THE BRIEFEST OF ETERNAL WHILES
(selected poems, 1988 – 1998)
Timothy Brickley
Free Pamphlet Publishing
Indianapolis/Jersey City
Copyright 2007 Timothy Brickley
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States of America by Free Pamphlet Publishing
CONTENTS.
Preface.
The Bathrobe Tie.
Each Lover.
Sangria.
Her Visitation.
Madison, Wisconsin 1.28.92.
This Space Is My Own.
5AM, NYC.
The Distance.
You Fuckers.
We Got Somewhere.
Ohio Poem.
Mary.
Renee.
White Coats In The Snow.
Naps.
Danny.
Greenville.
Kate, 8:44PM.
The Killing.
Hal (For Catherine Harris.)
Message Tape.
Pale.
Bad Neighbor.
Bad Naighbor #2.
Listen.
Refuse.
Maine Moon.
Really.
Deco Show.
Because Of You, I.
PREFACE.
I thought I might be dying last year, so I started getting my papers together. Years of journal entries, unfinsihed songs, letters, short stories, and, as it turns out, poems, haphazardly stuffed in various file cabinets. Turns out I’m not dying (at least for now, right?) but I’m left with a collection of poetry. Through the years, I have never thought of myself as a poet. My friend and songwriting partner David Rheins was the poet, he took the classes, he read the classics, he really worked at it. And my older brother Charles is (among many great things) an actual Published haiku poet up in British Columbia. I’d just scribble or type in the heat of the moment and put it away. A few of them stuck with me, though. Each Lover, was in my head, complete w/ a sing-song melody, for years before I wrote it down. Kate, 8:44PM is a mock-haiku (an unrefined homage to Chuck) but it always sent me back to that exact moment.
Since I was a kid, Kerouac and Ginsberg have been everpresent. When I was 15, David made me really listen to Bob Dylan. Later, Gary Snyder became very important to my understanding. His Call Of The Wild, from Turtle Island is/was an incredible inspiration (thanks to my dear sister Catherine for that – and for buying me Deja Vu and Court and Spark when I was 13.) And finally, as an adult, Walt Whitman, the father I finally found through the children.
So, I don’t think I’m a real poet or anything. They’re OK, I guess. I wrote them for me. They help me make sense of my time here. And now I have to go to work.
2.11.98
THE BATHROBE TIE.
How carelessly you toss
me away when you don’t need or want me anymore
just like that
for years at a time
oh, I miss you
i’m glad you gave me that last go-round
i learn so much from you
you are warm
you have taught me much
i remember you with
the pink silk bathrobe tie
between your teeth
me gently pushing it into your mouth
telling you to bite it
while you came
and when you come
that low moan that starts i don’t know where
mystical secret place in your center
like a cat
and it raises in pitch like an living siren
to where you come
and go
and i
happy to just go along
for the ride
EACH LOVER.
Each lover
like Stalin
demanded
I oblitertate
the emotional
memory
of any and all
previous pulling
pictures from walls
destroying stray earrings
burning
hot letters
and I let them
until I was a ghost
and you ask,
shall I remember you?
1988
SANGRIA.
(it came to me while i was running
not only the poem / song?
but the tag line from a review:
of Sangria, the critics wrote,
“an unlikely love song = a male ode praising the erotic/spiritual aspects of a woman’s menstruation”)
Sangria.
She was so unreal
but she was so real
this beautiful young woman
that god in heaven above i now thank
for the wonderous choice to
let me be there
can’t express
can’t find where it was we were
how she touched me so
the most earthy way. beautiful
i can smell and taste her
sangria
on the floor of her mom’s little apartment
up by the shopping center
where i, a kid. stood
and where now, then,
i still just a kid
say hello to the universe
in a red splash against the white sheet
on the grey living room carpet
(in that little apartment while her mom slept soundly in the back bedroom.
