Lines from a late-night cellphone text

We do so many horrid things on earth
the moon can only look at us full on
one day a month

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells but damned if I remember writing it

It's midnight, and I know you're not alone

It’s midnight, and I know you’re not alone.
   Someone is touching you, stroking your cheek.
You lean into his hand, and with a moan,
   You say three words I’ll never hear you speak.
And what his lips will give then is a kiss
   My lips have only dreamed of giving to you;
And what your eyes will say, he will not miss,
   For his eyes listen as they see right through you
While mine are here, looking at what will be
   And choking on it, like a broken pill:
A door that swings shut between you and me
   So it can open up to him at will,
     As you do now, when through that door you go
     To share a room that I will never know.

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells

You can take us out of the city . . .

We all live one month’s rent beyond our means
   To order specials from the city’s menu.
When subways shut down, we’ll walk home to Queens.
   NYC’s not an address--it’s a venue.
We never stroll when we can dart or lunge;
   We move too fast to see our own reflection.
Our sidewalks soak up rainfall like a sponge
   And then make oceans at each intersection.
You’ll find the sound of traffic never stops;
   We locals all count taxis to relax.
Live here a month and you will earn the chops
   To play our streets like Parker played the sax.
      Prouder than Paris, confident as Rome:
      Manhattan’s what a special breed calls home.

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells

Unrequited

Your sweet hands reach
Into the empty pocket of my heart
And leave a stone.


Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells

Fat Tuesday

I had dinner with my future last night.
“You’ve lost weight,” I said.
“You used to be as wide as a freeway
With exits leading everywhere.
Now you’re so thin,
If you wore black, stood sideways,
And stuck your tongue out,
People would think you were a zipper.”

“If I’m thin,” my future said,
“It’s because you’re not feeding me enough.”

Then he hailed a cab,
Drove off to a midnight rendezvous
With my dreams, and left me
To share a cup of coffee with my past.

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells

Disillusionment

Sometimes I wonder what I see in you.
   You never give except for your own gain.
You rarely do the things you swear you’ll do.
   Your inconsistency drives me insane.
You lay the law down like a traffic cop,
   And then wave favorites through against the lights--
Swear up and down that bias has to stop,
   Then make exceptions for connected whites.
The rules mean what you say they mean, and we,
  Who follow them, get nothing but your scorn,
While you proclaim impartiality
  And then bend over for the better born--
     Upholding principles that can’t be bought,
     Then whoring them to power on the spot.

Copyright 2011 Matthew J Wells

The 9/11 Poems

Ten years ago I was sending out monthly poetry mailings called The Hundreds to a circle of friends. There were three to five poems in each mailing, one of which was always the latest canto in “2001: An Ottava Rima Odyssey,” which chronicled my personal life with what I hoped was a certain Byronic wit, given the form I was using.

There would have been twelve Cantos, but there ended up only being eight--heh; just as unfinished as Byron’s Don Juan, now that I think of it. And there were only eight because of September 11th. I stopped sending the mailings out after September, and the mailing I sent out at the end of September consisted of two poems, one called “Climbing Up Lombard,” which I’ll post at the end of the week, and one called “September 11, 2001,” which is below.

I won’t say much about it, except to admit that it was deliberately written to echo WH Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939,” which I used to have memorized before the details of my day job pushed that part of my memory into the recycle bin. It was written primarily at the upstairs bar of the Cedar Tavern (the “bar on University Place” of the first stanza). I sent it out to several magazines but it was either rejected or I never heard back, and if I had been blessed with a marketer’s brain rather than a writer’s brain, I would have sent it out a couple of months ago to a few places in expectation of this week’s anniversary. But I didn’t. So here it is.

September 11, 2001

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn:
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
--W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939


I sit in one of the bars
On University Place
Uncertain and afraid
As the new millennium’s hope
Is buried without a trace
In a heap of mangled steel --
And I wonder how we can stand
When the earth beneath our feet
Hums like a tightrope wire
And the soot of a thousand lives
Offends the September air.


My pen droops from my hand;
The only thing I can write
Is an echo of Auden’s poem
Of 9/1/39,
The one where he hated the line
“We must love one another or die,”
And changed the “or” to “and”
So his wrinkled husk could deny
The ardour of his youth
With a retroactive lie
And a palatable truth.


The truth I see on my face
Is the look of a shipwrecked soul --
The eyes of a homeless man
Who trusted and was thrown
Down to uncaring streets
By a cold intractable God
Who calls for a pharmakos
To suffer and to die,
So that the rest of us
Can walk past life’s defeats
With an averted eye.


