AQUARIUS RISING Ben Fama
Ugly Duckling Presse Brooklyn, New York 2010
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THE UNIVERSE WANTS TO PLAY —Hakim Bey
G ir l
I dreamed you wouldn’t let me sleep in your bed In a phone call they told me the poem was over I was choking and there was no one to wave to Beneath me was the sea A stranger came out of the the water You stopped the car and took a picture He was touching me and you pushed us The valley was golden and you made it hush Something I never thought you’d do The houses were similar and we never lived there People were nice and you disliked them for their love Homer’s first word was rage, and you? They drilled screws into my hips Then I became an adult The radio said winter was crossing the mountain You had red hair and wanted us to lay Your clothes were soft but I didn’t want to The sheriff said you were born with a storm in your heart Did you pour hot lava in the game console? A mare gave birth across the meadow I skipped a star The sorrow of being locked out of divination
- 7 -
I drew you on the back of a notebook The sea was dark and I wouldn’t go in You sent pictures of long grass, the wind 1992 1993 1994 1995 In a phone call they told me you didn’t stop the car Young rites make sweet the new order of the ages Take a moment You have some beautiful friends There’s a beach shore somewhere inside you My head on your chest I hear it crashing My back slightly arched I showed my face to the sun The crystal in the window fractured light over the blankets I wanted a mountain in the city that only I knew about Try to imagine a future touching skin Dragging a claw through a cloud We broke into the neighbor’s pool and populated it An enormous wave soaked the lawn Someone called your name back there Life opened to you like a marble palace You brought new lightbulbs, pageantry, couture, a lion’s roar You came as a myth-weaver The wind took the last leaves Once I had a month with no dreams It was like living in an aquarium with a blanket over it Why kiss me if I won’t get better?
- 8 -
Won’t you forgive me the way I’ve already forgiven myself? To track the snowfall over the mountain on horseback Something you got for being attentive You talked about the light from your childhood You talked about being a girl But I thought about something else Magic isn’t real ... magic isn’t real ... magic isn’t real ... But I need more Just to look through a telescope To stand naked in a field My whole life has been spent on dramatic displays of expression I ran through the grass with a kite in my hand When I lifted, it dragged I will not will my anxiety into anticipation You pulled the car over and began to cry I dreamed I could show you my dreams like a movie I am simply wading into the surf If the sea breaks into sequins then I still believe If I am no longer curious then I must let myself go
- 9 -
A ng e l Y o u t h
The end of this actual men’s world was the last thing we truly needed when Mercury went retrograde we hid on the first day a cleanse began the second held wonderful whites detached magisterial pronouns on the third you told me the last thing this universe needed was another love poem written with wet eyes staring out the window of a spaceship I was already lost in morbid cosmic visions of reverse destinies of patricide in a mirror maze sparklers in zero gravity sequins stitched on a butterfly and later in my sleep I say aloud: take my word on it this beautiful shipwreck can never become real but wake me up and tell me I’m wrong
- 10 -
T e rrariu m When I’m winning my colors twist up like a candy cane when pressed I throw my riches into the woods I don’t even know what real life is
people talk
of a final discovery of a large bell lifted from a songbird drop a nickel in an ashtray listen if it sings
o mountain
how did you become so serious? do you forget like I do the middle name of a cloud you sometimes loved? does lightning hurt or do you close your eyes to hide? is your pain golden like the wheat filling you up with bad ideas? magic morning come back to bed let’s take another hour before we start the parade to carry our wonder towards the township of outlaws deeply masked their world is ours swollen hands in an iron dream a world that is always admired by someone and for everyone else nevertheless sometimes glows
- 11 -
A quarius R ising Imagine a minnow in your hand I don’t know anyone who ever died
it makes being human harder minnow: did you picture it in water? a rainstorm cancels blue morning how much do you rely on planets?
