poems
2007-2008
System of Belief (2)
Ethan Gilsdorf
I am building a system of
belief.
The girders shall be
forged of inflexible principles.
The weight shall be borne
on alternating columns
of promises and caffeine.
Ants shall be the history
teachers.
A jury of award-winning
mothers shall be the priests.
The membership shall be
open to all of you,
provided you don't believe
what you don't want to believe.
I am building a system of
belief.
I shall shake the dust
from the old gods,
buy them wholesale from
Deities R Us,
a greatest hits package;
an outmoded Odin, a rusty Thor,
a Hades, Jesus, Minerva,
Isis, Vishnu, Elvis,
a bloated Jim Jones. I'd
like an Aphrodite comeback.
The sound of my voice will
be both onerous and fun.
I shall have no
congregation. This I will accept.
My texts won't be so much
holy as shifty, circumspect.
I am building a system of
belief, so hang onto to the keys
to your former apartments,
cars and bike locks,
for these shall be the
keys to the afterlife.
We'll vote if there will
be an afterlife.
There will be no
money-back guarantee.
I am building a system of
belief, without weapons or sin.
I assure you the system
will show us how to hold still.
I picture a cosmology of
checks and Libra-like leanings,
over-adjustments, wavering
yess and reckless expressions of
love.
What do you say, brothers,
sisters?
Faith --- Oh, dear lord, I
have tried to trace it,
manufacture it, teach it,
lie about being able to taste it.
This system of belief is grasping for
answers:
an atlas, a dictionary, a
compendium of anxiety,
an itinerant record of at least who we are today.
I am building a system of
belief.
Won't you please join me?
In the discontented
suburbs,
leaves have abandoned the
trees.
After 3 pm and before
driver's licenses,
teens occupy the streets,
riding stunt bikes,
the final toys of
childhoods.
Neighbors accuse each
other
of a sin worse than
infidelity —
failure to comb the lawn.
The once top-of-the-line
Texaco is knocked apart
block by heartless block.
Mechanical arms and hands
dismantle the past.
What's left is a pink
rubble
of brick and insulation
and the failure of
permanence.
All may be lost.
Slung on my back
like a Jedi master,
Jack begs to differ.
"This," he advises,
lecturing on the forces
that bind us. "One."
And, as we depart,
"OK. All gone."
for Jack
composed by Uncle Ethan
November 2004
Play
Ethan Gilsdorf
"'Addicted to the
beginnings of relationships,' as I've been told.
And told. And told." ---"Can
You," Christian Barter
What wine goes with
toothpaste,
I asked the sommelier, for
those nights
I prop my feet on the
coffee table
after brushing my teeth,
the tv
annoyed by my itchy
trigger finger,
a miasma of truck-ad and
talk-show
cathode flickering like
blue fire
over my bulbous naked
torso,
having just allowed a
woman to fall
for me (or thinking I
could wield
her choice, swing it like
a scepter).
Only afterwards, bathed in
greenish
kitchen glow, spreading a
midnight snack
involving peanut butter
and ibuprofen,
did the dread enter the
manhole covers
of my head, the throbbing
thought,
I don't know why I'm with
her.
Outside, the car alarms
had nothing to say.
Addicted to the
beginnings
of relationships, the love doctor
conjectured, checking the
flub-flub
of my heart, listening for
the leaky
valves murmuring with
uncertain
tongues in the
half-verbal, half-moaned
saliva-laden smiling speech
typically found under the
sheets.
Doc had that fresh
clipboard, lab coat
and Austrian accent I
trusted.
He was no zoologist, but
understood
me being 16 years caged
up, I was a domesticated animal
set loose at the forest's
edge, ready or not.
But what of the songbirds'
squabbles
settling on an affordable
nest?
The slow disappointment of
swans
matched for a life-time of
gawking lovers
and package tours of
artificial ponds?
The humpback whale's
wavering
attention while migrating
south,
the head games of
plankton,
the cellular-level
domestic disputes
of paramecium, bacterial
tiffs,
the virus's fear of
commitment? Deceit,
not meteors, killed off
the dinosaurs.
Where am I? And you?
Feeling cowardly
and broken, but the port
wine has me uncorked,
so I sit imbibing courage
or half-delusions
as a half-moon backlights
Josephine Ave.
These fears aren't
specific to us. I appear
to be telling a story, a
saga. On a quest?
You said, "We're both on 'Play,'
though
occasionally playing at different RPMs."
I'm all I've been able to
muster, I thought,
as much as I want to want
more.
