Ryan McGinnis

032.

(after Frank O’Hara)

I’m going to Buffalo
in slow wades of tension
from Toronto via the King-
‘s Highway past Niagara.
Where towns that rusted out
in the nineties now whistle hollow
and ponder their lonely ring.

I’m going to Buffalo
by the lake perimeter
of Canada betrayed, being
careful with my vow-
els. Where distances pale
conversation and keep shut-
ters snapping documents of fleeing.

I’m going to Buffalo
of my alien dreams —
for goodbye, no doubt!
a city ready-made! —
but the jet surely’ll rise-ascend a’fore me;
leave the feeble child standing — the spoiled lout!

031.

Regal teacher yonder fussing
With bookbag and coil’d cord,
Behold! student hundreds yonder mussing
New hairstyles to please th’ lord;

030.

I contemplated this January poem again and, well, I like it more in this way.

You, the season,
treading concrete,
pockmarked scars.

In the white empty
turning out our past;
the crimson adolescent bedroom
retrieving the lost there.

two rooms long
or newly bereft of alibi;
two poor arenas
for reminisce

028.

I’ve not really stepped outside of buildings very long for two months. This afternoon I was barred from a library. Then I turned around and walked back when no one noticed. I’ve felt it has been best to occupy my hands with writing about other writing, and not writing at all. “Let us” talk about this. Have you noticed very closely that “spilled ink” is synonymous with sunsets and descriptions of lips and generalized smarminess? And posture and confirmation. And poison. No one feels very good about themselves, isn’t that right? For instance, I said to myself the other day, “sweet validation,” when someone I figured was an enemy shared some admiration with me. But if I thought about it for very much longer, I would have metabolized the words to something my body could use. Junk food for reluctant optimists — fuck does that mean? Maybe speaking is not so bad. But when I meet people anyway, I end up disliking them. At least enemies enable alibis for incessant defense. I don’t feel so bad. Glance sidelong. Miss you.

026.

Here is an overheard something: “I am going to war.” The city does peculiar damage. People borne of incongruent rooms develop an outrageous shade, and for good reason. Colors from the outside are brought out only in posters and photographs tacked up on their walls, but the colors otherwise don’t exist, except two feet from their bedsides, and black curtains and bath towels keep them out. Sometimes they forget about their windows altogether and go looking for lamps to remind them of being awake. On their floors and behind their mattresses grow blights that keep them sickly, and in their closets their limp, oversized hand-me-downs grow damp from subterranean moisture seeping in from the walls of their spider closets. Coffee cups litter their desks and leave tired rings of sustained concentration on pulp, print, and other, dead men’s worlds. There is one exit out and several hazards. Time arrives dragging its feet and leaves in a hurry. In this way, these people become translucent entirely, become emaciated, hulking masses dressed in too-big jackets and hunched over desks and notebooks with nothing to do.

025.

you and I these
days mostly enemies;

I am mostly made these
days of mostly enemies.

024.

Harold’s called
how we spend our
time “a great grey
ocean” killing us

clandestinely — us
acquiescent, us
slack-jawed, or
nescient altogether.

And yet, look, here —
me hunched alone in
my bedroom, slack-jawed
by myself, jotting

down candor
he’ll not see,
to, maybe, in fifty years,
after him, prove him
slightly wrong.

023.

I moved underground.
In the incongruous den
I had trouble dressing.

Walls seeped in
moldy puddles, kept me sick,
the kept bed sheets soaked.

wake up in sweat — I’d
be not hot, but worried,
me the water soaking through.

House shadows envelop
meandering body, my
shirt comes off in the kitchen.

But I was most unsafe there where
the windows light the way
out, the doorways, closet space, outside.

We come home to a non-home,
a building borrowed for home, racing
toward the beginning of end of home.

It is time. Wake up.

020.

wide-open spaces
paved over
filthy
people bobbing for
their egos
keeping
eyes averted, questing
putting cracks
inside
the bedrock crumbling
toppling over
absurd
how unlike a
narrative we
trudge
into each other
jump back
apologize
catch a glint
of fleeting
light
in the other’s
eyes momentarily
and
continue in our
rote consequences
looking
in the cracks
and alleyways
for
exits

The last time I spoke, I found I hadn’t a voice.

∞

I’ll not reveal anything ‘til anything behooves revealing.