Online Exclusive

03.20.18
Nonpsalms
1.

You can’t live forever in fear
of language. Or well,
you can.
But it’s pathetic.                                           
Say:
            the shade had slowly crept across
            that late-September lawn …
Say:
            fandango!                                        
Without my cap I am a new man.
I am “man, sans cap.”
How exciting!
To be alone here with you strangers.
This is my face, these are my failures.
Hello,


 
2.

World, thank you for existing
and not just tossing me off into the ether.
Where I’d be dead and therefore so lonely.
Telegrams are lonely,
no one receives them anymore.
They just orbit around like some murder of icy zeroes.
I was in recession
                            stop
I came up short
                            stop
What was needed was a sweepstakes.
Or sweetflakes.
Or an iceskating party.
An excuse to strap on my pretty white boots
and sing.



3.

I sang a psalm!
Then got punched in the face.
So now I spew nonpsalms
and things are pretty fine.
Aside from my head which is this funhouse
steadily burning up my steadily inside burning
this inside steadily funhouse head in this fire
of my fire steadily my funhead fire—

Touch me,
                       hold me,
                                           (happily ever after?)


 
4.

If the nonpsalms could speak for themselves
I wouldn’t have a job.
Jobless, I would lie down like a tarmac
and die.
I would dream.
Oh,
about pretty much anything. Meanwhile
my body,
                    this dark
                                            hot
                                                            public
thing


 
5.

To be further away
stick your binoculars on backwards.
Retreat slowly from the day
as if the day were some bear
whose baby you’ve just cruelly fucked with.
No one cares if you’re clever,
least of all God.
God is such a bully!
God is like a little white candle sucking
at lighting up.
This room is so dark.
In the matter of one miraculous moment the mail may arrive.
All sides fragile.
Just like pretty much everyone.
Is anyone home?
Don’t cry.
Cars go vroom
to let me know they’re cruising by.


 
6.

The nonpsalms were born
out of a certain desperation.
Desperate, the writer of the nonpsalms
called out dumbly from his heap.
To be of some use!
Can you imagine?
hahah um
No,
I seriously cannot.
The nonpsalms can’t either.
The nonpsalms are too busy
just turning into dust.
They are like a pack
of invisible jet-black ponies.
They ride at midnight.
They leave their little clues strewn about town.
You don’t hear a nonpsalm for months.
Then you do. Then
it’s gone.


 
7.

What would really make sense
would be to sell some nonpsalms.
Make a little scratch,
go to Cancun.
I just want to get drunk.
I only want to get drunk,
I don’t want to run a business.
Booze and pleasure,
can I please have them always?
Preferably while sitting watching
this weird horizon fade.
Where do memories go?
What the hell are you, ocean?
Locale of Joy
or Murky Nexus of Fear?
Cancun was awful.
The sun had died.


 
8.

In other words,
the strict narrative of the past was steadily coming undone.
I like that.
Past!
Undone!
Who cares!
The writer of the nonpsalms cares.
The writer of the nonpsalms
would gladly fix your flat.
Your hat.
Your escape hatch or whatever.
He’s awfully kind.
World, be kind!
World, be good!
World, you look so sweet
with your adorable mini lakes.
Won’t you hold me?
Won’t you rock me to sleep?
No.
There was something else.
un-
    done

Jamie is a poet living in Easthampton, MA.