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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780312274139 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 05/26/2000 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Todd Colby's poetry has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poet's Café and Verses That Hurt. He teaches at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church and lives in New York City.
Read an Excerpt
Heights of the Marvelous
A New York Anthology
By Todd Colby
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2000 Todd ColbyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-312-27413-9
CHAPTER 1
Anselm Berrigan
A short history of autumn
New York City fails to be spectacular from my teacher's car. And the van that booted me into Brooklyn last night, it has my sympathy. My sympathy was parked in a strange place last night. It hasn't come back. Did I think of my sympathy as a dog? A dog licking my neck all night?
Sympathy licking my neck all night kept me up all night & the anti-depressant medication I swallowed before bed tho' it wasn't prescribed to me & I wasn't depressed kept me up all night. I thought of a man who couldn't cry for years & years. He couldn't fly, so he died.
After he died he rose to a two egg breakfast that tasted terrible. Work was terrible too, later. Before the movie—Vertigo. San Francisco looking not too much different this summer than it did forty years ago, in Vertigo. After the movie I felt tired & creepy. I went to the office where I used to live.
I used to live there with a bad inflection. Every other word out of my mouth was off. "I'm off to off work off," etc. Life was profoundly stupid then. I guess that wasn't an inflection. I visit the office sometimes late at night, to think about what life was like then, & usually I can't remember.
And as I don't have much of an imagination, to go along with a bad memory (Rrrrriiiinnnngggg!) It's Jena. "What happened to your rationality?" "It jumped out the window." "Then let's go to Paris!" "Sure." (hangs up phone) Where was I? I was getting a ride from my teacher after class one night. we were talking about how to read your head and heart at the same time & how hard that can be. She dropped me off at the World Trade Center. From there I walked to Union Square. On the way I began to freak out. Everything around me looked great. I hadn't been that cold in three years.
I want to hear people read poems. I went to have a drink somewhere else. I went to the office where I used to live. All in all it wasn't enough. Where was the life I later led? Shall my tongue settle in its little tomb? Is this at all an improvement? Someone is at the door. Shall I ask them in?
Mercy flight
Some people should take a break. Have you ever met so many finished works? Doesn't it just kill you? Yes! & it is terrific to say yes as Lisa says & says yes. & so I say to the different variations of taking off one's pants, don't put any on. Teachers & their pants theories & their pants, the suburban moon. The D-train over the Manhattan bridge when I should be at my job has pretty legs. The pretty graffiti on the girders, pink legs with black outlines like those of the bleached blonde boy pouring a sack of cedar mulch next to the slant of wood he's come to call "garage". & it's a pleasure to see him seeing his future & to plant myself squarely there through no action in particular. Black & yellow pansies admire themselves endlessly on his lawn where I sit admiring him. We are fabulous examples of ourselves—strange birds invited to veer off course so naturally we go. To call this nature would be completely misleading, unless, of course, you think there is a course.
Bloodletting
Fifty American cheerleaders booking uphill on Rue LePic & what I understand, I've been given a list of things very valuable to me: a choo-choo train wearing a bluegrass t-shirt, my Pollyanna ring, a lovely crater. Where do pigeons go at night? The belltower is invisible, my brain is on the floor I name it Flat Bear the Stuffed Animal & remember: I don't like delirium/I do like a melange of tom-toms & Canadian spies parading down Lorimer St. Oh joy why have you shut your glass doors to so many of my friends & their neuroses that are very serious, like a tucked-in shirt and the end-all be-all meatball parmesan? Peggy knows the meaning of life, I have to get her my fax number at work to be enlightened. I know it's not philanthropy, where my fork always seems to be on the wrong side of the plate. Maybe a beggar's hiss on a 105-degree July evening in Williamsburg: Mick, Mick, is the Renaissance worthy of our attention? Will you still love me if I don't want to sleep with you & eat yoghurt my whole life? Have a seat sweety. Lay your sweat on my shoulder.
