Having a Poem with You

Tags: art as object, writing of art, narrative, loving of art, metaphor, imperative

This piece is one of the longest ones I’ve written, and probably one of the more unrefined ones. It was a really fun piece for me to write, and for me to read, but I’m not sure it works very well as a poem for other readers. In any case, I’ve included it here because it deals with a number of various pieces of art, and also begins to discuss the writing of art, marking the transition to poems that focus a bit more on this aspect. Feel free to skip over it if you’d like and start on a poem that properly introduces how writing is wrapped into such things.

I write to save my soul

James Bowden

How to start a book:

Hopefully with a hook; for fuck’s sake, what’s a book without a hook?
My ex-girlfriend has this book called Many Lives, Many Masters that she tried to get me to read. I think it helps her cope with the singularity of life, the futility of counterfactualism. Another friend writes a blog. Another friend ignores it. Another friend is a fatalist. I sit down to write a novel. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Befriend an English major. Bond over Haruki Murakami. Promise you’ll read Raymond Carver someday, and his thesis on love.
Sometime, someday. Note that these words are the lifeblood of counterfactualism. Continue to use them generously.
Pick up an anthology of short stories from the little free library outside the children’s center. It’s in alphabetical order, and eventually you get to Carver and stumble through What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Get obsessed enough that you figure maybe you’ll take the short fiction workshop class, perhaps end up in the poetry workshop.
Sometimes, “someday” genuinely is today.
Fail to understand how anyone can possibly have a whole fucking novel inside of them. Then fail to understand it again. Over winter break, pirate Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and promise to discuss it with said English major. It’s a thesis on writing novels and running marathons and how similar they are. Let mom buy you running shoes for Christmas and try running 3 miles in 30 minutes every day. Fail miserably before term even starts. Let it sit at 46%, behind even A Clockwork Orange, and continue on. One man’s treasure is another man’s horseshit. Life blows up, then blows up again. Consistency is key.
My ex, now dating my now ex-best friend and still-teammate, comments on how much smaller my arms are out of season. Pokes at the red bump on my nose in front of people who don’t love me. Buys me clovers. I don’t find any with 4 leaves. No matter, they’re mostly dead within the week. Three weeks pass and still I water them.
Sometimes, we talk. She alternates between counterfactuals and gushing over how they’re browsing houses and dogs and what Indian-Chinese babies look like. I hold my whole torso, for I’m not sure if it’s my stomach or my chest that heaves. Forgive a person for wishing they had multiple runs over life, multiple plots. For wishing they could read all branches of every “choose your own adventure” book. I never could stand to read more than one.
Suffer. Turn 21. Get drinks with said English major and tape the coaster on your wall. Plan a really cute breakfast date and get really excited and then never get another response from really cute girl. Find new friends, friends who will go to a festival of books with you, who were excited for your breakfast date but don’t press further. Now you know.
Try to write some poetry. Send it to people you love. Get unsatisfying responses. Remember The Picture of Dorian Gray, but only its preface, really the only redeemable part of that work of art. Think about how immensely you love every little artifact you’ve written, and know that that is enough excuse. Pretend to enjoy scotch and wine and coffee and other nasty things, but know that your sense of masochism doesn’t extend to taste, or any real senses, really. Refuse to be an escape artist, and read Ham on Rye. Suffer a little more.
Go to said festival of books. ~~Get frustrated with how many books are written for the plot and plot alone and wonder why you do STEM when it seems just about anybody could write like that.~~ Remember that you haven’t enough faith to be a writer, the kind of writer that you’d want to be anyway. Reckon that you don’t want to do anything that doesn’t require faith, though. Call your mom. Go to the beach, eat beef, ride a bus, come back jumpy and skippy in no particular order. Write some nice lines to seed the poetry you’re going to write sometime, hopefully soon. Something like I shave with my dead uncle’s razor and later just give me that popcorn chicken smile, darling and struggle with how much difference the way you walk through a place makes. Dislike how dark many of your lines are. Reflect upon how beautiful it is that you can tell someone is smiling just by listening to them through a mask, through the dark, and miss the person who prompted that realization. Obsess over Devin Kelly’s “As Light” and Mary Oliver’s “I Don’t Want To Live A Small Life” and pay $11 for some sometimes delicious tomatoes that, like everything, are distributed according to some distribution. Assume that it’s Gaussian. Assume that everything is Gaussian. Apologize, and explain that you are just trying to express beauty in what ways you know how.
End on a call to said ex-girlfriend, and maybe the one before that, who only sometimes responds to your messages or likes your posts these days. More of the same–Sally Rooney would like that, or maybe she wouldn’t. Start sleeping in the nude, with your balcony doors wide open. Maybe end on buying another color by sticker book to signal potential, heavy in the warm evening air. Maybe write another poem. Think about how beautifully you’ve constructed this here narrative.
I don’t know, man. I’m no author. This is no book. And the plot’s garbage if ever I’ve smelled it.
Return to said festival of books the next year. Have a booth next to that same old white man who’s still handing out free copies of his bright red book, an action novel set in China drawn upon his 20 years of experience as an ambassador, but only if you’ll let him sign and address it to you. We are all using each other, only some less subtly than others. Try not to think about him, and fail.

Here are some of the various references: Many Lives, Many Masters, Mary Oliver’s “How I Go to the Woods”, Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, which was very difficult for me to read, the Preface to Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Charles Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, Devin Kelly’s “As Light”, Mary Oliver’s “I Don’t Want to Life a Small Life”, Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, Frank Heller’s The Secret Empress.

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