Sangria)
and the salty apple butter brown of her ripe summer skin
and that mouth so sweet
(and the sweet delecious hello to
where it all began)
i singing the praises
and i would watch her dance
me not knowing i would get there
through my friend of course
he bolder
unrestrained by invisible pains
that would come on acid
just a force
and she, too
but he gone by then
i told him in the letters
wanting to make him proud
me
later just wanting her again
(and later, her own apartment now)
in that deco building
where Kate would later live
that dawn coming
it seemed like the first dawn i can remember
the screen in the window
open,
the next summer smell of the morning
so clear with promise
entwined with her
briefly
i was young, un-cock sure
she saw deep
and was very generous
and I think she still has
warm
feelings
for me, now,
us,
older
7/6/1997
HER VISITATION.
She says she was visited
by an unearthly spectral presence
that hovered, white, shroud-like in the corner
after it had scratched her sleeping roommate
there was blood
a skin sample?
there was blood
a skin sample?
sometimes she just can’t sleep
she knows they are outside, waiting
they’ve stolen unborn babies
from the wombs of unsuspecting mothers
and you’ve heard about those cows
yeah well, years ago I guess I don’t just
dwell on it, although it’s certainly
within the realm of possibility
oh yeah and the phone stopped working, too
just a maddening hiss
of white noise
aloneness
fall, 1994
MADISON, WISCONSIN 1.28.92
old man with one eye
in front of a bar
looking back
1/28/1992
THIS SPACE IS MY OWN.
This space is my own
i can do what i want
i have worked and made money
tonight
and now, after, i have worked out the angst and the anger
and the tenderness and the want
who would understand?
that’s OK – i don’t understand, either
but
this space is my own
this place is not my own
i am part of this social construct
i care i love i do
but i have the need sometimes to
get into the animal
i want to get into my own skin, i was
behind and
it felt good
i actually felt like
my animal me
i loved the way she moved, sounded
and this space too is my own
it’s my invention
i like it when she comes over and plays
i remember playing kidnappers with sherry brown when i was little
but tonight i was tired
so she made the drive
my hands hurt i’m getting old
but getting more in tune with my energy center
i am allowing myself, little by little
to be
i’m not lying anymore
some come and go
they have their limits
and I mine
i’d put it all into the one
i would
if she only had loved me enough
i wasn’t enough for her
not beating myself up, just fact
wasn’t enough
getting better
a reaction
i think so
it’s good to be moved
to be called to action
she was the most beautiful
when she moved it was
a breadth of flowers
an incandescent star shower
from her eyes
the soft hard smell of her
i miss her smell
i loved the sharp/cut hair on her legs
the thousand dark moles
of her back
that ass so
firm/soft like perfect fruit
her laugh that you
needed to love her
to love
the inquisitivness
and no need for stability
of her youth
unaware of the brick wall steaming toward
or uncaring of
she’s not a believer in that
she’s on one channel
her’s
not enough
and so now
i think of taking another photo of the bathroom
this time with her not in it
just the room
to show how empty
side by side
photos
like the vietnam ones
billy the restoration guy found
in an old house
left, abandoned
the tour of a black soldier
mid-60’s
those faded out muted colors
they were almost all girls
little girls
12,13,14,15,16,17
pretty
attitude, making a buck
all dressed up in swinging london clothes
dark shades, big earrings
they were portraits
portraits of these
young whores
prostitutes, excuse me ladies
they were loving photos
it was beauty
highest art of making sense of chaos
of finding beauty anywhere
(i/we am not guilty of anything
i/we am as not guilty as the tree
and the rock
and the breath within me/we)
and some photos were work
fixing jeeps
and i could tell which one was him
and there were a few of home
in a bar
with a pretty woman, his wife?
girlfriend?
and now no-one cares enough to want them
or maybe no-one’s left
will i care for mine, ours
where will they end up
who gets to keep them
who will be the family repository?
i must start mine
if i had that one girl
i’d put my new energy into it
why am i so preocuupied
lucky little niece
at 18 she will go to LA
and go to school
and her small tragedies
will befall her
but she is secure
i went at 18 and got drunk
with the 22 year-old
no good brother
of an import car repair specialist
who worked with my sister
worked on my sister’s cool
LA studio-owning lover’s car
and he got drunk at some
country bar in the valley
and wanted a hooker
and we drove back to Hollywood
and guess i thought it would be a sweet thing
from Iowa
and we’d go to a motel
i don’t know what i thought
i was scared
i had urges
i had no one to talk to
instead fat black hookers
he got blowjob
i got laughed at no hard-on wallet stole
then I went back that summer
and had finally found Bev, i think
my first love
4, maybe 5 years
they are so long gone now
just when you do the math
not in feeling
(i still look at the photos
that space of my own
i captured for
the briefest of
eternal
whiles)
6/30/1997
5AM, NYC.
