Trevor

selection from Trevor
by Ocean Vuong

Trevor the hunter. Trevor the carnivore, the redneck, not

 a pansy, shotgunner, sharpshooter, not fruit or fairy. Trevor the meateater but not

veal. Never veal. Fuck that, never again after his daddy told him the story when he was seven, at the table, veal roasted with rosemary. How they were made. How the difference between veal & beef is the children. The veal are the children

of cows, are calves. They are locked in boxes the size of themselves. A body-box, like a coffin, but alive, like a home. The children, the veal, they stand very still because tenderness depends on how little the world touches you. To stay tender, the weight of your life cannot lean on your bones.

We love eatin what’s soft, his father said, looking dead

into Trevor’s eyes. Trevor who would never eat a child. Trevor the child with the scar on his neck like a comma. A comma you now

//

put your mouth to. That violet hook holding two complete thoughts, two complete bodies without subjects. Only verbs.


Read all of it here. 

The Return Of Odysseus

 The Return Of Odysseus by George Bilgere

When Odysseus finally does get home
he is understandably upset about the suitors,
who have been mooching off his wife for twenty years,
drinking his wine, eating his mutton, etc.
In a similar situation today he would seek legal counsel.
But those were different times. With the help
of his son Telemachus he slaughters roughly
one hundred and ten suitors
and quite a number of young ladies,
although in view of their behavior
I use the term loosely. Rivers of blood
course across the palace floor.

I too have come home in a bad mood.
Yesterday, for instance, after the department meeting,
when I ended up losing my choice parking spot
behind the library to the new provost.

I slammed the door. I threw down my book bag
in this particular way I have perfected over the years
that lets my wife understand
the contempt I have for my enemies,
which is prodigious. And then with great skill
she built a gin and tonic
that would have pleased the very gods,
and with epic patience she listened
as I told her of my wrath, and of what I intended to do
to so-and-so, and also to what's-his-name.

And then there was another gin and tonic
and presently my wrath abated and was forgotten,
and peace came to reign once more
in the great halls and courtyards of my house.


https://nerdfighteria.info/audio/dearhankandjohn/226031596

From Cyrano deBergerac

"You…you have... hmm .…..a very large nose!"

"Ah no! That’s too brief, young man!
You might have said…Oh!… a hundred things, to plan
by varying the tone ... for example just suppose…
Aggressive: ‘I, Sir, if I had such a nose,
I’d have it amputated on the spot!’
Friendly: ‘But it must drown itself a lot,
you need a drinking-bowl of a special shape!’
Descriptive: ‘It’s a rock! ... A peak! ... A cape!
What’s that, it’s a cape?….. It’s a peninsular!’
Curious: ‘That oblong bag what’s it serve you for?
A sheath for scissors? Or a writing case?’
Gracious: ‘Do you love the winged race
so much, that you benignly set yourself
to provide their little claws with a shelf!’......
- That’s an idea, sir, of what you might have said,
if you’d an ounce of wit or letters in your head:
but of wit, O most lamentable creature
you’ve never had an atom, and you feature
three letters only, and those three spell: Ass!
And were your wit of sufficient class,
to aim a single foolish pleasantry,
at me, in front of all this noble gallery,
you’d not have been allowed to speak a quarter
of the least beginning of a single one of them, for
though I aim them at myself, so wittily,
I don’t let any man aim them at me!"

I saw Cyrano at Portland Center Stage and got this text from the full text of the 1897 play here. 

This is Your Home Now

This Your Home Now

Mark Doty, 1953

For years I went to the Peruvian barbers on 18th Street
—comforting, welcome: the full coatrack,
three chairs held by three barbers,

oldest by the window, the middle one
a slight fellow who spoke an oddly feminine Spanish,
the youngest last, red-haired, self-consciously masculine,

and in each of the mirrors their children’s photos,
smutty cartoons, postcards from Machu Picchu.
I was happy in any chair, though I liked best

the touch of the eldest, who’d rest his hand
against my neck in a thoughtless, confident way.
Ten years maybe. One day the powdery blue

steel shutters pulled down over the window and door,
not to be raised again. They’d lost their lease.
I didn’t know how at a loss I’d feel;

this haze around what I’d like to think
the sculptural presence of my skull
requires neither art nor science,

but two haircuts on Seventh, one in Dublin,
nothing right.
                            Then (I hear my friend Marie
laughing over my shoulder, saying In your poems

there’s always a then, and I think,  Is it a poem
without a then?) dull early winter, back on 18th,
upspiraling red in a cylinder of glass, just below the line

of sidewalk, a new sign, WILLIE’S BARBERSHOP.
Dark hallway, glass door, and there’s (presumably) Willie.
When I tell him I used to go down the street

he says in an inscrutable accent, This your home now,
puts me in a chair, asks me what I want and soon he’s clipping
and singing with the radio’s Latin dance tune.

That’s when I notice Willie’s walls,
though he’s been here all of a week, spangled with images
hung in barber shops since the beginning of time:

lounge singers, near-celebrities, random boxers
—Italian boys, Puerto Rican, caught in the hour
of their beauty, though they’d scowl at the word.

