Benzos

Posted on August 17, 2020 by Gavin W Sisk

This morning, already hot.

Too hot for grass to grow.

But dandelions,

they’ll push their middle

fingers unstoppably up.

And the bills, too,

flip me off.

And the taxes,

the virus,

broken blinds,

old photos in boxes—

and hell, of all things,

sugar ants

queued at the cat food bowl.

All of these

screwing into

my fat gut

while I screw my ass

into a corner of the couch,

watching YouTube

and drinking Diet Coke.

Seven PM in the

Dairy Queen drive-through:

behind a Dodge,

behind a Chevy,

behind an old Toyota

minivan with brown,

wind-buffed paint

matting in the sunlight.

Thoughts of ice cream

spill out its windows,

with children shouting and

waving their hands

like two plus two

equals four yet again

and everybody

wins a prize.

The thing is old but clean,

probably paid for,

maybe a pirate ship

on its days off.

The tag reads BLT-032.

III

Unbelievable.

I’ve been idling for a

cookie dough blizzard

for fifteen minutes,

but now need

a BLT on rye—

paired with a viognier,

which I’m guessing

Dairy Queen won’t serve.

Good viogniers

are hard to find anyway.

But if I do find one,

I’ll fix myself

a magnificent BLT

to eat while sitting

on my own shoulder,

unfurled by a

slow blonde pill,

and watching keystrokes

spill across a page.

Wouldn’t that be a life.

Gavin W Sisk

August 2020

Ignorance Amiss

Posted on October 4, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

I ask periodically: if the collective knowledge of humanity were on our tables–fresh, sweet fruit in bowls–if the knives were sharp, forks clean, blue-lit bay windows reflected in the plates; if we bought all that, fought for that, posted photos, ranted and raved; if we dreamt it, had it, did it, yet locked our doors and never shared or even peeled a single grape; if it were all ours–indelible and inedible as gold–ours but only composed in bowls, would we be better off than broken dark-age serfs, than emberless Neanderthals, than the dust of the dead in their graves–would this be an age of enlightenment, or just an age’s ignorance decomposed to myth?

Oct. 2014

Eclipsed

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

Blood moon’s iodine:
madrona lace against it,
cooling milky ways.

April 16, 2014

Evening Prayers

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

Have you heard a stone
skip across a frozen pond
at night?
Ringing blue beyond the fires
it caroms off everything,
absorbed by nothing.
Pewless in a dark church,
pleading for a choir,
it licks lambent vibrato
from ear to ear with
nothing soft to settle on.
It could warm a pang
but lasts without us,
as if the moon holds still
while prayers wander
into the woods.

Feb. 2014

God Computes

Posted on February 5, 2014 by Gavin W Sisk

Dear Mr. Sisk:

Regarding your exclamatory remark after learning your two-year-old laptop was not upgradable to Windows 8.1.
I empathize with your frustration. Though I invented the cloud, I’ll be damned if I can control it. (I like saying, “I’ll be damned.” It gives me funny hiccups.) But consider this. I remember turning my back for just a moment (a long time ago from your point of view, which is limited by design) so I could have a strategic planning meeting with my event coordinator, Moses. From my point of view (which, naturally, is all points), I was only distracted for a moment. But apparently it was long enough for some trash-talking ape-heads to erect a fake cow to throw prayers at. That really pissed me off—those prayers were for me. In fact, I thought hard about this being a really good excuse to use up all that rain left over from the last time I got mad. Cool heads prevailed in the end (all mine). I think Moses took it harder than I did. I know what my editors wrote, but that guy had a really short fuse. And he never did reassemble those last three commandments–told me ten fit the math better (as if I needed a math lesson). Nonetheless, Mr Sisk, every time I hear, “Holy cow!” I get pretty riled up. Just say, “Holy shit!” I can take that. Hell, I invented the stuff!

Thank Me,

GOD

PS:
Yes, backwards my name spells ‘dog’. But I invented those too. So I win either way. If that confuses you, it’s your own damned fault. One thing I didn’t invent was English. (When I say that something is your own damned fault, carefully consider the source.)
And yes, I write a lot of asides. But that’s kind of silly to point out to an omnipresent being, isn’t it? (Don’t spend too much time on that one.)
Also, get a Mac.

Your Head Is A Good Place For Your Eyes

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

Every time I write a crooked slice
of my funny sideways life,
I end up flopped on the couch
with all the pink
sucked out of my tender middle.
Maybe that’s how you feel
sometimes
after bouts with the reality
that blood remembers gravity
the more it flows.
We tire easily as we go.

