We Memorise How To Forget

I, too, have forgotten how to be a man.

Somehow forgotten how the hinges of doors work

so stay outside in night’s cold protecting my heart.

Quaint houses with windows and tired driveways

and their shoulders make me breakdown and cry.

   

The taste of cooked meat is like a mean nurse

administering strange vials into my body.

I cannot fashion my hand around the spoon

or make myself worthy for a lovely knife.

I want no more stories dragged out of mouths.

I want no more boxes, no more arrangements,

no more phenomena, no more exploration.

Forgotten how to plunder in my own mind.

How my nose looks, how these muscles reflex.

Maybe, I had never known how to be a man.

Still it would be impressive to believe.

To lay down in the intersection and pray.

To observe a stranger’s first waking moment

then describe them the eeriness of that sleep.

Great, even, falling in love with an arresting officer,

and, in all sincerity, become a martyr

for a stray dog crossing an unhurried street.

I don’t know how long I can hear this voice

from my chest that is more phonograph, this image

of misery on the water’s face, itself drowning down

where time is dark and no calendar can be read,

no socks to unravel, no shoes to collect,

no cold, cold floor.

I don’t want the floorboards to announce

my pacing anymore. A flag walking in a windstorm.

Entire industries run on taking the light

out of your eyes while you are still alive and lit.

That’s why, come morning, when the gasoline

starts to smell flammable again,

and the coffee percolates itself like a root

quietly growing inside a porcelain mug,

I will be the watchful fugitive, half-frozen,

escaping through the first mud of the day

and not wince my entire life waiting

for some masters’ slap to fall.

I escape through the garment shops, the litigator's,

where the statutory lowers its green eyelids.

I escape out the sweatshops, the mailrooms,

and the poison grow-house of the neighborhood

where lips of vinegar kiss glass bowls.

I escape, I, who has forgotten everything

about being a man, past the bullets of the sun.

There are papers everywhere, folders and markings,

and lamps the color of dying birds,

and cars asleep on the road like caskets

pushed out to sea. In parking lots mothers fold

blankets over babies who only now

learn to remember how to forget

the lonely things the world has to offer,

like sports bottles and cigarette butts and billboards

and towels and key rings and museums,

given names to safeguard them from anyone

who would try taking those things away,

like all the levers shifting inside an empty building

wait for absent landlords to come

cut its delirious power source.   

Reviews

[h d e rushin]

in each stanza G you encapsulate your many thoughts as if each is an individual blues song. Like
Etheridge Knight's "A Poem for Myself" which at first is a considerable departure from the conventional
or traditional notion of confession but still retains the cadence, even the pathos of what 'the blues' is.
Hence, the blues is a sort of resignation from all that hurts us even when the memory only makes the
pain more arrogant.

You're a great writer of poetry but an even greater champion of progressive thought. One would
think that more people would review and comment on what I think and believe is poetic magic.
But unfortunately most folk (around here) want to talk about their love problems. I have love problems too
but none I wish to write poems about.

No need to pimp your work G. But somehow more need to read it. dana

[Z]

Beautiful sequences enhance the meaning of the lines. Your poem reflects on the hardships of life, which are a cruel reality that many seek coverage from. We too often try to forget truths and escape to a superficial dream to heal our minds.

At times, the poem seems to be a fantasy -- falling in love with an arresting officer, becoming a martyr -- but then returns to the bittersweet and grey aspects of life.

"Maybe I had never known how to be a man" toys with the idea of common sense. Common sense refers to what the majority of people believe to be true; yet, when one does not comprehend such a train of thought, on will become an outcast from society and cease to be a "man" of it. Creativity and uniqueness could be one interpretation of lack of common sense, or sometimes, perhaps a much too materialistic and realistic view on life. However, what is it to be a man? If everyone had the same precepts, believed in the same God, enjoyed the same books, and ate the same food, would we really be people? Humanity thrives on change and perhaps, sometimes, it is better not to know how to be a man and to find our own definition for man.

This poem demonstrates great insight on the world and how one percepts it to be. It is thought provoking and an elegant work that is on par with other great poets!