The World

The poet who wants to express the world
ends up writing a sentence
broken into small fragments
like an insect
leaping
from place
to place.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Balboa Park, August 2011

Settled in the shade of a tree,
next to tourists talking of Istanbul,
I trek with my pen and mind
through the imagination before me.

Baudelaire, my backwards companion,
guides me to the depths of pain.
I rebel. The children swim in the fountain.

I am distracted and detracted.
A woman asks me, in a thick accent,
to use my mobile phone. Her boy
sits close to me and he jumps up to leave.

Two men play the guitar in the distance.
I cannot hear them, but I assume it is beautiful.
"Right there! Right there!" a child yells and points.

And I am right there, absorbed in it all.
The wind gusts and I am lost.
Teenagers laugh maniacally.
I can hear the music now.

In this park, it is easy to sit
and reflect on humankind -
constantly in a state of movement
and rest, a mix of language
and cultures, united under one mission:
to be joyful in this moment.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

I Clothe This Page

Slowly, letter by letter, I clothe this page.
I have given it a bath, carefully washed
off the cliches, and dried it in the sun.

My hands are soft and pruney, yet calloused
from years of writing on virginal, milky white
paper - each word plucked from the shadows.

Three ships

Three ships come in at night,
protected by a bank of fog
over the bay.

The ships are silent. The wood creaks
like the wind in a forest.

It reminds me that time
is infinite, but we continue
to decay without thought.

The three ships anchor and are still.

My breath, my breath remains.

I want to write a poem

I want to write a poem,
but my legs won't reach the ground.

I want to write a poem,
but there's iodine in my coffee.

I want to write a poem,
but he never smiles back
and the air is too polluted
and the band can't play
and my curtain's always closed
and the inspiration isn't coming.

I want to write a poem
so bad in my heart
but my brain says stop.

I want to write a poem
but Prince already did it
and some other people wrote
a poem the exact same way
so I might as well give up
before I even start.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Luminous and Hungry for a Revolution

Luminous and hungry for a revolution,
Lucy sits, waiting patiently
in a park, drinking water,
watching children swing effortlessly.

Persistent and tired of the turmoil,
Paul finishes carving a piece of wood,
that looked like a fish to begin with,
into Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

Restful and invigorated by the universe,
Rebecca lays next to her fourth love,
her hair greying, her heart swooning,
her breasts, her breaths.

Hunkered and weary of failure,
Harold plants petunias in his garden,
whistling a monotonous tune,
daydreaming of monkeys in the zoo.

Interested and hopeful for the future,
I write about people I have never met,
listening to popular indie music,
fingertips searching for the next word.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Isolationism

I imagine I am drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.
You are curled up in my bed, dreaming.

I am drinking coffee and smoking
because I am a tortured artist
and must be unhealthy.

You are curled up and dreaming
because you are coquette
and forgotten among the libraries
of the 1920s.

I imagine I am smoking a cigarette
and living in the 1920s
because these are times when America
regretted nothing and danced
in the streets.

I am smoking and drinking coffee.
My mouth does not smell great
and there is little I can do about it
because dentistry in the 1920s
is not a priority.

You turn over in your sleep.
I watch you turn over
then return to my writing.

My typewriter ribbon is dry.
I must replace it soon.
I can barely make out the words
I have written.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The Natural Progression of Things

The natural progression of things.
Fall into a pile of the everlasting.
Brush against the mistakes of yesterday.
Let go of the grass stains
and the forgotten memories.
Let go of the literal and anonymous.
Let go of the melodic merchants.
Become the murmuring in a monastery.
Become the horizon,
stretching endlessly for the next.
Become the stop of the hammer.
Become the time.

All that is reachable is limited.
All that is limited is questionable.
All that is questionable is hidden.
Therefore, love with all your heart.
Bare your chest to the latitude of the spin.

I walk towards the infinite.
The knock of a stranger,
asking for one more metaphor
to rest his head upon.

Leaves, pressed in books,
remind me of your smile.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The dust, the rumination...

The dust, the rumination
peeks from between my fingers,
a melancholy mistake of hair,
listening and whispering recycled
pleasantries with a smile.

I have forgotten where I began,
mindful of the stop sign,
a peaceful approach to living,
the unending questions:
how often does lightning underwhelm?

And again and again.
Upward and until the end, it seems.
First things first, vanquish aches
and pains. Then tackle the bigger,
louder anomalies
like tax evasion
and digestive problems.

Little by little, a cliche
in its own right (so is that)
you begin to be distracted
into elegantly folding paper.
This becomes a reason to breathe,
making shapes from simple paper.
Fold and fold
these tiny squares.

