hellopoetry.com/poem/1106978/witherspoon/
witherspoon
3/7/2015

I've met a few good men,
a few good men, this is why
I am so vexed.

The springing pantomines
of careful youth rings around
the green, as it always has

the campus store sells
cigarettes and muffins and condoms
as it always has, and

although the mood is different than
the one on early semester Halloween
night,

The grass is as green as it always
has been.
I need to learn to let people

and things go, but it doesn't help
when you live, when half of those memories

happened in towns where George Washington and Witherspoon got
drunk off their *****,

and Madison lied about men in the woods. Sitting dully alone in the stadium

the vast Powers,
I am one in 23,000
and I do not know how I feel

about that and the lost
days when I used to chain smoke
voraciously in the parking lot

in a car that smelled like
burnt tobacco
and run through

the rain in Murray dodge,
write on the walls at the Pyne
arches and smoke

drugs with friends
in the freezing rain on Wilson's
grave.

This is all gone now
and
I need new trivial distractions

now that all of mine are gone
and I see the summer sun getting
closer to my bruised memory.


i've met a few good men
key word:
few.

the quivering ghosts of our
salad days runs around the green
do you remember? are you sure?

i ran through the campus store
laughing til my liver hurt
posing with antifreeze, asking friends "anyone want shots?"

i don't know, wouldn't know
what princeton's like now
because i haven't been in six months.

i do vaguely remember
strips of it, the cheesecloth that wrapped around
the ides of april, freezing and shivering under my arms.

i still haven't learned how to let people go.
it is difficult when
you live in a town that is made by its history.

what town or person isn't?
constant talk of Stockton, Witherspoon and Washington's
crossing damns my existence.

i used to go down to the stadium
freeze my fingers off or pop open bottles with
White

i remember when i lied to Lacava about my first time
smoking cigarettes that is
he bought me my first pack

i sat in the front seat of the car that january
trying to coolly inhale
begging to god to not let me cough.

i didn't.
i remember i ran through the rain with someone i loved, once
through murray dodge

he'd told me he never forgot the way
i looked with eyeliner dripping down my face and
my soaking hair slowly curling into snail shells.

i'd written on the arches at Pyne
then i'd written on the walls with our spit
joking - why's it called PVNE?

I sat serenely with my friends one February day
that year, i must specify because one  has passed already.
smoking bouges on Burr's grave, so bougie.

i got new distractions
i don't have any way to keep them, though
i'll find a way in the summer

or maybe not
maybe.
maybe.

if i keep the receipts i can pretend
that we’re still going out to lunch together,
that your phantom arm is around me at night,
that you’re still here.

i can pretend that you’re not in new york,
and me, i’m not here.
i hoard the receipts and the tickets and
the programs and the take out menus.

i sleep with your sweatshirt under my body
and i, i remember each breath we took in unison.
i imagine that you’re not away
because we are both universal, anyway.

i never cried at the bus stop,
or the train station.
instead i hoarded the tears until i was so full
of water that i broke.

because we can pretend that this is easy
and worth it, it will be,
but at the end of the night
i’m still clutching papers and cloth

with all of my might.

soon I found
where you wrote those words
on the back of your hand
soon I found
the black planet
where you reside
soon I found
a child’s sickness
and the comfort it takes
to make one whole
soon I found
that you went with him
with a Salisbury steak
and a name tag that read
husband
soon I found a hole
dug by a badger
I donned its claws with my fingers
I carved a toilet in the corner
I drew your face on the ceiling
soon I found
I was an animal
a boy
alone
soon I found
I was never to be conceived
I was never without legs and feet
I was never meant to
climb out of the black star
soon I found
I would be without you
forever

I laid an anemone
on the mask of a crying girl
the young mother
the crouching woman
I am beautiful
says the sirens
says the ever-youthful vegetation
of God

I mixed my blood and nectar
on the mask of a dying man
the decay of kiss
the resurrection
I am beautiful
says the anemone
says Adonis in his grave

I burned their leaf-stems
on the mask of an artist
the eternal springtime
the life-death-rebirth deity
I am beautiful
says the martyr
says girl as she wakes
to the sirens

I am beautiful
says the head on the platter
I am beautiful

and the woman descends
the bronze invading
the bronze high-handed
the bronze opening
to the gates of hell

how could I have known
when I received that
final kiss
I would end up here
in the country side
the soul of
you
my sister

every morning I walk
through the wheat
hands grazing over
the bearded kernels
my heart, light
my body, transcended
the leaves inside
turning

oh! the joy it brings
to tell you
dear sister
that what lies beyond
isn’t made of
marble
but pure light
dancing
in its finest
colors

if only you were here
with me
I could save you
from the moment
I fell
I could teach you to
sculpt autumn
dear sister
I could teach you
to sculpt love as it is
without
clay