I am here, and so are all of you

We

2009-03-06T11:23:00.002-05:00

Some say this is
worse
than it’s ever been. The threats
of violence, eco-
-nomic desolation, the
suffering of the earth
nuclear bombs populous as
butterflies
in the grass but
something tells me
every
generation thinks that; every
generation
thinks they’re the last. That
they endure
or have endured
the worst
the world
god
humanity
can throw at them—the
tearing of stitches of planet
country
and self
is
happening
in their moment in this mute
murmur of time. Every
generation believes they were
referenced
in some ancient tomb
a hieroglyph scratched in a shadow
describing
atrocity not unlike
our current ill

now
now
now

there is a lion at your door
gazing at you
or
there isn’t anything at your door;

and maybe the knights
of the 13th century
with their sword kills and
chainmail
had it good, had it easy, really
had
nothing to fear
that it’s we
with something to fear now—the

master who devours time
who
shakes our hand
we know his visage, odor, method…

to think this way, to admit
the whisper of god as
killer of
people. Every generation closes its eyes
in the sum
of these fantasies like warm
sunlight.

Of course, just yesterday
an asteroid
the size of a ten story building
whizzed by
at a mere 45,000 miles (that’s
close in astronomical speak)

and no one even
saw it
coming.

False Truths - Poems by C. Kursel

2009-03-04T17:09:00.002-05:00

As a close follow-up to a posting last month, I have digitally published a second collection of work utilizing Flickr.

It was written around the same time as my previous collection, but because of its theme and style differences, called for its own grouping.

Thank you and enjoy.

Goodbye Jukebox

2009-02-24T09:46:00.001-05:00

Given up to Lake Michigan’s stomach.
The green bottom.
Green of cat’s eyes.
The air that hovers
above a hornet’s nest.
An ancient philosophy
brought you and I here together; the
timely togetherness of death’s ring.

It was born out of it and now I doodle
its figure in the margins of a napkin.

Exasperella

2009-02-23T10:55:00.001-05:00

The cat breathes audibly
while she
on the other hand
snores
and the
angel in the room goes blind with cataracts.
Horses whinny
when they hear the name of God.
Here I am in the birdhouse, the
shed, the
mineshaft. Here I am
in the straightjacket
poolhall
hospital bed. Los Angeles
stretches
its legs and
saddens me. Children
crawl
from the tar pits of La Brea.
I recall pasts
that aren’t mine. Dunces
walk
the streets as geniuses and mock me.
The white room
oscillates, the
jail of light, the moon rings
like an alarm clock. Prey in
my
cat’s mouth
is my father as a hand puppet...

She left it at my feet.
I do not
recognize him.

TV

2009-02-19T10:17:00.005-05:00

the dummies wear
bathrobes
while the president eats
bone marrow
salad.
the ranch is dead. bull
mastiffs
sniff the corpse
of
jughead’s sister.
mary ann never got
off the island. no one
voted
that way.

Who Knows

2009-02-19T10:17:00.001-05:00

It was he
who
ate his man
in bed
with
the lights all off
Murcury
giving
red light to the room and
everything around
it swollen.
like a porkified summer.
like the knees of
sinners. as the morning sun
picks a fight. daring
the night
to
eat as much without
so much
as a belch.

Valentine

2009-02-19T10:16:00.000-05:00

Left over. Left
with teeth marks in it. After
Ghandi proved
it was violent. A knife
shaved his whiskers
down
to mathematical impossibilities.
Clinton
gagged on the
pit of a peach.

Curmudgeon

2009-02-18T14:18:00.001-05:00

Some people say
they
don’t like people
but when I say it I
really
mean it. I
don’t.
It isn’t anger. It’s
just a preference. People
bring about
such a
gooey trail of damage.
Inflicted
by
friends, teachers, bosses, the
government, enter-
tainment, and most of all, our
parents.
Loving and
eating us up, butchering
us with their love so
that we really
don’t
stand a chance.
We are stormed
by the glow
of
day. By the
skeleton’s face
in the mirror. The chair
at midnight like
one’s own bones. Murky
in their puddling. Masters
of empty clouds, anaesthetized. And
you know
that the future is a weed
covered
island in cold, choppy water
made of salt and iron
and it will only warm itself to you
once
you’ve given in; disarmed; laid
back and allowed
its mystery to greet you with
trust—as in
trusting
a cougar crouching in the
tree above you; or with its
fangs and tongue at your throat—trust
that this is occurring not in
your control or
anyone’s
celestial, divine or
terrestrial.

