I spend the days deciding
on a commemorative poem.
Not, luckily, an epitaph.
A quiet poem
to establish the fact of me.
As one of the incidental faces
in those stone processions.
Carefully done.
Not claiming that I was
at any of the great victories.
But that I volunteered.
Today is my last day of classes. Most significantly, today is the last day of the intro to creative writing class I’ve been teaching this semester. I will miss my class; they made me laugh & taught me about the Fibonacci sequence. They worked hard and wrote risky poems. We all have to recite a poem in honor of the last day, and then they will hand in their portfolios, and then I will want to hug them all, but I will not. And I will begin by reciting this, by James Schuyler:
The night is quiet
as a kettle drum
the bullfrog basses
tuning up. After
swimming, after sup-
per, a Tarzan movie,
dishes, a smoke. One
planet and I
wish. No need
of words. Just
you, or rather,
us. The stars tonight
in pale dark space
are clover flowers
in a lawn the expanding
universe in which
we love it is
our home. So many
galaxies and you my
bright particular,
my star, my sun, my
other self, my bet-
ter half, my one
Joe Brainard (painter, collagist, writer) loved pansies so much. He cut them out of everywhere. He collaged them onto pages, in to entire books, which he kept and gave as presents to people like James Schuyler (I’ve seen them in the archives at UCSD–they’re beautiful; they’re shiny and layered, dozens and dozens of PANSIES).
His love of pansies (and flowers in general) reminds me of how I’ve always wanted to love football. Or the “Twilight” books. Or skateboarding. I want so badly to love something so simple, something that other people love so much. It’s incredibly appealing, the idea that there’s some new thing out there to get all excited about–I want to love these things; they are so available and other people love them and I would like to join in on that. But I can’t tell where the goddamn ball is on that huge field, even with the camera telling me where to look. And Bella is SO boring to read about. And I’m afraid of falling off a skateboard and hurting my knees.
Joe Brainard got something right with his love of flowers. He was a normal, human person like the rest of us, and by that, I mean that he was self-conscious and sensitive and he wasn’t sure he was ever doing the right thing. He made art and he tried his best to do days well. He wanted to be loved and he wanted to be known, and not as a celebrity. He loved flowers, especially pansies, and he found them everywhere. He collected and saved them. He saved them for himself, but also portioned them out to people he loved. People learned this about him and so sent him stationery with pansies on it. People learned what he loved and then there was more of pansies in his life, and voila: more of love.
because you do, and it makes me feel thankful and surrounded and known and relevant. Because you google “panache taylor katz” or “taylor mardis katz” and you get here. You read it and you text me about it. You read it and write me an email. You read it and cry and tell me about it. You”like this” on facebook. You refer to something from here in a conversation. You secretly, you in your house with your mug, you in your house with your dog, with your nothing on at all, you read this thing I write.
I write this thing because I love people and I like people and I believe that a person who likes or loves me would like to end up here. Because all of you have jobs, or you are trying to have jobs, and you are walking around, taking public transportation, shaking hands, heating up a lunch, you are talking on the phone or you are completing projects or having a drink with new or old friends, or you are in law school or you are in Berlin, and you like poetry, somewhere. If only because you know me. Poetry is a thing that I love and people are a thing that I love and to me, the two are connected.
And then there are the people that end up here accidentally, because I typed up a poem they searched for, or I compiled photographs they were curious about. They don’t know me but maybe they click around. I am not famous and I am not invincible and I know only a small amount. I don’t know who ends up here, I only know the numbers, when I check them.
When I write about something having to do with love, people click. That, alone, is fact enough to thank. I have things to say and I like to sit down and say them, and I do it, and you read. This blog is not one thing, it is many; it’s here to say: I like poets. I like photographers, especially when they photograph people. I like Misha and my friends. I like to feel like I am living the life I began imagining for myself at a very young age. I miss people, and I care for them by writing a poem that will make them laugh. I love my sister, and she moved to Texas. I like to think of my parents when they were young. I have a sideyard, and you should come to it. I am questioning and sometimes a poem surfaces to answer. I drew something, and it’s unskilled but you can see it. I wrote a little ditty and why not put it out there.
I am multiple and I am grateful and I am predisposed to joy. I make poems as a way of staying here. If you read this, it is very likely that we get along. And so: hey guys. Thanks for clicking on this site, this someplace on the internet. It really makes me happy that you do.
With love,
Taylor Mardis Katz
(Edward Hopper’s “Freight Car at Truro”)
Three dudes making music
on a rolled-out rug
Outside the table umbrellas
are lined with lights
One red guitar
One guitar with four shining knobs
Ian like a young Allen Ginsberg
on the drums
The lips of the man I kiss
taste like new smoke
People are talking and people
are nodding along
All my hair is safely stowed
underneath my hat
Good god thank you, this
is exactly what I wanted out of my twenties
She sits naked on a rock
a few yards out in the water.
