Like Water on the Brain
For my grandfather, Eugene Hallan
I was standing in the garden
when a drop of rain fell upon the back
of my neck, and a shiver shot down my spine.
And isn’t that the way our memories work?
Something jogs the senses-- a smell
or the ache for the familiar
touch of a loved one and the memory
of some event seems to fall from nowhere
into the wellsprings of the mind the way
the earthy scent of these geranium
blossoms bowing down to drink
from this dark pool forming in the mud,
which seem hardly blossoms at all,
but the essence of green itself,
reminds me of a childhood trip
to Seattle to see my grandfather,
along whose home geraniums
grew in profusion, before Dementia
began to restrict the blood flow
to the realm of memory in his brain,
and oxygen tubes wormed their way
to his leaf-veined lungs the way this fallen
blossom has withered and gone gray
as a mind washed clean by darkness.
Selected poems by Matthew Nadelson
Matthew Jacob Nadelson is the sole author of, and copyright holder for, all poems and other writings contained on this site. Watch Matt read his work at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVNvNzJ7zlM
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTqjWjUqzt0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVNvNzJ7zlM
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTqjWjUqzt0&feature=related
Nov 3, 2009
Aug 31, 2009
May 4, 2009
"The Kingdom in Our Kitchen," poem, first appeared in Avocet: A Journal of Nature Poems, fall 2008
The Kingdom in Our Kitchen
My reflection passes over
a mosquito stuck to the mirror,
her lips, like little suction cups,
locking her with her reflection,
in a cloud of steam from the shower,
like God’s face in the cloud above the Sinai.
I place my hands against the doorframe
like Samson, unaware of the Hair-
Max magnet slipping with the weight
of a roaches authority, from my fridge
with its baby roaches buried under layers
of ice beneath the freezer— roach cryogenics—
a Pleistocene ice age for the brave few
who dared enter this refrigerator’s
Promised Land of sour milk and Honey
Nut Cheerios. One roach plays Moses, reddening
dishwater with tomato sauce, seeking me—
Yahweh from this roaches summit.
I cast the spiders out— clinging like spindly claws
to their inheritance of crumbs spilling
like manna from my pantry paradise.
I damn them with fire for plucking
the bitter fruit of knowledge from my back
crumbled and caked with dust as Babylon.
The usual highways and byways buzzing
above my head, dive-bombing me, I sweep
the sea of fallen bodies from my floor
and shake their shucked shells into the trash,
after my roommate rained a nuclear winter
of Black Flag over my fleeing subjects.
But my fellow roaches are resilient.
They are fruitful and multiply
regardless of what tribulations come.
And when, by flood or fire, the world
is ravaged beyond belief, they will
inherit the earth and all that is within it.
My reflection passes over
a mosquito stuck to the mirror,
her lips, like little suction cups,
locking her with her reflection,
in a cloud of steam from the shower,
like God’s face in the cloud above the Sinai.
I place my hands against the doorframe
like Samson, unaware of the Hair-
Max magnet slipping with the weight
of a roaches authority, from my fridge
with its baby roaches buried under layers
of ice beneath the freezer— roach cryogenics—
a Pleistocene ice age for the brave few
who dared enter this refrigerator’s
Promised Land of sour milk and Honey
Nut Cheerios. One roach plays Moses, reddening
dishwater with tomato sauce, seeking me—
Yahweh from this roaches summit.
I cast the spiders out— clinging like spindly claws
to their inheritance of crumbs spilling
like manna from my pantry paradise.
I damn them with fire for plucking
the bitter fruit of knowledge from my back
crumbled and caked with dust as Babylon.
The usual highways and byways buzzing
above my head, dive-bombing me, I sweep
the sea of fallen bodies from my floor
and shake their shucked shells into the trash,
after my roommate rained a nuclear winter
of Black Flag over my fleeing subjects.
But my fellow roaches are resilient.
They are fruitful and multiply
regardless of what tribulations come.
And when, by flood or fire, the world
is ravaged beyond belief, they will
inherit the earth and all that is within it.
