Tell It to My Locker Partner

Copyright © 2009 by gabriel leif bellman.

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Contents

quote

2006

plugged out

fear

now

fuck

question

as if

vote

toes

l.a.

today

neck

poem

lover

start

man

today

serenity

bandages

quarters

friday

computer broke(keystroke)

fed

late night

fatigue

late

alarm

do

moon

you

pierce

what words can’t do

sunrise

phone

mother’s day

thunder

on the occasion of your wedding in oakland

lack

ask

feeling kippur

end of year

2007

year

i’ll let you in on it

jangle

nothing

reflect roy

where are you going?

34

handle

next door

future

we

elephant

milk

bed

potatofruit

love me

halloween

bleed

fri

twice

william

ugly

hurry

stay

jumble

invite

okay

old

black

idiot

angels

mexicanxmas

mom

wishsong

lvoe

wasp

solstice

ice cream

legs

laura

canyon

can

riding

snout

baby

anyone

mess

child

thaprice

mlk

santorini

time

briefcase

contact

morrow

breakfast

murder

boxes

float

starts

moon

ever

tear

gats

poemofday

battery

glad

futures

wash

milkeconomy (william alternate ending)

alice

my fish

fighttola

away

door

ask

stain

disappear

brazil

shallow

sunny

ridiculous

figure

bs

sight

shoulda

running

tears

die

song

cuello

ride

dark

tomatoe

fatsuit

newyearseve

valentine

ex

shite

new year

2008

unicorn girl

pigeon

generation WHAT?

snowflake

valentine

jamaica

mad

yogurt

swim

way

burn

monkey

stick

message

coming

care

almost

asshole

part

phone

so much

sick

easter

smell

read it

old

happy

neighbor

not me

gun

golf

joke

implication

mother earth

couch

true

not a mountain

meet

dust

look at me

alaska

look

fertile

old conversation

paper

poem

purpose

light

laid

leg

writ

daughter

want

cash

car

time

birth

ill

solstice

this 35 years

zebra

rocky

dreambad

flips

gossip

bowels

crock

aging

peak

cornea

lizard

murder

toilet

bus

illusion

speak

trash

san jose

boneless

mothers

for m. on the occasion of her birthday (from g.)

pyramid

firestarter

forgot

older

licorice

footprint

need

fire

toes

words

monkey

cocoa

sock!

walking

magics

xmas film

knees

fig

missin

time manage

bana

to

ambiguity

holla

live

tide

sound

caboose

end of year

2009

ruff morning

african mother

now

nows

obam

georgewashington

pms

fail

hallow

nights

help

guano

dirt

ghost

whole

loove

dry

create

bed bug

alexwedding

block

boots

broke

men

fixit

king

ladders

machete

mint

boots

plant

potato

premise

sheets

take it

untitled

at the end of a relationship we look back in fried teardrops

2009

bus stop

spider

lawn

mean

birthday writing 36

sombreros

birthday mom

catcharlie

rock

calculator

turtle

kidney

carryon

numb

financiers

race

nbd

penguin

cend

cereal

miss

hihf

bye

Audrey

the past

dream

ex

cryin

ease

angel

seed

response

strung

chin

spaghetti

dolphin

frock

giraffe

kelp

cigar

taffy

just

happen

message song

decaying

accident

stuff

ring

fistful

lovesick

Epilogue

dedication:

to

the moment

i haven’t forgotten

about

you

. . .

also

to my momma

because

i never called

you momma

enough

other works by Gabriel Leif Bellman

            (novels)

An Apple in My Back (1996)

Sleeps Never That City (1998)

She (2008)

            (short stories)

Coast Left Past (1996)

More Coast Left Past (1997)

Flatbush Fiction (2000)

            (poetry)

Bodies of Waste (1998)

Therefore, I Think (1999)

Special Features (2005)

            (stories and poems)

Spoon Me (2001)

Sum Swerve (2003)

Just Ash (2005)

            (operas)

Adam, Madam, Damn (2000, with Justine Chen)

The Maiden Tower (2004, with Justine Chen)

            (distributed feature films)

Duffy’s Irish Circus (2006)

The Bellman Equation (2010)

Introduction

When the heart is punctured, it lets out a slow hissing sound, like a balloon or a tire with an imperceptible leak. Only the holder notices the air is missing, and only because the next time they put pressure on it, it can’t hold as much weight. Over time, of course, patches are placed over the areas where the puncture wounds are, and the heart is much stronger for it. Of course, scar tissue also can make it more difficult to feel, as the nerve endings are covered in stitching and glue. What makes all of this beautiful, is the way in which human beings run at each other full speed, daring each other to move until the last second, skin and bones and blood, tears flying off in all directions. This is the dance of the human heart, which is mobilized in the cavity of chest and the cage of rib and flopped around by way of arm and leg.

