coffin of ice, deux

winter's already here
with its sepulchral grasses
still green under the snow
my goddamn mind is full of trunks
& old clothes thick as dead clover
I found your letter
its odd song & that promise
veneered w/a candy I can't
believe in anymore
this winter I'm going to
carve me a coffin of ice
and learn to keep still forever


This version is a significant re-write of this piece. I originally put this on the blog in June of 2007. This is much stronger than the original piece. I note, once again, the association of temperature with emotional status. Looking back on these pieces it is easy to see this relationship always had something to do with mortality in my consciousness. How elizabethan of me, no doubt. John Knoepfle always made light of the womb/tomb relationship in Elizabethan poetry (I took a class with Knoepfle in this, along with Jane Morrel, Alison Gaughan, and Steve Dolgin), but it had some profound effect on my work. Knoepfle always sought to escape things that made him uncomfortable. Especially aspects of sexuality, something Knoepfle was not personally honest about himself. For those not familiar with the Elizabethans (John Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell), they had that "small death" thing referring to orgasm. Certainly sex and reproduction are inevitably aspects of mortality. This really isn't rocket science. What follows are the original notes from the previous post of this poem.

Referring to a letter that Alison wrote me, promising a different time in our future. Perhaps she meant it when she wrote it, but it looks more like a manipulation from this distance of years.