The Weed Gatherer - Poems by C. Kursel

2009-02-09T08:19:00.004-05:00

I have digitally published a collection of poems entitled "The Weed Gatherer," utilizing www.flickr.com.

Many of these poems have appeared in this blog, and three have been published nationally. However, here they are revised and organized, including cover art.

Epitaph

2009-01-29T09:52:00.003-05:00

Grace

2009-01-28T13:17:00.002-05:00

In the undone sink of dishes. In
The full cat box.
In the telephone with no dial tone.
In the hurting of your loved one, or the
Total exhaustion of spirit.
That means you’ve been through something.
And there is grace in it.
There is exercise in the heavens.
There is not stillness—ever—there is no
Such thing as fear, doubt or false
Intentions.
There is grace in the single cricket facing death in an alleyway
As he sings you, city dweller, to sleep.
In the cold remnants of a great meal. In
The temperature dropping below freezing.

Every day it arrives. This
Sharpening
Of the soul.

Always

2009-01-28T13:17:00.001-05:00

I am there in the bed
on
top of the covers
waiting for the thunder to start
so I can
go to the closet and
retrive an umbrella. Go down
and wait
to open it
for a
few seconds
while the rain lands on my head. There’s always
that. The cold rain.
There’s always anger and
being pissed off in the evenings too.
Screaming
silently at the wall, gesturing
at the dumb blank wall.
There’s always the cat in the morning
jumping onto bed and
I don’t want to touch her
though she hasn’t been touched in two or three days
so I’ll give in.
There’s always telephone numbers
and websites and the tunnels
between them that
people dig.
The RMV and City Hall.
Parking permits and broken
washing
machines and visits
from our parents.
There’s always the neighbor
watering her flowers
from a red can in a tanktop and shorts and
her lopsided hair, telling me about her
deceased dog and
psychics. And the men power
sanding
and sawing and making plans for buildings
and buildings that will be changed or
destroyed, and the wealthy
dogs
with their women and the poor crazy men
with bandaged fingers
waiting for change at the laundromat.

There’s always all of that.

And there’s me and then there’s
you and there’s
the both of us.

I don’t feel them though. I only feel
you in the bed, and the fan
blowing on me
and the quietness of the new apartment
we’ve moved
into together, and that
little sound under my ribs that’s
already
starting while it’s still dark.
That little sound of day
in me
that will
stand up when I stand up, and start to
boil
when I go outside and it will bubble
till I go to sleep with you, you
there you are,
and a few stars will still be in between leaves
and the cat will hop upon our bed.

There’s that every day.

What I'm Doing

2009-01-16T09:59:00.003-05:00

Now is when it’s
most
important.
When it
seems useless, or
impossible.
Where the end of one
night
accordions forward
years, years
and looks
itself in the face
and
with
remorse, accepts
its fate.
When the mirror
turns
its back on you.
When you dream of swimming in tar with
the mammoths and
saber
tooth tigers.
This is when. This is it.
When time is no one
and
nothing worth loving. When
there
is but one of you.
One plum on the earth.

The Intimacy Of Time

2009-01-16T09:59:00.001-05:00

You stare at the long-nosed

witch doctor.

It stares back.

Val

2009-01-16T09:56:00.001-05:00

I liked Val because he
didn’t say anything. He just
asked me what I wanted done
and I’d respond in whatever fashion
I could muster; a little bit here, shorter
here etc. And then he’d go to work.
First, he’d fold my collar down
and wrap a length of gauze at my throat. Then
he’d pick up his shears and tap them a few
times against the comb.
Val worked fast, even around the ears. I knew
he wouldn’t cut me. He was a pro.
He had a few strange pictures of sickly
adolescents on his stand. One of a woman
I presumed to be his wife. A
cell phone. Cash tips. A magazine clipping
featuring the shop. I liked Val
because he didn’t say anything. Except, when
he was all done, he’d back away and lift his hands
and say: Now you are new again.

Following It

2009-01-12T17:32:00.001-05:00

I go to the door, check the lock again.
Poke through the mail.
The city is quiet out there. It sleeps
under blankets of conflict and doubt.
Observe a faint rectangle of light
on the kitchen tile, follow it to its source.
End up this time at the window
watching the half-eaten moon.

