LIKE A ROSE, LIKE A CROSS
My father
in the garage at 1 a.m.
smoking cigars
with Spanish music
on the radio
my father
nervous in restaurants
and department stores
his disappointment with the world
shining in his eyes
and a rage that has no name
always just beneath the surface
my father's silence like a hand grenade
my father's fist
through the kitchen window
my father fighting a war inside his head
fifty years after the fact
my father
the son of a drunken preacher
married to a catholic woman
hating god
my father at the dinner table
telling stories
no one understood
my father singing sad songs
in a strange language
pulling weeds from the yard
my father looking as uncomfortable
in photographs as he did in life
my father's face in my mirror
my father's blood in my veins
my father's voice in my throat
my father's name
is my name
I carry it like a rose
like a cross
my father's death
a seed inside me
blooming
into the strangest of flowers.
Continued...
THE WORLD AS I SEE IT HALF DRUNK AT 12:22 A.M.
I sit and stare at walls
while bittersweet music
plays.
This is almost all
I would take from life,
but she is in the other room
calling for me
to come to bed,
but I don't want to come to bed.
I only want to stare at walls
watching a dead spider still hanging
in its own web
while bittersweet music
plays.
And what I've never understood about the world
is why it never wants to let you
do this kind of thing.
It always wants you to come to bed
when you only want to stare at walls
or perhaps walk out into darkness
to nowhere in particular
or maybe drink one more bottle of wine
as you listen to the world decay,
but this somehow seems
too impossible
too simple
to explain.
So I will take one last drink
and go to bed
where she will ask me
what the hell it is
I have been doing,
and I will tell her
nothing.
YOUR OWN BLOODY HANDS
Let it be known
I've enough of my own crimes
and have no desire
to answer for those
of others.
The crimes of man
the crimes of history
were none of my invention.
They bore and disgust me as much
as they do you.
I was not consulted
or asked for advice
when Hitler marched on Paris.
I was home asleep when the blind girl was raped.
The children in the quiet village
were murdered
without my permission.
I was 300 years unborn
while the witches burned.
I lack the imagination
and ambition
for such things.
I only want to watch the sky through windows
on rainy afternoons.
My own crimes
are common and paltry
little things,
hardly worthy
of history books.
But they are, at least, my own.
THE GIRL ON THE PHONE IS SAD
She says
the cat is ill
and sometimes she misses me
too much
these days she feels like crying
almost all the time
when the conversation ends
I am sad as well
the girl in the other room
she too is sad
drinking blue gin from a plastic mug
I somehow feel responsible for this
this sadness that whirls around me
as if I were its sun
if I could I would
contain it all within myself
so that it might leave
the others be
not because I want to be jesus
simply because
I have made a kind of peace with it
for others it seems harder
I lie in bed and watch her back
move with the rhythm
of her breathing
I hold her hand in the darkness
and listen to her tears
and the sadness whirls around.
William Taylor Jr. is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Anise, and a cat named Trouble. He is the author of several chapbooks, including: "Any Abyss Will Do, "The Sad Dumb Beauty of Everything, "The Bones of Things", and "So Much Is Burning". He was a contributing writer to "Last Call: The Legacy of Charles Bukowski (Lummox Press). He will one day be the last man in America not to own a cell phone.
You may purchase "Words For Songs Never Written" HERE, through Centennial Press, and contact William via myspace.
All the above poems have been taken from "Words For Songs Never Written" (Centennial Press, 2007).
Last update : 19-03-2008 14:54
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