But I cannot look away.
I search for God in the sky
And see a pillar of smoke
That marks our common grave --
Where death is unverified,
Where innocence is a joke
And sleep comes only in fits
Like a seizure between the sheets,
And hopes choke one by one,
Charred leaves that plummet and spin
To earth in the autumn sun.


The world can parse the Koran
Till Armageddon comes
Or catalogue affronts
From Sykes-Picot on down
That led to this offense
And still be blind to the why:
No matter what the cause,
A man who is in the wrong
Will always reach for the rod,
And the righteous will rejoice
To kill in the name of God.


In the face of such belief,
Our patriotic priests
Will clutch the lectern and say
Even Christ would not forgive
This impious infamy;
For God, who does not live
Within one flag alone,
Will surely advocate ours
When we rise up and fight
To avenge the death of our own
Because we are in the right.


And those of us who question
Or talk of common bonds
Or say we had it coming
Will wear the mark of Cain
Till we chant the required truth:
No one is better than us
And no one has been more wronged,
So we all must stand behind
A man who is for the birds,
And say that he speaks for us
When he barely knows the words.

When leaders do not inspire,
Where can we put our faith
To match man’s faith in God?
To trust that the human race
Is better than its worst
Is to wander in a wood
Where outlaws use the weak
As kindling for their fire,
And prepare an unmarked grave
For all who cross their path:
The luckless as well as the brave.


But I have to believe there exists
Some hidden higher power
Whose purpose I cannot see --
Some virtue in the blood
Of the common hurting heart
That drives humanity.
And whether it wears a face
Or comes down from the clouds
Or studies our flaws from space
Or commands us from the fire,
It is something bigger than us.


I bow my head to pray
And I’m begging under my breath
The way I ask for love
When I think life owes me one
Or I’m desperate to death.
It’s not the ask, it’s the act
That determines the return:
Whether Allah or Elohim,
We get the god we deserve
As long as we treat each other
Like the butcher treats the lamb.


And what I fear the most
Is that what gags us now
Will soon be swallowed whole
Down throats too raw to scream.
We will return to rote
And sleep the sleep of forget
And ignore the threat of loss
And barely acknowledge the wife
And give her the usual kiss
And watch the weekly game
And deal with even this.

This bar will be packed tonight
With voices like battering rams,
With nameless fears assuaged
And troublesome answers bought
By the pitcher or the glass
Until the brain has been gouged
Of abominable fire
And human ticker tape,
And a man can face last call
Where the broken promenade
Meets the stench of the rat in the wall.


I pay for my beers and leave
And hit the empty streets
Where soldiers and police
Control pedestrian flow.
In the distance a siren grieves
But its cry brings no release --
I yearn for someone to hold,
To stop the ticking clock
That counts the minutes of
A world that is dire and bleak
And dressed in the rags of love,


And I think of the ancient Greeks
Who invented tragedy
By pitting a mortal against
His morals and his gods
To create his destiny:
How suffering scales the soul
And every choice means loss,
So the question then becomes
Whether a man will be great
When he hears the hollow drums
That summon him to his fate.


And where are we called now,
I wonder as I walk
Down a street blocked off from cars
To Union Square and the park
Where bullhorns compete with guitars
And the hush drowns out it all;
Where little girls kneel down
While their parents, strong and tall,
Crouch over them like a shield
With their hands upon their heads
As if dismay can be healed.


In the park there are endless signs
With slogans affirming stands
And stands with scrapbook shots,
And candles that flicker and glow
Like an army of shooting stars,
Arrayed against the might
Of despair and the unforeknown,
Confronting each daily lie
With honesty’s true kiss
And the irreplaceable light
That flares from our common soul.


Drowning in deep unease,
At the crossroads where belief
Collides with necessity --
Where the way of the righteous sword
And immediate relief
Meets the precipice of peace --
With our innocence in tatters
And poisoned with hate and grief,
We search for the perfect word
That will keep the foolish wise
And a dream from being shattered.


Out of a sleepless bed,
Into a dreamless day,
We stagger towards our fate
Like children who have no say;
And every step we take
And all that we think we know
Mean nothing unless we try
To bare our hearts and see
The world as lovers do:
If you’ll be true to me
Then I’ll be true to you.


Under that heavy charge
Down the hard road of love,
Where every blatant lie
Confirms a hidden truth,
It is how we walk that counts
As we stumble through this gorge
Of panic and despair
In search of higher ground:
The weak to teach the strong,
The strong protect the weak,
The lost to find their way,
And all the silent speak.

* * * * *

This was written in San Francisco in late September 2001, during my 15 minutes of fame, when Schrödinger’s Girlfriend was going into rehearsals at the Magic Theatre.


