Lasky - Thunderbird

Thunderbird Thunderbird Dorothea Lasky Thunderbird Wave Books Seattle and New York PUBLISHED BY WAVE BOOKS WWW.WAVEPOETRY.COM COPYRIGHT 2012 BY DOROTHEA LASKY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WAVE BOOKS TITLES ARE DISTRIBUTED TO THE TRADE BY CONSORTIUM BOOK SALES AND DISTRIBUTION PHONE: 800-283-3572 / SAN 631-760x THIS TITLE IS AVAILABLE IN LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER DIRECTLY FROM THE PUBLISHER LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING/IN/PUBLICATION DATA LASKY, DOROTHEA, 1978 THUNDERBIRD / DOROTHEA LASKY.IST ED. P. CM. POEMS. ISBN 978-1-933517-63-6 EBOOK ISBN 978-1-933517-70-4 I. TITLE.

PS3612.A858T48 2012 811'.6DC23 2012001195 DESIGNED AND COMPOSED BY QUEMADURA PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 FIRST EDITION WAVE BOOKS 032 I fancied youd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.) SYLVIA PLATH Baby of air Baby of air You rose into the mystical Side of things You could no longer live with us We put you in a little home Where they shut and locked the door And at night You blew out And went wandering through the sea and sand People cannot keep air in I blow air in I cannot keep it in I read you a poem once And you called it beauty And then I read you another one and You called it harmony air My brother is not air, he is water He is not a baby, he is older than me And when he brushes the hair from my face I cannot see him, but he surrounds me I cannot see you baby of air I put you in your bed and you get out I put you in the air and you blend I put you on the beach and you blow out Like an air bird, flying and flying I find other things similar to you And like you, they are air and Are nothing eventually I am not made out of air I hold your baby body in me As I am a mother to you I am a mother to you My brother is my mother He tells me when I have lost you To grieve grieve He says grieving is good He says crying is good He says sadness hits you in waves Of water and air I feel your fine hair hit me when I am sleeping I feel your hair hit me in the head Will you remember me When you breeze upon the other world O you are already there O you are already there My brother tells me, you are already there He is already there, he says And I cry And he tells me It is ok to cry It is ok to cry, He says You are not made of air It is ok to cry, he says When you are not made of air I had a man Today when I was walking I had a man tell me as he passed That I was a white bitch (he was white) And to not look at him Or he was going to fuck me in my little butthole I wandered away Who is to say I think I am a white bitch My butt is big But I believe my butthole is little This violence that we put on women I dont think its crazy Someone I know said Oh, that man was crazy I dont think he was crazy Maybe he could tell I had a look in my eye That wasnt crazy anymore Maybe he could feel the wild cool blood in me And it frightened him And he lashed out in fear Maybe he knew I was the same as him But had been born with this kind face and eyes Doughlike appurtenances What about the day I left What happened then Still Im glad he said that to me Still Im glad he was so cruel to me What bitter eye knew I had a voice To say what men have done to me What unkind wind has blown thru my brain To make me speak for the wretched To speak wretchedly about the ugly To make my own face ugly and simple To contort this simple smile into a haunting song Is it murder for Jasmine Fiore and Ryan Jenkins What is murder This is a very interesting poem to write And to consider I am coming from the devil Living in the devils house Eating of the devils food Am I devil? No Large Grey and red bird Holy symmetrical As in Asher As in the book where it all started What was evil? I loved And I loved truly Yes When I said I loved one I loved another When I said I was empty I was indeed full Take this bird Large, green, itching my skin To hold Feathers that are liquid mice At my touch And eyes that are small round Dragons Take this room upon me What is the purple motel Where the bird lives? That is the Thunderbird Motel You go there on a plane And land in a crash upon the pavement And then you enter And we die there again and again When I am sitting on This chair I am staring at his dead body From here Writers make workshops Artists make hell To live in I make hell to live in I make hell I make hell Where it already is In this poem Long ago, when I loved a woman Her name was Christine She was blond And in Canada No Long Ago I made this poem And then you read it And then I ate it Word ectoplasm Fiery meat that is liquid Meat Liquefied bites Of meat that is your own Was it the great murderer Who made a man Eat his own brain? No That man was not the best I pour cinnamon into the Ashes Are you surprised when it all Burns down If I were not the Devil would you Not think I was evil Either? You are evil, Brother Red The Snake is evil All I want In this life Is for the Snake to Leave me Alone No All I want in this Life Is For the Words to leave me Alone I eat and eat them And they become me And you will never know How much they are me And when you peel my skin Off me and Take out my teeth You will not see words You will see fractals That spell out letters That spell out the words Negative and Positive Great Bird Why do you leave me here on this earth? I want to soar above clouds Just today I saw a jet