Poems

 

 

Alison Moyet

 

Warm sweet

autumn in

the throat I am

eating the hell out of

memory and fears

of having, not

having, never knowing

memory, desire

one last big

warm moon

before things

get normal & the year

             ends

again

and again I’m thinking

of a sound

tracking a mood

sensing a field

of friends without end

notes like leaves

fall must end let

the cold come,

empty bed

            feels better than

empty body

            empathy

being seen by

the strangest eyes

 

 

 

Astral weekend

 

Maybe another face

with a heart in its eye

the slipstream between

engaged & escape

when the snoring stops

keep moving on

through grey coda day

seeing heart, feeling eye

what does it take to say

 

maybe another face

in the seam between

what is and is

unseen to seeing eye but nakedly

engaged

             a cage

of tinder sticks deep

 

heart            head            eye

another place

another time

 

 

 

February/March

 

Long belt of Venus over long view from bridge

long frozen river w/long

thin spots

 

Long day of work & long wait ahead

long weekend long time coming

 

            Snow is warm

before dark fall in

two slices red

bull jittery

& annoyed

but snow is pretty

 

getting laid

                                    Hawkwind

we were born to go

 

drunk & cold on Thursday night

 

thinking of you & when you’ll text next

 

this is definitely the future in some ways

 

           Snot frozen nose

remember

favorite shades, eminence

front drums under

cold sun all

skies are blue

an underture

           

              tiny ice shavings turn

              speed metal in

              the ears

           Shining

              in the sun absence

              is not deficiency

 

reading up on Mars

where it is also cold

where it all comes from

a line two steps a line words

like harmolodics the more

I put in the more

I get

           shadows on sidewalk

not coming for me

 

           Fuck me if it isn’t the moon

pale blue w/sky over

Porter Square under dirty

pink cloud over last sun

dirty windows

 

“Rain Song” and waitress

everywhere, a hundred poems between

me and it

 

I know the answer but the question shifts

with shafts of sun across the floor

 

            Woke as though still

drunk nagging elsewhere

in the dungeon mind

            California poets

in the backseat or the trunk

streams of suitcase beer

 

Cold Aries & Cambridge closed

but at red lights savoring X

organ frenzy & open air

repurposing & moving

under violet skies

 

            Pink light, liquid silk

some tower in the distance

pale midnight clouds, wind

slows rain to drip through screen

city still across the river lit

the universe at your core

in your room I am still

in my own skin

 

 

 

October

 

Cool again, getting late

rain light now as piano keys

streetlight pinks the blinds.

 

Some things are forever.

The idea of music is better.

You called with the best you had

and it was just enough.

Thinking about The Deal.

 

 

 

Riding the Megabus with Emily Spiegelman

 

Rainy morning, old shoes

empty streets, fast T.

South Station rain

front of bus, top deck, rain

Mass Pike, wifi, Hemingway:

“he got his nose flattened

it was an improvement.”

Bent nib, Wellesley/

W. Newton

Thinking about Boston

heading to New York,

weather report from Brian

via text

 

Last night w/the Knitter

first tattoo nerves in the Hen

Turkish Delight & soda

“black cherry is a strain of weed.”

This morning, news about Japan

waiting in Hawaii

everything everywhere seems bleak.

Steaming snow off the Pike

sitting higher than that Mack

Reading The Whalen Poem

letting it get in my head

“And who can square

I want nothing at all

with I want it all?”

 

What’s the name of that book?

We can look it up

on my phone.

 

 

Raining less

reading less

telling story again

of shitty reading

w/Jess, hot summer

inappropriate hosts

the weekend of my divorce:

Hendricks with cucumber

in sweaty Baltimore.

 

84 to 20

Hartford

New York.

Steam rising from roadside bog,

Chris to me in high school:

“You’re like me, you get on a note

and you stay there.”

Connecticut welcomes you.

Great. Sick

of baseball

in poetry.

There. I said it. Also:

I don’t get August.

Homework from shrink:

think about Mom,

“see what comes up.”

Writing is not thinking

but feeling kind of is.

 

 

“Atlantis is the best option,

don’t forget your passport

that would be the dumbest

thing you could do.”

 

 

Dainty Rubbish Service

Luv Boutique across from Sleepy’s

Sun comes

thinking about peeing

it could be a disaster.

Duchess: Grilled to Thrill.

Wasabi Lobby

Nancy Lee’s Pig Heaven

Pick-a-bagel

Szechuan Chalet

Hot and Tasty Bagel Café

China Fun

The Health Nuts

Hot & Crusty

Chicken Kitchen

Litter & Leashes

Hot Jumbo Bagels

The Irish Exit

 

“style is not

a display

of wealth.

But an

expression

of

imagination”

 

 

 

Seeing double w/hunger I thought the whole day was ahead of me

 

Relearning old songs holding

loss in my hand & heart

we all die & at a point

we all leave a thing or place

behind in pictures

or on earth we go

around like songs

 

            Forever

changes the way

time changes throw

back into daylight

or straight into darkness I

can never remember now

that you’re not there to call

 

                                    one blind bright

                        w/shadows

            & light

                        other blind

leaf red

 

            blue sky & wires

            breathing breeze & loath

 

to leave who knows

where I could go

                          without care

taking flight I watch ten

thousand bats in Zambia

online and ten

thousand tiny plankton flutter

through the lit wet dark

of a certain sea

I don’t want to see

                             these

shores again recede

call it psychic tide

            regrettably

there’s no other word

or way

            to put words to it

is the only way

 

 

 

Aaron Tieger’s books include February (Fewer & Further), Secret Donut (Pressed Wafer), The Collected Typos of Aaron Tieger (Editions Louis Wain), and Chaos Flowers (Skysill). He is also the editor of the first American edition of Richard Caddel’s Uncertain Time (Pressed Wafer). His poems have appeared in 6x6, Fulcrum, Litter, Drill, For the Time Being: The Bootstrap Book of Poetic Journals (Bootstrap Productions), string of small machines, Hassle, BPM, and elsewhere. He lives in Cambridge, MA, where he is studying to be a licensed mental health counselor.