INTRODUCTION
There is nothing quite so resonant to the word emotion as the action of the tear. A
ponce on the diamond; a unmanageable reasoning thrown to the fishes; a basket
of goodies left in a room, alone. One cannot simply imagine them up: they thrive in a reality that is their own, a
simple shade of grey or unkempt sunshine.
Epiphora is an overflow of tears onto the face. Or, a
clinical sign or condition that constitutes insufficient tear film drainage
from the eyes in that tears will drain down the face rather than through the
nasolacrimal system.
This is, perhaps, simply the human, rather than clinical,
condition.
I haven’t cried in at least a year. There have been
instances where it might be deemed social appropriate, and yet I retain my
reserve.
This has not always been the case.
In fact, I have often been known to cry, openly or quietly,
regardless of who was in the room or wasn’t.
I never hear the Victor Hugo quote that “Those who do not
weep, do not see” and yet that seems perfectly plausible to me. Or Goethe’s “If
you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.” Or even
the obvious Beckett:
“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each
one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the
laugh.”
Beckett holds the world in an absurdity of obviousness. The
simplest of sentences can relate more than the most enormous obligation to a
cause that it causes one to rant on and on in a world full of words, full of
instances that are self evident, and collapse them into simple statements of
fact as fiction.
If you’re human, you will suffer, from time to time, from
epiphora.
This is not cause for alarm or for a doctor.
It is a cause for elation, for being alive.
* * *
The Tears of the Tide
After you died,
It was Donald Duck all year.
Between us the pain
Of the sea – the hard break
Of the rock, mistaken for
Dry land.
The picture landscape
Of your old house
Never was settled, as waves
Never are and the
Memories
Nestled deep in their
Tide pools
And drowned.
And you were crimson-grey,
The color of something
Still living
But only in it’s shell.
The Tears of St.
Anthony
I have lost
Even the will
To find my keys.
(Or, perhaps,
Even my suck-hole).
The Tears of Ophelia
Water becomes water
And the waste of it
Floats like flotsam,
Both frail and
Forever wandering,
The madwoman
Rucksack,
Stuck right
In the middle of things.
The Tears of a
Blooming West
A cross-country
River, ecstatic in its own
Elation over the self-appointed
Selection of itself as savior,
Branded as cynicism and
A travesty of youth.
Gherkin Tears
Salty and singed
With regret: what
We want with it
Is left by the bedside,
Half uneaten.
The Tears of Men
Die on their own.
March Tears
Having a mood.
Or a dream.
Is unmooring.
In its stupidity.
Lest the rest spell.
A total tidal spin.
Banging a head.
Up against another.
One so clearly.
Isn’t yours.
Anne Tears
I read you as
A dream forcing
Yourself onto me,
Screaming blood.
My tears of the
Plagiarist, sprawlling
All over the page.
The Tears I Have
Exhumed
The bundle of bricks
That lay outside of childhood
And when picked up
Expose a lard of potato bugs
Bundled up into balls
To our of shame, shyness.
Bridal Tears
She waits.
Holding back.
As she walks forward.
Tense as a termite.
Knowing her time has come.
But won’t come.
Even that very night.
The Tears of Purple
Motion
Running mad, the person
On the other side of the street
Outstretches his arms,
Socking you once in the eye.
He crouches down and says
To you, on the curb,
“You know what you did,
And how you deserved that.”
The Tears of Last
Night’s Gone
Awake at the three
O’clock time
Listless but unable to rest
Making lists in your mind
To make up for it:
A thimble of warm water.
A mumble of precious nothing.
A furnace of cloistered penises.
A fumble of words, of frost desires.
An effect, an emotion, unknown.
Talulah Tears
Gosh, I don’t know
What’s left to say,
The said being sung
So long ago.
And I wonder if you
Will go there with me.
But beatnik boy,
I’m finished with you.
The Tears of Ripe
Chains of Nevermore
The painter required
A model of ill repute
And found one quickly
Amongst the firms of nevermore.
She was chained,
Ungodly on the inside,
To a toothy bumble of briar
Sticking to its points.
She said, “I would cry
If I felt it would make
Any difference, but it doesn’t,
So I don’t. So take me.”
