The American Idlers
By
Cloud Buchholz
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Cloud Buchholz on Smashwords
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Edition 1.2
Copyright © 2010 by Cloud Buchholz
All rights reserved.
Edition 1.2 Notes [3-30-2011]
-added 5 new poems
-revised 3 poems
-fixed poem title font
-fixed linked footnotes
-fixed and updated Table of Contents
-minor tweaks and improvements
A full Edition History can be found at the end of this ebook
No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.
George Washington, First Inaugural Address, Apr. 30, 1789
America is a nation with a mission, and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace -- a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom.
George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Jan. 20, 2004
late
I think of you sometimes
because I forget not to and
my chest feels like a pair of sandals on the beach
waiting for bare feet
I know you exist somewhere outside of my head
where words drift through the gaps in teeth
and skin is a prophylactic for the soul
but I am here, adjusting my glasses
and my tongue like a child's toy
that needs to be wound
I don't know how to say I love you
but I know the sun is warm and the wind is soft
and that you are as good as both, and better
[10-4-2010]
watching you tan
I am a used calendar always
off a few days but still
useful for children learning
to count
[7-26-2010]
the romantic
I met a door that squeaked
so loud the neighbors woke
and so I burned the walls
around the frame to leave
some chocolates on your bed
XOXO
[7-26-2010]
Like Drunk You Wrapped Me Up
you think in pieces like a Ferrari
parted-out dress
all hiked up my eyes wire
cutters for your nylons spread
eagle on my telephone
line leaving me like a box
of puppies outside a
super market bonding
with grocery bags
[3-26-09]
A Good 1st Date
I would like to see
you wearing steam
from the shower with your
hair in a towel tossed
back rubbing water
from your eyes half
closed and carefree
[4-11-08]
Left on Purpose
a tuft of hair
a tier of blond I thimble
around my finger
It falls in stereo
a rudder to your eyes
the blue of which I maim
with blinks
I am no savant, too primal is my touch
too pungent is my smile
like the sombrero I should never wear
[4-29-06]
I’m Buttoned at the Neck without a Tie
you’re sandals and sweatpants
your clothes are frozen candy wrappers
I pull off piece by piece
the sheets find the wedging
between your toes
courting the idea like
investing in the Zeppelin
we move together like
sitting on a straw-bottomed chair
until the seat falls through
the windows are in bloom
so let’s break the hinges
my hair isn’t dead at the roots
but like the sidewalk
it’s the boundary of something
like gripping a stair rail in the dark
the stutter of your foot finding air
I like your hair in braids
you have a nice neck
rules of animal-etiquette like
a diagram of a baseball field
I hold my call lean
into myself and say
hello
you say
[4-3-06 for Colleen]
Too Pretty to Eat Unaccompanied
DNA folding back on
itself spontaneous
proteins activate
ORC binding the shape
changing and we one
and one are simultaneous
[2-7-08]
Love Poem?
sometimes it's good to give
up before she says take me
home
[9-6-08]
Your New Pillow Shams
there’s no sheets to sleep
summer sweating the
leg hairs cling angled
like a spider walking
toward the crotch unseen
and slow stumbling the dog
curls behind your knees with
dreams of bones and puppy
butts
[4-18-08]
Closeness
I’m a nightlight left on
all day, like when you steal
the covers and I feel cold
because someone has to.
[7-26-2010]
We Should Age
counting backwards how hide & seek starts
the way the blind rub the notches of their watch
or the rusted chair that doesn’t close
like the grass that grows on sidewalks and
how the neighbors talk about the grass
that grows on sidewalks
like yellow spotted leaves brown tipped and eaten through
or taking-in commercial breaks between the news
the way dishes dry in the strainer
like the sweat that stains the bottom of a friend’s
Notre Dame baseball hat
like the toys we put in boxes
and give away
[5-27-08]
I'm a Kindergartner with Safety Scissors
watching with a weathered smile
the way your lips curl
around the red of an apple,
I think of you naked
like in the garden of God
my rib’s perfect reflection
[10-31-05]
Evening in the Summer Time
feels like you
lighting me like the orange moon and
a moment's twilight red and cobalt
blue with warm breezes the horizon goes
you come
and me too
[4-25-07 for Jasmine]
Lazy like the Tips of Her
Sometimes, when I think of you,
I feel like a towel full of sand
that’s shaken into the shore,
idling on the beach until the ocean rises
to carry me to some far off place.