Cheering victors over a trophy won for what?
Frames already dusty, at slight angles,
here, it is clear, forever. Are barbershops

like aspens, each sprung from a common root
ten thousand years old, sons of one father,
holding up fighters and starlets to shield the tenderness

at their hearts? Our guardian Willie defies time,
his chair our ferryboat, and we go down into the trance
of touch and the skull-buzz drone

singing cranial nerves in the direction of peace,
and so I understand that in the back
of this nothing building on 18th Street
                                                   —I’ve found that door

ajar before, in daylight, when it shouldn’t be,
some forgotten bulb left burning in a fathomless shaft
of my uncharted nights—
                                                   the men I have outlived

await their turns, the fevered and wasted, whose mothers
and lovers scattered their ashes and gave away their clothes.
Twenty years and their names tumble into a numb well

—though in truth I have not forgotten one of you,
may I never forget one of you—these layers of men,
arrayed in their no-longer-breathing ranks.

Willie, I have not lived well in my grief for them;
I have lugged this weight from place to place
as though it were mine to account for,

and today I sit in your good chair, in the sixth decade
of my life, and if your back door is a threshold
of the kingdom of the lost, yours is a steady hand

on my shoulder. Go down into the still waters
of this chair and come up refreshed, ready to face the avenue.
Maybe I do believe we will not be left comfortless.

After everything comes tumbling down or you tear it down
and stumble in the shadow-valley trenches of the moon,
there’s a still a decent chance at—a barber shop,

salsa on the radio, the instruments of renewal wielded,
effortlessly, and, who’d have thought, for you.
Willie if he is Willie fusses much longer over my head

than my head merits, which allows me to be grateful
without qualification. Could I be a little satisfied?
There’s a man who loves me. Our dogs. Fifteen,

twenty more good years, if I’m a bit careful.
There’s what I haven’t written. It’s sunny out,
though cold.  After I tip Willie

I’m going down to Jane Street, to a coffee shop I like,
and then I’m going to write this poem. Then


Found here. 

Lemon

Lemon ~ U2

A man builds a city with banks and cathedrals
A man melts the sands so he can see the world outside
You're gonna meet her there
A man makes a car
She's your destination
And builds a road to run them on
You gotta get to her
A man dreams of leaving
She's imagination
But he always stays behind

Watch the video of this song and another with a bit more accessible poetry here. 

About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter

About My Very Tortured Friend, Peter
By Charles Bukowski

he lives in a house with a swimming pool

and says the job is

killing him.

he is 27. I am 44. I can’t seem to

get rid of

him. his novels keep coming

back. “what do you expect me to do?” he screams

“go to New York and pump the hands of the

publishers?”

“no,” I tell him, “but quit your job, go into a

small room and do the

thing.”

“but I need ASSURANCE, I need something to

go by, some word, some sign!”

“some men did not think that way:

Van Gogh, Wagner—”

“oh hell, Van Gogh had a brother who gave him

paints whenever he

needed them!”

“look,” he said, “I’m over at this broad’s house today and

this guy walks in. a salesman. you know

how they talk. drove up in this new

car. talked about his vacation. said he went to

Frisco—saw Fidelio up there but forgot who

wrote it. now this guy is 54 years

old. so I told him: ‘Fidelio is Beethoven’s only

opera.’ and then I told

him: ‘you’re a jerk!’ ‘whatcha mean?’ he

asked. ‘I mean, you’re a jerk, you’re 54 years old and

you don’t know anything!’”

“what happened

then?”

“I walked out.”

“you mean you left him there with

her?”

“yes.”

“I can’t quit my job,” he said. “I always have trouble getting a

job. I walk in, they look at me, listen to me talk and

they think right away, ah ha! he’s too intelligent for

this job, he won’t stay

so there’s really no sense in hiring

him.

now, YOU walk into a place and you don’t have any trouble:

you look like an old wino, you look like a guy who needs a

job and they look at you and they think:

ah ha!: now here’s a guy who really needs work! if we hire

him he’ll stay a long time and work

HARD!”

“do any of those people,” he asks “know you are a

writer, that you write poetry?”

“no.”

“you never talk about

it. not even to

me! if I hadn’t seen you in that magazine I’d

have never known.”

“that’s right.”

“still, I’d like to tell these people that you are a

writer.”

“I’d still like to

tell them.”

“why?”

“well, they talk about you. they think you are just a

horseplayer and a drunk.”

“I am both of those.”

“well, they talk about you. you have odd ways. you travel alone.

I’m the only friend you

have.”

“yes.”

“they talk you down. I’d like to defend you. I’d like to tell

them you write

poetry.”

“leave it alone. I work here like they

do. we’re all the same.”

“well, I’d like to do it for myself then. I want them to know why

I travel with

you. I speak 7 languages, I know my music—”

“forget it.”

“all right, I’ll respect your

wishes. but there’s something else—”

“what?”

“I’ve been thinking about getting a

piano. but then I’ve been thinking about getting a

violin too but I can’t make up my

mind!”

“buy a piano.”

“you think

so?”

“yes.”

he walks away

thinking about

it.

I was thinking about it

too: I figure he can always come over with his

violin and more

sad music.


Found on the American Poetry Foundation website here.