dear Jenny, I too sleep in the grass cast spells do nothing connect some stars there’s your coat of arms mine points to a place where things I like come true by magic
- 12 -
give yourself a kiss because you’re awesome a fever passes around a cartoon world perenially it shines upon stones arranged to guide us towards infinite breezes if you are soft this is a spirit gift if you are a man this is a new poison put your hands all over me I’ll be your ouija board a spirit lies where its love lies deeper than music I’ve heard yours release
- 13 -
J o e B rainar d ’ s 21 s t T an
Opened like the funnies a picture stuffed into another picture’s frame the sky becomes gray no candles lit this reality will not suffice if it isn’t cosmic it isn’t anything it’s raining and I’m going out maybe Joe Brainard will show up maybe a diamond will fall all the things he talked about still make the poem a surprise I once asked to marry the moon believe a mind could take hold of the sea Katie died surfing I too know the sorrow of wanting love refuse to tame my vulgar emotions and I’d like to go home the long way if I remember
- 14 -
M ys t i c A m e ri cans There’s a music box I’ve had a long time I wind and wind I don’t think of anything an actual poison flower you grow in a jar or everything on any island what’s grief? no song never being naked? I’m not trying to be something far away a map with bruised cheeks that puffs at ships and tempts long grasses toward long grassy women who left behind flames used to ignite the black candle of let us stay totally alive
- 15 -
today you’ve got the beat lonely winner for the long grasses of Pennsylvania an actual pang for a small town where you once fucked up then drove alongside a magnanimous terminal fortune eyes closed over the mountain to drink at the inn and pull back clean sheets and dream against the cold
the ghost deer rubs her snout on the window
the spittle refracts the sun in the morning
- 16 -
Glitter Pills To live a serious life that’s a fucked up thing I would have to rent out a cabin beneath terrible angels if I get old wipe the dust off my tits I should have a serious log cabin the cabin’s name is Ben Fama find directions on the internet when you want to leave you can I’ll stay there just me and my heart bigger than the sun
- 17 -
B oy
Some days this house exudes a subtle whinnying asshole says graveyards are slowly winning I bury my face deep in the front lawn a family of magicians moves onto the block a sequence of colors erupts from their chimney now anyone can walk among strangers towards daylight Norse creature, neighborhood fog— stay here with us snow, stay here with us snow leopard
- 18 -
C ub
I wake press star to continue the wind blows the wrong way now you grow tigers summer is a sÊance where campfire loops endlessly The banner on the hill it opens like a sail the tiger gets huge I saw you with it in a picture a child named Lazyhead then a fortunate discovery selling metal from the ski lift If today is your birthday please remove exactly 300 hairs from my beard I’m dancing for fat rain to press on the evening so you may climb up and tear the sky in half so it will look the way I have secretly wanted
- 19 -
T auro m ac h y
Women of Odessa I come bearing .gifs
with a siamese suit and a cargo of light
your neighbors overhear my plot to break in
but I don’t care about their pinballs
I live in a palace among the picadors
who conspire proper ways to skin ponies
the hides dry beautifully but a stench fills the valley
you live across from a graveyard I vaguely remember never going into
- 20 -
this is because I am the torero people want to watch me die
I hold the espada the espada holds magia alquímica
your neighbors stare out when I talk this way
they worry my fireworks will melt their igloo revealing all their structures
let’s see what they’re hoarding let’s see what’s left of their dreams
in mine no one can reach my shore since the sea took the lighthouse
I wake up feeling like a dead thing and stumble through wheat and look in the clouds
grasses smell sweet and you are one torn short by the hands of many fair admirers
shall we gather and stream towards the landscape long worn down by ugly gods?
- 21 -
they left behind shells full of cosmic instructions that fall among plans I plan on planning
alive we drift among things no one agrees on when a bull kills a man with a sword—that’s news
a glacier is a chance to ride a bicycle across the sea a carousel has a pony for everyone
in order to be full of examples of people cast a handful of bullets in a flaming cauldron
come wielding the scent of theoretical children what this is has nothing to do with love
happiness exists only if it can be spread across a grouping of days
sometimes the world at midnight seems empty like an empty room in a sad empty gallery
or full the way a white horse floating in the center of a lake is a full lake
my apartment at midnight is a collage of wrapping paper and strange feelings
- 22 -
this world thrives on misunderstanding a cloud full of moods for mature situations
would you rather become the sand or the sea? drag a tail forever through mud or slay one albino deer?
I turn into wildlife, my spine abstracts by force of a magnet
some mornings westerlies prevail in my sleep the open radio glaring I had too much to dream last night
downwind from your lands a hot air balloon lies wrecked deep in the valley
I hear singing of erotic deserts, painted hillsides
but when I appear with a ring, you point to a rainbow gloriously spilling towards the next dimension
holding on only by work of a final colloquial sliver against me and into your spells were cast
try doing something beautiful it’s like wrestling yourself out from an executive headlock
- 23 -
it’s like leaving the ball with a stranger but then you cough up sequins
it’s like finding a wad of money in a field but then you can’t leave the field
the colonial centaurs are slowly vanishing win them over and you can stand on the dinner table
relieve a generous root to a larger pot to grow towards the light of François Villon
there’s a unicorn wrapped in hot towels, dying in my basement it’s like a fifty-four-year-old man trying to write a poem
at midnight she will be sent off by raft, her bones become cosmic golden jewelry
think you’re safe here and you’ll be kissed think you’re one place, then some radical truth
you were dying, then you did not die through force and imagination the future increases
across my shoulder you reach and correct the light
- 24 -
Aquarius Rising Š Ben Fama 2010 This book designed by wysiwyg with text and titles set in Sabon. Covers letterpress printed on French Paper using polymer plates from Boxcar Press. Books assembled at the Ugly Duckling Presse studio in an edition of 500. Parts of the poem Girl have appeared in the collaborative work GIRL BOY GIRL BOY (The Corresponding Society, 2010), co-written with Christie Ann Reynolds. Thanks to the following publications, in which some of the poems have appeared: EOAGH, Notnostrums, Pank!, Wolf in a Field, Correspondences, and Broome Street Review. Thanks to each of the following for helping in their way to shape this collection: James Copeland, Natalie Lyalin, Joseph Calavenna, Shonni Enelow, Garth Graeper, Christie Ann Reynolds, Derek McCormack, Heather Christle, Michael Barron, Matvei Yankelevich, and most of all David Jou. This book is dedicated to Angela Moore. Ugly Duckling Presse 232 Third Street, E002 Brooklyn, NY 11215 www.uglyducklingpresse.org