“A Clearing in a Windless, Shaded Wood,” poem, first appeared in Whistling Shade¸ summer 2008. Visit theShade at: http://whistlingshade.com/0802/0802.
A Clearing in a Windless, Shaded Wood
But when they sought his body, they found nothing,
Only a flower with a yellow center
Surrounded by white petals.
--Metamorphoses, Book 3, lines 508-510
The gods can’t seem to clear
their throats tonight.
Even Echo holds
her breath…
Narcissus drowns
in his own sight.
Even still
water stirs.
Water blossoms
sway without wind.
The Spanish Iris dons
her tepals like a brave
scalped by my scalpel.
They seem somehow disturbed as I
uproot a withered flower left
in the rain, trembling in my hand.
I think perhaps it’s my own hand
trembling or the rain that
stirs its dark roots.
I take it in my tent
billowing like a lung
and lay it down.
Its roots continue to tremble
long into the still evening…
But when they sought his body, they found nothing,
Only a flower with a yellow center
Surrounded by white petals.
--Metamorphoses, Book 3, lines 508-510
The gods can’t seem to clear
their throats tonight.
Even Echo holds
her breath…
Narcissus drowns
in his own sight.
Even still
water stirs.
Water blossoms
sway without wind.
The Spanish Iris dons
her tepals like a brave
scalped by my scalpel.
They seem somehow disturbed as I
uproot a withered flower left
in the rain, trembling in my hand.
I think perhaps it’s my own hand
trembling or the rain that
stirs its dark roots.
I take it in my tent
billowing like a lung
and lay it down.
Its roots continue to tremble
long into the still evening…
"Controlled Burn," poem, first appeared in ByLine Magazine, March 2008
Controlled Burn
The epics, like old, dead forests,
must be trimmed, if not slashed and burnt.
The old growth suffocating the soils
of the mind must be uprooted
and a new music grafted on.
Write the music down that haunts you.
Burn this crop of notes as you would
a field until it is a field
of white. It needs replanting and
replenishment. The roots of words
are twisted, tangled and undone.
Write the music down that haunts you.
Slash and burn it. You will make it
through the first fires. It may take you
years to hear the subtle rhythms
of your fluttering, head-strong heart
quietly keeping you alive.
Write the music down that haunts you.
Slash and burn it. You will make it
better through time. It may take you
so far into the dark you’ll think
you’re blind, but blind men smell the smoke
long before we ever see the fire.
The epics, like old, dead forests,
must be trimmed, if not slashed and burnt.
The old growth suffocating the soils
of the mind must be uprooted
and a new music grafted on.
Write the music down that haunts you.
Burn this crop of notes as you would
a field until it is a field
of white. It needs replanting and
replenishment. The roots of words
are twisted, tangled and undone.
Write the music down that haunts you.
Slash and burn it. You will make it
through the first fires. It may take you
years to hear the subtle rhythms
of your fluttering, head-strong heart
quietly keeping you alive.
Write the music down that haunts you.
Slash and burn it. You will make it
better through time. It may take you
so far into the dark you’ll think
you’re blind, but blind men smell the smoke
long before we ever see the fire.
"Coffee Shop Metamorphoses," poem, first appeared in Beauty/Truth: A Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry, fall 2007
Coffee Shop Metamorphoses
At Lestat’s in San Diego, California
A painter is trying to turn
electric meters into trees,
brushing the metal brown
as rust and rotating her wrist
to imitate the natural
knots in the grains
of the supposed wood.
Paint beads as sap might bleed from bark
were they trunks of furs or maples.
To the artist a tree is just
a streak of green and coffee-brown
across the canvas of her eye.
I glance down to my own hands, browned
by freckles caked across the canvas
of my skin, scarred and gnarly as the bark
of the tree trunk I drunkenly
clutch to keep from stumbling,
which becomes a coat rack I lay
my jacket against and climb
into the stars flung like paint flecks
across the canvas of the sky.
At Lestat’s in San Diego, California
A painter is trying to turn
electric meters into trees,
brushing the metal brown
as rust and rotating her wrist
to imitate the natural
knots in the grains
of the supposed wood.
Paint beads as sap might bleed from bark
were they trunks of furs or maples.
