en pointe

shared hearts, but you hid some valves
a few words you possessed but did not share ...
I was in your room Saturday, looked
and looked and read the words
you'd never say to me

I checked all the cars going by
though I knew you were in school
the valves open, close in my chest
the river runs, leaves racing
down its course
what did we know?

a list now of the questions
your mother could not know to ask:

1) are you trapped in amber or in ice?
2) did you love your father more than you loved me?
3) is Kelly inside of you, does she remind you
of how sad you have become?
4) are your curtains always closed now?
5) has your arch begun its deterioration
6) inside those black eyes is there some memory of me?

a new popsong you cherish
supertramp in the afternoon
breakfast in america
no one can let you out
you have hidden the key

the heart is not a machine you can take apart and fix
mine slumps in the afternoons, still full of your memory
the miracle dissembles
the days and nights pound in me
the chest is a cage for this sadness


This piece centers on the period after I was told not to see B. anymore in October, 1979. CF, my good friend and B's mother, went to Champaign to the Red Herring that day with Gael Cox. When she returned she was determined to get her daughter away from the situation. I told her, at that time, that I would leave so she wouldn't have to uproot her family. B. had been abused by her father from the age of six, so the reference to him is quite pointed. Before moving to Washington Street B. sometimes called herself "Kelly." And of course B. was, at this point, obsessed with ballet, thus the "arches" line. This piece was published in The Alchemist Review in January, 1980.

o carol!

that's a chuck berry number
the stones do alot/and I feel
a good bit jagger/as I stare
out the kitchen window/at your
fine fourteen year old body
wrapt in a blue halter/small
breasts/hard muscles jean
shorts hiding shale thigh bones
covering your juices/I can
in twenty two year old
sophistication/imagine your
juices/like the swift knowing
mouth of a girl I met
first year of high school

A good example of the early poems before I spent a lot of time with Knoepfle, trying to hit his cadences. There really was a girl on 4th street named Carol (Kienzler, I believe). I never actually knew her though another member of the family, Mike was a well known Springfield journalist. I just observed this girl, mowing the neighbor's yard. It was when I was with Becky McGovern, so I wasn't actually having much of a sex life. As I was really always oversexed I did write two poems about seeing this girl mowing the grass. Perhaps a sad commentary. Or maybe a Blakeian sense of the rabelasian quality of being. The girl first year of high school was named Linda Rausch and she was kind of an early party girl for me. I only went with her to a couple of post football game dances. Fun to kiss and feel up, of course.

Scarritt Poem

each is a syllabus of the other
unaccustomed vagary turns them on
to edges: emotional horses
are to be ridden for the sake
of circling the track
they have some dozen pages
listing fears, licenses, appropriations
at the meadow
they burn their pages
for the sake of writing others

This piece is one of those secret pieces. It is about my relationship with Pat Smith. We both spent those years writing novels. She really didn't like my books but it took me a long time to realize that. Her books were kind of really formal. The sentences were beautiful. In certain ways I did like her books, but I did not know what she was up to, writing them. When I write I am trying to find something out about myself. I think there was some element of jealousy/competition in Pat's books. But by and large I always found myself fascinated. Until she was writing a book clearly based on the fact that she had had an affair with her across the street neighbor, John Knoll, in the two years before I came to Springfield. The fact that John was her husband's colleague and friend didn't seem to bother her at all, even after John turned into a kind of weird, nixonian maniac. The ironic end to this is that she is married to John Knoll, now and lives in St. Louis with him. And he has taken care of her through her bout with breast cancer. Good for him. He was pretty much a complete asshole when I knew him. In any case, the object of the work, at the time, was to achieve some sort of understanding. I don't know that either of us ever got there.

sangria wine

who'd remember you she'd say to me
the frescos riven with blue wounds
a new angst to paint the rose that is a rose
your song in subtle colors falls
from these thorns the houris of my patience
who do not exist they'll know my name

Tone poem from the mid 1970s. Clearly based on a painting, I am guessing Caravaggio, who I had a small trip in about then. It doesn't matter; just another serve in that conversational tennis match with that girl.

Godzilla, used as a Prop

there will be rebellion
(this is wine) dolls decapitated
in a grand guignol
(this is bread) there will be
cannibalism, the dogs eat
their masters
(punch the batons)
(camera ready)
(1/2" equipment on line)
here in the future
knowledge is "produced" the social
realism is a model village
stalked by angst torn nipponese
monster, dragon of post
revolution: there will be
war in orbit
there will be memory
there will be release
the coins are tossed
it is "k'uei", the estranged
what wisdom can there be in that?

References to the I Ching spread through this one. It's an oriental fortune telling/or wisdom seeker's text, depending on how you look at it. I didn't consult it very much over the years, being more a tarot guy, western trad and all. This comes under the heading Bladerunner, really. Though I hadn't seen it at that point. One of those things that might have had a specific meaning, if I could just have focused a little more.

The Normal Heart, First Version

There may have been a lot to say to you
fifteen years ago~ so much we thought
we knew; obvious, expected even. But then you
turned on me, or I on you, or one of us
upon the other. The elephant rolled over.
Stupid story. And I avoided seeing your
politic, imagining us above the normal heart.
But I paid for this error,
the usual flesh boiling off
in the hot broth of time passing.
The bones are exposed now,
silver designs in a negative.

