POEMS BY LANE YOUNG

The poems on this page have been previously
published, as acknowledged.

I, Too, Dislike Writers

They come up with odd monikers for themselves.
They call their work their stuff.
Like actors they alternate between knee-knocking shyness
and braying.
When reading their work they're so swollen with pride,
so craving an audience,
they lose all sense of when to cut it off.
They forget responsibilities in pursuit of inspiration.
They grab up secrets and events they come upon as material,
      molding it enough to get it wrong
yet keeping it recognizable.
They drop the names of writers they have read
     and writers they have met but haven't read.
They sit in cafes writing in their notebooks,
shamelessly absorbed in their impure endeavor.
It's too bad their products can't be synthesized—
it's the same way as with oysters and silkworms:
      we have no choice but to put up with their processes.

published in The Blue Mountain Review

Found Objects

Poem for the Garden

I TOOK THE PIECES YOU THREW AWAY
AND PUT THEM TOGETHER NIGHT AND DAY
WASHED BY RAIN, DRIED BY SUN
A MILLION PIECES ALL IN ONE

- HOWARD FINSTER, on a painted sign in Paradise Garden

In Howard Finster's gardens grow
The things we leave to waste, unmeasured;
Broken parts, outmoded and outworn,
Reconceived as unearthed treasure:

Lawn statues, bottle glass, ceramic tiles,
Mailboxes, buttons, clocks, plastic flowers,
Body parts of mannequins and bicycles,
Mosaically arranged in walls and sidewalks,
Lined in buildings, cultivated into towers.

Tactile artists know the unexhausted charms
of scattered shape and hue and light;
     we love the purely physical—
     form lost from its function,
Fallen, ripe for re-connection.
Emerson of his shells was only partly right:

While "nothing is fair or good alone,"
Still "each and all" may gain new ground;
The odd and long-forgotten may yet find
Some other elevation where they shine.

published in an earlier version in Java Monkey Speaks, An Anthology: Volume I

You can read about and see photos of Howard Finster's folk art environment
Paradise Garden at paradisegardenfoundation.org.

I Fear Happiness

I fear happiness as some would fear success;
I can't be trusted handling anything so fragile
     and impermanent.
So many stories I could tell you of disaster,
     or mere attrition;
Only fools believe a glad heart's words,
For now, I know, will soon be proved mistaken.

A moment of assured belief invites despair;
Isn't bliss unfounded trust in good things
     that have come as if to stay?
I suspect these new delights with burning wicks;
     I know they don't in any way belong to me,
Their near proximity an odd chance, a fleeting mix.

With dialing hands upon the wheel
     so turns this neurochemistry of fortune.
I am left with scaffolding from months ago
     for I cannot remember what,
And friends I don't know how to be with anymore.

published in an earlier version in The Journal of Poetry Therapy

What I've Got Against The Turtleneck

Shirt or sweater, I don't care—
It's not a flattering thing to wear.
A neck is to be worn with pride
And not a part Sin bids you hide.
What better than a neck to wed
The mortal body to the head?
A neck can be a by birth a charm
That turtlenecks only harm.
A thinner neck is less disguised,
A wider neck is more realized.
The warmth a turtle's neck affords
A scarf that and good style awards.
So all the people west to east
(All those who read these lines at least)
Who think the turtle look is fun
Should heed some sound advice from one
Whose fashion sense is most adept:
Forsake the turtleneck.  Except
For some who wear well any clothes—
And, oh yes! You are one of those.

published in Free Hand Press, a Grinnell College publication

The Failed Cynic

Love is all ambience, tone, theatrics,
     honeyed words, nostalgic fragments;
whatever it is we think about the tunnel of,
     whatever record companies think we need;
rampant ritual sentiment, a communal pool
     of pumping blood.

We search the Hallmark aisles for quips that say
enough but not too much—phrases and ellipses
     we may topically apply
to our particular kind of social bond.

 And if we dare to choose a mass-print missive
    with a little passion or peril,
rest assured: they are all anonymous words,
     amusements, offerings of oh-so slight affection,
purloined letters, as borrowed as marriage vows. 

The only saving grace behind our sad clichés:
     our foolish, willing, this-time belief—
the pilot light of hope that keeps us listening.

published in The Blue Mountain Review

Matty

after watching Body Heat

Don't try to tell me
About abstract good:
This world is to have
Or have not.

I will not pray or
Save myself for some
Afterlife of hearsay.
What I need is
A man and a bicycle
And I will do the rest.

published in Lilliput Review

A Glass of Wine

We walked at dusk though orange leaves,
Some burning red and gold to the eye,
Beneath deserted branches, along streets
Of vacant lawns and solid wooden doors.
We held hands for a time, some need,
Beneath the low, foreboding sky.