stream And knew it was your yellow tail I hear the rumble Of your lightning tail I see the symmetrical face Of a great many lions What half of their face is Evil And what half is Good Yes It works That way No It is The Doctrine of The Similar Which states that because I am the same as you I am both just as good and Just as evil Evil or Good Bird And Red Brother I am neither Blue Sister Nor the Absence Of Fate So what So what I was born into this life And what a hell it was To find me Hanging A dead And living man Meant to plow Through all eternity With no tool or Force Only my woman Body Meant to Die Again And Again Why it is a Black Life Why is it a black life Because nothing is permanent And everything goes on and on not meaning anything Because I am an animal And I will always be displaced Until I die Because I am a human And other humans will constantly think of new ways to kill me And it will be loneliness until the end Which will be more or less lonely Because until then I eat by myself And ignore everyone Despite the fact that they look at me With their empty eyeholes And I read a book and am unable to nest with it Because I say things In the simplest way possible And am constantly misunderstood Because even when I mean well I am still a criminal And it is noon always Hot sun beating on the blacktop With the red bird endlessly flying Because my feet and arms dont move Unless I want them to Because when they do Move on their own It is frightening Because what is worse than terror Is not terror But health Which is transitory Which is often the worst friend of all Because I sigh and sigh And it sounds like a dog baying And no one wants to help me Because I am ugly, obnoxious, and insane Because the only living things that like the sound of my voice Are the vermin underneath the earth Who are waiting for me to come join them The world doesnt care The world doesnt care if you pay your taxes on time The world doesnt care The world doesnt care if you are loved, hungry, or fed The world doesnt care who died this year The world doesnt care if you are murdered or raped If you struggle, if you are generous The world doesnt care if you are sad If you are maimed If no one believes in you The world doesnt care The world doesnt care if you grow up and the only thing Keeping you in place Is the devil But I care But I care if you are hungry The world doesnt care But I care The world doesnt care But I do Death and Sylvia Plath My student in the city college Really likes the poems of Sylvia Plath She is writing her research paper about Lady Lazarus I like this student She spends some time Leaning over me and telling me How in the poem Plath turns from an object Into an entertainer And finally into a demon Oh yes, you are right, I tell her We are pleased I wonder afterwards, Why do young women like Sylvia Plath? Why doesnt everyone? The student tells me that when she was young She liked Plath I did too I did not ride horses Sylvia Plath rode horses I dont have a thesis I dont have a structure I am a demon There are blue streaks in the sky It is Spring I am not you Nor do I want to be It is 2:21 on 2/21/2010 I am not alive No, I am no longer breathing I dont live in this world I already live in the other one Misunderstood I have come here today to say goodbye to my father I feel somewhat understood and yet, misunderstood I have drunk cool water under a large palm leaf And now feel cool I am not nervous anymore Whatever death is I am not nervous about it It wasnt what we meant When we first described pain I just had a dream that A womans face was blown apart By a plane crash One side was normal Her normal face The other side was cut into, so that the muscle flapped I saw the plane crash happen in my dream Right after I had my usual dreams about betrayal And as usual, the whole thing was off It was not death I was after Nor dreams What is it in my words that makes People think I care so much about dreams What is it in my self that makes me think I care so much about dreams I dont care About dreams I care about this world What is it about this world That insists on making me feel so alone So separate from it When I drink a cool glass of water Why do I feel so cool inside In a way that is not representative of the outside world What is it that when I am feverish The rest of the world is not hot What is it about this room That makes me write a poem And what is not a poem when I am out of it People come and go There are many ways men and women are taught to think about the world I favor a world of fans That push the air below you At a breakneck pace In my dream, I saw a face that was calm in not knowing it was blown apart But instead of working against the odd feelings I have of being so separate from you I will be calm now in knowing we will never conjoin I will think instead that yoking is all there is left to do I will think instead of clouds and mountains And put them in poems, not dreams I will think of cool water that has some other sort of principle In order to make me aware of my separateness I will not think of love Love is something that is too confusing For understanding what is miscommunicated time and time again In this world I will not think of being born, which is too messy A language Or colors, that dot the landscape with emotions that I dont have the time nor space anymore to feel Or beach or bed, I wont feel any of it When I go to sleep I will wash linens