called by name

a broken bottle buried under
a mound of mud
dug
out by hands hardened, worked, full of calluses
and lacerations
from all the excavations
creating new creations
filling every nation
with branded bell jars of beautiful breathing bodies
fresh faces
polished and pure
washed of all dirt
no longer a broken bottle
but a song
sung
in perfect pitch
knowing that
there's a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in

but we watch our watches and wait for the inspiration to create
something worthy of time
either yours or mine
but nothing seems to rhyme
or flow as easily as it would if we weren't so severely damaged
flawed lazy selfish dumb
hungry for what never comes
because we fill ourselves with what won't sustain
from temporary treasure we don't
refrain
our best and worst
both look the same
through our eyes all we see is
[LAME]
transfixed upon the mound of mud
we still expect hides all the shame
of our brokenness and blame
while we make our mends
with the devil we all tote within
and do our work
to create something worthy of this life we've been given
art that motivates
music that resonates
words that procreate
but the one we should be doing
all of this for
says:
forget your perfect offering


(Inspired by Leonard Cohen's "Anthem" from his 1992 album The Future)

haikus

audrey and i spent part of our evening writing haikus. we would give each other a "topic" and spend the next couple of minutes composing a haiku. here were the results:

ice

slippery water 

blue time freezer moves slowly 

glacial paced glaciers 

homosexuality

i plug in the light 

no electricity flows 

love despite the shame 

les mis

one life turned around 

does the same to all others 

a ripple effect 

all is lost, all found 

you forgot the candlesticks 

silver salvation 

dogs

scruffy ball of joy 

you bring more to the table 

than most humans do 

unopened flower

wake up little one 

your time, it has almost come 

reveal your beauty 

a lightbulb that just came on

edison forgot 

to tell us about the hum 

fresh new current's spark 

garbage floating in the river

i don't belong here 

used useless good-for-nothing 

yet have many friends 

st. croix

unturned dirt grows hard 

chickens look for worms within 

finally! tilled earth! 

waterfall

roaring, splatter, mist 

steading dropping, constant reach 

powerfully graceful

Berry on the porch

plain are the lips that catch the tears
that run from her eyes for her tongue to savor.
she tucks her boys in after all these years,
southern oak leaves now their delicate covers.

the evening before they read Berry aloud
in a swing on the porch till the dusklight subdued,
but tonight they lie shiv'ring in their cradle of ground,
any feeling of hope she solemnly eschews.

so much so that she joins them in the dust and the earth
and crawls under her blanket of southern oak leaves,
she's closing her eyes on the faces she birthed-
the keen sword of grief, quietly sheathed.

a real new year's resolution

Actually taking the commands in this poem and giving them the power of a resolution is slightly terrifying. I imagine that is exactly as it should be. These words seem to be carved deep out of the same stuff that is at the core of my identity as an American, a man, and a child of God.

May God give me the strength in 2010 to dig down deep into the stuff, scoop it out, mold it, throw it in the fire, and pull out the forged stone and display it as my Ebenezer.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
--by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

why does everyone drink it all up?

it seems
all of the time
we get the right all wrong.
yet we speak of the truth
in our no spin zones.

when will we understand-
a broken bowl
will never hold any holy water,
and a shattered mirror
will always distort a perfect image?

still we take these distortions and package them up in groups of eight or ten
and create memos, lists, and adorable acronyms.

and to everyone who doesn't swallow, we say oxymorons-
because all morons hate it when you call them a moron.
and everyone else
is just a moron.

and those that don't swallow wonder,
"why does everyone drink it all up?"

they breathlessly await
the day a mustached oil baron and a young evangelist can share a perfectly situated milkshake

idea (reimagined)

I have incredibly gifted friends that bless me all the time, and one of those blessings came a couple of months ago in the form of song as my good friend David turned one of my poems into music.

He writes on his website, Travels of Anodos:

I have some of my favorite poems up on my wall, poems from Hopkins and Eliot and the like, and one called "idea" by my friend Ben. One night in the dorm, I was sitting at the desk playing my guitar and looking at the poems, and I began putting a tune to "idea." This is what came out.