the rain and the ghosts
the pipes and the wind
the gone, the living
the machines and the fucking
and the trucks
and the working
and the new
_____
she was running from the same thing
so we ran together
1988
THE DISTANCE.
the distance
is farther than the miles
nowadays
no time for drinks
or crooked smiles
nowadays
and the people that were
have been replaced
by different cells
so they say
somewhat the same face
a few xtra pounds
maybe a little hair
than in those
salad bar days
and I still want to break thru
and talk like brothers
nowadays
but the schedules are tight
don’t coincide
and i’m lost
everyday
in my own world
and you in yours
and the lovers
and the jobs come and go
but i still need your light
and those laughs
especially
nowadays
1990
YOU FUCKERS.
choose life
bumpersticker
driver side
window cracked
smoking a cigarette
8/17/1997
WE GOT SOMEWHERE.
So,
I am the type
who will lie about anything and
you are the kind
who will always be lonely and
no place is surely our destination when
anywhere could in fact be our home but
given all the facts of the matter
given it all i’d do it again
because in this end we are almost friends
at least closer, than we were,
at the end, of that affair
but i still see your
face in the sky
though those stars are lit by
nothing
nothing but history
from
so long ago
that everything that ever was still is
somewhere
So,
we got
somewhere
1988
OHIO POEM.
Immobile homes
moss on the fallen roof
broken trees
the House of Clocks
the refinery light
125 Crew, Ruiz
freewill baptists
the river is sick
with coal barge
tumbled cold shack
satellite dish
old barn
unbalanced on flat rocks
white oak
bark stripped
Contrell’s Motel
kids smoking cigs by the Ben Franklin
little white crosses in the yard
driving along the Ohio, grey winter afternoon, 1992
MARY.
But he had the sweetest
outside shot, she said
regretfully, truly
sad he was in
re-hab, thinking about
what might have
been.
RENEE.
Live for the moment
live for you
what can you talk about when…?
oh Robert, I‘m buying a condo
leaving and crying and being strong
I was there for three hours
nobody‘s ever stayed
for three hours, he said
10/11/89
WHITE COATS IN THE SNOW.
those brief seconds
of silence when they
hang the phone up,
and it’s dead
and the silence
is the space between you,
that empty space
you will never fill
and have made worse
and they fumble with the phone
and then they hang up and
it clicks dead
slight vague hiss
then dial tone
and that’s it.
NAPS.
It’s really just
taking little naps
in one big long
day.
DANNY.
danny
i’ve never seen you drunk before
but now i have
tonight in the bar and
you were fuckin’ funny drunk, man
and it’s made you more human to me
see, i ‘ve seen you before just as this shine-ing
something, this perfect being
with your baby and wife
and your faith and
your incredible songs and i never told you but
you helped me to believe in spirit again.
and now you are bloody drunk
in the Patio, your arm around
John’s date you know her better she
used to date Cary the drummer
and everyone tells me this is nothing
this is a pre-drunk state you’re
nowhere near out of control
and i can’t stick around
but i bet that’s something
10/12/1997
GREENVILLE.
Horn rims, compacts
step ins, carry-all’s
a geometric charm a
higher form of interest
lifeboat – who do you throw off?
impatience drove us to accumulate power in
a leather briefcase
bright green against grey cement
try to understand
I was a middle child a
worshipper of women
with an anguished past and
no matter how bad anybody treats you
it’s not as bad as this
dizzy with devotion
everyday is ladies day
snapshot day
savage river
authorized dealer
movie teller
inside it was
dark
_____
and then
out of the big blue sky
the giant C-51 transport
crashed into the back of the Jo-Jo’s
killing everyone
on the road doing ADA surveys, North Carolina, listening to NPR (with apologies), 1992
KATE, 8:44PM.
a dazzling smile
a little lipstick
she looked great
fainting couch
red velvet
real baroque
forgot my checkbook
changed purses
did Lorraine call?