Advice to a young philosopher
It should be in your nature to instantly trivialize anything you read in italics. Everyone thinks they deserve a reward for not dying, but there will always be someone available to hate you. Your reward can wait, can wallow in mud; I love mud. That it's not quite the water & not quite the shore. This allows you to understand purgatory. Dilemmas cause problems, cause auto-didacts. Have you ever met a sultry philosopher? So, thanks. If a present is to be had have it tied with a ribbon the color of the dress of God & Howard Hawks' river. But the uniform you design may still be stripped & not in some pleasant manner by the frog of your choice. Your dilemmas will always fail their physical, whatever roots you ingest. Waking up is a nice way to start the day. When you think of order think take out. It's always hard to get a perspective from the inside. Measure the distance between dead people & their existing stars. And vice-versa. You may be killed by a random shot of a cannonball.
Ode to election day
Then to admire some beached whales
lights a cold. I run an ad agency on the side
& am a true blonde, with dirt; flesh rigged
for pressure I believe you must understand
in other people's brunch. There is an out here
slap the clever. A walking talking single-cell
grassroots activist finger fucking. The first part
was the disinclined moment. Then I wanted
to be Jane Eyre, in the third person on line
for a metrocard & chicken sandwich.
There is a stupid in my house & I'm not scared.
After many delayed probabilities we went right
for the essence of the matter. Who would
stand it? The orange wall, the green ceiling
the naked postcard coconut life saver. Xerox &
send, xerox & send! To make it easy we chose
bullfrogged detachment, no surprise, nooooooo
nothing. Verdict: robust, mellow, satisfying.
Looking up my balance
If I think you'll think I'm brainwashed because I think I am. It's like having your belly button on your big toe, & that was solace 'till I shut my eyes. Many constructors of chaos are historically grabassy. Agitated for lack of warmth & the answer is relax. Off into orbit by merit of gratuitous misery i.e., free long distance minutes inside. Entering a mid-town diner & greeted by a sign: Please wait for the waitress to be seated. Logic dictates a reasonably healthy diet but I read that one should undermine authority. I left empty & thought about what I've stepped on in the country. My brother said he called Jesus but the outgoing message was too long. He played Jimmie Rodgers over the phone & said this man in this church with a chicken bone in his hair was, like, totally no bullshit.
Sabotage
On with the jalapeño Christmas lights! It's only the end of July, no calls, no poems, damn this antenna. To defy being positioned I indulge in irrelevant cosmic lunch openings, take a handful at my will & dirty this penny-ante heart. The hub is searching for its head, which is a lost cause. It was a leaf on the windshield of her car & she was handed an oeuvre. Micro-sized wormholes dig it, Heidegger's works are at least as manipulative as Spielberg's. Words spoken by a boot full of wicked on Brooklyn's vibrating giraffe-ride scene. If François Villon had ever led a life as sweet as this he wouldn't give a damn about passing out in Philip Glass' bed. Whosoever shall encounter him by chance shall read to him this poem. Who gives a damn about the bathroom door rotting off its hinges & who gives a damn about a toehold on a crowded ladder. Francois does not pity my delusions nor those of the monks & black-winged demons painted in gold & tempera onto the panels of my face.
A four minute history of getting it together in order to be fabulous, briefly
As if having a thought makes anything, & assuming of course that I did not mistake a different wrecked vehicle for the one I was looking for. In Annandale. With John Anne, Tom, Eric, the folk singer with the brown teeth, the geese Satan, Ani, & "I like to burn my brain." I'm still young enough to accumulate lies. The good society must involve fucking without conscience, right? or acknowledging someone else's conscience? I wanted among fireflies to fall through floorboards inside a haunted house by the rails last night, rectilinear & light. Everyone I know shaping up & why, they're fine, no specifics Aloha. But fucked. It's passé to be twenty-four and alive. The young are so rotgut full with cynicism & medication. Let's take the rest of this poem & turn it into money: Revolution! or what don't you understand? We'll fix it, together. Spirit makes us paranoid. I made it up, it's not science. I'm just this boy. It's in the psycho-analysis of my health. It's because I'm passive-aggressive, yes, that's right love. Tracing the trails of grace. Shall we blame our flaws on society? Over a glass of scotch?