I am complacent to watch the days graze
the edges of me, to leave me placid
and self-contained, but sometimes,
when I think of you,
my thoughts are dismantled and shipped
to all the places you might go.
I am like a wave that has been kicked
into one thousand tiny pieces,
hoping just one droplet reaches you
before returning.
Sometimes, when I think of you,
you are like the heat of a fevered forehead,
pulling back an open palm of sweat
and I am waiting like a child-
proof bottle of pills.
[3-17-2011]
Until We’re Forming the Same Letters
like last looks
seeing you in the white
dress with Karin and
your brunette roots grown
back “omg you sluts
look hot!!!” the way you burn a camp
fire or swim with ankles and shins
in Lake Michigan I would have
been the Chicago sky watching
you tan but someday damnit
we’ll be poetry together smoking
somewhere in the US like
the hookah you painted in Iowa
or Nashville before ladies night
[12-11-07]
No Love Making Wednesday
she touches her stomach
surviving used babies she
thieves thank you's and
more thank you's they say
that's a good name he got
she hears a dozen
new religions moving her
eyes to the tips
of radio towers like
drunk birds waiting
to migrate her breasts
never got swollen she
thinks he'll notice and
be disappointed
[3-24-09]
Two Beer Cans Barely Touching
like the bottle
caps collected at
age five you
find her thinking
as you are and
as she was
[7-2-06]
Bandages
instinctively we breathe
plunging our bodies into motion
before judging the effects
of a lung’s worth of air
I bite my nails until they bleed
momentum of my habits
the telephone cuts onions
the idea and the impulse remain
a rabbit came running, came to keep company
the lion was fed and sedated before
it entered the cage
dialog with memory
like jousting lances quick to reach
the reproduction of themselves
back to the original
the ashtrays are brimming
I take my hand away
gently light a cigarette and
watch the smoke sift
inventory of what we find about
the body the force we resist
torrents of tendency
the girl at the counter smiles
I say it’s colder now
we touch objects pinned up
in a towel of experience
unity is lost in activity
the mind is impassible
I think we’ll manage
we should try and see
I just wanted to say
smoke spirals from my lips
the pressure of gauze
like snow crust
capturing card catalogs of reproductions
a collection of second-hand books
we read and read again
movement originates from a point of rest
comprehension shivers
she reaches out her hand
a helicopter passes overhead
I don’t notice
[2-27-06]
Your Earrings on My Windowsill
I feel like the quiet
breathing of sleep and
stucco walls
white with the windows
drawn on streetlights
gone
soft with
burnt filament
[12-12-07]
Sunday Evening on the Front Steps
I touch
you like a half
eaten apple drying
in the hand of
a sleeping afternoon
[7-2-06]
Tuesday
I slammed the door the other day;
a picture frame fell
the corners were cracked. I couldn’t rehang it.
A seascape Monet knockoff,
the kind you buy at the boardwalk.
It was nothing special, except that my mother hated it.
The glass was fine, the picture too.
It was just the boarder
that broke.
There was a little rectangle of white
on the sun-stained wall
[10-31-05]
The 2nd Year Anniversary
Here’s some flowers
I thought you’d like.
You should know,
they’re going to die
because I cut off their legs.
[7-26-2010]
Spilling Towards the Low Point of the Mattress
I am tired like
the pavement
leading to your door
[7-2-06]
The Love Song of
I.
another day
aching to eat and breathe
while I wait to take
the ripples from the sea
like all the works of days before
that have peeled paint
and gathered shells along the shore
or mornings with the window in the nook
the smell of apples in the sun
and bananas turning soft and brown
and how I thought of taking one
yesterday before you brought them home
II.
The couch cushions are soft from your hips
and how you lay like a morning stretch
then curl about the house like yellow smoke
the smoke that walks through narrow streets
and throws its empty shoes upon the beach
to count the seashells blue and white and red
so how should I presume to wait
and how should I begin
I took your slippers from the dog
and wiped the teeth marks off
and saved them for when you get home
III.
