Infinity Blues

by Ryan Adams

  yuck

  gross

  the moon plays with a ball of yarn

  it tells me jokes

  tells jokes also to the yard

  dogs go ape-shit

  and in the pile of garbage

  they roll

  snort

  and then get up begrudgingly

  and go settle down

  in a lie

  under a tree shadow

  fuckers

  lucky and pure

  in their madness and devotion

  and without doubt

  so noble a thing

  but when living

  so pure

  minus all that second-guessing

  and congestion.

  I do not talk about how I feel

  so much as I talk about

  that I am feeling–“something”

  but I dunno what fucking what

  really

  it’s so nonspecific

  it talks a lot of shit but doesn’t back it up

  if I planted something

  not the evidence in a coat

  but a tree

  maybe it might slow something else

  everything being perfectly balanced

  still I blush

  when I get the feeling

  a woman is thinking of a saddle-up

  forgive me but

  I mean,

  I got the ticket for me

  for us

  For Charles

  Today is Thursday, Charles,

  and I had that old dream again.

  I bet it was something like your drinking problem.

  You can never admit it

  or let it go

  so you glorified it

  until it wasted you

  and your possibility

  and you died

  right after people started looking like horticulture

  and whatever.

  I bet God made you join a rollerskating league

  I bet you hate it

  I bet it’s all men too

  an all-men rollerskating league

  so you don’t get any ideas

  and besides

  rollerskating is a bag of funballs, Charles

  and you

  they put you in the movie store on the day you passed

  in all your drunken glory

  and you

  you were a good writer

  and you saw things

  and they were messed up

  but they didn’t have to be

  and those docks

  by the swampy pier

  they aren’t meant for learning

  but for ships

  cargo

  and

  the sea.

  Today is Thursday, Charles,

  and I had that old dream again.

  But you are still asleep

  and will be forever

  and I wish

  I wish you could wake me up one more day

  to cry

  and write a brief note

  and leave it on the refrigerator of the world

  that you were sorry

  and that you really were just scared

  and loved too much.

  Goodnight, Charles.

  No Movie Tonight

  Just tonight, walking home I thought,

  Maybe I will treat myself to dinner and a movie

  but I got cold feet

  and I just couldn’t

  For all that walking down the aisle alone again

  For all that unnecessary static I feel

  watching grouped shadows before me

  side by side

  taking it all in together

  it does not remind me of her anymore

  but it does remind me of me

  desperately alone

  and

  there is just no one

  no one

  not a soul with a match to relight that fire

  and I’m terribly afraid it is in no way an over-exaggeration

  but a fact.

  You can feel that stuff from this altitude of 33.

  I can see the fast-action valley below of youth.

  How merciless and warring always

  teeth-gnashing war machines, but all pretty and dumb

  colliding

  and at this height

  well

  one must saunter on toward the summit

  or what point was it anyway

  if for stopping now

  to find the peak

  and know a measurement of a single light

  inside this machine of mine

  which keeps growing hair

  breaking down

  and

  capable of the longest of sighs

  as darkness surrounds.

  What If

  slice it any way you like

  be it a loaf of homemade bread

  or a block of cheese

  I like it when the mail comes

  I open the box one-armed

  with a string I keep tied to my belt loop

  on its end a gaggle of keys

  and there

  there is your magazine

  we don’t finish them

  but we try

  us youngins or under 40

  but as instructed by our elders

  we stack them neatly

  in our bathrooms or our sitting rooms

  or wherever a window is

  that gets the most light

  for reading them later

  under the reflected brick thrown

  unnatural light

  and

  EVEN when you make a funny cover

  about politics

  some of us don’t mind

  or even understand

  because

  in the front pages our poets speak

  simple and condensed into phrase

  and it is as if at once

  I learn each time

  to understand a world of hearts

  one must focus on a single beat

  its flow

  and be silent and in the know

  what courage it must take

  to be at ease enough to expose a truth

  single and fit for a feast

  of your offices

  overstacked with the words of us dreamers

  trying our best

  to be clever

  in the way we use words

  when they rhyme and repeat

  or not

  but

  slice it any way you like

  if it made it in,

  there is a bit of dancing standing fits

  when you open the box

  and your submission

  somehow

  against all odds

  made it in.