To the artist a tree is just
a streak of green and coffee-brown
across the canvas of her eye.
I glance down to my own hands, browned
by freckles caked across the canvas
of my skin, scarred and gnarly as the bark
of the tree trunk I drunkenly
clutch to keep from stumbling,
which becomes a coat rack I lay
my jacket against and climb
into the stars flung like paint flecks
across the canvas of the sky.
Orginally appeared as "Elegy for My Grandfather, the Golf Caddy" in Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, the Arts, and Humanities, summer 2007
To My Father on the Death of His Father
You told me you could barely remember him
holding you as a child, so I can only imagine
you cradling, in the crescent of your arm,
your father’s head, bald and dimpled
as the golf balls he fetched from the lake
of the golf course he mowed as child.
You held his body draped in white
hospital sheets like the fish he wrapped
in newspapers and sold to tourists.
IV’s wormed their way through his veins.
Hooked to the gills like a fish caught
between two worlds, he gasped for breath,
grasping for something eternal.
The God of Abraham will cradle you
as a child, you whispered, as his heart
slowed to a whisper, and his lungs expired.
Beneath a towering Joshua tree,
you buried his remains— 8 pounds
of ash and bone, already taking root,
embedded in the green grass of Mission Lakes
Country Club where he worked his youth
away, mowing the golf course to a tee,
years lost with every fistful of ash tossed
through the Joshuas shaking their claws
at heaven, contorted into question marks
at the end of a life sentence.
You floated through that golf course’s lake
in a rented boat not altogether
unlike the soul-laden body adrift
through any night’s cold, dark, indifferent air,
knowing we’re all born beneath one roof— this sky,
and all must shoulder the blue beyond.
The morning sky is a blank sheet
spreading out before me,
lacking stars and infinitely
wide and deep as the sea.
I look up past the blue beyond
to God, who is everywhere
but here. The austere trees stand proudly,
and death is all that shadows us.
You told me you could barely remember him
holding you as a child, so I can only imagine
you cradling, in the crescent of your arm,
your father’s head, bald and dimpled
as the golf balls he fetched from the lake
of the golf course he mowed as child.
You held his body draped in white
hospital sheets like the fish he wrapped
in newspapers and sold to tourists.
IV’s wormed their way through his veins.
Hooked to the gills like a fish caught
between two worlds, he gasped for breath,
grasping for something eternal.
The God of Abraham will cradle you
as a child, you whispered, as his heart
slowed to a whisper, and his lungs expired.
Beneath a towering Joshua tree,
you buried his remains— 8 pounds
of ash and bone, already taking root,
embedded in the green grass of Mission Lakes
Country Club where he worked his youth
away, mowing the golf course to a tee,
years lost with every fistful of ash tossed
through the Joshuas shaking their claws
at heaven, contorted into question marks
at the end of a life sentence.
You floated through that golf course’s lake
in a rented boat not altogether
unlike the soul-laden body adrift
through any night’s cold, dark, indifferent air,
knowing we’re all born beneath one roof— this sky,
and all must shoulder the blue beyond.
The morning sky is a blank sheet
spreading out before me,
lacking stars and infinitely
wide and deep as the sea.
I look up past the blue beyond
to God, who is everywhere
but here. The austere trees stand proudly,
and death is all that shadows us.
"Scene from a Hospital Window," poem, first appeared in Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, the Arts, and Humanities, summer 2007
Scene from a Hospital Window
The sun ascends as one
rising from the sickbed, shaking
the cotton clouds loose as death-shrouds.
The moon slips from the horizon
like a newborn from his mother,
a new world in constant revolution
around the two moons she calls breasts.
Mercury the midwife ushers
the child from one world to the next
with a slap to clear the air between them.
So the child’s genitals descend
from his heavenly loins as Seraphim alight
to fix even the smallest worlds in place.
The sun ascends as one
rising from the sickbed, shaking
the cotton clouds loose as death-shrouds.
The moon slips from the horizon
like a newborn from his mother,
a new world in constant revolution
around the two moons she calls breasts.
