My favorite poet is Dean Young. Here are two of my favorite poems by him:
My People
Initially, I too appeared between the legs
of a woman in considerable discomfort.
A rather gristly scene but fairly common
among my kind. Those early days, I must
admit: a bit of a blur but generally
I was provided for, wiped off
and kept away from the well.
Dressed as a shepherdess until
I could handle an ax, it was then
I saw the golden arches and tasted of
the processed cheese and left my field
forever, disastrously it must be said
although it has led me here, addressing you
in this grand and ugly hall, paid
a nominal fee and all the grapes
I can eat. Well, I’m told they’re grapes.
But I leap ahead when leaping backward
as well as vibrating in place
is more what’s called for,
much like the role of the tongue
in the bell. Hear that?
Reminds me of the coyotes of our youth
before we hunted them to near extinction
then expensively reintroduced because
it turned out they were the only solution
to our rodent problem, at least
on the outside, in the cribs. Inside,
it’s a grackle/possum/viper problem too,
even algae in some areas. Somehow
we’ve managed to ruin the sky
just by going about our business,
I in my Super XL, you in your Discoverer.
A grudging, fat-cheeked tribe,
we breed without season, inadvertently
or injected with quadruplets. The gods
we played with broke, they were made of glass.
The trees our fathers planted we will not see again.
How I Get My Ideas
Sometimes you just have to wait
15 seconds then beat the prevailing nuance
from the air. If that doesn’t work,
try to remember how many times
you’ve wakened in the body of an animal,
two arms, two legs, willowy antennae.
Try thinking what it would be like
to never see your dearest again.
Stroke her gloves, sniff his overcoat.
If that’s a no-go, call Joe
who’s never home but keeps changing
the melody of his message.
Cactus at night emits its own light,
the river flows under the sea.
Dear face I always recognize but never
know, everything has a purpose
from which it must be freed,
maybe with crowbars, maybe the gentlest breeze.
Always turn in the direction of the skid.
If it’s raining, use the rain
to lash the windowpanes or,
in a calmer mode, deepen the new greens
nearly to a violet. I can’t live
without violet although it’s red
I most often resort to.
Sometimes people become angelic when they cry,
sometimes only ravaged.
Technically, Mary still owes me a letter,
her last was just porcupine quills and tears,
tears that left a whitish residue
on black construction paper.
Sometimes I look at used art books at Moe’s
just to see women without their clothes.
How can someone so rich,
who can have fish whenever he wants,
go to baseball games,
still feel such desperation?
I’m afraid I must insist
on desperation. By the fourth week
the embryo has nearly turned itself
inside out. If that doesn’t help,
you’ll just have to wait which
may involve sleeping which may involve
dreaming and sometimes dreaming works.
Father, why have you returned,
dirt on your morning vest?
You cannot control your laughter.
You cannot control your love.
You know not to hit the brakes on ice
but do anyway. You bend the nail
but keep hammering because
hammering makes the world.
