A POSTMORTEM GUIDE - Stephen Dunn

                                        For my eulogist, in advance

Do not praise me for my exceptional serenity.

Can't you see I've turned away

from the large excitements,

and have accepted all the troubles?

Go down to the old cemetery; you'll see

there's nothing definitive to be said.

The dead once were all kinds—

boundary breakers and scalawags,

martyrs of the flesh, and so many

dumb bunnies of duty, unbearably nice.

I've been a little of each.

And, please, resist the temptation

of speaking about virtue.

The seldom-tempted are too fond

of that word, the small-

spirited, the unburdened.

Know that I've admired in others

only the fraught straining

to be good.

Adam's my man and Eve's not to blame.

He bit in; it made no sense to stop.

Still, for accuracy's sake you might say

I often stopped,

that I rarely went as far as I dreamed.

And since you know my hardships,

understand they're mere bump and setback

against history's horror.

Remind those seated, perhaps weeping,

how obscene it is

for some of us to complain.

Tell them I had second chances.

I knew joy.

I was burned by books early

and kept sidling up to the flame.

Tell them that at the end I had no need

for God, who'd become just a story

I once loved, one of many

with concealments and late-night rescues,

high sentence and pomp. The truth is

I learned to live without hope

as well as I could, almost happily,

in the despoiled and radiant now.

You who are one of them, say that I loved

my companions most of all.

In all sincerity, say that they provided

a better way to be alone.

"I’m looking for something to scare me out of my skin" - Henry Rollins

I’m looking for something to scare me out of my skin

I’m following myself

Playing jokes on myself

Injecting myself with nightmares

I wait in dark corners to jump out and scare myself

I’ve got to get away from myself

The Voices - Richard Shelton

Suddenly dawn

had to get up and build the trees.

I could no longer deny

the voices so I came

to terms with them: glistening

votaries dipped in madness,

a blue eye in the wrong socket,

an old chair

rocking by itself,

leather with its memory and silk

which forgets everything,

a machine producing time

in the factory.

This does not mean

I learned to trust them

but I came to terms with them

because, as they said,

we are the only family you have.

Not Waving but Drowning - Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

Healing Hermann Hesse - Buddy Wakefield

Hermann wants to eat nicotine sometimes. He asks

for a lot. He paces space to make himself nervous

because some people are better at surviving than

living. If you wanna get heavy he'll teach you. He

knows it. Spends his time falling from the weight.

Got a lead brain. It's a battle magnet. He carries it

around by the guilt straps. Don't laugh. You didn’t

see the size of the blizzard that birthed him. Fits

of snow. Cotton rocks. Whipped white bullet stretches

pinned with chips of teeth to his habit of crying for help.

He doesn't land well. Hates landing. It reminds him of not

living up.

Listen.

I know there were days you wanted to die.

Days you misplaced all the right words then waited

to make sense once everyone here stopped watching.

Nights you let them beat up your body in bed

because redemption was still alive in you howling.

Uncompromising.

Gathering strength.

Happiness

is too far to fall.

Felt like ecstasy

when they pounded it out of you.

Those days of dead weather high strung out together

and spoke for you.

You told everyone here it was a good life,

smiled and waved back into the wails of your wind fight,

into the parts of the past that haunt you,

all the days you weren’t being yourself.

It’s why most of the past

still haunts you,

Milk Worder,

Mr. Self Murder.

Hiding is not an option for people

so good at showing up. You show up.

It is okay that you showed up missing.

We’ve all abused ourselves

then looked over

the wrong shoulder about it.

Call it Fatherlock.

You were picked like this.

I know you hate the hope.

It’s all the hope that makes you stay.

And you stay so far off the ground.

Hermann will not bow down to gravity. Falling

he catches up to himself midair just before the ground

smacks. Pullthroat, they call’im. Sharp turner. Nothing

touches the ground here.  Ground is at capacity.

He sees that. He falls back. He patches parachutes

together with a kite knife.  It's big enough to raise him

in the updrafts where he hides himself away in angles

of air outlined by his knack for believing that this life

is gonna work itself out.

Depression, Too, Is a Kind of Fire - Taylor Mali

I’m an idiot because once

before we were married she asked me whether I knew

that we would not be having children

if we did get married, and I said yes.

And because she knew I was lying,

she asked if I was really okay with that.

And because I’m an idiot I said yes again.

And once during a fight, not married

more than two years, she said she felt like my first wife,

and I, like an idiot, assured her that she was.

She worked out at the gym five times a week

and smoked as many packs of ultra lights,

and I’m an idiot because when I asked her why,

She said, Because I hate myself and I want to die.

And I laughed and said something I don’t recall,

something completely and utterly insufficient.

From the roof of our apartment,

I saw 40 or 50 people jump from the towers

on a Tuesday morning—we used to be able to see them to the south,

just as, to the north, we can still see

(and by “we” I guess I mean now just me)

the Empire State Building,

which still steeps me in gratitude

because I’m an idiot—

out of the smoke with arms flailing.

