Let’s have a mind and raise flowers.

I walk up Telegraph Avenue in
the fresh piss morning the stiff
homeless chiseling away at last
night’s condensation in their
lungs their dogs stretching

on the corner I hear the beard
wearing stone like cardboard
colored grampa change his mantra
‘good morning’ to ‘morning ladies’
in front of his money cup

the clock in the tower erases at
the air unconquered clouds
unimpressed with its organization
wind up like a cold scrotum against the hills
and the ladies were eighteen

Ryan McGivern

The first time I heard the Doors was in the back of a station wagon facing backwards
watching Minnesota Northwoods stream by
I was in 8th grade.
Adam once asked me while sitting in his room late at night-
“have you heard U2?”
“no.”
and he sang a cappella “I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields” to me with a soul older than his
nine years would seem to allow
Jon gave me many gifts-it was in his car driving through a ridiculously hot
Duluth summer night that we heard Weezer’s Undone and in his room
I met The Flaming Lips and in a parking lot Smooth Criminal
and in a drive through Beck’s Loser
in high school on a Minnesota Public TV show I saw Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans and I
was astounded
in Bob’s basement I heard Bjork clicking, cooing, screaming
in my brother’s college era bedroom that was a Minnesota plains furnace in some
attic, I listened to Neil Young’s unplugged while college girls downstairs drank and cackled
on a rooftop overlooking San Francisco I heard my friend Masato finger pick on my guitar in
such a way that I felt like I couldn’t play on it again
in Morgan’s room we went to sleep while he played The White Album and I was haunted
and wanted to die right there and then before any other sound
because it was peaceful in the dark with Long Long Long and Morgan
writing songs
on the futon

Ryan McGivern

“We’re still in the safety of November”
she says from the iron clad argumentation of a warm green sweater
but all the sweaters in the world didn’t help Fallujah and believe me, that place is like Mr. Roger’s closet.
my eyesore eyes morse code a slow SOS in response
hadn’t the Edmund Fitzgerald its saints?
Our Lady watched the Three Sisters meet upon iron red railings
and Baby Jesus sat in Dallas waving placidly to passing traffic
so what chance do I stand?
her appeal to ‘alternate universes’ doesn’t mean anything
when I’ve already gone ahead and ruined them all from
the comfort of October
but she sure looks secure-what gods must she be in cahoots with? Green Sweatered Saturn?
Office Coffee Shiva?
There’s no 5th draft movie script on her desk, I bet
no deadlines that correspond directly to her sense of well being and worth
I imagine a new scene that I’ll only take out again later
where the movie’s hero sleeps an entire night without one nightmare
of a red X on a calendar
not because the red X on calendars is cliche but because the protagonist is
Aztec and some social conventions don’t translate well.

Ryan McGivern

let me jump into you (the best I can)
i want to see this morning bound over
anteloped in freedom and small footed sure steps
what clean andes joy to be in you and not the world
living purely in your language my claxon dumbed ears
to rest in downey anglelessness
hidden hunkered like North Dakota Whitetail
in your lilt shade
set me grounded again only to kiss you at
the screen door

Ryan McGivern

backstage pacing the energy of ‘at once’
the same convergent horror of unwanted nocturnal emissions
aloneness and cut off from the stage manager’s clip board and the drunk extras
history drops off
that the Haitian Revolution has happened
is weaned by its not being here because the only now is now where forgetfulness reigns
it is the chaos of ten tiny circular spice bottles some of which bear dangerous street
drugs unannounced to you but each holds its own condolences
your kingdom is not in order your own sloughed off detritus of chinese take out
and curled up scripts taunt you on a hair-of-the-dog edge
its deafening-the warfare of your own choosing-it will carry
ruin or genius which either way ends up in after-show bar close
such silliness in that minute before hearing “…yes and it’s trouble that will find us” 

Ryan McGivern