Mustache remedies and literature,
wasteful yearnings and thunderous boastings,
these are a few of my favorite things.

Yesterday, I wondered if I could find art
in everyday places. Then I found you.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

White Wolf

A white wolf wanders through the streets,
the heated concrete its new home.

Does he think of his family?
Does he long for his family?

White wolf, I cannot repel from this place.
I am transfixed as you pass.
The world rotates
and I rotate with it.

Does he hunger for truth like I do?
Does he look into the void and wonder?

White wolf, you are free to run
along the length of the beach,
yet I find you sniffing trashcans
in an alleyway.
You are thinking about where
your next piece of food will come from
and whether or not tonight you will die.

Your blue eyes reflect the sun
as you turn to look at me.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Poetry, a Rebuttal

for John Reuter

Poetry is so simple, you say,
that anyone can do it.
The poetry world is full
of people who don't have anything
to talk about, their stories
aren't interesting, their poetry
unfathomably bad, you say.

Since it is so easy to write poetry,
I want to write you this poem.
I didn't take me long to write,
it's not full of similes and assonance.
Though perhaps "assonance"
has an assonant quality to it.
And perhaps "unfathomably bad"
is an analogy of some kind.
And perhaps I can't avoid being a poet
as much as you cannot avoid
being an intellectual.

Poetry is as old as language itself.
It is in the drinking water.
It is the air that a baby breathes
for the first time, coughing.
It is deep within our bones.
It clutches us to remember it
every night before we rollover to sleep.

Poetry (complex mistress and forgotten
utopia), there is a monster at your gates.
He spits fire and quietly decays
the foundation of your home.
He is the holy Intellectual, pious
to the god Aristotle and all
his linear plot structures.

And yet, the glass blowers blow
the kilns still fire
the canvasses dance with paint
the blank page yearns for words.

It is these things that give me solace.
The progression of art is alive
and it breathes in poetry
like gust of wind,
filling the lungs with music.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Yes! I Cry Out

Yes! I cry out. Yes!
The little mouse
and restful eyes
lead me to linger
at the gate once more.

Yes! I cry out. Yes!
A million times yes.
My need to hunger again.
My need to hunger again.

Yes! I am the atom.
I am the flesh.
I am the organs.
I am the I.

Yes! Thankfully yes,
yet she says no
and I still smile
like the grass in a field seeding
like a hill offset by rain
like the trees, multitude of trees
like the beer fermenting in the closet
like the echo of shoes on the pavement
like the first born child saved.

Yes! I still smile
the earth below me
reaching towards existence
like a million and million particles
maybe more - explained in a number
of ways, but always returning
to that one reoccurring dream:

Yes! My mouth bloodied and silent
among the endless road, not
before the handful of ladybugs
pulls me upward to the stretched
ocean of the sky, chaos
in a drinking fountain, softly bubbling.

Yes! I cry out. Yes!

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Priest of Poetry

for Soroya

Have I taken a vow
of poverty for my art?
Reading sacred texts
and holy men, I do not doubt
that I have become a priest
of poetry.

"I am a nun to theatre,"
she muses.
There is passion in her eyes,
her concentrated gaze
peering into me.
I am naked.
“Then I am a priest of poetry,”
I smile back.
“How poetic,” she says,
emptying her coconut porter.

Years of celibacy, it seems, carved
on belts, silence in the church
of my mind.

I give my life to you, poetry.
I will scrawl notes in your margins.
I will paint cathedrals with words.
I will take communion every day:
it is with the breaking of the spine
of the book that we remember you;
it is with the drinking of verse
that we remember you.
I will sweat rhythm,
sing stanza, whirl dizzily.
I will stand on the street corner,
shouting the names of the dead.

I am a priest of poetry.
I carry my bible with me everywhere,
mumbling its incantations
to the wall.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The Bus at Night

The drink of the night --
caressed and stumbling.
Slurred meth and lost teeth.
I watch the honey pour out
on hand tattoos and missed stops.
The eyeliner smudged, the eyeliner
questioning like language.

A body of winkles, a face
of aged crevices, the weathered
blankets below the eyes --
those shallow creatures of quiet remorse.

A man enters the bus, removes his bags,
and puts on a very large, black mustache.
He stands and looks at his reflection
in the glass.

Another pours whiskey into a half
empty coke can. The bus
stinks of the stuff.

A body shakes violently impatient.
She carries a bouquet of flowers
with her everywhere.

