poem

Memorizing Rilke, Reciting Mallarme

April 8, 2015March 20, 2018 ericryangrant

Pooling together what we know is first order.
We move forward in each others languages
or not at all.

I am memorizing Rilke, not so far up the shore.
You recite Mallarme over my nervous meditation.

Together, we are mincing the obtuseness of our genetics,
while I down a million heartworms. Later,
we can pillage the rent of other fabrics
aside from language, form, semantic obliteration.

Read another passage out loud, I say,
neverminding the words being lost as tickets. I realize
I am only here
to hear
you.

Let’s stop being those people right now
paradies of promise
pioneers steering away from pnemonic pasttime.
It’s time to retire these sinking alphabets and not crumble down with it.

One day, when I am
old enough, rich enough, stable enough
with fame that marks my face another poetic geography
I’ll return these messages to you

And the pooling will no longer be a delusion
but togetherness I’ve founded
that’s easy
and bare.

April [1/15]

Each Tunnel Like A Vacuum

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 ericryangrant

Each Tunnel Like A Vacuum: on reading Eric Grant’s work, circa 2009

In one line, from October 2009, you asked if life were worth the marathon. Well, I’m not going to answer that
For you, though I can negotiate some semblance of balance
Between you and I on that subject.

I am coming closer to the roses, you see,
Each tunnel like a vacuum
Expresswaying me halfway across the hemisphere and sometimes
The mere thought of a new currency tramples me. I cannot seem
To shake the wilderness’s wildness from my mind, it is un-understandable,
A fuck in a foreign language that is gone far too soon.

I remember the days when we apologized to mirrors and these
Are not those days. Sure, things still explode,
But something is always exploding. No longer is there a fear of faking
The fall so I can get-back-on the hero wagon and carry the horse.

Here’s the honesty I promised you years ago,
draped in courage-blood:
You can’t strangle a moment until your fingers fall off. You just can’t.
Each one will pass standardly and, unless you fight it,
Each voyage will feel vacant. I’ve fought it
For you, and each speck of our shared future’s history.

The best moments, though, I can tell you about those:
When beauty passionately and nakedly sits stagnant
and my (American) blue eyes watch our own smothered plans
lie flat and stretch over miles and miles and miles
until I cannot see them anymore.

Punch, by Justin Richardson

September 25, 2013September 23, 2013 ericryangrantLeave a comment

For years a secret shame destroyed my peace–

I’d not read Eliot, Auden or MacNeice.

But then I had a thought that brought me hope–

Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.

– Justin Richardson, Punch, 1952

“The Lost Hotels of Paris” by Jack Gilbert

September 22, 2013September 12, 2013 ericryangrantLeave a comment

The Lord gives everything and charges

by taking it back. What a bargain.

Like being young for a while. We are

allowed to visit hearts of women,

to go into their bodies so we feel

no longer alone. We are permitted

romantic love with its bounty and half-life

of two years. It is right to mourn

for the small hotels of Paris that used to be

when we use to be. My mansard looking

down on Notre Dame every morning is gone,

and me listening to the bell at night.

Venice is no more. The best Greek islands

have drowned in acceleration. But it’s the having

not the keeping that is the treasure.

Ginsberge came to my house one afternoon

and said he was giving up poetry

because it told lies, that language distorts.

I agreed, but asked what we have

that gets it right even that much.

We look up at the stars and they are

not there. We see the memory

of when they were, once upon a time.

And that too is more than enough.

– “The Lost Hotels of Paris” by Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert on women

July 8, 2013July 7, 2013 ericryangrantLeave a comment

“We are allowed

women so we can get into bed with the Lord,

however partial and momentary that is.”

(Gilbert also wrote: “I relish the physical surface of a woman, but I am importantly haunted by the ghost inside.”