The various multitudes contained by the loves of my love
& I've always admired fiction but I've never admired the fiction that is on the swing in the warehouse kicking paint cans & I double pumped so collapse went my young robot companion & a polaroid snapped history into our lives & white energy escaped through the hole in my foot which I acquired by stepping on a nail after a great jump I got off quick but my lover was out of town & my lover is depressed & my lover in a foreign land can't sleep & I am counted out of my fiction & I have no lovers though I love my lovers & I have no lovers but I love them & they love to be happy & they love to be sleepy & they love to be chased by their numbers & I love to understand ones now & I love to understand zeros now & I look forward to sleeping on mud & I love to give my blanket which asks for nothing to my host & I love to imitate my lovers & I love to ignore the crosses in my kitchen & I love to swing when the ball is in the glove & I love to send messages to my love & I love to check the voice mail for messages from my love & I love the shoulders & the space between them that is love & love & love & I love the whatness of the space in my love goes to hell & the it of my love goes to lunch & my love is an object with great use of verbs & my love is an object with great use of colors & I love to know that objects are absolutely amazing now & the mud of the love I love is incredible love & Larry Eigner is love & copping some love is proof of further love & here comes love talking a lot & the last thing you can do is intentionally walk love & love takes its pants off & lies on the lawn under a brown & grey sunset & love sits on the couch in its underwear & love has a package taped to its leg & inside the package is a note from my love & I read it loving to understand that I've been hopelessly defeated by love
Todd Colby
The Boy and the Girl
1. The boy and the girl loved each other very much. They saw the world in a very similar way so they didn't have to do too much extraneous translating or explaining to each other about what they saw or felt. They could take certain things for granted because they spoke the same language. They were not morons. They loved each other so much that they quit their jobs and hired people to do the things that they could no longer be bothered to do. They paid their bills on time and took great pleasure in watching the workers do the jobs that they had done under great duress, only months before. At the orientation meeting for the workers the boy and girl instructed them to clap together on the count of three. They called this the "We're-All-One-Clap" because they didn't want any of the workers to be alienated by the exclusivity of their love for each other.
2. There was a certain confidence that the boy and the girl had that came from choking each other while fucking, and this "confidence" was evident in the way they addressed the workers at the orientation meeting.
3. The boy and the girl started speaking a secret language which didn't address the larger issue of the unease they both felt whenever they spoke their language to the workers. There were too many obscure or syrupy phrases and many of their words had meanings that shifted around a lot. The workers reacted to all this by making marks in their ledgers every time a dog barked, which allowed them to maintain contact with the real world.
4. Question: How many individual dog barks does the average person hear in a lifetime? Answer: 18,841 woofs.
5. Many nights the boy and the girl would sit in bed naked and plot out ways that they could eat each other without getting the wounds infected or running out of flesh to eat.
6. The borders between them started to blur, and in the aftermath of this "blurring" the boy and the girl became even more alienated from the workers. Because the workers couldn't understand the couple's language with its sugary baby talk, they stopped listening to their commands—so they had absolutely no idea what they were being told to do. Needless to say, it didn't take long before things started looking pretty shabby around the compound.
7. The boy and girl started to look Rubensesque and smudged.
8. It was around this time that the workers' unwillingness to do their chores centered around a mysterious blue gas that entered the room through the air ducts whenever the boy and girl gave them orders.
9. The boy and the girl decided to see a Specialist to help them with their "special problems."
10. When they went to the Specialist she told them that their problems were due to some repressed anguish or mutual self-destructive desire that would cost a lot of money to find out more about.
11. The boy and girl started getting anxious when the workers began doing their morning "We're-All-One-Clap" with an absurd amount of enthusiasm.
12. On one occasion the girl referred to the boy as "criminally charismatic" in front of the workers. Later that evening a half-dozen or so of the workers got drunk around a fire and told scary stories that all ended with the naïve couple getting hacked up with machetes. When they got tired of telling their stories with the same endings, they took turns imitating the girl saying "criminally charismatic" while another worker would pretend to be the boy with his sheepish, theatrically embarrassed grin.
13. The boy and the girl interpreted the workers' growing hostility towards them as sexual which could only be alleviated by a really good fucking.