  Electric Nothings

  Am I still a country mouse

  If forever now

  I boxed me up

  and shipped me up north

  and

  gave my heart to a city-style dream?

  or

  am I not a geographical thing?

  Am I still a Southern pie

  If long past baked

  I boxed me up

  and was overlooked

  for

  people here eat mostly cake

  and

  remember when Johnny Carson used to do that thing

  that thing

  where you playfully end up

  riddled with the whipping cream

  interrupting a blush

  as it fell onto a suit

  from a smiling face?

  Am I still?

  Because I feel like electric nothings

  most days

  and find myself engulfed in measurements

  my soul fastened to my shoes

  my shoes the counterweights

  and

  I don’t feel like I belong much here

  or there or not

  any more than anything flickering

>   digital

  that a spilled glass of something

  could make forgot

  gone too

  like a season well spent.

  This is how we go about it now

  now that the curtain and the cast

  are simulcast

  before and after intermission

  with all of us mid-bow

  to empty house crowds

  and

  my body tells me something LOUD

  “hey, mister,” it says

  you are yours

  so

  I let the words take me where they will

  and marry each morning

  that clicking sound

  far from electric nothings

  and south.

  War Is Awful

  That gun,

  That suit,

  That thought,

  “aim … then shoot”

  How’d you do it?

  What’d I miss?

  I kill cockroaches

  sure thing, man

  I never miss

  Well, that’s a lie

  But what the hell

  They invaded

  So why not try?

  Why not?

  Is that how it goes?

  That gun,

  That suit,

  That thought,

  “aim … then shoot”

  Someone made that thing

  lust or love

  directed by the hands

  and silence above

  below a floor

  not sheets and bed

  but rapid miracles

  reproducing

  like light orb circles

  dropping from words

  meant only once

  for ears now yours

  once your mother’s

  surrounded perhaps

  by careful doctors

  and a nurse

  plus plenty of hot water

  and your tears,

  all miracles

  considering the lists

  everywhere

  talking “End Is Near”

  take this, take that

  to calm your fears,

  fix you, not IT

  like you were a world

  funny, but not cute

  you’re not

  so

  That gun,

  That suit,

  That thought,

  “aim … then shoot”

  How’d you do it?

  Fuck You, Mister Know-It-All

  Sometimes I tell myself,

  “Fuck you, mister know-it-all”

  but I know I’m right anyway

  so I don’t talk to myself

  for like, seven days

  because

  I am an asshole

  an asshole with a big fucking mouth and also

  I am trapped by multicorns

  several of them

  not to be confused with unicorns

  who are also assholish, like swans

  beautiful but will fuck with you,

  NO multi-fucking-corns,

  which are just downright,

  um,

  nasty, yeah, nasty and awful mean

  so you know,

  next time you get mad at yourself

  think about this

  or me

  and feel free to keep smiling

  and walking on through it

  because,

  well, what am I even saying here

  who am I to tell anybody anything

  I dunno shit about anything

  my life is a fucking mess

  “fuck you, mister know-it-all”

  I would tell myself right now

  but I’m busy

  I’m busy being a poet

  or whatever

  infinity

  plus

  whatever makes it impossible to retort

  I get the last word here

  always.