Mercury the midwife ushers
the child from one world to the next
with a slap to clear the air between them.
So the child’s genitals descend
from his heavenly loins as Seraphim alight
to fix even the smallest worlds in place.
"Drunken Dessert Ode," poem, first appeared in Mosaic Literary Journal, 2002.
Drunken Desert Ode
Let me lie awhile longer on the sands
of tenderness, sipping a dry Shiraz
and suckling at the supple breast
of paradise as succulent
blossoms blanket my blood-shot eyes.
Let me drown again in the red
life-fluid flowing from Christ’s flesh
quenching my thirst for immortality
for a few hours, until the sweet ephemeral
liquid dissolves into sustenance
for the flowers, and I too wilt.
Let me listen to the drizzling blossoms
letting go and waltzing with the wind
winding through the cacti and time
winding down with the metronome-
moon to a steady stream of stars spilling
down my cheeks like a river through this dust.
Let me weep not for Jesus or the fallen
stars and flowers, but for this empty bottle
left in the sand as my tombstone,
its only epitaph a lone petal
lodged in its neck, unwilling to give
to the wind’s sanded-down white knuckles,
which, unbiased and without mercy,
soften us all into the same dust.
Let me lie awhile longer on the sands
of tenderness, sipping a dry Shiraz
and suckling at the supple breast
of paradise as succulent
blossoms blanket my blood-shot eyes.
Let me drown again in the red
life-fluid flowing from Christ’s flesh
quenching my thirst for immortality
for a few hours, until the sweet ephemeral
liquid dissolves into sustenance
for the flowers, and I too wilt.
Let me listen to the drizzling blossoms
letting go and waltzing with the wind
winding through the cacti and time
winding down with the metronome-
moon to a steady stream of stars spilling
down my cheeks like a river through this dust.
Let me weep not for Jesus or the fallen
stars and flowers, but for this empty bottle
left in the sand as my tombstone,
its only epitaph a lone petal
lodged in its neck, unwilling to give
to the wind’s sanded-down white knuckles,
which, unbiased and without mercy,
soften us all into the same dust.
"Hungry Again...," poem, winner of the Roy T. Thompson Award for "Best Poem" published in the 2002 issue of Mosaic Literary Journal.
Hungry Again in Camelot
If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill,
as God as my witness,
I'll never be hungry again!
--Scarlett O’hara, Gone With the Wind.
I press my fingers to the steel
wool to feel the cold, elastic
cheese snapping back into the black
olive sludge of sausage and sauce
caking the sink and my fingers.
Each scrape echoes the seconds lost
to the stacking of steel pans that will need
washing again before the tables are stripped
of their transparence and the trash
rests as empty as my stomach.
While I wash I’m lost to staring
at the pizza crust crucified
by dried cheese by-products
to the rusted, white time-
clock on the wall lacerated
by my knife from when I charged the wall
interest for Mauricio’s lies
of five-fifty-five an hour and dreams
of management and dishwater blondes,
lost to releasing grease and cheese
abandoned by customers for the eternal
bells and buzzers of pinball and Donkey
Kong and the killing of aliens and time
lost with their silver moon quarters
slipping into the subconscious sleep
of prepubescent miniature-golf fantasies
set to numb the nausea of fear,
Camel lights, and American
Spirits sucked until the fingers are also worn
numb and browned as the bubbling cheese,
our hardened hearts, or the dirt time melts us into.
Alone under a leaking ring
of oozing pepperoni moon,
I tightly twist the night-
black trash bag spilling tiny stars
of cheese as firm as my faith
that midnight will soon find us
sleepless, slapping time clocks, each others
hands, and golf balls onto freeways
until the cops send us sprawling
home like hell to yelling diamond-
ringed preachers on late-night TV
selling heaven and foretelling
our eventual descent.
But what the hell
do these perverse purveyors of wrinkle-removing
miracle creams and hair-restoring holy waters,
O, what do they know of our lonely Camel-breathing lot,
together reaching eternally into the flames
still slithering from ovens’ iron jaws, for fake
pizza cheese we’ll never taste stuck to red,
rusted steel pans, scraping wasted
time melting into liquid days,
stolen nameless seasons slipping
with every molten, plastic cheese
strand devoured by the black
gaping garbage disposal lips
letting loose a robust belch to carry
up our prayers for pardons
from this pizza counter purgatory.