8:44PM
something like that
just turning dusk
summer, 1988
THE KILLING.
And so your name was
Sherman
but you are dead now, though
shot in the back
by a local vigilante
pursuing somebody elses
stolen wrenches and drill bits, who
was driving around the
white enclave in this ghetto area
in a Model-T Ford, who
happened to have a
.38 caliber
when you fired twice at him
(they say in the paper)
while he was chasing you, and
then he shot you in the back
and you died
within
ten
minutes
and so, it turns out that
Pete
who the paper called a neighborhood
“activist”
didn’t like black people
but he was pals with all the cops
and his wife would help bust the whores
and he’d beat up bums who lived
by the fence of the interstate
and everybody knew this would happen
someday
but he worked on everyone’s
houses
and even has a
key
to
Elizabeth’s
and then at work
Rachael the big blonde with
the girly marilyn voice who
works for a judge
told me that
the cops, no, were pissed at him
because he did it before
ten or twelve years ago and
they were gonna hafta
go thru the files by hand
because that long ago isn’t
on
the
computer
and all because there’s so much
work to do
and more than enough people to
do it
but not so much gets done
all that work sitting here
all these people standing there
and we can’t
put
it
together
So, he, Sherman,
who tried to sell stolen tools and
then fired at his pursuer, and
he, Pete, who let his anger get the best of him
and shot a man in the back, we all
are lost, fools, dumb,
afflicted
stumbling through these fucked-up alleys
and the concrete cracking that
can’t hold back
the
mighty
grass
10/1/1997
HAL (FOR CATHERINE HARRIS.)
Oh Hal,
you’ve gone and left my dear sister blue her
old friend gone and
i wanted to tell her that it’s all
illusion
and everything happens at once
and you are still
somewhere
but it didn’t seem right
to try to minimize her grief
because that’s only part of the story
the other part is that
you are really gone
and we are still here
and she will miss you
and it will hurt
very much
you were good to her
when she needed somebody
to be and
for that i love you
(though i barely met you and so)
i’ve decided to make you my patron saint
don’t know why it just
sounds cool to have
a bald, benevolent
gay jewish tough guy angel
(say hi to allen for me, and walt)
and look out for dearest catherine
would you?
so they are all at your funeral now
people coming from all over
to gather and honor your warm memory
and then leave their
lives going on and
i imagine she will feel very sad and alone
when she’s walking out
of that gathering
so look out for her
and i will not try to minimize the grief
my dear sister
i’ve minimized it all for too long
i will feel it with you
i will be here to tell you
i love you, we all
love you
and that is
it has to be
enough.
9/27/1997
MESSAGE TAPE.
I have a tape of her voice
I saved her phone messages
I don’t know why I started
one was from that winter together
then one my birthday morning
then through the spring and
then summer
when i knew she was leaving
when she was leaving
i saved them
there were
13, I believe.
I left them on my crackly digital machine,
hovering on the shaky brink of on-off no-reality
a power surge or battery-low away from nothingness
so,
to be safe i transferred them to cassette
two or three times
when she called from Pennsylvania
i added the new ones to the tape
just her voice then could well me up
it was an amazing thing
in retrospect
i truly, simply, deeply
totally loved her
without question
(for that while. I think it could have lasted)
the rest
the problems then didn’t seem as real
to me
as the love
(to me
then
that is.)
7/7/1997
PALE.
This pale
afternoon
i finally
realized.
Who was it,
I thought,
that loved
that girl
so?
7/3/1997
BAD NEIGHBOR.
yeah,
you keep your yard better trimmed
than me
but your children
are monstrous little brats
with voices like demons
who torture each other
as play
and I’m allergic
to poison ivy anyway
7/10/1997
BAD NEIGHBOR, #2.
it was just totally
uncivilized behaviour
the rows the neighbors
had where I grew up
in those tightly wound little houses
by the ocean
they would rant and scream and
dear god did they hate each other
I guess one day the old man just said
OUT!
7/10/1997
LISTEN.
yes she told me
but I just didn’t listen
I take that back
I chose not to hear
instead I chose to
find myself, lost, in
the crashing of angels
the roar of her ocean,
the constellations
of her soft back
\the smell of forgiveness
the rush of her river
the laugh of her voice
drowning out my demons
the faint hope of something
beyond all this pennance
the throw of the orbit
that she sent me into
where I now
stay
yes, I told you
but you just didn’t listen
1/3/1998
REFUSE.