These are not fixed ideas,
nor have they
malfunctioned. You said, "Let me know
when you hit 'Pause' or 'Stop'
so I don't keep on playing alone." I'll never
decide to never go further. You said,
"OK, let's not be sad." I
said, "OK." You said,
"It's sleepytime. Can we
brush our teeth?"
How Happiness Works
Like us all, he arrives
crying
as if already tricked to
have gotten
the stub end of life's
shtick,
wailing incredulous, "Wah!
Is this it?" He can't
grasp
how happiness works,
that in increments it is
stacked
astonishing blocks
first placed in hand
by mom and dad, then in
steps
himself, smiling, raised a-b-c
among posts and beams
and bladed lawns of beige
and green. The amplitude
of cricket song each
August
washes the home
and ushers in the baby
and hushes him.
for Henry
composed on his birthday
by Uncle Ethan
August 23, 2006
Lies
There clearly are contacts
between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented.
No, you can use my razor
to shave your legs
I'm sorry. You're right. I'm
an idiot.
I
have a proven management team.
I won't get mad if you say
I look fat.
You're beautiful. I've
always thought that.
I don't really enjoy going
to strip joints
I have been very candid
about my past
My blog has no
commercial agenda.
I love hanging out with your
friends.
Your
call means a lot to us. Please hold.
I married because I was
through with searching for the perfect woman.
yeah
we know how to do a soundcheck.
I
love sports.
I love your cooking.
This allows us to explore
the promise and potential of stem cell research.
Yeah, I just got back from
an east-coast tour.
I have purchased high-strength
aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production
I love your family.
We give you health
insurance.
Our
projections are conservative
It doesn't bother me when
you check out other women.
I
can fix it. No problem.
I'm a uniter not a
divider.
I don't want to have sex
unless you want to.
[We are] taking every
possible step to protect our country from danger.
Key
employees are set to join us as soon as we get funded.
I wouldn't change a thing
about you.
Don't worry honey, it
happens to everyone.
Honesty is the best
policy.
I'll be right back.
To Traverse My Courage
Ethan Gilsdorf
To reach me you
must descend a long silk cord
into my bottomless mug of java,
swing from the silver dipper
and consume from me in sips.
To enter my garden
you should understand the commands
that draw back the vines and part the prickers.
Trim my hedges, divide my waters.
Then proceed over the drained floor
of my supposedly Biblical sea.
To traverse my courage,
take in hand this map to my mine field.
Step on my trigger as if you weighed nil.
Just side-step my cocked spring and neck-snapper.
Better not jostle my peanut butter and cheese.
Better not step at all.
To walk across my coals
you should first read my old letters.
Ingest
a tea of dried flowers to protect yourself.
Then
send me my favorite shirt and chocolate.
Better
feed my beloved black-capped chickadees.
To open me up, lift tab A and insert into slot B.
Mix
that Brazilian lime and rum drink
whose
name I can't say.
Solve
the equations curling in my hair.
Go
ahead, make my hay.
Hack all my passwords, then hit 'enter.'
At the prompt, you should already know the reply
posed by your question pulsing through me.
Feel our combined voltage.
Yes, there's a risk of death, but also life.
Please, just not this half-state in between.
Trash Day
Ethan Gilsdorf
Monday in Somerville. "Nicky!
Nick-kay! SLOW DOWN!"
What's worse, the kid
speeding and peeling out or the mom
screeching after him? And
what springtime "please have sex with me"
bird chirp can compete
with the Mustang, the Jaguar, the vehicles
named for species we like
to exterminate? Car alarms talk endlessly to themselves,
confusing the cardinal who
splits her hydrangea nest for Lincoln or Concord.
Nicky shouts a yard away.
The dog two doors down tries to be heard.
Castaways, life rafts, the
blue bins reveal our weekly waste.
A broken broom, a bent
teddy bear, Candyland upended,
a landslide of plastic
blocks. Did a kid die here? Try to reuse.
Try to recycle. I save too
much. Are you saved? This neighbor arranges
his barrels and piles:
Presentation matters. The garbage truck won't take just any trash.
What you leave out Monday
night disappears Tuesday by 10.
Is happiness the act of
forgetting? The street person is heavy with moon
and bakes in a wool coat
the next fiery day of May in front of CVS
and Bank of America. I
pretend she's content, her black trash bags
self-sufficient, her world
at arm's reach. I envy her for a moment,
then smarten up. The crow
selects a Snickers wrapper for its nest.
No one wants to be seen
scavenging. "Nicky! Get your stuff outta the car
or I'll leave it on the
street." Poor Nick, speeding by, just wanting to be heard.
Nothing romantic. It's
dusk. A stranger invades the neighborhood,
collecting 5-cent deposits
by bicycle. The clink gives him away.