
  
  
  I'm chopping poetry like firewood.
  Throw another sprig of herbs into
       the flames to sweeten
       the sound.
  Still it rings as loudly as
       a lead bell --
  the words cracking on the cold,
       hard concrete floor,
  the windows breaking in sympathy. 
  
  Syllables circle 'round my head
       making me dizzy with their
            bee-buzzing.
  Recombinant memes and phonemes
  make new monsters to turn on us
       like the new Prometheus did. 
  
  A friendly terror stalks our minds
       using a majority of the crowd
       as a truncheon to pound
  the pulp of our bones into a compliant
  miasma of right-thinking, right-action,
       defined by those on the dexter
       side of the aisle
  Beware of those who travel in large groups
       or alone
       and suppose that in all the
            world
  there is such a thing as certainty. 
  
  Copyright © 2003