Deborah Landau

[audio:http://www.scatteredrhymes.com/poets/Deborah%20Landau.mp3|bgcolor=0x000000]

from Welcome to the Future

*

so it came time and
no day like that is ever
good in the coming
the bleeding like satin
the river flowing down
and heavy and to the east
dark with soot
crossing the night bridge
the river flowing down
and heavy and to the east
there were roads into bitter
heads between knees
the diminishing systems
bleached and diagonal
the river flowing down
down and no sound
all night the breathing
all night the breathing continued
in lieu of

*

welcome to the future welcome to the new
no instructions

I have come into the aware
where the gilt edges are

look all the men
and the distance sitting in the roar
with knotted blue glass

we are aware
as if all is tunnel and paper

there are bodies and
bills in these flattened villa

one waves as we pass him

and home isn’t here
and home isn’t there

and randomly we plead with the officers
to get down from their cophorses and help us

*

worry the river over its banks
the train into flames

worry the black rain into the city
the troops into times square

worry the windows cracked acidblack
and the children feverblistered

worry never another summer
never again to live here gentle
with the other inhabitants

then leave too quickly
leave the pills and band-aids
the bathroom scale the Christmas lights the dog

go walking on our legs
dense and bare and useless

worry our throats and lungs
into taking the air

leave books on the shelves
leave keys dustpan

telephones don’t work where you were
in the chaos

desolate oblivion face me along the bar
nothing will rest tonight in the high empty room

the nothing closes forever
in a shop-window
and forever opens the heads wide again

the streets bob up incessantly
height is felled wire rises

the glass is laced together with tunnels

the fathers are all glass
all air and windows

_

Drinking with Richard

Richard propped up the bottles
like bowling pins

I had fallen into despair
did this bother him

when Richard left I broke
my throat I bit my tongue

cracked teeth my mouth split my lip
smashed chairs in the bar trashed

poems I was writing
all this breaking was very expensive

there is no Richard but I think it was Richard
who had the idea of pouring libations

because of the stumbling thirst
because our lives are like that

I am writing this to do as right as possible by Richard
think back to the bed look out at the bar

the fragrant medicinal flasks
I don’t care to drink anymore because when I drink

it makes me hopeless
Richard, are you going to come back

to the bar where you belong
or just leave me here

here is a flask
I am tired of being metaphysical

our bar is a winter bar
at night we need the dream

of all the objects lined up in a row

_

from Dear Someone

my emptiness has a lake in it deep and watery
with several temperaments milk cola beer

at night the selves are made of water
all the openings flooded streaming with rain

my emptiness has an aqueduct in it
selves rushing through channels

dissolving washing away in streaks

my emptiness has a fish in it
a piece of seaweed liferaft a rocky strait

all night the selves are breaking themselves
again and again on the sandbar

you can’t get out from the drowning
nightwatery the blacksparkling pools

my emptiness has a nowhere reef an island
at night the immersion comes deep-running and sudden

the selves
it washes us under and sudden

—

POSTSCRIPT

In the interview, I think I am more talking about popular usage turning compound nouns into contractions while Deborah is on the money with which even Catullus liked to use.

Deborah was not far off when she said I probably wasn’t born when was a new and exciting thing.

The Last Time I Saw .

The Last Time I saw Richard .

All poems reprinted with permission from the author. You can, however, see more of Welcome to the Future at and the excerpt from Dear Someone at . Also, one of Deborah’s poems at and a blurb and excerpted poem at .