And I swear I saw a perfect swan.

And I was going to write a poem

about how fire is the only thing

that can make a person jump out a window.

And maybe I’m an idiot for thinking I could have saved her—

call me her knight in shattered armor—

could have loved her more,

or told the truth about children.

But depression, too, is a kind of fire.

And I know nothing of either.

in which you anxiously anticipate events that will not occur - Mira Gonzalez

in the end he told you that he didn’t want you

but he never did you the courtesy of leaving

out of necessity, you reconstructed your identity around being alone

though you almost never thought of it in those terms

you spent time allowing all the wrong people to think you are beautiful

watching them blindly perform unreciprocated feelings onto you

at a distance twice removed from the act

because you refuse to know the feeling of not loving anything

though the feeling will force itself into you sometimes

everyone will tell you what the most painful part is

they will say it’s the moment nothing is left for you in him

or it’s the moment he finds you in someone else

but nobody will tell you that it is possible

to move further from reality every day

until there are no parts of you in anything

Five of Swords, for all my death girls - Marty McConnell

Betsy’s in the second stall practicing

with a plastic razor, so I lie on the floor

to listen for the janitor, the cart’s

loose wheel squeaking our names down

the evening-empty hallway. the weeks

she was at Lutheran General, I didn’t

go to visit. but I know from her stories

what the doors looked like, closing,

how they strapped her to the bed

for her own protection. we’re 17

and I adore her despair. I think she’s shining,

fearless, carving herself a body that’s nothing

but light. on the way home, she lets me

drive. tells me there’s a trick

to disintegrating in increments subtle enough

not to trip the alarm wires, to hiding cigarettes

and death from therapists and parents and this,

all my girls have had down: how to go and go

until the night is too fragile or grimy

and then the fanfare, the wild dive

from the spire, the water tower, the clock

yanking its hands back, how to dangle

from the spotlight once everybody’s

watching. 1999: we lie on Angie’s futon

searching the phonebook for institutions

that will take her without insurance, curl

our bodies into still commas of want

to wait for morning. they take

her shoelaces, and her cigarettes, and I watch.

they give her forms and more forms

and I watch. they walk her to the room

with its single bed and single dresser

and unsmashable mirror and I ride

the long, high buzz of the door back

to New York. 2003: Georgiana is an expert

in suicide and poetry. her medicine cabinet rattles

like a jar of vengeful bees. she wants me

to find her. all our idols are martyrs, not one of them

a saint. her hair drops like cabernet all the way

to her waist. and how she needs me. my simple body

becomes bread in her mouth, I’m whiskey,

an obliteration who’ll get up in the morning

to call the hospital and make coffee. oh,

my pretty ones in love with the beast

of disappearing, there are many ways

to give birth. not one is without pain.

there are almost as many ways to die

as there are to love. tonight, I drink to you

who chose to keep going, who moved

through my body like a chemical

I could not keep. the night stands outside

like a hungry dog on an old chain, the scent

of lilies rising from the half moons of his teeth.

go ahead. tuck your babies into bed

and lovers’ hair behind their soft ears, as if

there’s nothing left to fear.

At the Restaurant - Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people

and a public place the wrong place

for what you're thinking--

stop this now.

Who do you think you are?

The duck à l'orange is spectacular,

the flan the best in town.

But there among your friends

is the unspoken, as ever,

chatter and gaiety its familiar song.

And there's your chronic emptiness

spiraling upward in search of words

you'll dare not say

without irony.

You should have stayed at home.

It's part of the social contract

to seem to be where your body is,

and you've been elsewhere like this,

for Christ's sake, countless times;

behave, feign.

Certainly you believe a part of decency

is to overlook, to let pass?

Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan's

black dress, Paul's promotion and raise.

Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.

Insufficient, the merely decent man.

Untitled - Chris Mc Geown

Mental illnesses

Are constellations

Of the mind–

Most people won’t

See them

Unless you point

Them out.

TODAY MY ALARM WENT OFF AT 12:30PM - Mira Gonzalez

I stayed in bed for over an hour
looked at things on my phone
I felt slightly anxious about nothing particular
I walked downstairs and poured coffee into a jar
I asked a person on the internet if I should take drugs
I took drugs before the person had time to respond

I feel alienated by people who express concern about me without
defining their concern in terms of a specific solution or goal
I dont feel comforted by the idea of an afterlife
I dont want to continue experiencing things after I die
I want someone to pull my hair because I like the idea of someone
controlling my head without touching my head

what is the difference between being an independent person
and being a person who is accepting of loneliness

REPLICAS - Lawrence Raab

We were tooling along in Fred’s old jalopy,

thrown off our game

because the directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing.

I decided not to mention how appropriate

getting lost might be, maybe later

having to battle the elements to stay alive.