  Sand Sea Tide

  I wish it were sea spirits–joining me to the ocean of sadness

  or static tides filled with anger and depression–my own faults

  sea spirits, green sun-glinting eyes

  skin like scales, every color in them

  when they moved ever so, standing upon

  the beach, with merlin’s staff

  but I am simply crazy

  and me

  my loneliness, which I spell so well

  is killing me

  off

  like a crushed bug under a nice set of heels

  I am surrounded by misery

  and my boat sets sail

  and we drift

  into that fog

  where I shall never see your face again.

  sand

  sea

  tide

  when I ask you to take my breath away

  what I mean is,

  forever

  for-fucking-ever

  My Watch Hates You

  Dear Time,

  Fuck You,

  I used to get wasted and stand at the edges of buildings

  not for show, there would be no one anywhere

  not fried style

  not even a stranger

  and I would know I was wasted when I hung over the side

  because naturally I am afraid of heights

  that’s when

  when I would snort a speedball off my hand

  you know that place

  between your first finger and thumb

  that’s where you snort them from

  I would buy coke

  and buy heroin

  both powders

  and premix

  and put them into little pieces of paper

  which I would hide in my jean jacket pocket

  very small

  and I was like a magician

  I would pretend to wipe my nose

  the way anyone would with allergies

  mid-lunch with someone

  and I would drop the line into a linen napkin

  or just a plain one

  and I would snort them

  all day

  all day and night

  but at night eat at least two sedatives

  and one painkiller

  then get wasted

  wasted as fuck

  and when the darkness filled me up all the way

  I’d find a quiet ledge

  and I would try to accidentally fall off

  I did this for at least 6 years

  I miss it

  not the drugs

  but whatever else that was, but I don’t do that anymore

  now I work myself to death

  that is my new punishment for myself

  and because

  during that time at the end

  I lost you

  I lost you there, I guess

  I lost you.

  so

  Dear Time,

  Fuck You

  and

  watch this watch this watch this watch this and watch this watch this

  watch this and watch this

  Asshole.

  Forget It

  slowing hands at ends of stems

  pedals

  arranged white, purple.

  cornrows like directing orbs

  of orange/tangerine blast

  over a silent

  waterfall that is you

  and

  forget it.

  marsh lands toxic dump radioactive

  semi-truck

  spills toxins, fire, a wreck

  fire explosives and up and

  down and up and down

  so afraid and insanity-bound

  glacier

  that is me

  so

  forget it.

  Fruit Gets a Lot of Still-Life Action

  sit still,

  no,

  you fucking sit still,

  dialogue

  between a camera

  and

&nb
sp; a bowl of fruit

  it’s tired

  it’s been there forever

  and the set is exhausting

  it’s tiring work

  getting too much love

  isn’t it?

  so it starts to give

  the lights are too much

  the hours are too long

  and the orange is more brown

  now than yellow and red

  mixed

  and the green of the apricot

  has softly fizzled out

  nodded off in its chair

  a sitting bed

  in a green bowl

  on a table

  with large hands moving the pieces

  round and round

  a race against the clock

  time always wins

  the cameraman just forgot

  for they are driven

  driven by madness

  against a time

  and

  the world stops

  they think

  when you isolate it

  small enough

  it fits into a frame

  but it is a trick

  to make you think

  that fruit gets all the action

  it does not

  it dies behind the colors

  in the darkroom

  and

  is nothing,

  zero

  so move, soldier, move

  winter is coming

  Aplomb

  since nobody is listening,

  I will sing this

  aplomb

  aplomb

  I’m singing that song

  but I am not dignified

  without dignity

  I am alone

  and no one is listening

  this is MY hillside,

  my right and left

  sky and tree line barren

  white canvas

  north and south

  devoid of color

  listless

  totally shut-mouth

  since nobody is listening

  I will sing this

  over myself

  over myself

  and the thump of my own heart

  kicking my chest

  beating it

  with its blood-fist

  aplomb

  aplomb

  aplomb

  aplomb

  aplomb

  I am alone

  I am alone

  and

  no one is listening

  Do Not Loan Your Heart to Women

  if you raced me home

  you would end up

  in the woods

  woods–white

  silent

  and

  scary

  but you know that now,

  you know

  as we watched the clouds break