He stands on the shore,
also naked, picking blueberries.
She calls. He turns. She opens
her legs showing him her great beauty,
and smiles, a bow of lips
seeming to tie together
the ends of the earth.
Splashing her image
to pieces, he wades out
and stands before her, sunk
to the anklebones in leaf-mush
and bottom-slime—the intimacy
of the geographical. He puts
a berry in its shirt
of mist into her mouth.
She swallows it. He puts in another.
She swallows it. Over the lake
two swallows whim, juke jink,
and when one snatches
an insect they both whirl up
and exult. He is swollen
not with ichor but with blood.
She takes him and talks him
more swollen. He kneels, opens
the dark, vertical smile
linking heaven with the underearth
and murmurs her smoothest flesh more smooth.
On top of the rock they join.
Somewhere a frog moans, a crow screams.
The hair of their bodies
startles up. They cry
in the tongue of the last gods,
who refused to go,
chose death, and shuddered
in joy and shattered in pieces,
bequeathing their cries
into the human breast. Now in the lake
two faces, floating, see up
a great maternal pine whose branches
open out in all directions
explaining everything.
I call this Rain Diego, rain for one minute in San Diego
The only thing a Fanta and a persimmon have in common is color
On the bus Scott looks gorgeous with the night moving black behind him
The martinis have back-up olives & back-up gin
You know him in the biblical sense
HIPSTERS*HIPSTERS*HIPSTERSATTHEARTGALLERY
There’s something about knowing someone in the biblical sense that makes it okay to take sips from their drink
I should’ve stolen that tiny tiny decanter when I had the chance
There’s no such thing as practice floral arrangements. You don’t waste flowers!
An empty Dr. Pepper bottle in my greenleather pocket
Green leather red leather three friends in leather would be better
I feel like such a GIRL when I’m with you
This tiny red can of champagne. This tiny red can at the Tin Can Alehouse
That girl’s got a wind machine
That tiny dog just pooped on the bar room floor
-We just danced in circles around thrown-off shoes, you missed it
-Oh I didn’t miss it/I was just waiting/for you to finish doing your thing
You’re doing something wrong, without a doubt, but it’s not that you’re wrong
I’m goin’ down to the bus station baby with a suitcase in my hand
In circles on the bar room floor
Walking up 5th is not nearly as hard as Main Street in Pittsburgh
If you know someone in the Biblical sense you can lean on them and whisper (the music’s loud)
If you know someone in the Biblical sense they might be asleep in your bed against the floor near the ground that will be rained on
I’m goin’ down to the bus station baby with a suitcase in my hand
Those girls are too skinny for girls
Those girls are too SKINNY for boys!
A chile relleno burrito/
and sauce/
Hot sauce
You have only just begun to love her
and therefore there is no way for you to know
how much I love her. I love her so ardently
that already I must and do love you. And not
because of anecdotes or the photo of your parted
hair, but because you loving her is a way to keep
my loving relevant, keep it safely and unwilted
in the air nearby her, air I can’t inhabit after moving
far away. I thank you and I thank you for keeping her
not in a jar but within a cloud of particles that love
her particles, within the air I see you breathing out,
visible as steam and towards her, no matter
what the weather calls itself that day.
The sideyard was better than ever before
The sideyard, according to a new neighbor-friend named Neil “felt like the 60s again.”
The sideyard had around 70 people attend which is record-breaking for the sideyard
The sideyard had a tiki torch
The sideyard had such good loud music that the police came
The sideyard thanks “Tendrils,” the new house band, who will perform acoustically from here on out so that we don’t get evicted
According to a girl I met, the sideyard was “the most fun event I’ve ever been to.” EVER!
Neighbor and friend Jed said about the sideyard, “Don’t ever let me miss this again.”
The sideyard offered free wine and decaffeinated coffee
The morning after the sideyard I had both a real hangover as well as a happiness hangover
Thank you to everyone who came to the sideyard
Thank you to everyone who let themselves enjoy something so analog
Thank you to everyone for coming out to hear poetry; we poets need you, we poets are you, we are all poets
(photos by misha marston johnson)
featuring the debut of the house band!
featuring flowers by ellie!
featuring “friends of the sideyard,” a group of loosely or not-at-all affiliated people who always come over to the sideyard!
featuring beer and wine if you bring it!
featuring foods also if you bring them!
featuring handmade arts for sale!
featuring poems spoken out loud!
be there or be square or be one of those people I love who lives very far away and can’t be there!
panache, perhaps 