I’d been reading the old myths

and liked to imagine sailing through the clashing rocks

with only an oar for a weapon,

which wasn’t the most useful idea since we were heading

south of Tampa, trying to find our old friend

Adam, who might be waiting for a visit.

On the other hand, I thought, and then recalled

Adam having said far too often: On the other hand––

a knife is up close and personal.

People didn’t like to hear that kind of thing,

but we were sure he meant no harm,

even if in fact he did. We figured by now

he’d have forgotten the dangerous inclinations

of his youth, those days when he insisted

we’d all been misled by the voices

in our heads, then turned into replicas

of the people we thought we were. “Of course,”

Adam explained, “certain men choose

to be tempted by sirens. Others just let it happen.”

I told Fred that last part made sense, or sounded

like it should. “Damn,” Fred replied,

having taken another wrong turn.

“Not every kind of craziness makes sense.

Believe me, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.”

At first Adam was upset about being sent away,

but since then we’d heard

he’d grown accustomed to the quiet gardens

they let him putter about in. We imagined

him kneeling down in the soil

like his name-sake and weeding

something small and green,

wondering why he’d ever believed

what he had, or else why no one

had ever understood what he believed.

Or perhaps both thoughts vanished

while he concentrated on his task, half-listening

to the murmuring of the more distracted guests

as they explained to each other how easily

they had been deceived by their lives.

Walking Around With A Broken Umbrella - Noor Hindi

Because sneezing my emotions onto the fibers of your

Kleenex isn’t working, I’ve spent my days punching

mailboxes, and taking victory laps around childhood

graveyards. I know you think I resemble a Sour Patch

Kid, that my thoughts are just silly string. Maybe my

brain twitches too much and maybe I was born inside

of a teardrop. I’m all passion. But to me, you are the sun

and I’m hanging my thoughts on a clothesline for you.

If I told you to disentangle our straw house, if I told you

that I feel like a puddle that is gliding towards a sewer,

what would you say? If I asked you to set fire to the world

using only the warmth of our hands, would you do it?

                                                   *

Yesterday, I became so angry that I ate a quesadilla. Then I

smashed my desk with a snow globe. I once cried for three

days about a purple butterfly kite that refused to fly. Weeks

later, I sobbed at our toaster for burning my optimism,

and when you called me unstable, I kicked our floor pantry

just to prove you right. It was inevitable. You would spit me

out as if I was a watermelon seed. You would ask me three

times a day how I felt about broken backspaces, but my eyes

were already decomposing. Days expired. I was the rotting Jack

O’ Lantern left outside our door. Every time you told me a

truth, I used a magnifying glass to find all of your potholed

lies. Eventually, I fell silent watching the image of you,

dad, melt like the icicles that later formed on our house

gutters. I tried to hold them once, but they only burned my hands.

For the Dead - Adrienne Rich

I dreamed I called you on the telephone

to say: Be kinder to yourself

but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way

trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the leftover

energy, water rushing down a hill

long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from

but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down

the red coals more extreme, more curious

in their flashing and dying

than you wish they were

sitting there long after midnight

Brinkwomanship - Leontia Flynn

When they come for you no bigger than a piece of fruit,

weighing no more and no less than a water biscuit,

this will be my excuse:

that I hoped you were just testing yourself

as I might subtly and irresistibly

poke at a sensitive tooth. That is, not morbidly,

but out of a curiosity

to locate the exact, minute, sensory transition -- between

merely knowing the definition

of pain, and knowing the meaning.

"For some there is no music" - Henry Rollins

For some there is no music

No lights

No fire

No untamed madness that breathes life

There is work

Anguish

Frustration

Rage

Despair

A dullness that rings like wooden thunder

The essential - Aleksandar Ristović

I was not allowed to live my life,

so I pretended to be dead

and interested solely in things

a dead man could be interested in:

petrified reptiles,

museum bric-à-brac,

fake evidence passed off as truth.

I felt a great need to be really dead,

and so at all times I wore

a mask made of wood

on which someone occasionally drew,

with colored pencils,

the look of contentment,

impatience, desire, bliss,

or the look of someone who is thinking

about an entirely different matter.

Mirror Image - Louise Glück

Tonight I saw myself in the dark window as

the image of my father, whose life

was spent like this,

thinking of death, to the exclusion

of other sensual matters,

so in the end that life

was easy to give up, since

it contained nothing: even

my mother's voice couldn't make him

change or turn back

as he believed

that once you can't love another human being

you have no place in the world.

Lamium - Louise Glück

This is how you live when you have a cold heart.

As I do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,

under the great maple trees.

The sun hardly touches me.

Sometimes I see it in early spring, rising very far away.

Then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it. I feel it

glinting through the leaves, erratic,

like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

Living things don't all require

light in the same degree. Some of us

make our own light: a silver leaf

like a path no one can use, a shallow

lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

But you know this already.

You and the others who think

you live for truth and, by extension, love

all that is cold.

Richard Cory - Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean, favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.