"All this sun, my heart is a toad!"/"We fucked on the roof, not everyone looked"/The Inspired Writing of Anthony McCann

Here's one of my favorite poems, from one of my favorite teachers (and one of my favorite people, for that matter--someone who has helped me immensely with my own writing, helped me learn how to live with this constant word-intake/alchemy that presses from the inside, out--without fear--with willing embarrassment and plenty of laughter).  I just found out that he has a new book of poems available, so now seems like an appropriate time to revisit his work. I think of Anthony as a sort of Wildebeest/human hybrid, which seems fitting given the frequency with which wildebeests and similar beastly characters pop up in his poetry.   His poetry walks this delightful line between the insanely beautiful, enlightened ecstasy of human-absurdity and emotions, NOISE and sacred nonsense, always threatening to fall off the edge, but somehow maintaining this teetering balance.  There is a lot of Kafka-esque mechanical malfeasance and thing-hood that appears in his poems as well (and I really shouldn't say Kafka-esque, because it is a thing-hood totally and completely unique to Anthony's writing style).  His poems are definitely meant to be read aloud--voiced, they come alive, unwieldy, beastly and full of the insistence of absurd, rambling rhythms and noise--intoxicated by shadows and trees with a roaring hunger: throat open, eyes twinkling with an almost devilish glee.
Really, all these poetic descriptions of mine don't do his work justice, so I will just post some of his work (I think of it as one long poem, even though it is titled "Five Poems").  Here it is:

Five Poems

*

I came out of the past, with fingers all stained

Behind my face my brain glows like carp

It’s like this, you’ll see, even in pictures

Leave it to someone to figure that out

That sad bug guy just imitates birds

Hey guy, I said, hailing the dude

The flowers you gave me weighed like ten pounds

But I walk up that hill every night

Still, I won’t put the moon in my poem

The moon knocks at the window, each window it makes

These bugs deposit some eggs in the dust

I respect the impulse, but can’t understand

The weather was there, a feeling like teeth

A small kindness, something like that

She’d wanted to listen to my voice late at night

She’d asked me to mail my voice to her home

I’d only wanted to speak truth to weather

It doesn’t matter, it’s going to happen

The moment withered, stood up and looked

I leaned in to get kissed, but I’d misunderstood

*

The surface is quiet; I’m suffering joy

Silently weeping she sniffed at my hair

All the blood, together, spilled from my face

May happy precision inflect your whole fate

“What have you done?” our someone exclaimed

You shrieked as though you’d stabbed me yourself

It was weird; being there, with the rocks and the trees

I leapt from the platform into your arms

You gazed down through the branches, the flowers, to me

I saw myself stumble from two miles out

When I opened the door you leapt into my arms

All the water spilled from my body at once

I was happy, adrift, in the spectacle fires

When I opened my mouth little bodies came out

In my dream there were dogs, blue feathers and dread

The cops filmed our wounds while we strolled in the park

As the city acquired a specialty light

As each night we watched the light drain from its wound

I can’t really imagine what anything’s like

But at times I’m compelled to recall how I felt

*

In this forest milieu: an encounter with void

I burst from the scrub to the roar of the crowd

Was a horse, untethered, alone in the glade

I stood in your place while you backed away

A horse is some kind of encounter with legs

The enormous head, hooded, just lowered itself

Here is precisely what gentleness is

There was shit on the stairs, I had to go back

O to wiggle and still be blessed and have legs!

Now here is a landscape for feeling bald things

This path wanders down through some unfurnished thoughts

I followed these ruts to your shack in the pines

O little blue bird, clear voice of the pines

Your letter has made me hot with new joy

Truly I tremble here in my plight

To have passed this close to one animal’s health!

I dozed with my view of the stream and the hills

Woke with blue fur in my teeth and my beard

Slowly—in bloom—my skull grew new eyes

Thin fingered light slipped down through the pines

*

The clouds drifted over a late human lunch
From miles away the tiny clouds came
Soft moss underfoot, far off rage of the dogs
Protect me, my love, from these horrible words

When the rains began I was waiting for you
The sky opened up and delivered this sound
It makes my lips linger here near the plates
Each thing we perform is rehearsing for death

This miracle gland gives my body no rest
To be emptied again by the meaningless roar
Let’s go die, and then die, and then die and then die
Roll on, little toes, to the top of the earth!

I address this next line to the mind of the trees
The trees are green hair, all wild and ripped
Then the world slumps and is soft as clay heads
I lie at your feet and imagine my eyes

The hedge behind me is filled with small eyes

Each animal seems like a personal trait
All of these signs—but only one word!
Demented! Demented! I run through the woods

*

It’s strange to be seen, I’ve said to a tree

To have trembled so much while breathing the air

For I stood by the lake and was taking its place

And you were the first to see me be seen

You sat and I watched you watching me watch

I was hearing the wind and then seeing the wind

I’d slowed down the film to watch your hair seethe

So that you were The Phantom and I was The Hand

I’m over your face—leaning in—to your face

(I watch the light change as your eyes re-adjust)

Soft lids close over the voice in its dream

Cloud shadows drift and shoot over the lake

Vacant and bright I hoist breakfast flags

Just watching the lake I’m forgetting your face

Hot, wet and alive—slickened with beads

All I see is your tongue, where it sits, in your head

No object here aches to be seen (except me)

Once again I’d arrived at the limit of friends

It might just be me and it might not be me

But it’s nice to be held while watching the waves

Here's a link to more of Anthony's work for anyone who is interested: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/05/poetry/four-poems