Early Poems: 1998-2005

By Adam Fieled2215 Arch Street #408

Philadelphia, Pa.19103

afieled@yahoo.com

Early Poems: 1998-2005

1Table of Contents

2Clean

I gave myself an enema the other day, took some antibiotics.Thought to myself, “This is really the poet’splace in the world— not sitting in some pasture,not smoking in some bar, not fucking someone lovely,not courting Gods or Jesus.

No.

The poet’s place is kneeling down,naked, with somethingor other stuckup his ass, in a desperateattempt to getclean.”

April, 1998

3Prince

Wesley wore silk pajamas— he looked very regal,planted before the floor TV.

I would sit next to him, waiting for the ugly nurses to feed us our pills, and take our pulses.

He told me about his car, his mother, his buddies— the catalogue

of adolescent normalcy—

and you wouldn’t think he was schizophrenic, listening to him speak.

In fact, I thought he was a prince,

Albeit one who was, like most princes,

at the mercy of his servants.

May, 1998

4

Disappear

The bleached blonde shook the two white bowls together,one atop the other, making a Caesar salad.

Another bleached blonde, my girlfriend,watched me watching this meticulous process.

Dug her engine-red nails intothe sweet secrecy of my inner thigh,

Saying, wordlessly, “If you think that’sa good trick, You should see medisappear sometime.”

May, 1998

5

4325 Baltimore Ave.

Jason cooking flounder on a filthy range, picked up at 40th & Walnut where Penn studentsmingled w/ artists, Chomsky-ites, bums, mothers, where French bread for two bucks we’d carryaround for walks home down rustic mansion’d streets, fish-waft filling lovably threadbarekitchen laden w/ mustard & crumbs— gone—

Mary’s Acme pesto pasta, Olive-oil Goddess she’d make a pot on pot in a pot & we’dhave a bowl from the pot watching hot French-flicks in the vivid living room, gone—paintings, Mary’s evocations Dionysus & Apollo, Jason post-Dali post-structuralist Dada &Derrida derived violences, submitted to smitten PAFA judges winking secretly at Jason’s tightass, Mary’s too, they screwed, we screwed, we all were screwing each other secretly, tenderly,flecked w/ little chips from falling ceiling, gone—

parties on green-awning’d porch, weed midnights; butt-smoke, frost-breath, gun-stocked West Phillycops stop to shock us w/ looks, putting no cell-bar cramps on druggy St. Steven, gone—moments later I’d drag Mary into her wood- floored torrid bedroom & open-door fuckher, hoping Josh & Kevin might spy us, one time on whiskey Mary’s diaphragmgot stuck inside her, I felt it, fucking her, we laughed, Mary’s hair then waslong down to her ass, raucous, gone—

Grace, Jason’s grace, a minx of jinxing, she from rich Connecticut knows Salinger reads my poems

at parties makes snot comments, silver-belted, out on the back porch in October wind we stood,Grace, raven tresses Heaven-breasts innocent sex, girlfriend who had Jason by the face, ass,

I made scathing Spears comment everyone hissed, instead we put on Stones Kinks ElliottSmith, Josh who played music, gone, now w/ Sara,

6jailbait date stealing cars & kisses, back-seatcaresses blonde tresses sun-dresses, trouble- starting, Kevin’s dread on my head, gone—

Kevin dumb chimp we called him big beast of a man writing bad songs doing Ritalin linesraging through nights fucking Diana, gone, moans that broke us up, Oh Kevin Oh Kevin,waitress of the hunt, Diana, blank stare, no cares or qualms taking alms from everyone, doinglaundry, Diana & me in lust discreetly, doors open, Bohemian dream-time—

apogee— everyone hot— everyone fucking, painting making music, boozing, drugging, sucking, humping,leaning on nothing but the night’s promise, always more night, another line, another ride, timeto find out food, hues of mood, clues of color, love shape, O Lord we were the crux of ourselves,our nexus the nexus, our moment the moment, all now reduced to ash, nothing but a shut window,a fiery memory of an open one…

June, 2004

7After Picasso

There was an eye that stared.There was that that didn’t know what it was.There was that that didn’t know who it was.There was an eye that glared.

Spring 2005

8Front

To have a front is to be faking it—though its this we use, when we want to prove,there is no love— love isn’t making it.

Though pain is dross (we must be shaking it),though the fight isn’t fun, (nor does it soothe)to have a front is to be faking it.

The world is a bank; to be breaking it,we sit tight on all fronts, to make our moves;there is no love— love isn’t making it.

Money is the king, we’ll be raking it;it is this we worship, and this we choose—to have a front is to be faking it.

Knowing no doves, we’d rather be snaking it,and our soul’s in the fire; hot, it stews;there is no love— love isn’t making it.

If love were a drug, we’d be taking it;we want the pill that we’re loathe to use—to have a front is to be faking it.There is no love— love isn’t making it.

Autumn 2004

9Combing Out

“we” were in english class, next to being next toeach other.a matter of adding a porch or rolling in mud.she said to me: “you’re caring”sounded to me like: “you’re a fairy”that hair became a kind of relic, the waya once-used metaphor might (in its’ “it”)leaving high school was a “volta” i’m stillcombing out.combing out with meredith’s mud-brown hair.

combing out with meredith’s mud-blown hair.combing out.leaving “leaving high school”, another “volta”now, becoming a once-used metaphor (out & “out”)that way is a hair-relic, “me” a heretic; her ticsounds to me like: “you’re a weirdo”she said to me: “you’re a weirdo”a matter of adding peach or rolling in haywith each other.“we’re” in a separate class, “late for the next one”.