and beans through the glow of an unearthly sun Will it be a spirit that I will encounter then? Yes. But it will be a new spirit, instead, that I will make myself A rational spirit A spirit who is always sure it knows and feels the land A spirit who is not human, but has large arms That I will walk along and on top of And will not be sad anymore in their uncaring Why go in cars after Bernadette Mayers translation of Catullus #48 Why go in cars They can be destroyed I dont want to be destroyed by you I love you and your want We dont need cars Why dont we sit in a sea of violets I could kiss you a million times And never be sick of it Lets go sit in some flowers Darling boy Lets sit in a sea of flames And I will never put the fire Out of you The Room It rains incessantly I go outside I go inside Inside the room are four ghosts One is silent One is old and another is young Another preens himself upon the sofa His hair is golden, there is a lyre Women and men wait at his legs Touching his airy cloak He beckons me I touch his face What does it feel like? Nothing I run from the room Down the steps Out the door Down the street I get on the nearest bus I take that bus to a train The train to a boat I get on the boat Then get on a larger one I find a bedroom It has a navy carpet A red bed I hide in yellow sheets I fall asleep for days When I wake The golden man is next to me Touching my face Eyes going every which way He tells me a story It makes no sense It is in a language that is like My language, but is not mine I remember I am American I say, Is this America? And he tells me that it is In his hand appears a dish of ice cream And when I eat the cold, dear liquid I know I am already dead I ask if I can at least go to heaven Or to hell, whatever Do I have to stay in this room with you forever, I ask him He tells me I dont That I can go anywhere But that he and I are yoked So wherever I go it will be with him I punch him in the nose I run down the hall of the boat I jump into the water and flail He saves me He drags me to a beach I come to He ties me to his ankles And sweeps me along to a house That belonged to his family He lays me in a maroon room A male ghost appears He is scraggly. I touch his face I kiss him on the cheek I run out the door The golden man follows me I run and run My father appears as the feeling of a vision And layers upon me I am two ghosts I stop and the man stops And my fathers ghost stops And I look down and there is a hole And I punch the man again And my father and I go down into the hole We slide down the hole for hours My father is calm Just stop, he says I ask him if this is America It is, the golden man says As he catches us at the end of the hole Where there is a room With all my friends By friends, I dont mean all of the people Ive known I mean all of the people Ive truly loved Smiling at me, everyone is calm I sit down and they all come rushing at me My father fastens me to a seat next to him Am I still a witch, I ask them My friend Conrad tells me we are still witches One wall of the room drops And turns into a giant face The face is awful I look into the eyes I melt and scream Then I am whole again I am by a stream There is a farm with animals I have made this farm I get up and tend to the fruit trees And put the fruit in a basket And in the background I hear children playing And on the edge of my farm is a school And the children are learning near my farm And I go about it And I go about it for a good long while Everyone keeps me from my destiny Everyone keeps me from my destiny Keeps me from it And keeps me locked away from beauty And they cant feel my beauty In me reaching out Like glass into itself And then into glass And everyone keeps me from myself Cause the self they had imagined Was flesh and bone And this flesh I am is glass And everyone keeps me from my genius Because genius is not human And everyone wants me to be human And I am not human And everyone expects me to be something they are, which is human And I cant be anything they are which is human Because I am not human And they are And I am not human This is a poem for you How could this come to a good conclusion I thought of your face, strange and French And your sweater full of robins You most likely think I do not pay much attention To your face But I was sitting by the train When inside I saw it burning Im sorry that some people Think of this burning as nostalgia Or sentimentality And that we have to endure them And that they are so boring To want to think away everything That is beautiful on this earth Im sorry that we have to think Of other times when it might have been More acceptable to burn You were there When I told you that a cold November Would come Wind and rain, the cold May have hardened me But there is not much else I am willing To leave anything for but your Face that is wet with wildflowers The white wind, the warm wind The cooling prisms above the beach The beachtrees and scattered leaves Above the Winter that will never come I am not sure if we matter I am not sure if your face matters But I will destroy this house for it anyway But I will scorch this black world for it anyway Wet face and wild wind I told you all it would come This is a poem for you This is a poem for all of you Awful and quiet I like weird ass hippies I like weird ass hippies And men with hairy backs And small green animals And organic milk And chickens that hatch Out of