Mark DeCarteret

My Muse Retires Early

Implied in the nightingale

its back black as a die’s eye.

Not the russet of song

it makes kidding itself

or the often white that at

times makes no sense of it.

Six winters shaving my neck

like my father before me.

Six winters of missing

kept after with string.

Will you look at all the chemistry sets, I said to you.

But not one of them working, you said.

Look at them, I said, look at them.

Cars are creeping up

on the unbraced and braced alike.

I’ll end doting on the hotel’s window.

Today’s film, a yellow rendering of flight,

first tree seen with a needle’s death ray.

The organs worry me more

than the lair of the angels.

You dangle between worlds

one and the other the crumbling kind.

I come to. In the inside of a shell.

My Muse Give Me Something for the Pain

May happiness will not slip

out from your hands. Shouted

the doorway to prove to my father!

Then turning after to take still no use for me.

With its sadly lit path or the thousands

of drawers to it. And you now operating

at a vapory rasp—what rope and what

upset (I see how this anything on the turnpike…).

Repeat upon repeat. So like paper,

like torn or preachy shapes.

My opposite if piled by chance!

Only, well, this. The hands later put into place.

No test not the stone has yet known.

With you clapping as specs all them would.

My Muse Is Not Itself

I rouse the horse from out the dream.

And eat till my mouth fills with folly.

The sun rehearses its bit. Red as in.

A nurse crossed with insecure laughter.

Ear lit from behind. Star-meat and stars

risen out from the mist. Time’s un-stuck.

I have soured on these useless notations.

Mate with night all you want. Noon tames.

The Year I Went Without Being Paged (Executive Function)

“Mark DeCarteret” no longer exists.  (Noticeable Weakness of Late.)  Certainly, you can ask for him to be re-created, designed.  (Effects Mostly Transient.)  But consider the tons of text, note-taking, mail-sacks and ark-pairings.  Gap after gap after gap.  Not to mention the test scores and credit reports, set-ups and cancelling.  (Age matter, amount of exposure.)  Ditto, the statements of authenticity, up-to-date town records.  Artistic licenses and decrees.  And the trading cards.  (Digital non-native.)  It’s always easier this way.  Thinking of him as a make-believe sea creature.  Who meets up with another sea creature.  Less make-believe.  More indefatigable, ruthless. 

I, Muse

I broke down the suggestion boxes

I had worn like a pair of shoes and recycled them.

I did the best I could but it wasn’t very good.

I don’t think with the addition of death

I need to think of it as an idea, a stray thread.

I mean, I still see your likeness in the silk shirt

I tie-dyed for you, the ink spill I’m eyed by on the sofa.

I hope you’re not thinking any more ill of me.

I have been eating what you eat.

I am okay with the meatless display but not the iced tea

I am made to stir up with my finger though

I am also so-so with eating treats off the floor.

I have an asterisk on my head the size of a chimpanzee fist, a starfish.

I was kissed by either the dash vent or the shift stick.

I have no needs. I am so full of what little.

I will lie down with any deity. Or corporation.

I have seen an angel regret tearing up over a cat/tiger video but

I have never seen a tiger regret eating up any and all of it.

I am new to the winning number though

I am beginning to get used to it now.

I broke down the raised toilet seat box

I left out for the cat till he got bored eating it.

I sniffed the glue from steamed-open letters till

I stuttered and grew fins, masterminded them.

I could have been anyone. But never the guy

I stitched into a doll and double-billed “The Loud Guy.”

I will lie from here on in. I will die like

I mean it and love what is left of love.

I am mostly okay with regret. But not with how

I grew tired of words. All the rain they’ve entertained.

The Muse Copyrights its Past Wrongs

Please tell it to stop.  The poetry-making machine.

I’d rather it a chinrest, an insult settling upon my ears.

Me, wakening, sire, in slow-motion.  With time lording it over me--

staked out on the paper or rising in these iron-cast clouds.

Your decision, my camera?  Which moment to rhyme?

The tolling of a pot.  A pan caked with tears.  Self-taught peers.

For its own sake please tell it to stop.  Let it in on the charm

I’ve been pitted.  How I sat in on my past and oversaw the last edits.

More niches I’d championed, scrutinized into doped speak. 

That picture of her I’ve been pouring.  As she tipped off the posse.

The rope tightening again.  Sunlight, so poor, it’s resistant to tropes.

Or toe-tapping.  O, the lake that I ponder.  Its lack of a bottom.

The Muse Waits for No one 

                                        for Phil

For no lack of the luv (sic)

the killer line or the limerick

I’ll call on St. Beckett

to re-create and/or wreck it

and do if for, like nothing else,

   at least kicks

 Genetically Altered Muse

Water is not yellow.

When one mentions “wall of trees” there is no wall.

My upper peninsula has a tear in it.