Stranded

I was stranded on a desert island once with my friend Noah. We had gotten really fucked up and then we took his motor boat out to this tiny island in the Gulf of Mexico, several dozen miles away from the coast. Then we got there and realized we were out of gas.

At first it wasn't that bad, because he had a fridge on the boat. We had some beers and then we laid on the beach and got sunburnt. He also had some fireworks left over from the fourth of July, so we set all those off and that was fun.

After a few hours we realized that we were really fucked. We had no fuel for the boat, and we could see no other boats in sight.

"Let's go explore the island," Noah said.

"No, we need to stay here in case a boat comes," I said.

"Oh yeah."

We stayed by the boat for a few more hours, and then it started to get dark. Noah had some sub sandwiches in the fridge so we ate those. We each laid down on opposite ends of the boat's floor and then we went to sleep.

The next day we didn't really do anything. Noah swam around the island. It was a small island. There weren't many trees, and you could see from one end to the other. We continued doing nothing for several more days. We ate some raw seafood that Noah had in his fridge, but we started rationing it, because we were getting low on food.

Finally, one day I consented to exploring the island. There were a dozen or so tropical looking trees, and lots of big rocks randomly placed all over the island.

After a week we had run out of all our food. For the first day or so I didn't even notice after awhile. Then I began to feel thin and sickly. I felt like complete shit. I wanted to kill myself. Noah decided he needed to be alone for awhile, and he walked to the other end of the island.

I tried drowning myself. I swam out about a hundred meters into the ocean and then I dove my body into the water and when I resurfaced I kept my face in the water. I did that for a good two or three minutes, and was rapidly losing breath. Eventually I gave up brought my head back up. I decided I needed a better plan, a way of killing myself that would be irreversible.

I tried using rocks to slit my wrists. But I couldn't find any rock that was sharp enough to do the proper damage. When I did find a somewhat sharp one I made several gashes across my left wrist and then my right one, but nothing happened except for the fact that blood started dripping everywhere. I put the wrappers from the sub sandwiches over each of my wrists to stop the bleeding.

I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I was fucking hungry, and I had no way of finding food. I tried catching fish with my hands, but that failed miserably. I decided I needed a better way to kill myself.

I took a pocket knife and cut the anchor from the boat. I found a tree with rock underneath it. I threw the rope from the anchor over one of the branches and tied it like they do in Western movies. Then I stood on top of the rock and put the loop over around my head.

Just as I was about to jump from the rope I noticed a white speck in the distance of the ocean. It kept getting closer and closer and eventually it was right next to Noah's boat, which was drifting in the water since I had cut the anchor.

The people in the boat didn't notice me and I didn't say anything because I was in dark, suicidal place in my mind. I heard one of them yell, "This boat must be abandoned." The tied their boat to ours and began riding away.

I looked up the tree at the branches and then down at the rock. I took the loop off of my head and stepped down from the rock. Then I went to go find Noah, to see what he was up to.

found poem taken from class discussion

listen to your thoughts - a kind of stoner experiment.
see which ones generate nubs that tease.
attuned to your epiphanic thoughts, read.
you are collated, shuffled into one giant piece of flesh.

the terms...
which terms?
there aren't so many terms.
what are the terms?
it's a negotiation.
what negotiation?
it's an agreement.
but what terms? what special language?

ordinary words show ignorance such as:
it is up in the air.

on the stage of intimidation you are still poisoned by questions.
tangents make up your main operation.
stories and anecdotes accumulate the echoes
of technical terms and what is unsaid.

punctuation bears no relation to our impressive temptations.

it is a matter of pacing.
fear and misgiving avert our attention.
what is the material of nervousness?
how do you build your authority on ignorance?

you really haven't got all the data on time.
you've got a disconcerting ability to shift your commitments.
you have a greater commitment to velocity than to commitment.

he walked through puzzles of pain.
boy, you guys are young.
it's better for the chickens to almost scratch a vulture.
if there is the possibility of saying what you really mean, do it.

an unfinished poem i began years ago that i completed today

inner turmoil like the fighting of the morning's last light -
that brisk kind of ship that takes you back to yourself again

the killing of the turmoil, fighting like the last light of the morning.
you briskly take that ship back for yourself again.

what kind of indifference moves me to stillness?
killing the ships of the morning, you fight against yourself.

stillness, like the last light of the morning
briskly indifferent to yourself and your needs.

fighting, you destroy the ship that takes you back
to yourself again, and briskly kill the last of the morning's light.
all is still in the glow of my indifference.

life

another cut-up poem but this one is taken from john cheever's journals

the city, my heart, begins to rise.
over-scrutinizing its seventy-first formulation of the world does me so much harm.

susie, journey, a very cold girl with damn-fool ships, white with ice.

in the city a bitter cold kept us from the imitation of ill-fitting ideas.
vaguely formed depravity, decorated with mirrors and spoiled meat.

i've written a cheerful patriotic finale - flags, tears, performed by shadowy ladies.
cliches, mightily offended by a bony tiny smile animated by the purest ambition.

a woman with an unusually deep and heavy beauty that promises intractableness
that suggests a horizion of artfully betrayed bones, hungry.

i dreamed about a game of mutisyllabic pressure.
the dream discolered by food, dirt and scandalous marital mix-ups.

i dreamed that last night was changed and that someone explained to me:
my father there, and how unhappy my mother.