"idea"
words by me, music by David Scudder.

download recording here

Thanks again, David.

what's missing is by will oldham

what's missing is-
some kind of pillow
some loving willow
some care once denied
now dissolved inside

what's plenty is-
one god
six tongues
five breaths
four lungs

what's rhythm is-
plenty of things missing
steps taken, lips kissing
new harmony on an awesome scale
meat against meat
under sail

untitled

i’m a silly sap
looking back and back
to my stack of sacks
my past
sometimes forgotten
squeezed away into the wind
never to be found again

but others remain vivid, actually,
even more now so
when the memories are those
that I never want to squeeze away
they boil in a pot – my life’s silly stew

all the food is from it
gaining salt and flavor with each passing day
every second they spend bouncing between my ears
they become fresher, newer, sweeter
like a merlin

when I am old, I imagine,
things will be so pungent they will hurt
i’ll dig in the dirt and put things to rest
but like a courtship calling
the smell will never go away
and I will die from my happiness
a smile too big to bear

the road to nowhere

the sky looks warm
as waves curl window pane's view,
but i look past the rising heat
to feel the air of winter-
chilling,
biting,
embracing,
inviting.

dead leaves on the dry grass
like the ones that made piles
when kids jumped in,
digging tunnels
in puffy jackets.

and fingers that curled around your mouth
to bring back color-
white to pink,
and pink to red.
emptied lungs
that breath the air from skies above,
air that quietly dives down,
blowing smooth lines into the hair on your face-
barely a sound,
barely air.

it's days like this
when i would go to somewhere i've never been before
and stay a while,
breathing the air.
bryson city, north carolina,
maybe i'd ride the train
that cuts through town,
and i'd wave my hands at the crowd
like they were all my family,
close ones i would be away from for a while-
waving,
crying,
missing,
faking.

i'd take the road to nowhere
until the road to nowhere ends,
and walk the woods
the cherokee did
at the end of the road to nowhere.

resolutions

© adam brimer..................................

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secret of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all they sky over him with one smile

-e.e. cummings

happy 2008 everyone . . .

eating the world is easy

This poem was written in April 2006. It is the most cathartic piece I've ever written; the three-part process stretching across several days. The imagery was more real to me than what actually inspired it - germinating a new bodily sense. My new taste buds thirsted for salt water and leaves. And, of course, I discovered that eating the world is easy.


1.
i ate the earth in one bite.
its oceans and plains felt
the wet of my tongue.
dreadfully rural.
horn seeps,
world waits in dark suspension,
and starlight flicks white dashes beneath
the sound.
echo...
sound.

grass coats my throat still
making me want to die again.

2.
i ate the earth in one bite.
its oceans and plains felt
the wet of my tongue.
wonderfully domestic.
appliances hum,
dirt floats in alluring anticipation,
and sound is an afterthought behind
the wind.
familiar wind.

clouds are in my pocket still
making me want to die again.

3.
i ate the earth in one bite.
its oceans and plains felt
the wet of my tongue.
silently haunting.
fog bleeds,
water laps in pooled premonition,
and darkness rifles my misery before
its prowl.
midnight prowl.

bedrock cuts my feet still,
making me want to die again.

idea

i have an idea -
let's put the top down and drive to a place where
we've never been before and lay

in grass and leaves that aren't yet
dead, they still have colors -
red, yellow, orange, and brown.
autumn, please don't count your dead before
winter's darkness buries them.

until then, i have an idea -
let's grow our hair and shout our secrets from
the bottom of thick-trunked trees

whose bark is cold to the touch when
we climb into its carousel of
twisting arms and forgotten fingers that
we give names to and make remembered as the
southern wind bends them in its shivery chill.

i have an idea -
let's drink steamy coffee and tangle limbs when
you can't hear me whisper words

of love into your untrained ear
that never senses growing weeds where
travelers stop to catch a breath and wrap their hands
and brush their cheeks and cover up when
no one cares to build a fire.

