For CLP

you asked for this a long time ago
ESTIMATION
December 7, 1993

There are two worlds.
That of the Pretty Ones
and that of the Real.

Everyone wants to be a pretty one
no one wants to be Real.

It's a fair shot, they'll tell you
EVERYONE CAN BE A PRETTY ONE!
some of us believe that 'til death.

The pretty ones laugh at them for that.
All their lives they'd tried to convince
WHO?
themselves and they almost believed.
But no one else did and this they knew.
So they catered to and worshipped on
The Pretty Ones
and they told us we should, too.
EVERYONE CAN SERVE A PRETTY ONE!

Where there are pretty, ugly can be found.
Of this group I found myself.
I knew this to be true.
They'd convinced me well.
I let them connive me, deceive me, torture.
and all the while I asked myself,
WHAT'S SO GODDAMN PRETTY ABOUT THIS?

Watch my friends go down over the coals
Daily Hourly Every Grade

How was 7th grade, darling?
Did you get over that nasty compulsion stage?
sorry we made you feel so bad, but you had to get over it
Don't you know?
YOU TOO CAN BE A PRETTY ONE!

THEY'RE FULL OF SHIT!
I yell, and I mean it.
I've watched them all my life
Step on people, and watch them bleed
See hearts break and watch them weep
Laugh all the while, the chosen few
I've watched them all my life.
They told me I was nothing.
Didn't care what I had to do.
Broke me, too. For years
Anytime they could
Any way they could

AND WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?
No one wants to go against them!
Everyone secretly hopes they'll eventually fit in.

And my ROARING, SWELLING, OUTSTRETCHED
middle finger, THRUST up the nose of the
PRETTY ONES

Lifts the hearts of all those bound
even as they purse their lips and disapprove.

FUCK THIS! I yell
And hope that someone hears.

Even as I join their ranks
gain their trust
An insidious REAL among all
THE PRETTY ONES

How my mask slips every now and then
As my passions torment
and torment and torment

I walk among, my eyes not blinded
my brain unclouded

I walk among, but I'm unaffected
I DON'T BELIEVE ANYTHING THEY SAY

He who suffers remembers
and I will never forget.

And I refuse to play their game,
their methods I detest.

In a battle of wills
they'll never forget
I'll turn these mirrors around.

On all THE PRETTY ONES.

They'll run into that night screaming
consciousness shuddering
all support beams crash loudly down.

Then those beautiful nothings
will crawl from every part of the woodwork
and stand on the decay.

I told someone once
DON'T YOU EVER UNDERESTIMATE ME

but he wasn't listening.
If I could see him now
I'd sweep my hand over all the blessed wreckage
and show him
REALITY.

BIrdy

Birdy

A long time ago
not terribly far away….

I released my hope
in the shape of a bird
and watched the flight away.

I have not seen her since.

Perhaps someone,
expectantly,

prepared his rifle
and shot her down?

I have no birds
left to set free.

January 17, 2003

Covers Of My Journals

I used to trick out cheap notebooks with pictures, and they became my poetry journals.
I used to perform my pieces at open-mics, so on the back of these, I have a small piece of tape that lists how many in each journal are "performable."

DelBacon Book: 65 performable poems


Nothing Left To Lose: 4 performable poems in a full book. They're mostly pretty awful.
Sketchbook Sketch - 10 performable poems, lots of drawings.

MENBOYSMEN

June 16, 1999

Wonderland
big becomes small
by a trifling sweet,
little no longer IS
when you quench your thirst.

I never meant to take your power
you should not give that
to me.

I don't know how to nurture you.
You've grown so long now
in such foreign soil.

There are different bugs here.
Some without conceivable remedy.

I rolled a newspaper up,
and didn't know whether to whack you in the nose
with it,
or leave it in the garden.

I can't be your Savior.
Not for all things
Not at all times.

I have myself to save
as well.

Love is the white rabbit....
Running far late
to come to get me.

I hold you now at arms length.
Examining, cautious-like.

For this is Wonderland.
And things need not be as they seem.

They may just seem.
They might just BE.

IT COULD COME DOWN TO THIS
You see what you need.
But you get what you've got.

Written the Day After I Met Him

I am poised on the rocks
a forbidding muted coast
visceral
and shivering.

I am not scared.
It is not cold.

And somewhere a tiny girl runs through a meadow filled with flowers
promise all around her
and laughter
everywhere.