I look out over the
refuse
of my life my
emotional landfill the
missed turns the stupid
lies the bad
smell that is there
when it’s warm and sunny so
i’ve kept it
pretty damn
cold,
haven’t I?
1/5/1998
MAINE MOON.
i don’t want to forget that moon in maine
it woke me up so bright
an abduction
the bright white cool light i
was immediately awake,
staring at me through the big windows
that rung around the pine cabin
overlooking the so-still bay
and the evergreens
the tops of them spired by
the light and i was swimming in that moon
(so big just hanging there low right in my eyes
unblinking staring at me
wide awake like it’s been there forever) that
finally got to maine moon and it was
getting cold that night
and it did and she slept
beside me warm how strange i thought
i wish i could see inside her really know her
she seems so seperate there quiet
peaceful
but it was all ok
not happy, sad
just beautifully nothing
just knowing just accepting
of it all in
that cold light
that was only there
in that instant
because only i
was seeing it
(the night was all clear
and there were so many stars and
it was just the middle of september and
i knew, finally
they were
beautiful days)
10/15/1997
REALLY.
I did not do it to
get back at anybody
despite what anybody -
myself included -
might think
i did not do it just because i could
or was bored
or lonely
i did not do it to get back at
her
you
him
me
and ultimately, remember
i did not actually
do it,
did I?
I did it,
or did not do it
as the case may be
because
I
Really
Feel Something For You,
Julie.
10/29/1997
DECO SHOW.
I missed you at the deco show
i missed being young i missed
the guy from st. louis who
you bought the turn-of-the-century
lace cream dress from
he wasn’t there and
that dress i guess is hanging
in a closet somewhere at your mom’s house
i loved the way you loved it
i saw a spooky skinny deco chick
looking at clothes
curly long dark hair, cheekbones
and that’s when i missed you
it doesn’t happen much anymore
i think of you, though, often
i do, you are in my prayer
(that i try to remember to say)
to the great spirit, to creation
to chance, you are
but i don’t feel what i felt today
much
anymore
i let it come though
i try to remember to let the flowers
instantaneously bloom
now but
still I have to try
to remember
to try.
but i just let them all
be
i let them be
i let my feelings for you
be
and now i’m letting them
go
i remember bev us young she in those
forties and fifties
cashmere button soft sweaters
the smell of her body
putting my hand on her breast over them
and gena and her hats
from the store she tried
(it didn’t work i tried to tell her it wasn’t all failure)
some still in the basement here that
i can’t throw away
although it’s been years
and she probably has her baby by now
and my baby, my darling, all of the stuff
you left, mostly
the stuff you really
didn’t need
is down there too
but i’m really glad you have
the dress
10/11/1997
BECAUSE OF YOU, I.
Because of you, I
realized I didn’t comprehend enough to deny the existence of God
any longer
Because of you, I
wear my seatbelt now
Because of you, I
eat frozen peas
Because of you, when
I fall in love again I’ll know what not to do
Because of you, I
miss you
Because of you, I
sing “A Night In Tunisia”
Because of you, I
know where Kano is
Because of you, I’ve
swam in the Atlantic,
eaten crab at a big saltwater picnic table,
have that one brown sheet
and a concrete angel
Because of you, I
waited once for love
Because of you, I
remember a joyful tearful moment where
I pledged my love and meant it
Because of you, I
have the bad nights that fell apart
and left me alone in my hollowness
Because of you, I
faced and told secrets
Because of you, I
still want you
want to know you
want to love you with my newly-revealing actual body/soul
(the way I was in my photos from three)
Because of you, I
have no illusions.
Because of you, I’ve
driven through the lush dark green of Pennsylvania
humid late mornings when the mist hovers over fields and lake
Because of you, I
have an envelope of photos of indescribable temporary lovely
(the one in the magic winter grocery, the one your eyes shining in the car)
Because of you, I’ve
seen my depravity
I have the letter you told me
Because of you, I
know my own beauty.
5/3/1998