Again, not much to say about it, except that, in the echo of 9/11, it was impossible not to feel the thinness of the earth’s crust beneath my feet wherever I walked. And I walked everywhere.

Climbing Up Lombard

Climbing up Lombard--
watching the fog eat up the Golden Gate
and auto headlights vanish in a thick


mist like the smoke of a huge fire, marching
down from a world of battle to a shore
where seagulls preen and children skim flat stones--


the land clouds curl with the south wind. And in
my nose I smell asbestos, steel, the harsh
unmentionable odor of decay,


the smelling salts of devastation, which
once sniffed will always linger in the air
and wake you coughing from unconsciousness


even out here, in this determined city
which sits precariously on a fault,
balanced like a thin tabletop upon


the twin pillars of hope and ignorance.
This world is treacherous and sly--without
a moment's notice it can open up


and gulp us down, leaving no trace behind.
No matter where we go, we are such stuff
as meals are made on, and what we call life


is nothing but a brief and fog-bound loan
which will be called in when the only way
we can pay up is with all that we are


and all we build upon this shifting ground,
as one by one we march on through the mist,
mindful of where we have to step to keep


climbing up Lombard.





Copyright 2001 Matthew J Wells

Climbing Up Lombard

This was written in San Francisco in late September 2001, during my 15 minutes of fame, when Schrödinger’s Girlfriend was going into rehearsals at the Magic Theatre.


Again, not much to say about it, except that, in the echo of 9/11, it was impossible not to feel the thinness of the earth’s crust beneath my feet wherever I walked. And I walked everywhere.

Climbing Up Lombard

Climbing up Lombard--
watching the fog eat up the Golden Gate
and auto headlights vanish in a thick


mist like the smoke of a huge fire, marching
down from a world of battle to a shore
where seagulls preen and children skim flat stones--


the land clouds curl with the south wind. And in
my nose I smell asbestos, steel, the harsh
unmentionable odor of decay,


the smelling salts of devastation, which
once sniffed will always linger in the air
and wake you coughing from unconsciousness


even out here, in this determined city
which sits precariously on a fault,
balanced like a thin tabletop upon


the twin pillars of hope and ignorance.
This world is treacherous and sly--without
a moment's notice it can open up


and gulp us down, leaving no trace behind.
No matter where we go, we are such stuff
as meals are made on, and what we call life


is nothing but a brief and fog-bound loan
which will be called in when the only way
we can pay up is with all that we are


and all we build upon this shifting ground,
as one by one we march on through the mist,
mindful of where we have to step to keep


climbing up Lombard.



Copyright 2001 Matthew J Wells

Nighthawks at the Dive Bar

Broome Street Bar, 0130AM

Nine Eleven

Ten years ago I was sending out monthly poetry mailings called The Hundreds to a circle of friends. There were three to five poems in each mailing, one of which was always the latest canto in “2001: An Ottava Rima Odyssey,” which chronicled my personal life with what I hoped was a certain Byronic wit, given the form I was using.

There would have been twelve Cantos, but there ended up only being eight--heh; just as unfinished as Byron’s Don Juan, now that I think of it. And there were only eight because of September 11th. I stopped sending the mailings out after September, and the mailing I sent out at the end of September consisted of two poems, one called “Climbing Up Lombard,” which I’ll post at the end of the week, and one called “September 11, 2001,” which is below.

I won’t say much about it, except to admit that it was deliberately written to echo WH Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939,” which I used to have memorized before the details of my day job pushed that part of my memory into the recycle bin. It was written primarily at the upstairs bar of the Cedar Tavern (the “bar on University Place” of the first stanza). I sent it out to several magazines but it was either rejected or I never heard back, and if I had been blessed with a marketer’s brain rather than a writer’s brain, I would have sent it out a couple of months ago to a few places in expectation of this week’s anniversary. But I didn’t. So here it is.

September 11, 2001

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn:
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
--W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939


I sit in one of the bars
On University Place
Uncertain and afraid
As the new millennium’s hope
Is buried without a trace
In a heap of mangled steel --
And I wonder how we can stand
When the earth beneath our feet
Hums like a tightrope wire
And the soot of a thousand lives
Offends the September air.


My pen droops from my hand;
The only thing I can write
Is an echo of Auden’s poem
Of 9/1/39,
The one where he hated the line
“We must love one another or die,”
And changed the “or” to “and”
So his wrinkled husk could deny
The ardour of his youth
With a retroactive lie
And a palatable truth.


The truth I see on my face
Is the look of a shipwrecked soul --
The eyes of a homeless man
Who trusted and was thrown
Down to uncaring streets
By a cold intractable God
Who calls for a pharmakos
To suffer and to die,
So that the rest of us
Can walk past life’s defeats
With an averted eye.