The not knowing
of what’s coming is very present;
what can possibly be generated
out of this still air, this block of salt.
What areas can be encircled; what inventions
are even possible.

Dry Wood

2009-01-12T17:28:00.001-05:00

Can it either open or close, or both? Does it have hands?
Can it be both large and small, like childhood?
I held it in my mouth like an acorn; the sameness of both sizes.
Hands on a gray rock, a fly, one strip of grass.
Can its waves cross the desk and touch me?
My father glued them in place.
In doing that, he opened it, and he closed it.
His hands occurred and then they died, while
the ocean indifferently watched.
Back to etiquette.
Bow to the forehead of time, seagull, swinging
through the snow like a block on a rope.
The beach turned and regarded its people.
They were invisible and sat cross-legged like monks.
Drank glasses of milk big as Stonehenge.
Why does the brain consent to something so outlandish?
It reiterates nonsense like facts, it kisses doom on the prick.
The forest on the outskirts stands steady as a priest.
Clues in the rainbows of skulls, the prism interred.

Animals

2009-01-06T11:46:00.003-05:00

A colossal bird came down
to be
the feeder of the whale. Each
moment passing, some bit of him
breaking off.
Coming loose from my
loose descriptions.
Drawers of silver
spoons and knives.
The bloody composition of
the sun
cooking its own head.
Forbearance. With balloons
tugging at our wrists
like dead tethered
planets
haunting earth…

we
all have plans
to die.

Not just make it there
but
actually do it.

Celebrate with a small
gathering of wilted relatives,
plum pits, music and
the firing of a
pop gun.

Serves you right.

There must have been something
all this time
as life
coagulated at the joints.

As evil men walked through knee-high evil
with pickaxes on their shoulders, and
sunk them into
newly
finished graves, calling out for
their mothers.

Near and far. In a
flatland called Medea. Her name
stitched
on maps. Sirens all night.
And the deep, macabre woof
of a dog

I’ve never seen. He brings
something to me in my sleep. Is it

the bone of my aunt Marnie?
Is it the bone she lost
when
she tumbled off
her bicycle?

The spotted moon limps through
the rotted door.

Entangled and newborn out of the hair of the universe.

That aimless glow-eyed animal
that prowls

the courtyard.

Now It's Nothing

2009-01-06T11:46:00.001-05:00

A window.
A Japanese Kimono closed against its
skin--white as apple flesh.
Nothing like a surgeon’s poison.
Nothing like a block of ice; like a salt-lick; like an undertaker’s dream.
Two nothings on top of one nothing.
I am nothing…
Now that’s a nocturnal idea. That idea has no teeth. That idea
is as complicated as a tarantula, with eight eyes
and as many legs, hairy as a dog.
That faint aroma of your mother’s perfume is very real
even though you’re six or seven states away. That’s nothing.
Nothing fleeing nothing.
Losing in a battle of zero.
A murderer’s eye with you in it, like the bloody seed of a tomato.
Your deceased cat come back to life, you swear it.
Your father’s urn crawling out of its grave.

These are characters who cry and we are addicted to their pain.
Their pain is a synonym for our own.

I am quiet as an ocean tonight.

Our brains consent to our deaths,

which is proof that they are indifferent to us.

Voices In The Blue Hills

2008-12-08T17:01:00.001-05:00

This is the place for translation.

For making rubbings of
things into other things, other forms.

Where the skull gets translated
as leaf and log, where lists of my gentry
are unraveled
and dispersed like seedpods. Where gravestones

sprout like hens of the forest.

All around me is the unbrushed
hair of years. Bunched, yellowed. This, too,

gets translated

into words and bodies
as I lunch in the abandoned stone house.

Why have I brought these terrible
apples here

to eat alone?

It is with this question that I continue
with my work. Push the softened

blue hills at their rest
to mold with
future’s unloving blueprints.

How Many Of Me

2008-12-08T16:59:00.001-05:00

How many of me were there
when I came out?
Flailing and reaching with
how many hands
at the glowing streams of light,
eyes flickering
to the
tunes of autumn?

And was it a terror
to see me there, upside-
down and shaking, gargantuan
mass of myself
so gustily birthed, with so many limbs
and so many eyes, and to
kill all but one
and
allow it to leave?

One ingenious invention
from the
billion-celled
ocean.

How many of me did you drown?
Bury without marker?
Did their toenails drag when you
hanged them? And with how much
rope?