hey, i have an idea -
let's gather jackets and vests and scarves
and pack our bags for a trip where

we don't know where we're going until
the train stops screeching in the central
station of some great city with soft-white windows,
like bearded men with newspaper sleeves,
who ride coattails through fluorescent streets.

i have an idea -
let's learn to dance before december arrives
so we can foxtrot through the wintertime.

somwhere between fuse and fire

somewhere between fuse and fire,
between fugitive thought and busy dream,
an organ pumping fist
flexes,
knuckles stretching white,
ligaments pulsate,
quivering skin,
the invisible heart
vibrates, throbs, bleeds
in rhythm with the
bone that connects your wrist to the rest
of your
body.
somewhere between fugitive thought and busy dream
there is awake,
a daydream,
that phosphorescent cinema
launches a reel
onto undersides of saltwater skin,
the bulging veins of inside eyes,
that flashing light-
through lids' lash fix
with all the fuzz and wires
of decades
old,
when pupils dilate
to take it in,
the glittering movie of brain activity
that eyes don't see but
once
in a lifescreen.

fingertips

I
dont
really
know
what
your
face feels like
because tonight
was
in
my
head.
Fingertips and
knuckles
trace
the
life-lines
back
around
frontwards backwards and upside down.

chandelier chords

the silence breaths inward like a flame-
flick'ring dancer,
pirouetting ember,
your
throat is full of heated coils,
a radiating hum - not softly heard-
nor is there ever sound
in evening gowns.

when letters leave the city

when a book is being set to type,
ink drips out of forest vats,
bombing pages with blots of black-

stories are the stolen seas where letters use their dripping breath
to float through pages rough and secret,
blowing by one at a time
until they settle down and build their fires.
they build their fires and chop down trees,
they tie their horses and plant their seeds,
they run their baths and wait for rain,
they make their love and harvest grain.

letters like their eggs poached.

living below the bootheels

leaves fall, trodden soil fades,
for soon a snow will come
and dust the mess was made.
with ice below and bud above,
the green will grow and heal my love.

softest skin

i am a homeless milton bradley,
plastic telephones inside and out
step over borderlines,
as red suns speak of flames and distant shouts of
softest skin sending their sounds
around my pressed
white shirt.
i am a silk-tied train station,
cases of drivel chain-linked in the light,
the fluorescent hum shoots blue invisible
as uptown and queens trains tiptoe under streets
that support displays in windows incased where
softest skin presses against
top models.
i am a lincoln log donation,
no real grain or rings or dust,
true blooms don't sit next to five and dime
boots or bottles or envelope openers
as children pass by and in the wake of their wind,
softest skin touches buttons on a
gameboy.
i am a cold concrete dance routine,
making ends meet around a chalk line,
synchronous feet stomp babies in air
as central park wrinkles by and adds to the collection
of fatherless fathers who can barely watch
softest skin fold money into a
bucket.
i am a rainbow-stained puddle,
painting the curbs of carpeted streets,
and hiding the wrappers of cancer-lined paper
where i can see everyone in their horse power stride
as the clank of a turnstile ripples my face
where softest skin once reflected
desire.
i am a tombstone flower,
petals of white are actually yellow,
and creased crinkled edges add to my allure
but no one will see me, in fact, in my
death.
if only the hands of the ones below
would reach through the earth and the roots and the leaves
and pluck me to smell me, i could map landscapes of
the deadliest skin, so soft to the
touch.

sunburned & sober & such

a promenade of ceiling fans
casting a gale, brown shutters stale
orange light climbs in
slowly
with a sudden, instant leap
on blood-splattered faces, wait
that's just blood.
you searchlight, you
with your 50 watt hair and you 1,000 watt stare,
pulling a man unwilling to fare
eternal halloweens as a grizzly bear.
cool-musty-settle-dust
on your body sunburned and sober and such.

a hotel blanket

calling upon elastic removal
to hide what others never see
fusing; charming screen and label
change the route of history
a hotel blanket, pink and fake
wrapped around a body worn
stumbling out of time to take
away from love yet to be born
water creeps under my chin
and ends up washing down with sorrow
spiralling toward drains to blend
with a broken promise of tomorrow