Jason Koo – Two Poems

Jason Koo

Two Poems

Shopping with Mayakovsky

One morning I wake not wanting to get out of bed, and see a cloud in my room. “Mayakovsky?” I say. “Find me some trousers!” he orders. I scramble to the closet and pull out a pair of jeans. “Don’t know if these will fit,” I say. “Of course they will!” he says. “I’m a cloud!” He puts them on and begins to look more like himself, his cloudiness assembling into a column. “Don’t have much style, do you?” he says. “Nevermind— let us go out into the world and find ourselves an ocean.” Before I can object he’s kicked me out the door into the sunlight. “Ah, just what I was looking for,” he says, reaching up for the sun and fixing it like a monocle in his eye. “Now, poet,” he laughs, slapping me on the back and sending me flying into some pines, “take me to your supermarket.” I point him down the street— rain leaks from his legs, flame leaps from his eye, and as we walk he floods and scorches, scorches and floods… “Marvelous!” he cries. “Your window-flashing automobiles! Your torrent of engines! But these buildings are ugly.” I slow him down by telling him about my problems in love. “What will it be?” he says, his face softening, the floodtide letting up. “Love or no-love? And what kind of love: big or minute?” He grins and nudges me with a feathery elbow: “Girls are partial to poets.” We arrive at the supermarket, where Mayakovsky falls in love with the automatic doors. He walks into the store over and over again, each time announcing, “But I—!” The people in the cash register lines drop their products. Turning, Mayakovsky bows and says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Vladimir Mayakovsky: a Tragedy.” One woman screams— the rest smile and bat their eyelashes. I grab a shopping cart and Mayakovsky hops in. We cruise through the aisles, blackening the boxes. “Look at all this food,” he says. “Over there! The ocean.” We roll into the frozen fish section, slowing by freezer doors so Mayakovsky can open and fog them one by one. He sees the lobster tank and tells me to stop, going silent with concentration. “This is how I feel, ” I say, stooping. Calmly, Mayakovsky tells me to move on, then, once out of view of the lobsters, wheels and says, “Stop moping!” “But what’s the point?” I say. “I’m not you—I’m just wasting my time.” “You think you’re wasting your time? You don’t know what it is to waste time until you’ve written a three-thousand line elegy on the death of Lenin. Try drawing posters and championing boiled water for a change.” I apologize and he says, “Who can blame you for feeling unproductive with all these stores around? Forget about them. Sharpen yourself on the edge of your own decision. “But what if nobody listens?” I ask. “Hit them with hammer strokes of metaphor in stanzas like pistol points. Make sure you sing.” We pass the kitchen utensils and Mayakovsky plucks a long wooden spoon from its rack, folds a tuft of cloudfront neatly back into a lapel, and inserts the spoon like a boutonniere. “Now, let us find some women!” he says, pointing to the produce section. But then: “Never, under any circumstances, set your heel on the throat of your own song.” As we turn toward the tomatoes the spoon shifts, revealing the tiny, clean bullethole underneath. I Just Got Out of a Serious Relationship Often when I get depressed I think about throwing Balls at something. Not diminutive superballs But something you can pack in your hand, like snow, Or a wet glob of paint. The look of smithereens… “I won’t go out with you! I don’t wanna walk Around with you!” sez Joey Ramone, which is what The packed ball sez when it bloze my something To smithereens. I thought I should tell you, I just got out of a serious relationship. With a man. Instead of giving me some good old-fashioned Attention he’d stare into my colander all night long Trying to count the number of holes. “Honey, I think I see some constellations!” He’d bring this Lunacy into the bedroom, saying, Little Dipper, Big Dipper … and as if that weren’t bad enough, he took My six-volume Modern Library box set of Proust And drew Garfield cartoons all over the margins. Imagine Gilberte strolling down the Champs-Elysées And Garfield stuffing himself with lasagna at her side. I should add, I just got out of a serious relationship With my cat, who likes to cuddle by licking me Behind each ear, twice, always twice behind each ear. My man, he thought this smooth, so he started Licking me twice behind each ear as well, and pretty soon —You can just imagine, Little Dipper, Big Dipper As each ear was two times getting licked—I was fantasizing About my cat, making love to him in planetariums, So I thought I should call it quits with both man and cat And concentrate, for a while, on Monica Bellucci. She has eighteen muscles in her back no other woman Has, which makes many women want to throw balls At her, and unfortunately, many men, including the gay Man who rapes her in that horrible scene in Irreversible. That scene makes me want to perforate that man Into a colander, or shred him like Garfield translating A head of lettuce into coleslaw, because when I’m feeling Depressed, when I’m sitting alone in my apartment Enjoying an all-too-serious relationship with my television DVD’s, I like to think of Monica Bellucci saying “Bon,” as she does in that beautiful French film L’appartement. Would you like to have sex with me? “Bon.” Would you Like to play Battleship? “Bon.” Would you like to watch All 24 episodes of the 4th season of 24 back-to-back With me? “Bon.” Jack Motherfucking Bauer, in the house! In the 3rd season, Tony Almeida rolls his eyes a total Of thirteen times, our Brooklyn correspondent Gunny Scarfo Reports. A “scarfo” is what you use when your lasso Has been misplaced and your scarf is all that you have handy. Not only do you catch your cows, but you warm them, Make them look fashionable too. “Have you seen My new Scarrrrfo?” Cow Dancing Matilda sez to Cow Patrice. “Oh, it’s divine.” Lately, I’ve been trying to get serious With the divine, the Holy Monica of “consummate relaxation,” As Nat Hentoff says of Lester Young, but she never Calls me back, agrees to do dinner then cancels last minute So she can party with her sister in Branson, Missouri. I want to say, in true Jack Bauer fashion, “You have NO IDEA how far I am willing to go to get you to cooperate!” But she just rolls her eyes and says: “Look, Jack, I just Got out of a serious relationship, I don’t want one of those, Try cool and detached, positively flip me with surprise.”

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