There is, somewhere,
a photo album entirely of my
portraiture. My
likenesses;
which, every moment, expands
and enfolds.

Will they march with me through the years?
Twins masked
by the blurred cone of time’s hat.
Roaming like invisible clocks.

A layer of feathers
growing upon me in equal number to they,
and to years.

It is good to die with
eyes open, they say—and my eyes
were open. Taking
stock of the
moods and allegories of this world,
this sparkler in the green night
towed behind us.

Learning To Write With My Left Hand

2008-12-08T16:57:00.000-05:00

In the dark, frost coated blue.

Fish meander
about in the
tank, dulled blades of the tropics,
murmuring
in only
cheap silences.

I wait and watch my brain
record its solemn, loyal functioning;
oh, how cute. How brave.

Muscles twitch like violin strings.

The lamp just
went out
in the neighbor’s window.
I didn’t even know it was
on to begin with.

And that box of tissues on the
bequeathed dresser
looks almost morose; but maybe
that’s just because
I know who brought it there.

The Postcard

2008-11-17T09:35:00.001-05:00

Someone probably paid a little money for it.
I didn’t pay much. Three for a dollar out of a shoebox
in a maritime chopshop. The sign said
“Relatives For Sale.”
Then a stack of old postcards
in see-through envelopes. Photographs of people
all of which I figured were long dead. The ghost-like
faces of children. Women in black dresses
at the beach. A family on the bumper of an automobile.
One man standing proudly with only a
foggy lake behind him.
This one had been tinted blue and given a decorative border.
And in the middle, two people from the stomachs up
kissing. The man almost shorter than the lady,
as she seemed to bend to him.
Her face merely a profile, his more
of the whole thing. Taken by surprise, I think,
a tight and flat pucker to his mouth.
Whereas she had full control of her grace and love.
Or the appearance of it. Softer. Her sweater buttoned
to her sternum. Daring in what
corner of her eye could be seen. On the back, a space
for a message. And a space for an address.
Neither one filled in. Rather, sideways along the top in
blue pen written: Josie and Luther Goreman
Taken in Wilder, Tenn
about 1920

We had a few short
happy years together.

I have since wondered about Josie and Luther Goreman.
Who was it that arranged this photograph? Said, alright
now kiss you two. Said, we’d like it blue please. Or maybe that
was just the blueness of time. Who wrote
the message I’ve read so often? Summed things up
with such courage and simplicity. Was it Josie,
or was it Luther?
Whose fence is it
behind them? And why were their happy years
together so short?

I’ve also come to think, since I purchased this piece
of paper so long ago in that damp, quiet store in winter--
among maps and hooks and buoys, harpoons and
wheels as tall as me, a full scuba suit in one corner
a hundred years old with a skull behind the cross
hatched mask--that it is my most beloved and prized
thing. That I will keep track of it, of
The Goremans,
for the rest of my life.

The Lying Web Of Shadows

2008-11-17T09:32:00.002-05:00

A cat with no face appears in the window--and I’m on the third floor in here.
The houseplants are whimpering little blades
that chatter like prisoners.

She’s pregnant--belly full ‘a eyeless numbers.
She grooms her fur with her little jackknife of a tongue, and I tremble.

Can’t help but think this is a
threat of some sort, some implication
at my demise.

“I’ll call the fucking cops!” I shout.

Then

without much noise, a woman enters the room
and lets her clothes
slide off

like ice sheets melting into the Arctic.

“What on earth is it?” She asks.
“You look concerned.”

The Something

2008-11-07T14:48:00.001-05:00

The thought has a thing, and sun is a blinking eye
Coerced into the long stare at her children. Wind pauses
For reverence at our eulogy, as if anyone cares,
Which if brief, formal and boring.
Pigeons throw their voices like ventriloquists, a
Boy bounces one green grape infinitely.
This memory as thought as thing; the idea as
being a thing once
And only once;

A blind man rolls a cigarette and invents language.
What’s the difference? He’s been sold, but a useless slave.
He does not remember a motel outside Pittsburgh.

The dark cozies up to the dark there. Only our night continues.
In the night, there are not only pictures, but figures.
Not many nights but one after the other. A sequence of nights.
And imagined forms, and nostalgia.
Memory clips the wings of the ocean. A certain
Immaculateness brightens them, hurries us along to the water.

Brownish white, Egypt crawls out of the cave
With its body wrapped in sack-cloth.

The stars are merely pygmies.