Why am I telling you this? Because I have been through the washing machines of human emotion, brothers and sisters, and here I am: dizzy, bruised, and shiny as new. Here, in these moments of writing culled together from the last three years, I have attempted to equalize and cauterize the wounds and joys of day to day existence.

When people speak of day to day existence what they mean, of course, is the time that passes without great tragedy or exultation (which is of course the kind of existence we all hope for when we are sober). While writing is not much against the wind blowing out candles or the fear immobilizing generations, it does force the heart to beat and the lungs to breathe, and it closely approximates meditation (which, boring as it is, sustains our spirit). In this collection, I have hoped to maintain this day to day existence as a record of proof that it is possible to work in all seasons and conditions.

How does a group of poems and stories written over a three year span bring more oxygen into the world, or quench the thirst of deserts, or fill the void of canyons? Of course, the answer is it does not. As artists, we can only hope to shine a flashlight into our own chest cave and hope that the beating heart revealed as the dark, light red mass, will bring consolation to others who have spent nights awake gasping for breath.

This is a book that I have written entirely in the gaps of time in each morning and evening when the pull of the universe dragged me to a keyboard and demanded clacking. It is one of the only noises I have ever heard that (for me) rhythmically melds with the beating of my heart. I hope you understand one day, that all of this is for you.

Pulsing.

gabriel leif bellman,

October 2, 2009

p.s.       the title of this book comes from a scenario known by a few and foreign to none, which is to say: do not spend your limited time on this planet minding to things that are of menial consequence. we are not in high-school anymore. when you find yourself worrying about anything that detracts from your absolute love affair with this planet and your soul and this moment, remember the human parable that is both a comedy and tragedy:

IT ALL SEEMED SO IMPORTANT AT THE TIME . . .

quote

A samurai once asked a Zen Master where he would go

after he died.

Master answered ‘How am I supposed to know?’

‘How do you not know? You’re a Zen master!’ exclaimed

the samurai.

‘Yes, but not a dead one,’ the Master answered.

Tell

it

to

my

Locker

Partner

by gabriel leif bellman

2006

The year of our lord, two thousand and six, was a symmetrical year for me. In that, while it happened, I noticed symmetry in the world. Or not. Looking back, I often wonder if these poems were inspired by a dog bite that happened in my sleep, or perhaps I contracted rabies from a fruit bat and it was very mild, but not so mild that it didn’t lead to a form of poetry that, years later, I recognize as partially bat-rabid. I think the overall mood of the country, with economic prosperity and senseless war, was one of numb idiocy, and I hope my writing from that period reflects only those good parts of such a state. I also was pretty excited that I got a new fish tank that year.

plugged out

frozen our messages of text

exoskeletons of our embrace next

we talked into mouthpieces more than lips

even the kiss was just another of these blips

born with computer keys imprinted on our finger tips

never a scratching record just a cd player that skips

we heard that again we heard that again (push the forward arrow)

in a million years they will struggle to comprehend our carpal tunnel marrow

information pours in through ears drilled with empty dramatic rescue worker holes

bowed down from the scars on our backs from the removal of all the moles

the heavy absence

of colorless pigment

ethnic raceless humorless

laughing at generic dirty jokes

both of us broken shells

on the wall humpty empty yokes

and i mean it when i say ring them bells

clang them heads (spoken with a jamaican accent please)

so jaded even irony seems clichéd

all the paper stuck together machéd

reading not with our hands but by scrolling a side bar

did we ever have an idea of what the information was for

remember the astronaut fireman that grew up without a television set

look in the mirror at the digital emailed photograph of what you get:

deleting forwarding creating new folders and screen (!) holders

reflecting frozen information

our generation restoration

chatting instantly

face to screen

falling in love with people we’ve never seen

because of their profile

amusing us for a while

adding to their friend

list

we got from technology

everything we

missed

gratification without mobilization

saturation without expectation

incantation without rehabilitation

crushing blows last only a blinking cursor second now

barely enough time to furrow a brow

let alone weep

and not to be deep (but)

i missed bumping into you at a cafe organically

falling in love with the smell of your slice of pizza accidentally

wondering why your copy of lonely planet was folded just like mine

talking over citron candles over a glass of crickets chirping wine

falling off to bed sleep halfway on somebody’s couch

full of a feeling of old fashioned what to say next ouch

see, it would have been like this when

      we-just

      met

all night long nothing beeps or vibrates there’s no world web

it’s just

you-me/hammock-net

(and i beg you to stay and we no words but sway)