But I cannot look away.
I search for God in the sky
And see a pillar of smoke
That marks our common grave --
Where death is unverified,
Where innocence is a joke
And sleep comes only in fits
Like a seizure between the sheets,
And hopes choke one by one,
Charred leaves that plummet and spin
To earth in the autumn sun.


The world can parse the Koran
Till Armageddon comes
Or catalogue affronts
From Sykes-Picot on down
That led to this offense
And still be blind to the why:
No matter what the cause,
A man who is in the wrong
Will always reach for the rod,
And the righteous will rejoice
To kill in the name of God.


In the face of such belief,
Our patriotic priests
Will clutch the lectern and say
Even Christ would not forgive
This impious infamy;
For God, who does not live
Within one flag alone,
Will surely advocate ours
When we rise up and fight
To avenge the death of our own
Because we are in the right.


And those of us who question
Or talk of common bonds
Or say we had it coming
Will wear the mark of Cain
Till we chant the required truth:
No one is better than us
And no one has been more wronged,
So we all must stand behind
A man who is for the birds,
And say that he speaks for us
When he barely knows the words.

When leaders do not inspire,
Where can we put our faith
To match man’s faith in God?
To trust that the human race
Is better than its worst
Is to wander in a wood
Where outlaws use the weak
As kindling for their fire,
And prepare an unmarked grave
For all who cross their path:
The luckless as well as the brave.


But I have to believe there exists
Some hidden higher power
Whose purpose I cannot see --
Some virtue in the blood
Of the common hurting heart
That drives humanity.
And whether it wears a face
Or comes down from the clouds
Or studies our flaws from space
Or commands us from the fire,
It is something bigger than us.


I bow my head to pray
And I’m begging under my breath
The way I ask for love
When I think life owes me one
Or I’m desperate to death.
It’s not the ask, it’s the act
That determines the return:
Whether Allah or Elohim,
We get the god we deserve
As long as we treat each other
Like the butcher treats the lamb.


And what I fear the most
Is that what gags us now
Will soon be swallowed whole
Down throats too raw to scream.
We will return to rote
And sleep the sleep of forget
And ignore the threat of loss
And barely acknowledge the wife
And give her the usual kiss
And watch the weekly game
And deal with even this.

This bar will be packed tonight
With voices like battering rams,
With nameless fears assuaged
And troublesome answers bought
By the pitcher or the glass
Until the brain has been gouged
Of abominable fire
And human ticker tape,
And a man can face last call
Where the broken promenade
Meets the stench of the rat in the wall.


I pay for my beers and leave
And hit the empty streets
Where soldiers and police
Control pedestrian flow.
In the distance a siren grieves
But its cry brings no release --
I yearn for someone to hold,
To stop the ticking clock
That counts the minutes of
A world that is dire and bleak
And dressed in the rags of love,


And I think of the ancient Greeks
Who invented tragedy
By pitting a mortal against
His morals and his gods
To create his destiny:
How suffering scales the soul
And every choice means loss,
So the question then becomes
Whether a man will be great
When he hears the hollow drums
That summon him to his fate.


And where are we called now,
I wonder as I walk
Down a street blocked off from cars
To Union Square and the park
Where bullhorns compete with guitars
And the hush drowns out it all;
Where little girls kneel down
While their parents, strong and tall,
Crouch over them like a shield
With their hands upon their heads
As if dismay can be healed.


In the park there are endless signs
With slogans affirming stands
And stands with scrapbook shots,
And candles that flicker and glow
Like an army of shooting stars,
Arrayed against the might
Of despair and the unforeknown,
Confronting each daily lie
With honesty’s true kiss
And the irreplaceable light
That flares from our common soul.


Drowning in deep unease,
At the crossroads where belief
Collides with necessity --
Where the way of the righteous sword
And immediate relief
Meets the precipice of peace --
With our innocence in tatters
And poisoned with hate and grief,
We search for the perfect word
That will keep the foolish wise
And a dream from being shattered.


Out of a sleepless bed,
Into a dreamless day,
We stagger towards our fate
Like children who have no say;
And every step we take
And all that we think we know
Mean nothing unless we try
To bare our hearts and see
The world as lovers do:
If you’ll be true to me
Then I’ll be true to you.


Under that heavy charge
Down the hard road of love,
Where every blatant lie
Confirms a hidden truth,
It is how we walk that counts
As we stumble through this gorge
Of panic and despair
In search of higher ground:
The weak to teach the strong,
The strong protect the weak,
The lost to find their way,
And all the silent speak.


Copyright 2001 Matthew J Wells