The scent of her fabric
stays with me through the night.
The weave of her skin:
braille to my fingers.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

While

While the boy sucked on sugar cubes
while Susan huddled under the bridge out of the rain
while Thomas doubted
while the bus driver watched in disbelief
while the husband thought of nothing
while the stench of peanut butter wafted up
while Penelope wandered the streets looking for love
while hundreds and hundreds of ants invaded
while Joseph became irritated by triviality
while mustaches quivered
while Megan poured cereal into a rather large bowl
while french fries fried in a grimy McDonald's
while rest area restrooms were closed for renovation
while a hungry bear searched for food
while the villagers played soccer
while Johan cuddled the kitten he found in the ditch
while the planets kept spinning and the universe expanding,
I prayed for an end to this poem
and you hoped for resolution.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Poem While Listening to Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 1st Movement

It begins, the light shines through the window.
Stronger still, she holds me and reverberates my song.
I can feel the life now, at the root of her tongue.
The harvest is quick. No one remembers my name.
She calls out to me and I do not call out to her,
it is useless and sad against the bark of the tree.
The mechanism of love rings truth to bathe in.
Our passion (though hidden) is naked before God.
Yeses and noes play a seesaw of formation.
Little by little, little by little: acquiesce.
The spring has come and love come undone,
this is the act of creation: acquiescence.
The mouse finds its home, the mouse finds it home.
The mouse does not find its home. I am home.
Running slowly downstairs uncovers nothing.
Running quickly upstairs shows, thankfully, nothing.
I am a rabbit of melancholy. She is the ocean.
Deeper now, deeper still, the legs of a chair.
Rustic winds and the underlining forgotten metaphor.
Wrestling with or against the ebbing tides,
I am an overturned apostrophe.
She steals glances of my broad smile.
There is quiet now, the light still shines through the window.
It started with a pace and more than halfway through it continues.
There is a dance we are reconstructing, an old dance
of placid grass in the rain. I am home.
She hums the same tune she has hummed for years.
I listen apprehensively, making notes here or there.
It reminds me of jazz, but I do not dare mention it.
My eyelids are heavy now, but my heart beats strong.
She tries to tickle me. I am not ticklish,
but I pretend to be because it brings her delight.
There is another swell, then movement again.
Breath.
Then silence.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Politely, I think

I've got no real answer
for the question
"I don't know, you know?"

---------------------------

I have little doubt
and that brings me
great joy.

---------------------------

She prepared her lips
for their first kiss.
It was forgotten.

---------------------------

Paintings of sunsets
bring tears to my eyes
because they're terrible.

---------------------------

A hundred times over,
I will get you a spoon when
you promise to eat correctly.

---------------------------

The darkness falls.
The waterfall falls.
I fall out of love.

---------------------------

I believe pessimists
never fully understand
the meaning of life.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Let Us Begin

Let us begin,
dust the dust off the typewriter and truly begin,
letter after letter, word after word,
the bending silence of the gracious echoing,
a humble beginning, the little gallop of the television,
grandfather hides his pain and smiles so that you know everything is okay and everything will be okay and nothing will be different even when someone tells you otherwise,
older and older I become, little does she know,
little does he know that tonight will carve out their existence in their minds until the end of the end,
gracious host, gracious again and again,
please, I beg you, lift up your voice to the ramblings of God,
he is there on the streets, in the market, in the bowling alley,
there is a great stirring in my soul, a level of transition,
the Spring has arrived, guitar and muscles fading,
justified beginnings come and go, here and there is the palace,
in moments now, as the music swells, the smell of gas and garden,
soon the commas will end, the induced coma will end,
frightened of the beginning, scared of the end,
littered among the next word and the last word,
I find the beginning:

“She sat on the lawn chair, a pile of magazines at her feet, the smell of grass, freshly cut, the fresh smell of spring. Her eyes are closed but she is not asleep. She wears a striped one piece, breasts of gold peeking out. Little words now to express my memory of her correctly. She sits, the angel of plastic. Sunglasses, a straw hat, a daiquiri in the holster. She sits and the sun perceives himself the victor of her pale skin. There is the occasional car, translucent to her perception.”

No, that is not the beginning. I do not even know this lady.
I will find it. Let me continue to search among these broken letters
until something comes to me again,
like a mother of two having trouble wrangling her small children,
like the handbag of the apocalypse: devouring the forgotten,
like the yeast of yesterday,
like the underlining metaphor in a sex ed class,
like the wasted wasteland of the internet,
like the recycled memory of the first day of kindergarten,
like the – have I lost you? Good. Now let us begin again:

“She uses the sponge to mop the floor. This is her life now, a modern Cinderella because of her father. Her apron says “Kiss the Cook” but she is neither cooking or does she have someone to kiss. She revels in the irony with a slight smirk on her face, though smirks are slight to begin with, aren't they? Her yellow gloves protect her sensitive skin from the harsh chemicals. The radio plays a tune of the current generation, which she is not a part of, though you would be hard pressed to guess her age. She does not lose sleep over her age, though she does lose sleep if her floor is not clean.