So why should our heads
perch so far from our feet?
Though our brains ride astride
our mouths (on good days),
our respiration
must be fussed over by organs
that might as well be on the moon.
Through the lungs, the heart,
and down the line–
flushed through miles of old pipes–
the oxygen falls into our slippers,
only to bother our gout.

The birthday candles glow bright
as our heads grow light.
There’s barely blood to wake our noses
to smell the burning wicks and
decide the lilies in the vase are real.
That’s how some days seem to me,
though younger than you.
But I digress.
And you can still tell:

the lilies came from a friend’s garden.
You smell vanilla in the cake.
The milk is fresh;
the blanket soft.
More is right and young than wrong.
Your head is stuck where it is because
it’s a good place for your eyes,
which over the window sill
see beauty your slippered feet
might barely feel.

Birds do better than murmur
in the Oklahoma sun,
which rises old but warm.
All the senses can be painted
from your chair,
whether you lift a brush or not.
You do.
So, without regret shall I.

For my friend, Jo Ann Duck Teter

Oct. 28, 2013

Fair Illusions

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

Gavin W Sisk

Today’s trip to the Washington State Fair was fun but incomplete. Without machines from Caterpillar and Case, and nothing from John Deere bigger than a gentleman’s frontloader, the event seemed little more than a suburban thrill ride through a missremembered past. Most of the barbecue was branded by national corporations. Half the prize-winning chickens were provided by just a few 4-H families. Show horses pranced with graffiti and colored sparkles on their rumps. The blacksmith admitted he didn’t know what he was doing (we all had guessed).
It’s an illusion. I ate fish and chips for dinner and a Caesar salad for dessert.

Sept. 22, 2013

The Game

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

Visiting Hours

Worked all day and evening.
Haven’t seen her since yesterday.
Trundled into the house, she hugging my heels.
No time for whiskey; She has an appetite.
Order up!
Purrs and paws my pants while I take too long
to scoop her kibbles from the plastic bin.
Now what the hell, you furry fickle?
Two bites and you’re scratching at the door?
You’re spayed! That tom won’t take you.
But I see that the moon will.

Aug. 13, 2013

When I wrote the above first version of this poem I imitated my daughter’s writing process. I had an experience, recognized its potential, and immediately wrote it down. It should be simple.
This process works well for my daughter partly because I’ve taught her to always swing for the fence. Partly also because I’m careful to stay out of her way, and because there has been less crap in her life to pollute her perceptions. She mostly throws down the right words on her first try. If she makes small mistakes, they shouldn’t matter–proper punctuation is for adults.
I am an adult. Tenderized by middle age, I don’t often swing for the fence. Hell, my life experiences have made the fence all but invisible. Instead of exploring my thoughts, I tend to write what I believe I ought to be thinking, or what I hope will seem to others to be good thinking. So I must approach writing, especially poetry, incrementally. Instead of baseball, I play golf.
Every poem has a par. I tee off with a driver (usually hooked behind a handsome tree) and proceed toward a distant hole in fits and fights against my own mysterious nature. A hole-in-one is theoretically possible but highly improbable. For me, writing is a game of one damned thing after another–of seeing the light but listening for the tick of the bullshit meter. Writing is rewriting. Driver, six iron, wedge, putter—perception, delusion, epiphany, closure (that’s a good hole). What keeps me playing the game is knowing the woods are full of as many flowers as lost balls.
Here is what may be the finished version of the above poem. My daughter warned me against fiddling too much with the original. For me, though, such weightless subjects as cats are opportunities to disregard the bullshit meter. It’s not Eliot, and that’s fine.

Visiting Hour

Worked all day and evening.
Haven’t seen her since last night.
Trundle into the house, she hugging my heels.
No time for whiskey; Rosie has an appetite.
Purrs and paws my pants while I take too long
to fumble through the cupboard, shuffling beans
and soup and sauce to finally find the fish flakes,
and bend to scoop her kibbles from the bin.
Order up!
Now what the hell, you furry fickle?
Two bites and you’re scratching at the door?
You’re spayed! That tom won’t take you.
But I see that the moon will.

Aug. 17, 2013

Zombieism

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Gavin W Sisk

Story idea:
The zombie virus is so powerful it tries to kill you hours before it infects you. But you can’t really die because you need to survive long enough to catch the virus hours later. These hours precede you continuously in an awful time bubble while the virus replicates in your temporal lobe and sheds to look for other hosts. So you remain in a state of undead until the virus’s host, your brain, is destroyed.
Makes sense, right? Good enough for a book and film rights?
Show me the money!

Deviations Toward Normal