farms in Vermont I like weird ass stuff When we reach the other world We will all be hippies I like your weird ass spirit stick that you carry around I like when you rub sage on my door I like the lambs blood you throw on my face I like heaping sugar in a jar and saying a prayer And then having it work I like cursing out an enemy And then cursing them in objects Soaking their baby tooth in oil Lighting it on fire with a tiny plastic horse I like running through the fields of green I am so caught up in flowers and fruit I like shampooing my body In strange potions you bought wholesale in Guatemala I like when you rub your patchouli on me And tell me Im a man I am a fucking man A weird ass fucking man If I didnt know any better Id think I were Jesus or something If I didnt know any better Id sail to Ancient Greece Wear sandals Then go to Rome Murder my daughter in front of the gods Smoke powdered lapis Carve pictographs into your dress A thousand miles away from anything When I die I will be a strange fucking hippie And so will you So will you So get your cut-up heart away from What you think you know You know, we are all going away from here At least have some human patience For what lies on the other side You are beautiful You are beautiful But you are also heartbreak Locked forever frozen in time A cry I cannot get out No matter how much I grease myself With honey Pink palette of grapefruit, the book on the shoulder Of the room, the rose gardens But I do not want you to be so I want to be spilling forth with the acid yellow honey of the bees O love, take me thusforth Into your secret places I will never travel I will never wake You are more than heartbreak In your fanciful suits and closing sighs You are more than the shining blue room On the afternoon of the date, the cold bite You are the hot breath too I take myself into The hot red fruit I take myself into The living breathing thing I take in, I want to Be a watery nymph in a wooded grove With you I want to be a cloud so full of honey That there is nothing left of me Until I throw myself into the fire And am contained forever I will be contained forever, a thing of beauty Forever I will be that thing forever I dont want to be beautiful with you I want to be an ugly, wretched, bleeding thing Pouring out on the windmills I want to be the locked tiger they cant lock up Until it murders and then rages through the fields Of wild grasses I want to be so wild they cant lock me up Put fences around me to pen me in I will be so full of fire that they wont be able to extinguish me Before the beauty comes I want to be so full of fire That they cant tell me from you, my wretched angel Sweet animal, they locked us in this life But I think we still have time before we have to get out of it Ugly Feelings after Sianne Ngai Why are people so cruel? I mean that as a very serious question Why can people be so cruel and why do they want to hurt other people And why do they hate with such intensity And why do normal things make normal people so mad Matthew Savoca wrote in a poem That Mother Nature is the new art If that is true then what Would that nature be I really dont know I really dont know Im seriousI dont Oh, I am so stricken Oh, I am so stricken with fear When the evil comes around Paranoia is the new art A lump of deceit Worry is the new art And compulsion And repulsion, an ugly heart A voice is the new art But it is rancid A rancid tune That I have worked out with care and concern To make ragged That you have worked out pitilessly That you have striven for That you have bent your fingers for That you have come around to Only to watch it come around again Orange flowers in the grove Are not ugly flowers But they are dumb medals Of the sun, who has watched them Who has cured them in its heat Only to watch them grow Not birdless But without birds Not moonless But to be a flower without a moon Not a tree that has fallen with a lump of birds But a moon that has fallen with a lump of birds So that it is no longer a moon So that its voice has no planetary pull So, that there is no center So, that center is beside the point So that the tone is pain always And hurt always So that this life is always about Dodging pain, but also inflicting it And not a body Not a body that feels But a spirit that feels A burned-out spirit That is old and grey and small And never renewed Nor revived That never has life That is pageless and poreless That is dead for all time An ugliness has reached across this space It is no feeling But ugly feelings are the way we make of it And what I say feelings are Are feelings And what I say are feelings Are also not feelings And what I say are old hurts Are new hurts And what deceit And what deceit makes a moon go negative And what black hole Is the opposite of a rock I only have you and me I only have this hand to hold you with And if I am an empty space And if I am a truly empty space Then my open hand is empty too Then my heart a wide and open plain Then my brain a dense infinity A dense infinity of nothing That holds no power And if I hold no power Then what ugliness could I truly hold To make you so mad at me To make you so cruel And to extend that cruelty elsewhere And if paper and bone make up light And if animal fur makes up the night And if light and earth are nothing Then what is this light that shows my face? Then, truly I would rather it shroud in darkness Then I would rather it always