Prison Letters Continued

One poem is long, and one is short, the long one is new, the short one is not. The short when is also happier and more conventional, but the longer one is everything that's going on in my head ,and everything I think it's currently important to address. So there you have it. I hope you get some joy from it. I always think of you.

-Chris

t h e   r e w o r k e d   o f   t h e   e a r t h

Not in my head, this knot in my head, this heaviness of eyelids, as if the night before we wrestled with an angel,

sometimes waking is like walking around with black eyes,

waking like a boxer.

Midway through I got up and shook out this foot on the one leg shorter

than the other, the foot that survived the car accident.

I stretch out the cramp and stretch out my will, limp

out like to make the coffee and stop the dreaming.

Sometimes life is a grinding thing, you sit here and think,

shall I season the meat and refrigerate the meat and cook

this or cook that, it’s all too much to worry about right

now with this elephant on my head, when there is this

cloud on my head, back stiff from bed, and I haven’t even

wiped the sludge from my eyes.

This is the sludge from which the world was born.

I still believe one day I will wake up full of life and not curse a room full of shit and sunlight be the go getter you see on TV, well up by ten thirty and

I will move on with my day,

move through it swiftly, gracefully, getting it done,

not being this lazy holy fuck that I’ve become

and here is the relief

cause movers and shakers don’t think

and go getters never reflect.

There’s not time to think about reality when you’ve agreed to someone

Elses

But for my recalcitrant ass

it always took an hour to blink into the world

and the sky was always a little grey, and I never liked the sunlight in my face.

I always needed this second cup of coffee

Someone out there gets up at seven and sings while making egg white omelets.

Some sad fuck tells you he’s glad he gave up smoking and pleased at the

thirty pounds he put down.

But I took them up, and, think on this, every morning I rise to write poems,

and that was why I came here

I resolved to be this person writing poems,

Look here, to follow your resolve looks like this.

looks like headaches and cramped bodies

The doing is never glamorous

The doing’s always full of doubting

And that is why the doing is so seldom done.

All through the morning, scribble down your poems

Take the knife off the altar

Get your mind in order

I had something to bring to you, but when I came, my hands were empty.

The song in my mouth unraveled to air, the words to nothing. I had rivers to say to you, but they were swallowed in blackness and the whiteness of air.

Waiting in patience is the most neutral of things.

Having done all you can do you, do a little more and find silence.

But, what? This silence cannot be enough. This waiting, but…

but sometime waiting is whole that can be done.

In the morning when I do not have to rise to tend the children,

I sit here and let words drip from my brain,

the little shower of rain and the lit candle, the thoughts I dandle

like a baby, are the fruit of using underemployment.

And I am poor, but not as needy as I think, and I looking at all

the normal people I called myself the wretched of the earth.

But wretched is the shirt and tie, and wretched is the working till you die,

smiling to make other people happy, wretched is the routine,

the memes sent back and forth from your desk, learning to live

in regret.

We, who have too much time, and too little comfort with the way

Things are, blessed are we.

We who wish for normalcy like it is a luxury,

are the reborn, the skyborn, the earth born,

the reworked of the earth.

c h r i s t m a s   s o n g

every valley has not been exalted

and the hills still need to be

made low so that i can look over

them and see the glory i stopped

believing love is lukewarm and

affection damp at best and these

damn folks don't try their best

from one look, one gaze, all i

see is half life

and still, in my life,

out of the corners

in the stable, in the cave.

so quietly, so quietly,

hear him crying,

the little child is born

all these days, all these travels

have stretched tiresome and long

but past lies, deceptions,

half attempts, i hear the angels' song