October 2017
Michael Gessner
mjcg3@aol.com
mjcg3@aol.com
I live in Tucson with my wife Jane, a watercolorist, and with our dog, Irish. Our son Chris, writes for screen in L.A. My more recent work has appeared in The North American Review, The French Literary Review, Verse Daily, and others. My most recent collections are Transversales (BlazeVOX, 2013,) and Selected Poems (FutureCycle, 2016).
TALK
We talk it out whenever
we are alone, or when we are not,
when we are about to betray ourselves,
right before we take out
the dusty old lie again,
shake it off to show the crowd,
say in the boardroom when presenting
our case before the city council,
whenever we are about to move
forward we must talk about it first.
Our adversaries will not complain
as much if we repeat them,
as if we are actually considering
what they are saying.
“Talk about it and you will feel
better,” the accused is told,
and tho’ this may be so, what we
really want to know is the gossip,
‘tell us the whole story,’ we say pulling
the chair closer to the speaker,
to the other made vulnerable,
exposed, as we know ourselves
to have been, and all the talk
in the world cannot put it right,
tho’ we continue to search
for the perfect story of ourselves,
the one we can wrap around
our bodies, lie down, live inside.
When we talk the small talk
about the weather, as if we ourselves
are warm, or cold, we also talk
the talk of avoidance, “I love to hear
you talk,” she said staring into his eyes,
hearing nothing. Table talk, the talking
we do on our night out on the town,
at the booth reserved in the back,
in a semi-circle of red velvet
curtains, where we first whispered
our plans and our longings
that did nothing but put us
in our place, the place we have
sought all our lives.
We promise to move on
before we talk it to death,
in the bedroom we make sure
the other agrees
to the arrangement, so it will
all go well, as planned,
so there won’t be any misgivings,
regrets, even tho’ there are always
regrets, even if they are
small and fleeting.
And later, if we have problems,
a bad settlement, unreasonable demands
on our lives, we talk it over.
It gives us time, sympathy,
maybe some options. We talk late
into the night, sometimes talk
until we are exhausted, what we
will do with the mortgage, our loved ones,
the right to die. The distraught lover
goes on until he is talked out.
The guy on the ledge who might be
one-in-the-same is talked down.
And should we say we have nothing
left to give, we may be accused
of poor talk, or if talk is used
as a substitute for an expected outcome
that does not occur, words instead of deeds
the poets know talk is cheap.
Even the gift of gab is not
immune from this accusation,
as if we could not read
ourselves in someone else’s saying,
as if we could not find ourselves,
the shape of our soul, in talk.
“What could we say?” they said
after the Basilica of St. Francis collapsed
from an earthquake. Then the talk began
once again, quietly, as if they should not be
talking at all about rebuilding,
“Let’s talk it up. We will rebuild
the Basicila,” they said when they were
rebuilding the holy temple of talk.
Talking in circles
we are circles of talk,
the talking of taking ideas
away from their home
in the staid grotto of rumination
where those of us familiar
with the settings of antiquities loiter,
and placing them on board
one of the Voyagers, we are talk,
all talk, the talk of the town, incessant
talk, double talk, we talk on waking
to discuss the day, we talk it through
talk and talk until we are blue
in the face.
—from Artificial Life, BlazeVOX, 2009
We talk it out whenever
we are alone, or when we are not,
when we are about to betray ourselves,
right before we take out
the dusty old lie again,
shake it off to show the crowd,
say in the boardroom when presenting
our case before the city council,
whenever we are about to move
forward we must talk about it first.
Our adversaries will not complain
as much if we repeat them,
as if we are actually considering
what they are saying.
“Talk about it and you will feel
better,” the accused is told,
and tho’ this may be so, what we
really want to know is the gossip,
‘tell us the whole story,’ we say pulling
the chair closer to the speaker,
to the other made vulnerable,
exposed, as we know ourselves
to have been, and all the talk
in the world cannot put it right,
tho’ we continue to search
for the perfect story of ourselves,
the one we can wrap around
our bodies, lie down, live inside.
When we talk the small talk
about the weather, as if we ourselves
are warm, or cold, we also talk
the talk of avoidance, “I love to hear
you talk,” she said staring into his eyes,
hearing nothing. Table talk, the talking
we do on our night out on the town,
at the booth reserved in the back,
in a semi-circle of red velvet
curtains, where we first whispered
our plans and our longings
that did nothing but put us
in our place, the place we have
sought all our lives.
We promise to move on
before we talk it to death,
in the bedroom we make sure
the other agrees
to the arrangement, so it will
all go well, as planned,
so there won’t be any misgivings,
regrets, even tho’ there are always
regrets, even if they are
small and fleeting.
And later, if we have problems,
a bad settlement, unreasonable demands
on our lives, we talk it over.
It gives us time, sympathy,
maybe some options. We talk late
into the night, sometimes talk
until we are exhausted, what we
will do with the mortgage, our loved ones,
the right to die. The distraught lover
goes on until he is talked out.
The guy on the ledge who might be
one-in-the-same is talked down.
And should we say we have nothing
left to give, we may be accused
of poor talk, or if talk is used
as a substitute for an expected outcome
that does not occur, words instead of deeds
the poets know talk is cheap.
Even the gift of gab is not
immune from this accusation,
as if we could not read
ourselves in someone else’s saying,
as if we could not find ourselves,
the shape of our soul, in talk.
“What could we say?” they said
after the Basilica of St. Francis collapsed
from an earthquake. Then the talk began
once again, quietly, as if they should not be
talking at all about rebuilding,
“Let’s talk it up. We will rebuild
the Basicila,” they said when they were
rebuilding the holy temple of talk.
Talking in circles
we are circles of talk,
the talking of taking ideas
away from their home
in the staid grotto of rumination
where those of us familiar
with the settings of antiquities loiter,
and placing them on board
one of the Voyagers, we are talk,
all talk, the talk of the town, incessant
talk, double talk, we talk on waking
to discuss the day, we talk it through
talk and talk until we are blue
in the face.
—from Artificial Life, BlazeVOX, 2009
© 2017 Michael Gessner
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