be dark Then I would rather my open hand be night For what love is useful In this cold dark light And what fire extends in this cold dark light And what cruelty I will too create In the cold dark night And what cruelty will I extend To your night And what papery ghosts will I shove in your light And what cold hand will I grasp your heart with And what hot tag will I put upon your brain You know a man told me a story once Listen, listen A man told me a story It was Of a toad The toad was hungry He was tired He felt the swamp upon him His felt his skin within him He felt his black eyes melt with death But he wasnt dead And one day a child picked him up And brought him with her And made him a reptilian bed In her house Full of grasses and insects Full of flowers, orange ones And in the house was a painter Who made a lovely picture Of the toad and the girl When the toad died The girl died Then I died Thats the story Im dead Beautiful and ugly feelings Gorgeous and horrific feelings Feelings in the mouth of the cave Feelings on the underbelly of the sun Feelings that are hot and terrible Listen, I am asking you Why can people be so cruel I really want to know I want to know and I want you to know And I want us to stop the reasons why And I want us to reverse the earth So that it is not possible And I want us to pick each other up as animals And for us to be friends And I want us to sing and laugh What falseness do you see What falseness do you see In a gentle exorcism What ugliness do you see In our quiet and watery laughter That will cleanse the air What ugly fountains might spring forth From a watery and gentle laughter That goes circling Through the air Zombies Some people are zombies Some people live with zombies I live with a zombie Zombies have flat affects They are so frustrating I turn into a demon When I encounter Blue-eyed nightmare Curve my smile into its What level water makes the eyeless eye Oh yeah, that we are thrown out like trash When we die Oh yeah, that there is no elevation And I throw myself in front of a train car And again in front of the vehicle Then in front of a plane A boat, an endless thing The sun burns out a corpse that is black and blue And I live on with my own self And I turn into a lyric when I see that zombie And I turn ferocious when I meet that zombie because The zombie is so much like me But is the ugly parts of me, too In that it has no style No green operatic hat And that it holds small brown lumps of dirt in its pockets When in my own I hold the flowers That I have picked from the zombies pockets To give to you What poets should do Poets should get back to saying crazy shit All of the time I am sick of academics or businesspeople telling poets What we should do A poet is a scientist To favor poetry Or science In that both relate to Buddhism However, both are things that melt A purple haze or dawn What sunken in Always a shifting mood, But its true, I love you guys and gals Of the wood and word Lets say whatever it is we please We dont have to defend anything It is our God-given right to declaim No, let me start again It is our universal law to speak Not an actuary to measure how thin The arguments of our verse To say we make a treatise in language, no No we go on living and living and living on Thats beautiful, and poems are, too Poems and shells These little nothings I pick them up All the livelong day They are the signposts of comfort possible To smooth the jagged edges Of this worried traveler Thats what poems should do And thats what poets actually do Damn light Always going on in my face I just want a poem to speak of So I go on and on Into the night And the townspeople, they say to you That they may have seen A monster But no no I was only the dawn Dog for Lucy When my dad was just a corpse The man came and put him in a body bag There was another man with dementia Who had shared his room The man recognized the black bag and got scared I held him as they wheeled my dad away Now I sit on the front steps with my dog I tell her that nothing is permanent So we should sit here and enjoy the cold air That smells of other mammals She sniffs and looks at me I have my arm around her and start to cry A neighbor comes up with her son Who hides behind the buildings corner He is afraid of dogs I take my dog into the building We jump up the stairs We are just two things in the air I am the horse I am the horse people should bet on I am the person who will likely save you from a fire I am the person who is black smoke And blows black smoke in your eyes I am the squeaky noise at night I am the tables, and paper, and slugs I am the thing that most excites you I am the thing that most excites you I am the horse that you should bet on When you put your money down Wild Things are wild here Everywhere around the green Snakes, bobcats, and foxes The purple flowers look wild I am wild My husband keeps me in his room so as not to upset the neighbors The wildest thing about me is my arrogance Which turns to anger Over language People put so much stock in wild language I wander, an animal Over hills The civilized path, the orange sun Do I dare mention God in this poem? God is wild, and not human And when people make God human He stares at you through the eyes of a bear And beats his terrible bearded chest And guffaws into the stars O the night, mysterious and purple And the shining rocks None of them are sins in their Lack of humanity.