fear

the first of the morning and all my ears are sealed shut

all my arms are waxed over my hands sanded off

i wake up with a taste of yearn in my eyes

the smell of hope in my feet

the feel of ugly in my bones

all i want to do is wrap myself in a heated blanket of you

cover myself in skin not my skin

fill my head with thoughts not my thoughts

if i ever thought i could leave myself

and settle next to your spirit

the candles leap up from their off position

and all i can smell is

fear

now

he went back to his room, let the ache in his jaw dull to a throb in union with the sirens ripping red flashes of light out of the peripheral of his vision. he felt like a note had been slipped under his door from one of his neighbors. impending fear. confrontation. he didn’t care about the fucking, not as much as the laugh. her laugh was better than her ass (which was pretty amazing). he knew all the fish in the ocean couldn’t contain the bubbles that floated his thoughts, just like all the words in a poem-story couldn’t contain the feeling he had that one of these days he was going to stop speaking altogether and resort to the acoustic smiles and laments of his guitar and guitar only. for now, he let the beans from yesterday spin inside his intestines, working their way to his small intestine, anus, toilet. he was a compacting food machine, and what did it matter. the more he ate the more hungry he got and none of it touched the flutter of pain and fear and loneliness that manifested itself as a rush of adrenaline whenever he noticed the subway car he was riding was full of people just like him. going along as if it were normal. as if it were okay to die with a broken heart along the clacking tracks of business cell phones dead from too much use. he tucked under the covers and turned the light off. he didn’t fall asleep as much as he just was bored with the waking universe. no extreme physical pain or bright lights anymore. the headache blending with the disappearing sound of the siren, and with the body’s immediate jolt subsiding, he curled up to hibernate for another six hours. tomorrow it would be better. he said yesterday. and again right now.

fuck

fuck the sinus hole in my head from not a bullet but an absence of bone

fuck the false alarm as the pain ripped through flesh like an abscess of tooth

bite me jaw throbbing discomfort adrenaline gland speed freak pain

i woke up with the clench in jaw the sadness in heart the pepper in soul

i went to forty doctors in forty days and nobody could heal me

i was even more alone with treatment than i was on the sidewalk

i never realized what a paralyzing force pain can be

deep in the soul

loneliness of absence of care

i looked around for somebody to take care of me

and in the mirror

even my own reflection turned away

the next thing i knew it was 2a.m.

fuck

question

The first time he used the keyboard to type a letter he could tell from the clack clack clak that his mind wasn’t focused. It was full of the subway ride home which was full of the furtive looks from the twenty year old college student with her friends smacking gum laughing about whoever’s heart she was tangling like a guitar string tightening and tightening making all the sounds until one day pop. She was in charge and she saw him caught his eye saw his power his age what he represented and she wanted to tear him open stare at his entrails and see where he came from this foreign being and what made him tick.

He sat down to write about it and it was as if a great burden had been lifted from his chest. he no longer had to make his heart beat. it could beat itself to death (and it would) for all he cared. not that he was indifferent. literally for all he cared. for all that he cared about, his heart would stop beating. the fullness of his experience would peter it all out. everything would come to a grinding halt. blood would no longer rush from his lungs carrying oxygen to his heart to be redistributed throughout his body (even his toes which he just knew were waiting to fall off from gangrene or diabetes which he probably had considered all the ice cream).

He was tired but not exhausted. At the same time, he wasn’t much else but exhausted. A perfect description of him would have been a web-blogger without a computer with nothing to say. Who reads these days, he thought to himself, clacking away on the keyboard. And who writes?

Tapping the question mark key, the key stuck. It was impossible to keep writing. The only character that appeared on the ribbon of his screen was a question mark. What answer did he have for that- what answer could he have- if there even was an answer???

as if

as if everything in the night (moon) went bam

as if it all started with green eggs (easy over) and ham

children’s stories (wolf!) read while sitting quietly at the park

and wouldn’t you know

by now

about the fear

that comes

in the dark (nightlight)

it isn’t like we aren’t going to all die alone anyway (leave my sunglasses to goodwill)

still

looking at your skin

pulsing all those organs (pink)

from within (veins)

i could pull your bones out of you (gross) and you could still stand up straight

i’d say it with a deep scottish accent if i could ‘it’s great’ (that sounded australian)

because it’s you (!)

and of all the twisting explosions and interred graves and newly named stars (actually, that’s a planet)

in the universe

it’s just you (!)

that makes me cry blood salt (needs more oregano)

more than any refugee war saved by a dolphin

more than