david sewell
4 poems
**
Now We’re Really Living
Nothing’s what I know about salt marshes
but I’d like to be lost in one right now
holding a seagull saying scrimshaw
to someone and someone knowing
what that means because I do not
sailing through the marshes
with my head tilted back and a hand
not mine in my trousers pocket
maybe I know whose hand and maybe I don’t
and maybe I eat bees when I’m home alone
at night and maybe I don’t
hanging pages from a children’s book
in your bedroom doesn’t make your life a fairy tale
just as wearing trousers outside my bedroom
doesn’t make me a productive member of society
wanting things makes me feel better
but not getting them tends to have the opposite effect
what I want is hearing damage and feeling damage
and damage damage because lately it’s all become
too much to manage I’m not saying
I want to live in a bus but I’m not saying
I don’t want that either I’m saying
I want a giant sombrero on my head
and one more chance to apply marmalade to your pants
I’d like to delimit something or someone right now
but I have no idea what that means
the water gets only so high and then it gets higher
the seagull goes only so far into the toaster oven
and then it wants out
I’m not saying I’ve drowned in the bathtub
but I’m not saying I haven’t done that either
I’m saying maybe I know what your doorknob tastes like
and maybe I don’t the important thing is the order
in which the running and screaming takes place
the jury will want to know whether it happened before
or after the life-size effigy in butter began to melt.
**
Now We’re Really Living
I’ve been sleeping on the floor the last two weeks
in leisure slacks because it hurts when I don’t
because it hurts when I don’t I threw rocks at your house
and pushed a crossing guard into a bush
I scratched my name into your roommate’s car
because you don’t have one and you never
get close enough to read my arms anymore
because an ant crawled into my ear
and decided to stay there
because I wore pastels often
because I was raised by a toaster oven
I climbed a tree unsuccessfully
I stood across the street but everyone could see me
because my invisibility was selective and incomplete
orange felt calming so orange flowers I bought
you were wearing a brown cotton blouse
because a blouse made of squirrel fur would be unfashionable
and there was only enough left for one very small glove
I closed my eyes real tight and thought hard about toast
I just called to say I wasn’t thinking about you
but you wouldn’t pick up your phone
I wanted to tell you I don’t want to talk to you
anymore either because your tooth is crooked
and your lisp isn’t because you have a bird
in your mouth it’s because you never have.
**
Now We’re Really Living
I wanted to buy something new and nice
for wearing purposes I wanted to make up
an aphorism involving igloos and tell it to everyone
I knew it’s difficult to say how many
wolves will be required for the festivities
because really who knows anything
about stockbrokers’ athletic abilities
various ideas of an opinion-like nature
were inscribed into our arms
I’m not interested in metaphysics
unless in a dirty way strip epistemology for instance
crossing the parking lot it occurred to me
shoes aren’t like anything else they’re just shoes
whereas Sundays in your bedroom were
like Tuesdays on a cruise ship
everyone knows very little for instance
the apostrophe is descended from the seagull
the walrus can be made into a bathtub
though the process is a bit messy
hold your hand in the air if you require assistance
hold the blunderbuss on the lawn
of the capitol if you require a hole in your chest.
**
Now We’re Really Living
How and how and how to begin
in the scullery with the butter dish
in the taxicab with the mental patient
rubbing up against the war widow
beneath the store awning
waiting for it to stop raining
I forwent a knighthood for this
for this I gave up unchaperoned visits
I intentionally left the bathrobe unfastened
but what happened next I did not intend
when the time comes we’ll set out
in dragon-shaped canoes
wearing suspiciously heavy boots
it will be forever till we feel anything again
so I’m writing this note just to declare war on you
as long as you don’t mind that is
I wanted to make you hot under the collar
but not enough to spontaneously combust
I admit it wasn’t exactly spontaneous
it required significant logistical planning
to arrange the flamethrower operator
to find a parking space for the fire truck.
**
return to sawbuck 3.2
**
David Sewell has poems in or forthcoming in jubilat, Poetry East, h_ngm_n, La Petite Zine, Forklift, Ohio, Good Foot, The Bat City Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and co-edits the online poetry journal Fou.