14. One morning while watching the workers perform their "We're-All-One-Clap" the boy turned to the girl and asked "Who would you really like to fuck right now?" To which the girl replied "Why you, of course." The workers heard this exchange and made a mental note of it for later use.
15. The words that came out of the boy's mouth were the same as the ones that came out of the girl's mouth so they were able to express certain things to each other as long as they understood who was really doing the talking.
16. The girl turned to the boy and said "I think I'll have you for dinner tonight." While the boy was mildly turned-on by this idea, he was also afraid of actually being consumed by the girl against his will. But it was only a passing feeling.
17. The boy and the girl each believed they'd been sent for each other by some sort of divine command. When they confessed this to the Specialist she seemed to agree but warned them of possible mutual ruination if they confessed it to anyone else.
18. The girl started to smell of bleach, so the boy asked the girl about it and she told him not to worry because all geniuses smell like bleach. From that moment on the boy didn't let the smell bother him anymore for fear that she might not think him her equal.
19. The boy and the girl each knew that the first sign of immortality is becoming invisible to dogs. The second sign of immortality is the ability to hear funk instead of barks when a dog opens its mouth.
20. The Specialist reminded the boy and the girl to watch some of the television shows that the networks had taken the trouble to make for their enjoyment.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Heights of the Marvelous by Todd Colby. Copyright © 2000 Todd Colby. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Welcome
Anselm Berrigan
A short history of autumn
Mercy flight
Bloodletting
Advice to a young philosopher
Ode to election day
Looking up my balance
Sabotage
A four minute history of getting it together in order to be fabulous, briefly
The various multitudes contained by the loves of my love
Todd Colby
The Boy and the Girl
Think Eight
Labor Day Picnic Poem
Dear, I Love
Captain's Log
Brenda Coultas
The Human Museum
Dr. Wasserman,
Third Farming Poem
Weather Report
Capitalist Projections
Lecture #l
Jordan Davis
The Zoo
He Is Lightning
Time Bum
Fire Barns
You Turn Around
A Boat
The Kids on Television Imagine Me
Maggie Estep
I Have to Go Now
Amy Fusselman
Puffy Jacket
Mother Nature
Journal
Sleeper
Ticker
Mimi Goese
The Dive
(Untitled)
You Are
Love Ghost
Kenneth Goldsmith
From Punk
Mitch Highfill
Rebis
Sea Breeze
The Marginalization of Poetry
Ben Marcus
Battle at Horizon
Plagiarism
Justice
Delaying Relevance
Sharon Mesmer
Lonely Tylenol
What Becomes Us
My Life in Yonago
Amanda Nazario
Kevin and Nicole
Melt Me
Maggie Nelson
Molino
Vallejo
Wish Fulfillment
Brightness
Proposal
Michael Portnoy
The Evolution of Lather
DINOGON
Voucher
Hints at Distance
"Roget, Papier, Schism!"
Instant Control
Of of Titmouse
Lee Ranaldo
A Refugee
Flash Me
Killed
Steel
Ttest
Wrong #
No Deal
HIS:STORY
Five Weeks
Time Presses Me
Carl Hancock Rux
The Excavation
Asylum of Gestures
Asphalt Musings
Shunning an Imperative
Prageeta Sharma
Action-Packed Sonnet
Poorly Matched
Transit
Principles, When I Felt Them
Potter's Field
Performance Test
Beau Sia
claim to fame
things to do in holland
enemy
howl
no words empty
Edwin Torres
Bio-Rodent-Oriole
How Long Does the Curator Dance For?
Gigabyte Me—How Much RAM in Your Summer of Love?
Breezy Delicious Day
Summertime Late Show
Poetry Detective
An Elbow in Dumberland
The Vase of the Universe
Elder Dubb
Of My Nipple Ring Halos
Lipsticktion
Drowning in the Last Days of Luxury
MarianneVitale
I read that it was all a chain
Joy Island
You Oh Even
excerpt from On Justifying Cuckoo La Goose
Truth Put It
Loop, fleck, sound and so on . . .
three written poems, unconnected
patois
become your face
Mac Wellman
Poems from The Rat Minaret: Miniaturist-divan
Notes on the Poets
Permissions/Acknowledgments