Tears From a Hustler’s
Floor
Wet, yet drying,
On hard wood.
From childhood he felt
That beauty makes him
Hopeful. A trusted guide
Through a panoply of
Mistrust. Speak, but shortly,
Leaving the money
On the dresser, please.
Beta Tears
Revision
Revision
Revision
Revision
Revision. Done.
Girls’ Tears
Are meant
For the trees
In your front yard
And not for you.
Boys’ Tears
Are meant
For the socks,
Full of the spunk,
Not given, but taken
That he hides
Under his mattress.
The Tears of the
Father
He holds his
Old World America
View in his hand:
“This is not
The life
I was shot in
The back for.”
The shame.
There is no shame.
He cannot, will not,
Cry today.
The Tears of the
Mother
She shutters the covers
Over her head and
Cowers through the
Night-thoughts nigh.
A turncoat resettling
Of trenchant love,
Nestled deeply
In the far corners
Of her pillow.
Our boy will be fine,
She tells herself, Our
Boy will be fine.
Our boy will be fine
Be fine
Be fine.
High Tears
Paws still dropping
All over the sandwiches.
Risen in bountiful layers
Like buildings
Made of fat and cucumber.
The tumble inevitable,
With each fine lady in
A fancy hat, all but barely
Escaping.
Low Tears
Fuck it.
Fuck tits
Fuckish.
Fuck bits.
Fuckit.
Tears That Cannot Hold
Jill in her
Little room
Lasting longer
Than she thought she would.
Silence comes
And Stands.
“No, not today,”
She says.
“Not today.”
Tears That Hold
A new way to chambray:
Orange, green
And blue.
The Tears of this
Morning’s Gone
Taken together
The dreams of the
Night before
Hester a spectre
Of force and
Malice. But still,
There is a lingering
Doubt, hidden
Deep, that burdens the
Day, and is eventually
Not shaken.
The Tears of No Motion
The bed.
The floor.
The instance gone before.
The roast.
The smell.
The memories of last night’s hell.
Yet you are stopped.
Unable.
To even dry (very).
Groom Tears
In the back room
He cries
Over the visage
He sees
And the secrets
That will now be
Forced to be kept
Hidden.
“She doesn’t know
Me, nor I her”, he says
To his reflection.
“She will never
Know me
The way that she should.”
The Tears I Have
Burried
It wasn’t.
What you said.
But what I didn’t.
That I keep.
Long still hidden.
In my spleen.
Carson Tears
Watch me fold
This laptop now
So you think
It is you.
October Tears
One fear, one that
I have, of Halloween
Is that I somehow
Am expected to be
Another person.
I wish this
Wasn’t
The wish
That other people have
Even if I understand.
I stay in, if only just
To listen to the doorbell,
Unanswered,
Pushed by children
Only wanting candy.
The Tears of Women
Are familiar,
Like a face somehow
Smiling. A touch too
Touching, an eager
Pose to the camera
Of your eye.
They tender the bay
Of your mind, reeling
With focus in order
To place your focus
On the issue at hand.
A response, required,
Arrests all self-will
And attends to the
State of the situation at hand.
She says, “Don’t you
Care?” and you can only
Reply: yes.
You don’t care and that
Only makes her cry more.
So you say yes,
again and again.
Kosher Tears
The clean.
And the unclean.
Spelled out.
Explicitly.
As if it were law.
As if taste
Weren’t the law
Of the land.
It’s all
Still salty.
Anyway.
The Tears of the Stagnant East
Boiled well after
The boiling point.
A cruel and unusual
Mistrust of class and taste.
I moved here believing
That believing was worth
It. It is not.
Unless you have
The money to
Believe.
The Tears of Gertrude
See: what was wrought
By a sinister simple.
Hear: what was behind
The curtain.
Touch: the curtail
Of your transparent parapet.
Smell: the crouch
Of crimson
That lays on your bed.
Taste: the cup of
wine,
Held in front of you
Like a ghost of you.
The Tears of St.
Patricia
Gum blood.
By blessings.
Hostage wake up.
Taken.
Mixing color.
With make believe.
The Tears of the Shore
All washed
Up.
As is.