**
Now We’re Really Living
Nothing’s what I know about salt marshes
but I’d like to be lost in one right now
holding a seagull saying scrimshaw
to someone and someone knowing
what that means because I do not
sailing through the marshes
with my head tilted back and a hand
not mine in my trousers pocket
maybe I know whose hand and maybe I don’t
and maybe I eat bees when I’m home alone
at night and maybe I don’t
hanging pages from a children’s book
in your bedroom doesn’t make your life a fairy tale
just as wearing trousers outside my bedroom
doesn’t make me a productive member of society
wanting things makes me feel better
but not getting them tends to have the opposite effect
what I want is hearing damage and feeling damage
and damage damage because lately it’s all become
too much to manage I’m not saying
I want to live in a bus but I’m not saying
I don’t want that either I’m saying
I want a giant sombrero on my head
and one more chance to apply marmalade to your pants
I’d like to delimit something or someone right now
but I have no idea what that means
the water gets only so high and then it gets higher
the seagull goes only so far into the toaster oven
and then it wants out
I’m not saying I’ve drowned in the bathtub
but I’m not saying I haven’t done that either
I’m saying maybe I know what your doorknob tastes like
and maybe I don’t the important thing is the order
in which the running and screaming takes place
the jury will want to know whether it happened before
or after the life-size effigy in butter began to melt.
**
Now We’re Really Living
I’ve been sleeping on the floor the last two weeks
in leisure slacks because it hurts when I don’t
because it hurts when I don’t I threw rocks at your house
and pushed a crossing guard into a bush
I scratched my name into your roommate’s car
because you don’t have one and you never
get close enough to read my arms anymore
because an ant crawled into my ear
and decided to stay there
because I wore pastels often
because I was raised by a toaster oven
I climbed a tree unsuccessfully
I stood across the street but everyone could see me
because my invisibility was selective and incomplete
orange felt calming so orange flowers I bought
you were wearing a brown cotton blouse
because a blouse made of squirrel fur would be unfashionable
and there was only enough left for one very small glove
I closed my eyes real tight and thought hard about toast
I just called to say I wasn’t thinking about you
but you wouldn’t pick up your phone
I wanted to tell you I don’t want to talk to you
anymore either because your tooth is crooked
and your lisp isn’t because you have a bird
in your mouth it’s because you never have.
**
Now We’re Really Living
I wanted to buy something new and nice
for wearing purposes I wanted to make up
an aphorism involving igloos and tell it to everyone
I knew it’s difficult to say how many
wolves will be required for the festivities
because really who knows anything
about stockbrokers’ athletic abilities
various ideas of an opinion-like nature
were inscribed into our arms
I’m not interested in metaphysics
unless in a dirty way strip epistemology for instance
crossing the parking lot it occurred to me
shoes aren’t like anything else they’re just shoes
whereas Sundays in your bedroom were
like Tuesdays on a cruise ship
everyone knows very little for instance
the apostrophe is descended from the seagull
the walrus can be made into a bathtub
though the process is a bit messy
hold your hand in the air if you require assistance
hold the blunderbuss on the lawn
of the capitol if you require a hole in your chest.
**
Now We’re Really Living
How and how and how to begin
in the scullery with the butter dish
in the taxicab with the mental patient
rubbing up against the war widow
beneath the store awning
waiting for it to stop raining
I forwent a knighthood for this
for this I gave up unchaperoned visits
I intentionally left the bathrobe unfastened
but what happened next I did not intend
when the time comes we’ll set out
in dragon-shaped canoes
wearing suspiciously heavy boots
it will be forever till we feel anything again
so I’m writing this note just to declare war on you
as long as you don’t mind that is
I wanted to make you hot under the collar
but not enough to spontaneously combust
I admit it wasn’t exactly spontaneous
it required significant logistical planning
to arrange the flamethrower operator
to find a parking space for the fire truck.
**
return to sawbuck 3.2
**
David Sewell has poems in or forthcoming in jubilat, Poetry East, h_ngm_n, La Petite Zine, Forklift, Ohio, Good Foot, The Bat City Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and co-edits the online poetry journal Fou.
Labels: 3.2, david sewell