March again, lover, cher,
the carnal spring, sopping up my blood
but there are no acts of passion
believed in, intended, remembered,
or wished for, in anyway~

just soft noise of the possible,
that chance missed,
that prescription tumbled in the trash basket
traitorous now
the normal heart


From circa 1985. I believe this was written in New York City, during the time BB was at Columbia's writing program, and I worked for the Russian Studiers at the Harriman Institute. This poem is yet another earnest attempt to separate and understand the damage Alison Clare did to me. In truth it is a confession of pride, admitting that I thought she and I were above the normal romantic escapades. That we loved each other in a different way.

summing up, 1977

last sheet in your memory
first half of twenty seven
commmitted to the dissolution
every day is another belief
you grab at morality
you think of exploration
you wonder about your fear
you satisfy nothing
with stupid dreams and sonic
blades from a patti smith
song cutting me open
rivers of vomit
knots of my insecurity
last page of another time frame
tired of pictures
hurt by the self
worried about honesty
afraid of the mail
irresponsible, in turmoil, private thoughts
of private murders, remembered
diseases, tracing you
on the x-ray. No more books
today. Last page and you are
lost in your map. A hundred pages
given to the television,
slipping from sight,
white and grey
particles in a robe worn
for too long
now become skin.
revelation of just
another black hole

only wanted some of your lunar blood
no one ever gave that to me not even
those I once thought read these words

and the letters ~ only thought
you knew, just shows how
wrong I can be, making people
special out of need,
a desperate act from a lousy gambler,
filling up another notebook

The final pages of one of my 1977 notebooks. Clearly most of this is really talking about being in love with Alison and not being able to put the work ahead of this failed strategy. Many of my mistakes come from thinking I am more aware of things than I actually am. I have learned over the years to let some of that go. I know now that I knew very little about the world I lived in. Does it help to realize this? Not at all. The bet was too large and the loss was of almost all the capital I was holding at the time. So I learned to lay back and live through the 1980s, giving up the work, a little at a time.

approaching winter

You said you'd remember me
ten years ago and I know
I remember you. But it doesn't
make a true difference,
does it? There isn't any refuge
in this enormous room.
Every corner is crammed
with the detritus of a short life
still unused, but already
recorded. Another old friend
wants to know why this is,
but I'm in a permanent closet,
waiting for an extension
of years. Each of these words
is another atom between us.
I'll never see you
again — I'll never know
if you remember me,
as I understand it.
Despite the brevity of days,
this is normal.


I think this poem is addressed to Marcia Jean Froelke (Coburn). She made a point about how she would remember me, when we were dating at the end of high school. I actually talked to her in 1988, when I brought out the first Writers BARBQ, I thought she might help us along in the city. I was wrong. She mostly wanted to know who I knew and whether I was a groovy enough person in the arts for her to bother with. I never heard from her again. Marcia was beautiful in her time. I wish her well. The undertone of the piece seems to be BLF, but because of the timing, it must be Alison Clare. Well, isn't that entirely normal for Tim? Making my way out of the finger trap here.

Adkins, Mapless

It's all lost
as Adkins said, it's all gone now
and in a new year
we will celebrate all those unheard voices
who thought
they might have something to say

we knew better
all along ... knew it was hype
& some of it hope ... things
we wanted for our own reasons
things we thought
might be important

and I'm in for a big fall
humpty dumpty on Scarritt
wondering if anything
is really important

it's all lost, Gary.
You're not here. Maybe I'm not either.
I am tired of my excuses—this,
I presume, is me.
What else can I think,
this cold awful day
with the voice of suicide
singing of hope & fear
though it's perfectly obvious
fear is the trump card

The Hammer Sets the Scene

This time, dressed in snow, winter
1977. Cat on the sofa, yellowed lamplight
while I put these words in clouded cold
flourescence. Pat at the dining room table.
Dramatic readings of Plath, set off, in sets
against her furnitures—snow, on the outside;
the diabetics gonna drive in
from Pawnee, gonna claim his glory
it's only, for me, an ancient story
of one who'd tell his friends
I have to leave & have no place
for you, this evening. The vikings, my team,
fool the elements and odds
by acting like I feel, foolish and drunk.
The opponents are like light bulbs
burning as the cat wakes up, turns
around and finds her fear confirmed.
She goes back to sleep. She dreams, not of me
but of cats who think their fears ephemeral.
The snow comes like white reality
so thick your arm can slice the air,
the hammer cutting the scene
in sets. I had my time returned.
The boys plays capitalist,
innocently thinking, this is it, this must be
how it is. The cigarette smoke
is a temptress while the vikings fail
to score, the clock whispering,
I've got you chained. I know your real names.
I know why you hate me. It's not surprising.
If I could, I would hate myself. See
inside. Always trying to see inside.
AMF introduces major voices from an
invisible world: cervantes? shakespeare?
I doubt any of us
make the difference, clear the
stuff out of the road. Make any
differences. As usual,
the poets are sad, are new, are
misunderstood. No one cares
and frankly no one should. The time is used.
The snow is one dimensional.
A representation of the world inside.
Subatomic structure.
Who knows? No questions. Assembled
phrass in another phony's stupid
notebook. Time betters spent
playing Monopoly with the kids.
But no one cares for words,
anymore, and figures disappear
like this snow, by Thursday.

Pat's husband, who she remained married to most of the time she lived with me, Larry Smith, was a diabetic who moved from Springfield to a small town, Pawnee, to protect the virtue of his mall-girl vixen daughter, Anne Keats Smith. Pat Smith had finished her first novel manuscript at this point and was typing it up. She never typed any of my books up. Becky Bradway typed up one, Stones Out of Time, but I think it disturbed her so much she never went there again. I never typed anything up. I was, and am, a lousy typist. If I had had a PC I might have gotten some manuscripts together. Who knows? In any case it is interesting to note the references to professional football in this poem (the vikings), used metaphorically to speak both to my heritage and to the psychic place I was occupying at that point. The children playing Monopoly would be my son, Joel, and Pat's boy, Jake Smith.