I think of you as if made of art
and I would defile you
smudge you
with my inelegance.

You are very beautiful.
intricate
fractured
passionate
strong

Even my words are daunted
adjectives rendering themselves inadequate
flying from my mind, gathering behind my head
peeking out to discover if you are real.

Because I’ve been at this beach,
stripped raw
before
and STILL.

And I am sure that no one like you has ever come by….
So you must be lost, friend.

To find me here,
shivering
now stunned.

But I am not scared.
It is not cold.

And somewhere I’m a tiny girl, flying through the fields of

THIS.

-1/22/04

Untitled - June 16, 1999

I mistook the cosmos again
Shooting stars should not aim
at civilians

What is so lucky about planetary motions?
Placements?
Mars has me by the throat
And Neptune
is just
unmentionable.

I'm up here without a rope
net
or game plan.

I shift into various constellating intentions
thought Pegasus
Andromeda
even Ursa Minor.

I TRIED to swim away
but the Kraken sent me back
and Ursa thought me just
too small.

And all the while
the edges get edgier
and the corners
sharpen their blades

and I'm going to need that black hole soon.

I tried to write a poem about my divorce.

The WHY. Everyone always wanted to know the why. And I think better in metaphors, and the one that started this poem is the metaphor that I came back to every single time I tried to understand why my marriage failed.

So here it is, and it is a wayback poem. I'm not terribly happy with this one - but I haven't tried to revise it in a while.

Divers (written 7/2/03 - revised on 7/16/03 and hasn't been touched since)

DIVERS


A cool night
spanning years at a time
in a minute

we were chin-up from the water’s surface
taking great gasping gulps of crisp frigid air

I can still see you smile at me
falling short of full lungs in your exultation
and those great blue eyes full of sweetness and hope

I had no hope to return to you.

I sucked the night sky
dry of oxygen.

I couldn't see anything

no land
no clear view of the water below
or what swam down there
waiting

And I guess I never take real deep breaths anymore
I don’t think I’m meant to go down that far.

That was a free dive
Into uncharted territory

And as soon as I headed down
With my big wet hand clutched tightly in yours
And my big wet heart....

Going down with all your hopes riding shotgun,

I realized
There isn’t enough air
To live through this.

And you might as well have been
A bleeding diver in a great white’s path
Poised for a destruction
Astonishing in violence and speed.

Down several fathoms
Farther than rational thought:

I KNEW

we were dying.

You held me so tightly
like you thought I was drowning
like you alone could save me.

We were dead weight
Trailing loosely into abysmal currents
And I was hyperventilating
Choking desperately with asthmatic lungs

lack of air
space
of breath.

So I reached down
To the diver’s knife at my belt

I cut you free of me

And the flood of bubbles
From your shocked and shattered face
Breaks my heart a thousand times a second
Every time I think of it

Every single time I think of it.

You spiraled up like a shot from an underwater flare
Kicking feebly
trying to reach down and grab me

Like you thought you could save me
Like you thought I needed saving

I dove out of your grasp
into the dark and murky depths below
where I have some idea
of what to expect
prowling around me.

I am not prone to drowning.
But you were.

You would have died and stayed at my side

And it would have been dangerous, as frailty always is.

I washed up on the shore,
long after this battle gasped its last and let go

I stayed there
striking the rocks on a cyclic tidal rhythm

Just to make sure you got out.

I need you to know that I would have gone back in
To the depth of a realm I fear more than anything else

To get you
bring you to safety.

But one of the things I’ve learned
in all these esoteric, watery lessons,
is you can help someone only so much
then they’ve got to plunge in
fight for themselves.

So you have to WANT to walk out of that water.

I am still here
Standing now on the shore
I’m leaving,
you know that
But I walk slowly
backwards
eye toward the sea
In case you call me
like you need my help.

But don’t fuck around
And call me just to swim
Because you will eventually drown
And there is nothing that I can do about it.

You know I’m like an angler fish

You don’t get what you see
You get what I give you

and I’m short on that
just now.

Poetry Contest Submission #1

Angler

Swim fast, little fish
Dive deep
dark sea

plunge hapless until dangered be.

Why seek I the witch?
Why taunt the sharks with blood?

Do I desire the purity of sea foam,
knowing that it wastes into mud?

I'm going to get bitten

I'm going to die
down here

someday.


(1994)