Red curtains in your bedroom framed
The window's near and barren trees.
I held the mood and you up close a while.
I did not want to leave, or speak.
The pain remained unfinished on my lips,
However sweetly kissed.  Before I left
I looked long at your brimmed eye,
Wanting to drink its dark shine.

published in COVER Magazine

Rock Band Listings

Names as arbitrary as for mixed drinks or race horses;
homages to weirdness; nods, allusions, mock heroics;
      sharp rocks found along the river bed
      and worn on leather straps around the neck;

letters reproducible for flyers, shirts and decals;
cloned in local music-show compendiums;
      bold enticements, born out of confusion;
      antidotes, with judicious drops of poison.

  published in The Blue Mountain Review

The Bonds That Break

You never quite know when the rift begins
To leave you stranded. When your mind has spanned
Nostalgic scenes with lovers or with friends,
Each sketch appears to be from your own hand.
And you may call it injury but not
injustice; you may call up all of those
You don't much care to see, but what
You seek is still an ever redder rose.
The dozen or so men who never phoned,
The rediscovered friends who failed this too—
A few were even asked but never owned
Up to their apathy—a thousand who
No longer need remember you exist,
And you must learn and learn and relearn this.

published in A Wreath of Poems, published and edited by Ron Hendricks

Space (Atlanta, 1988)

The planetarium show only whet our appetite;
We wanted to see stars—no small ambition
In a cloud of smog where electric lights
Only glorify the haze. We headed north
In your car on the endless highway,
Chose an exit, spread out a blanket
on a churchyard hillside, and looked back.
From this distance, you said,
We could see a nuclear missile fall
From the sky; down in the city, you said,
They would never know what hit them.

Later that one summer, we waited
In another field for a laser show
Cast over granite Confederate generals
Carved on the side of a mountain.
Outstretched at dusk on the same blanket,
In the sprawl of thousands of folding chairs
And moving limbs, in the noise of every
Radio and voice—wave upon wave in collision—
We closed our arms and eyes into each
Other's darkness, holding on, wordless, losing
Ourselves to the unsoundable, populated sea.

published in an earlier version in 360 Degrees

December Productivity and Loss

The days are their darkest,
And the leaves,    inches thick
          under heavy boots,    crush
Like frail skeletons, in whispers
          so many leaves    lives
How should I care
          about this path I walk
Homeward    in the dark
          each night,
This deep river of cells
          shed    scales
Of dead, once-living matter,
          ubiquitous    why
Do we not tear away in horror
          at these piles
Of what was once a means of life?
          We don't.     We know
The ways of nature:
          Life will come    and go
Decay    and open up    again,
          we know the ways of nature;
We are used to them.

published in The Journal of Poetry Therapy

Art Museums and Lovers

In cathedrals of all
That is beautiful to the eye,
Forms are stolen from life,
Reordered and reframed
Against an endless void
Of pure and flawless white.

The lovers walk the waxed floors,
Hand in hand, idly studying
Artifacts of elevated civilization:
Ambiguous, wayward human thought
And emotion wrought sublime.

If seems that beauty
Is safe here from the business
Of profit and advertisement;
Despite the claims of church
And ideology, art is faithful
Only to its guardian schools
Of aesthetic, to its rules
Of grace and proportion.

This is just the kind of thing
They’re looking for
To build a nest of:
Designs to be remembered
For their own version—
Borrowed breath, not just
For reproductive ambition,
But as much for
ordinary mating’s power to,
If not remake, at least

Refinish, two by two, so many
Scarred and tarnished lives;
To paint a pristine scenery
Of order in a world at once
Too brutal, muddled,
over-sweet and dull;
One so loosely scrawled,
We can barely read
The artist’s true intentions.

published in an earlier version in Mobius

At a Loss

At such a point I don't know where—
or more precisely, thought I knew exactly, 

but the confidence was inaccurate,
strong wishes blowing it all off course.

Sometimes a mess is just a mess,
and sad distances too much like scripts
that didn't make the cut—

the story line too confusing,
with neither formula dynamics
nor striking originality.

Today it seems to configure itself
as paring down the list;
it's only one lifetime and modestly priced.

Tomorrow it may seem again a blind bargain,
agreed to more out of weariness
than forethought or conclusion. 

Another day the choice may be apparent—
the straw that stands out at the top.

  published in The Blue Mountain Review

Ignatius Days                    

Now that Fortuna had saved him from one cycle,
where would she spin him now? The new cycle would
be so different from any he had ever known.                     

—JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE, A Confederacy of Dunces

In my meandering twenties,
whenever I knew my life
was about to take another plunge,
when Fortuna had turned the wheel
again against my favor,
I knew where to turn for solace:
A Confederacy of Dunces.
I wasn't the only one.
When I would read it on the bus
people would come up to me
to talk about the book, how they loved it too,
as if there was a secret Society of Ignatius.

Ignatius Reilly and I have much in common.
After college we both returned
to the "womb room" of our childhood.
We both failed early on at teaching,
and fared little better at other work.
We lived for what we could write about in letters.
We both wrote reams of serious-minded chaff.
And just as he turned to The Consolation of Philosophy
by Boethius, so did I turn for consolation,
over and over, to the pages of his story.

Once married, I tried again
to read myself through uneasiness.
I picked up the book, but no longer felt
that drive of desperation—
halfway through my life,
with so many other books to read.
Besides, my Myrna had already come for me
by moonlight, and this time
everything had a chance
to be different.

published in The Blue Mountain Review