And there will be time to come
and go from room to room
through empty halls and half
shut doors to wonder do I dare
to turn back and wonder still
if your legs have grown too thin
to descend the stairs
or if you'll have me guide you down
with arms that wrap about you like a shawl
the years digress and malinger
but let us still talk of you and I
and cheap hotels and restaurants and
oyster-shells
there will be time after all
(you have said so yourself)
and I am waiting still
IV.
I have stood in the dooryards
and searched the sprinkled streets
to find you so meticulous
walking the stone paths each to each
you seem almost ridiculous
almost a fool but
that is not what I mean at all
V.
Should I hem the bottom of your white
flannel trousers or fix the part
in your hair or be of use
an easy tool
the tea kettle whistles
and I move to the noise
to pour a glass of something warm
to warm our throat and tongue and arms
and all our indecision
drying by the furnace
with your boots and socks
and melting snow
would you say it has been worthwhile
to know the mornings, evenings, and afternoons
to know them all already
can you say just what you mean
in a smile
VI.
I am tired of counting saints
like sheep to sleep so tired
of the moss that grows in cracks
along the fence or rain
that gathers oil in the street
and pools rainbows for our feet
and the wheels of our cars
I have heard you singing as you sleep
like the yellow smoke that lingers on the beach
but I know you do not dream for me
I have felt you turning in the sheets
and I have counted
the white hairs I have left to grow
if you hear a whisper as I leave
it was only to say goodnight
[10-21-07]
The Only Rule is Don't Be Boring
I have no declarations of my own
my life has come and gone
in rented homes
one night dreams
and library books
[9-30-07]
Being Single
she said I would be a great
wing man for Mike
I told her I had never
met Mike
she said it was ok Mike only
liked the ugly women
she said the pretty ones were
bitches but great in bed
I thought
she seemed nice
[6-2-08]
In This Houseful of Other Things
missing you is like running
out of toilet paper or drinking 12 cans of Coors Light
alone like a good first date that ends
with masturbation or the sweet syrup inside
the plastic wrapper of an Otter Pop tilting
your head back your hands pressing down
on the corners to open the slit but isn’t it
more like the porno I’ve never seen
the end of and I told myself I would never settle
for a love poem but that’s what missing you is
like a love poem I keep in my wallet
like a photograph I can’t throw out
[9-20-08]
I Have About 100 Pairs of Pajamas
biting like
an infant at love
and loving I learn
to suckle
or starve
[7-2-06]
I Think We All Agree, the Past is Over
like standing on tiptoes
or the way winter slows
into spring and how hollow
I am breast to back
like pulling canvas to a frame
with the love I wear on Sunday
or the streets at closing time
wanting the dimple of your elbow
and the warmth that it brings
but it seems (I think it seems)
I open like water pulsing in a drain
holding written resolutions
you have broken
into details this real
[3-21-07]
Singular
a telephone voice you talk eager
ringing and I a hand sliding the sound
into a pocket to be found
later like nickels in the dryer or
dollar bills crumpled clean am
a familiar voice wafered
to your ear
[2-7-08]
Like a Girl Walking Past Construction Workers
a new species found in a
trench 4,000 meters below sea
level through a crack in the earth’s
crust a carnivorous sea squirt
funnel-shaped and almost clear like
a Venus flytrap tethered to the sea
floor the Tasman Fracture they say
there’s just as much to study but
less to find with climate change
and CO2 levels on the rise and I
wonder if in Australia they care
about AIG giving more than 1 million
dollars each to 75 employees the
financial products division focused
on high-risk mortgage-backed
securities or user content rights in
the Facebook terms of service (which
is now revised) or the 70’s radical Sara
Jane Olson released from California
prison and her return to being a Minnesota
housewife or the green glass soda bottle
from the Mexican grill that’s
reflecting the sun into neon
lines along the windowsill and white
stucco walls where we
wait for a menu and
a place to sit
[3-17-09]
Sorry is the Kool-Aid of Human Emotions
blanketing
your feet for
warmth you lie
on the floor near