If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill,
as God as my witness,
I'll never be hungry again!
--Scarlett O’hara, Gone With the Wind.
I press my fingers to the steel
wool to feel the cold, elastic
cheese snapping back into the black
olive sludge of sausage and sauce
caking the sink and my fingers.
Each scrape echoes the seconds lost
to the stacking of steel pans that will need
washing again before the tables are stripped
of their transparence and the trash
rests as empty as my stomach.
While I wash I’m lost to staring
at the pizza crust crucified
by dried cheese by-products
to the rusted, white time-
clock on the wall lacerated
by my knife from when I charged the wall
interest for Mauricio’s lies
of five-fifty-five an hour and dreams
of management and dishwater blondes,
lost to releasing grease and cheese
abandoned by customers for the eternal
bells and buzzers of pinball and Donkey
Kong and the killing of aliens and time
lost with their silver moon quarters
slipping into the subconscious sleep
of prepubescent miniature-golf fantasies
set to numb the nausea of fear,
Camel lights, and American
Spirits sucked until the fingers are also worn
numb and browned as the bubbling cheese,
our hardened hearts, or the dirt time melts us into.
Alone under a leaking ring
of oozing pepperoni moon,
I tightly twist the night-
black trash bag spilling tiny stars
of cheese as firm as my faith
that midnight will soon find us
sleepless, slapping time clocks, each others
hands, and golf balls onto freeways
until the cops send us sprawling
home like hell to yelling diamond-
ringed preachers on late-night TV
selling heaven and foretelling
our eventual descent.
But what the hell
do these perverse purveyors of wrinkle-removing
miracle creams and hair-restoring holy waters,
O, what do they know of our lonely Camel-breathing lot,
together reaching eternally into the flames
still slithering from ovens’ iron jaws, for fake
pizza cheese we’ll never taste stuck to red,
rusted steel pans, scraping wasted
time melting into liquid days,
stolen nameless seasons slipping
with every molten, plastic cheese
strand devoured by the black
gaping garbage disposal lips
letting loose a robust belch to carry
up our prayers for pardons
from this pizza counter purgatory.
"Denial," poem, first appeared in Mosaic Literary Journal, 2002.
Denial
As night spills over the Infiniti
like my lover's locks against her breast,
I’m left to smear the stars from watery red
eyes as the moon burns through the dream-
catcher resting on the spider-webbed wind-
shield near the pen I gnaw until lighting
a Lucky Strike surrogate for that creamy
white breast, which but summons the blood
faster from my missing wisdom
teeth’s gaping gaps plugged up with the gauze
I spat, blurring the bloody chicken-
scratches on a lost stray
Hallmark card, denying “Jesus
loves you, Matthew,” as I knelt
to leave tonight’s Nyquil, Tequila and pain-
killing codeine not deadening enough
to cease the bloodlet from my jaw,
salty and rich as tears or the chicken
broth of my toothless sedation.
Now I know I’m too easily nauseated
for a world where love’s a Hallmark
card. So I grab my “Christian Brothers”
brandy bottle like that thrice-crowed
cock’s neck that echoed Peter’s denial,
wrung and wilted and betrayed as Judas
and us all left living in the kingdom
of lost tequila and wisdom
teeth, and drown in the blood-
red brandy, merely to feel this denial
rising from my inner realm of mucus
and tears, blanketing creation in night-
black pen strokes confessing my love to shreds
of napkins white as the wedding dress my love
will never wear.
As night spills over the Infiniti
like my lover's locks against her breast,
I’m left to smear the stars from watery red
eyes as the moon burns through the dream-
catcher resting on the spider-webbed wind-
shield near the pen I gnaw until lighting
a Lucky Strike surrogate for that creamy
white breast, which but summons the blood
faster from my missing wisdom
teeth’s gaping gaps plugged up with the gauze
I spat, blurring the bloody chicken-
scratches on a lost stray
Hallmark card, denying “Jesus
loves you, Matthew,” as I knelt
to leave tonight’s Nyquil, Tequila and pain-
killing codeine not deadening enough
to cease the bloodlet from my jaw,
salty and rich as tears or the chicken
broth of my toothless sedation.