Mid 2005

10To a Diner Waitress

You were not born to mind the counter at Pete’s Famous Pizza.

You were born to be an Italian peasant in a thick black skirt.I’d walk w/ you along dusty streets of some green provincial town.We’d lay making love in a field, your skirt hitched up.You’d have a child by me as I was off fighting World War I.Then I’d be dead and you’d take other lovers who were also me.

You were not born to mind the counter at Pete’s Famous Pizza.

You will always be to me as you were in those rolling verdant fields.You will always be to me Demeter, scattering grain from your hips’heft.With every corned beef club, I come closer to the essence of your sorcery.With every side of fries, I come closer to encompassing your cleavage.

You were not born to mind the counter at Pete’s Famous Pizza.

2005

11

fantasy interaction with bjork

She crouches in greenwilderness, a sylvansprite, tonguelapping rain, tattooexposed to humidmist & heat.I take hold of herfirmly, handsfeeling flanks,teeth gnawingneck, fingers findingspine, wedged betweenlegs; she squirms,writhes, surrendersto the ancientpulse of drippingleaves, swayingferns, moistearth. I ease heronto her backand come inside her

Autumn 1999

12To Karen O.

Indie waste land: fish-net detritus,spat beer festooning bare red con-crete slabs. crooked floor, youstraddling an unseen phallus, rapt,pussy-pink, “sweat-watered”, notasleep w/ motor humming; boysconceiving hummer-dreams inloose-jeaned, tee-shirted, ball-grabbed blisses. song: chanted.

“Icon”: two parts vinegar. “art”:one part sass. “kohl”: what yousee. “media”: tease & freeze ‘em.“substance”: lies behind myth,vomit. “karen”: possibly, someone home.

13New Orleans Elegy

We’re all floated bodies: splay-limbed, blue-faced, lining gutters the lengths of America. We’ve all looted, hunger-loosed, fever-freed, prowling aisles set out in plastics. We’re a country w/ out levee. Acid rain blows in from Gods & sand-rats, blighting us. We slumber at flood-gates, star-struck. Ciphers amble about, skin-flashed, scurvy. We’re all would-be snipers, trigger-trained, tensed,lining bars, hearts of America. We’re all drowning, shudder-huddled, money-pitted, prowling streets knee-deep in feces. We’re a country w/ out levee.

September 2004

14

White Light/ White Heat

Lou spews whirlpools of junk-puke over grimy expanses of East Village loft, grasping his Gretsch w/ fingers likeneedles, feeding back carcass-stacks of stank-ball squall, humping his collegiate-clean dystopic-dream lysergic-scream haunches against concrete dank-secreting wall; John (throttled at the edge of static-panic, lapsed scho-larship schoolboy, stiff earnest-drip shoulder-chipped art-mensch) pounds resounding third-rounded absurd-isms from his keyboard, shudder-rippling behind shades like Horatio watching Hamlet create more things in

Heaven & Earth (magic-tragic turkey-wracked Jew-Lou waving his textual bi-sexual word-wand over shit-wind-owed walls), Sterling (Lou’s chord-swallow lick-mellow pick-darling) lets winsome Beatle-bangs fall in his eyes,Virgo-nerd flying tight, word-silent but evoking jagged miniature Pollock-plots of red edge-lead, direct math ab-straction bridge-reaction ledge-approaching dread-encro- aching speed-promoted blood, glowing protein-splats,

shattered from canvas by Mo’s garbage-truck stark-as- fuck thunder-thuds, female-engendered texture-bends

breaking wave-like over dark-din anti-silence; city-collis- ion in shock-sharp car-part fuel-fart mule-heart oil, crudely refined; blinding black & white stag-movie snap-sho- ts, hot wig-wearing dick-sharing eye-glaring girl-guysgetting & giving head, erectile tissue explored in minisc- ule detail, deep-throat gambits, shaft-licking side-swipes,nut-sacks tea-bagged on shag carpets, intense semen exp- losions leaving greasy sludge-stains, also smearing lips& faces, mixing w/ pill-highs, gin-depths, sleep-deprived contests of who blows best, knows best; bathroom mini-

battalions tying tourniquets, biting off ends, fixing works (spoon-cook patient moments contemplating junk-comingElysian ecstasies), further red-dropper squish seconds bef- ore final plunge-thrust, fulfilling Oedipal lust, Mom-cuntin needle-point vein-stitchery; twitching of nerves, bitching swig-sounds from the living room; Lou bent over, rectumloosened, accepting phallus imperious intrusion as he pukes groaning bloody mucus into the deep-shitted bowl, his ha-nds hip; its God, or maybe isn’t, directing anal in/out peris- taltic ocean-flow (drainage drone audible behind grime-

15walls), entrails burning w/ New York concrete essences, upper-cranial snot-drains as John drops ass-dissonance(thinking avant-garde revenge, correctness of murk, inner/ outer alignment) into the entropy of snake-body being;Sterling lets open strings ring, bends the fifth arrythmically, tasting the taste of no-taste, the vacuum sub-stench ofdeath’s final abyss, as a bathroom-boy collapses, needle- armed, needing nothing, complete, feeling free in the swim to death’s other un-mother still-thunder gut-chunder shore, final spittle-remnants flecking his chin, leaving

puddles on tile, shit piss & blood, mingling w/ living-room semen, picture congeals & Andy says okay cut

Spring 2004

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