Joshua Keiter

Sometimes in my daily journal
I’ll remember something I forgot
And open the day one more time

To insert the missing passage or two
Knowing full well that I’ll never return
To read that entry ever again

Unless I need to look up
The thing I forgot to write the first time
Remembering that I remembered to write it

Or else it will be lost among the words
As it would have been had I never written
An empty space waiting to be found

I used to be concerned
With the places where I first heard
The music I wanted to stick

As if the associations of a setting
Would outweigh the aesthetic appreciation
Especially in the run down town I didn’t want to call home growing up

Now I understand as I recall the music I haven’t heard in years
As I ascend and descend the staircase doing the laundry
The only physical home music creates is in the mind

And new memories are for childhood and adolescence
The time when the only thing that matters is music
I have no intention of outgrowing

When your friend is in another state
Where the ground isn’t quite so frozen
And she calls to tell you her cat has died
After only a few days with the sitter 
And you look up the appropriate service
From the Tibetan Book of the Dead
For an impromptu steel grey memorial
As spring puts its transformation on hold
And you feel the presence of feline divinity
Ascending to the realm of its own itself
Even though the cat was never found
Surely these words have found the cat
And fed him sustenance only eternity could eat

Don’t be surprised if a few weeks later
After your friend has returned to the north
She calls to let you know that
The cat was never dead to begin with
The cat was only hiding from 
The strangeness of the sitter
And scavenging the water from the cellar
And any mice that crossed its spot
At least that is the best hypothesis
For why his absence was so strongly felt

When a cat hides he hides with a purpose
One that is not ours to glean
For we have only words to bring forth
The intimation of innumerable lives
While a cat may hide in the cellar
If he knows his true companion is not there
He will wait for the opportune moment
To show himself resurrected
And you will see him as thin new familiar born
Now it is finally safe to return

The dollar menu is the only menu.
The wrong word may be the only word.
The sad song is just an echo.
The pavement will have to be repaved.
The train is followed by another train.
The magazine is run by the advertisements.
A blurb is just a name.
The winding road is long.
The river swallows its own tail.
The folder doesn’t belong on the desktop.
The knife ran away with the moon.
The filter welcomes impurities.
The madness is just an affect.
The soil makes room for worms.
The detour is the only way.
The road is the one you’re on.
The mistakes are meant that way.
I know you are but what am I?
The reference is lost on ears.
The movie is best seen from the aisle.
The world is not enough.
The room is far too much.
The galaxy extends this way.
The miracle is we’re not.
The silence is all.
The readiness is rest.
The center is everywhere.

Maybe I should just admit
I am in the wrong venue
The business of buying and selling just turns me off
Both poetry and teaching 
Especially without an audience 

Is that the problem? 
As a kid I wanted to be a rock star
I did lip-synch routines for the school talent show 
“Hourglass” by Squeeze in 3rd grade 
And “She was a Hotel Detective” by They Might Be Giants in 4th grade

When I helped move my family
Back to the house my parents bought in 1981 
And we held onto by renting out for twenty years,
I found a videotape from the time we borrowed a camcorder from my Uncle 
Which was the only time we had access to one
Although we also had a manual Polaroid video camera that you could crank 
And hear it click forward but never had any film

But on this videotape the only thing we did was make music videos
After our first year of having cable back when MTV used to show music videos
And I strummed my stringless guitar in a ripped t-shirt and stonewashed jeans
To “Desire” by U2 and “Rocket” by Def Leppard
You could see I expected an audience on the other side of the camera besides my brothers 
And myself obviously in the future on the only working VCR in the house and probably for miles now

Here I am staring back at me

Before an awkward jump cut to a tour of the house and “Pride (In the Name of Love)” as I went outside in the suburban Philadelphia midsummer and captured swirling flashes of green green leaves swaying in the blue 1989 sky of the tree that had to come down long before we moved back

Still want to plant a tree to replace it

I’ve given up watching corporate news masquerading as informed consent.
I’ve given up submitting my carbon for review.
I’ve given up pretending the past is an undiscovered country of multitudes still waiting to be recreated in my synapses.

I’ve given up eating any foods that are not completely processed because I believe in recycling.
I’ve given up any kind of health regimen except the accepted wisdom of alcohol.
I’ve given up fingernail clippings that someone could have used for their conceptual art.

I’ve given up pretending there’s an overarching grand narrative to the universe that justifies poetry prize submission fees.
I’ve given up my advanced degrees because most of my fever infections are impervious to antibiotics.
I’ve given up waiting for extraterrestrials to prove the existence of intelligent life on earth.

I’ve given up all semblance of a career maybe it’s the looking for the job.
I’ve given up music guitar chords are too hard to finger.
I’ve given up finding meaning in an inherently meaningless fashion.

I’ve given up talking now there’s nothing left to do but speak.

When I was about three I remember 
getting lost and clinging on 
to a stranger in a mall
thinking it was my mom

and the lady said she wasn’t my mom
while my brothers stood right there
looking embarrassed for me
and pretending it never happened.

It was about the same time 
as when I used to crawl with my hands
around the edge of a swimming pool
overlooked by an elephant made of trumpets

while my brother asked the lifeguard
for a french fry so he threw it
to the bottom of the pool
and my brother went diving after.

This was probably the same year 
as the pageant about Indians in which
I nearly refused to participate
but I wound up going regardless

and walked to the wrong side 
of the stage where I could see
across the stage a boy was drumming
on his own drum as well as

the one next to him.

I’m not about to make any excuses for my absence.
Life is meant for the living and all that malarkey nonsense.
Get busy dying or get busy writing.
Is disjunction still “in”?
My preference would be for a candidate with more than one book although I realize the realities of the job market.
Meat as they say is murder.
Obsolescence is the new Humanities department.
We are looking for venture capital to invest in our massively overrated opinionated conundrum by which we will sustain a future for the idea of a university.
Our ultimate goal is to be entirely self contained within the parameters of a global bubble economy.
Double your pleasure double your pun with gender trouble mint gum.
Is there a position available that hasn’t already been filled in house?
In fact all the adjuncts we hire receive a signing bonus and that is several lifetimes of crippling depression.
Grade papers while u shop.
You won’t write anything for years even if you try.
Oh I have been away for a while and I hope to be back again soon.

Far on the other side
Of this brown empty winter field
They are building skyscrapers
Lots of people stacked on top of each other
So they can be together
For some purpose other than
The one that keeps this field empty
For the time being anyway
The crane still seems to dangle
Above the steel and glass and exposed girders 
Keeping people from climbing quite that high just yet.

That’s the
cool thing
about life

You get to
remember
being a kid

for the rest of it.