leonard gontarek
leonard gontarek
BRING ME THE HEAD OF BILLY COLLINS
1
Salt on the lip from the sea somewhere.
Where’s the music? Wasn’t there supposed to be music?
The rain, heavy, slants and glints, drops dark. hard.
The weather (heat) is a prison. Only thing that gets us through is sleep and sex,
sweaty, real and imagined. Female guards. Inspired. Only God would think of
that. It won’t always be like this.
But, what will it be like? Revolution, baby. Poetry is anger and stage blood.
Government is for losers. Bring me the head of Billy Collins!
Eat a too hot flour and pepper stew from the skull. Pot a night-blooming cereus in it later.
See it on the first step of the palace. The rest filled with candles.
All night wind whistles through the machine-gun riddled façade.
Parts of the wall fall occasionally like markers in the cemetery as the temperature rises.
2
huge as alone (e.e. cummings)
I am bigger than alone, so I am emptying my drawers.
My bedroom drawers, that is. And closets:
Shirts, ties, socks, descending like confetti,
Drifting like leaves into piles.
Why am I doing this? That’s a good question.
A very good question. And I will answer it. But,
First I have to answer the door.
You say, your apartment was broken into?
Yes, officer.
And is anything missing?
Yes, officer, my jokes.
You say, someone stole your jokes?
Yes, officer.
And can you describe these jokes?
Yes, officer, as a matter of fact, I can. Please have a seat:
A nun, an archeologist, and a midget walk into a bar …
PAST
is endless & runs into the forest. Sumac,
leaves: spackled & lit. This is true: dog
barked inside a zen question, The hallowed Scream.
This is true: a long pole leading into where light is sourcing.
Call it juice. Limbs are black at night.
And now: dog barked inside Heidegger’s hat. The young girl
said in a voice that was green, in voice
that was calm, Where light is safe, light
is a silver voice. I live in a tent in my
living room.
The young girl said in a voice that was pixiliated.
Needles & rain rattle on overhang. Blackbirds.
A walnut. It screams finding itself so
exposed. Only takes gold beautiful objects
to lead the deer into the past, only takes
a trunkful of scarlet leaves to hide the truth.
Spend hungry years scoring the heart,
that it will break evenly. Some
thing scours the light on its knees, with a brush.
Admit it is superfluous admit it is mysterious. Smells like soil & pine.
AFTER MONTALE
I’m in the toilets with the cloud.
Climb another step & repeat.
I’ll give you something to be afraid of.
Cigarette smoke & milk & breasts scratched in sex.
My dear, we shall see. Climb another step.
I can steam you, I can smite you.
I can carry you on my birds a mile
into mythology, till I’m red in the face,
to spite you. Many Autumns rise from
the graves of Spring. Well, not many, twenty.
Mark my word. Eat a crumb. Climb another rung,
for among the stars is silence. Jagged, dangerous.
Melting between tips, between knees,
between your lips, I die. Bells, the bells:
a popular song, the babble, the lust, pray.
I pop the ineffable.
Leonard Gontarek is the author of St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris,
Van Morrison Can't Find His Feet, Zen For Beginners and Deja Vu Diner
(Autumn House Press, 2006). His poems have appeared in The Best American
Poetry, Joyful Noise! An Anthology of American Spiritual Poetry, American
Poetry Review, Blackbird, BlazeVox, Pool, Field, and as a tattoo. He was
nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2006, 2007, 2008. He received poetry
fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts in 1994 and 2004.