She yawns a stifled yawn and dumps the water into the sink. She looks outside at her lazy cousin who is asleep in the lawn chair again and steps carefully to avoid muddling the clean floor. My God, how her beauty makes me believe in you.”

I must interrupt again because this is going nowhere,
the clock ticks as your eyes tick across the page,
a mere wasted minute, but none the less we will begin again,
let me see if I can find a word or phrase
that might entice you to read further:

“Two Mormon brothers, dressed in their Sunday best on a Friday, cross the street to a small cottage with a girl in a one piece sunbathing in a lawn chair in the front yard. The taller of the boys gives a knock to the door. “Just a minute.” is the answer from inside. An eye comes to the peephole and then disappears. There is silence for a minute or two, so the brother knocks again. Nothing. They smile gently at each other and walk on.”

Hmm, yes. Now what we need is a deus ex machina.
Let me see if I can't stir one up:

“There is another knock on the door, but she ignores it. Silence except for the radio. Suddenly, the locked door flies open and Truth walks in with a scent of gin and pastrami.

'What have you got to drink?' Truth asks.
'I'm sorry?' she says.
'What have you got to drink?' Truth repeats with a sigh, holding the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb.
'We are fresh out.'
'Well, shit, lady. I need a drink or you need a drink. I'm loaded with triviality and suffering. Luckily, for the both of us, I carry.' He pulls a flask from inside his coat, slicks back his hair, and takes a pull. 'Okay, Hannah. It's Hannah, isn't it?' Hannah nods. 'I've come with some rather heavy news. You may want to sit down.'

Hannah sits, unquestioning. Her interest is fully piqued by this strange man. 'Today,' Truth says, 'is the last day of your life.' He pauses to let this process. 'Your organs will shut down tomorrow around one and you won't wake up from the coma. So, as they say, seize the day.' He gives a little bow, turns and leaves, closing the door behind him.

She removes her apron and lays down on the couch. 'At least the floors are clean,' she thinks.”

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Time will tell, time will toll, time will yell.

Goodness, how time is a bitch,
you relentless goddess of hunger,
a tell-tell hobberchord
like a mix of pleases and feasible entry.

Time will tell, time will toll, time will yell.
I am the benefactor of the word yes:
my life-vest is a blimp
and my youth in shambles.

Before yesterday, I was wondering,
and that gave me great heartburn.
There is little left to see, little by little
left to be thankful for, yes.

Honoring Pound and Eliot today,
I think to make an allegory
of a forgotten time and place
like the inside of a shoe on a Monday.

Boundless and tired, she sits
in a Victorian chair, velvet red
like her lips, a handful of cats
scattered around the room.

Waking from my waking, breakfast
comes in when I ring the bell.
I am a servant of my servant,
a master of my creased appendix.

Undoubtedly yours, yeast rises and sets:
this is a metaphor for something.
I cannot place my finger on it,
but I believe it has to do with sex.

Wasteful, wasteful – I plan and plan
and only became a man today,
my beard - a stain on my face.
I am the guitar of monotony.

This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Missed Connections

Lady on the bus with the red outfit and large red hat: There is an exploit to the universe and you are the key.

Woman and man doing the crossword together on the park bench: Tumble with the inevitable chaos and drink in the pale liquor of the once forgotten world. Smudge your fingers with delight and lick the ink like a lollipop.

Man running through Balboa Park without a shirt: You are a cliche of your own devices, your muscles reflective and questioning in the afterthought of this run-on sentence.

Little girl with golden brown hair, holding your mother's hand in the grocery store with such a delicateness: Breathe deeply and open your eyes to the myriad of choices before you.

Couple making out next to a boarded up Blockbuster's: Kiss the nape of eachother's next until goose bumps appear.

Reader of this poem: Keep close to the ones you love; cherish the random encounters in your life because one day you won't wake up.


This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Autism

He stands, hand in his mouth, both slightly cocked to the side.
He stands, breathing.
He stands, teeth jutting out, unrestrained.
He stands and flicks his hand over the television.
He stands above me, face to my face, blinking deeply.
He stands still for a picture, eyes empty.
He stands and loves the world with as much joy as humanly possible.

He sits, playing with his marbles.
He sits and watches his DVDs for the thousandth time.
He sits bow-legged on the ground, flipping through cards made for kindergarteners. He will be 20 in eight days.
He sits on a carousel, watching everything blur.
He sits and meditates in his sanctuary.
He sits and eats because he is told to do so.
He sits and loves the world with as much joy as humanly possible.


This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.