The Mysterious Human Heart in New York

What with awards ceremonies and other end-of-the-school year events, we've been up early and to bed late and I've been seeing all sorts of people I rarely see in between. One of them told me he's trying to "cut through the Gordian knot" of kid sports and school schedules so he can come with us to take a road trip through the inevitably predicted rain to the most crowded part of a nearby city tomorrow night.  As my friends used to say about spending too much money getting to the beach, it is a highly inadvisable thing.  And yet, well nigh irresistible.

The inimitable poet Dorianne Laux says it best, in her poem "The Mysterious Human Heart in New York," which is from her new volume that I've already touted here once, The Book of Men:

Streetwise but foolish, the heart
knows what's good for it but goes
for the dark bar, the beer before noon,
the doughy pretzel hot and salty, tied up
in a Gordian knot. It takes a walk
through Tompkins Square where
the homeless sleep it off on stone benches,
one shrouded body to each gritty sarcophagus.
The streets fill with taxis and trucks,
pinstripes and briefcases, and the subways
spark and sway underground. The sun
is snagged on the Empire State, performing
its one-note song, the citizens below
dragging their shadows down the sidewalk
like sidekicks, spitting into the gutter
as if on cue, as if in a musical,
as if there's no association between the trash
flapping against the chain link and the girl
with her skirt up in the alley. When the traffic
jams on 110th--a local pain, a family affair--
the Starbucks junkie leans against the glass
and laughs into his hand, a cabbie
sits on his hood and smokes, cops
on skates weave through the exhaust,
billy club blunts bumping against their
dark blue thighs. Everyone's on a cell phone,
the air a-buzz with yammer and electricity
as the heart of the city pounds like a man
caught in the crosswalk holding his shoulder,
going down on one knee, then blundering
into Central Park to lean over the addled bridge,
the sooty swans floating under him, grown fat
on cheap white bread. Oh heart, with your
empty pockets and your hat on backwards,
stop looking at yourself in the placid waters.
Someone is sneaking up behind you
in an overcoat lined with watches,
and someone else is holding a cardboard sign
that says: The End Is Here.

Sometimes your heart feels better when you do what you know is not good for it. As the parent of a high school senior, I would desperately like to tell my heart to go ahead, spend more time "looking at yourself" instead of having to pay attention to the way the doomsday sign is "sneaking up behind."

Antilamentation

Sometimes how you've come to be reading a poem is part of the pleasure.  Last week I was carrying around a volume of poetry while I ushered some very important guests around campus, and when I had a few minutes, I would perch somewhere and read one or two of the poems.  On the second day of this, I perched on the side of some cold, concrete steps in front of the Admissions building, where people come and go so quickly, and read this poem by Dorianne Laux, out of her volume entitled The Book of Men:

Antilamentation

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the living room couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the window.
Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied of expectation.
Relax. Don't bother remembering any of it. Let's stop here,
under the lit signs on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

And there I was, twenty years later, sitting in a highly visible spot on a campus where I have not achieved fame and fortune, reading this poem and laughing because I'd picked up an onion ring someone dropped on the floor of the dining hall the night before and crying because it was a bright, sunny morning and the rest of my life was all spread before me as soon as my campus visitors opened the door onto those concrete steps.

Every poem in the volume is just about as glorious as that one, and it's one of my recommendations for this year's poetry award over at the Indie Lit Awards, where you should go and nominate it if it made you laugh and cry, too.