Now I know I’m too easily nauseated
for a world where love’s a Hallmark
card. So I grab my “Christian Brothers”
brandy bottle like that thrice-crowed
cock’s neck that echoed Peter’s denial,
wrung and wilted and betrayed as Judas
and us all left living in the kingdom
of lost tequila and wisdom
teeth, and drown in the blood-
red brandy, merely to feel this denial
rising from my inner realm of mucus
and tears, blanketing creation in night-
black pen strokes confessing my love to shreds
of napkins white as the wedding dress my love
will never wear.
"Empty," poem, first appeared in Mosaic Literary Journal, 2002.
Empty
Secret agent man, they’ve given you a number,
and they’ve taken away you’re name…
“They take away your name,” Mike claims
about the cop he called a pig before running
into me. “Imagine being
called junkie…” “Or just another number,” I add.
“What’d you say about my mother?” Mike growls.
Wrestling himself into his “Romanian spy coat,”
Mike sings some “Secret Agent man,"
as we step into the light of Telegraph
avenue, where a mesmerizing mass
of flesh merges into one, one hundred hands
beating the blues into their own
aluminum or plastic cans, empty
spaghetti colander cymbals, and trash
cans not eyeing heaven for change
but flipped on their rims into drums—
timpanis brimming hipster hymns
sending tie-died angels spinning,
bodies dissolving into song,
men boxing air, wrestling with God,
and nymphs subdued by heroin
sprawled around wooden tables— last supper
saints tonight and ghosts tomorrow,
specters scouring the streets for anything
to sate that old unavoidable void.
We breathe the light of seven hundred suns,
buried deep in the dank empty belly of Blake’s bar,
where no neon angels dance upon the head
of the needle lodged in Mike’s arm
sucking up his muddy life-fluid and filling
his eviscerated veins with visions
as he eyes my empty trembling
on a yellow, worn napkin sprouting blue flowers
of flames. Fumbling for my beer, I tumble
from my stool and stumble up the stairs,
where Mike mumbles something
of our crumbling immutability
and crumples his changeless Pepsi cup,
pointing past a tree’s arms to an Army
sign reading “Be all you can be,”
knowing all we all want is to be
known and full of food and something
true, which no one can take away.
Secret agent man, they’ve given you a number,
and they’ve taken away you’re name…
“They take away your name,” Mike claims
about the cop he called a pig before running
into me. “Imagine being
called junkie…” “Or just another number,” I add.
“What’d you say about my mother?” Mike growls.
Wrestling himself into his “Romanian spy coat,”
Mike sings some “Secret Agent man,"
as we step into the light of Telegraph
avenue, where a mesmerizing mass
of flesh merges into one, one hundred hands
beating the blues into their own
aluminum or plastic cans, empty
spaghetti colander cymbals, and trash
cans not eyeing heaven for change
but flipped on their rims into drums—
timpanis brimming hipster hymns
sending tie-died angels spinning,
bodies dissolving into song,
men boxing air, wrestling with God,
and nymphs subdued by heroin
sprawled around wooden tables— last supper
saints tonight and ghosts tomorrow,
specters scouring the streets for anything
to sate that old unavoidable void.
We breathe the light of seven hundred suns,
buried deep in the dank empty belly of Blake’s bar,
where no neon angels dance upon the head
of the needle lodged in Mike’s arm
sucking up his muddy life-fluid and filling
his eviscerated veins with visions
as he eyes my empty trembling
on a yellow, worn napkin sprouting blue flowers
of flames. Fumbling for my beer, I tumble
from my stool and stumble up the stairs,
where Mike mumbles something
of our crumbling immutability
and crumples his changeless Pepsi cup,
pointing past a tree’s arms to an Army
sign reading “Be all you can be,”
knowing all we all want is to be
known and full of food and something
true, which no one can take away.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)