handy guide

Avoid adjectives of scale.

Dandelion broth instead of duck soup.

Don’t even think you've seen a meadow, ever.

The minor adjustments in our equations

still indicate the universe is insane,

when it laughs a silk dress comes out its mouth

but we never put it on. Put it on.

Cry often and while asleep.

If it’s raw, forge it in fire.

That’s not a mountain, that’s crumble.

If it’s fire, swallow.

The heart of a scarecrow isn't geometrical.

That’s not a diamond, it’s salt.

That’s not the sky but it’s not your fault.

My dragon may be your neurotoxin.

Your electrocardiogram may be my fortune cookie.

Once an angel has made an annunciation,

it’s impossible to tell him he has the wrong address.

Moonlight has its own befuddlements.

The rest of us can wear the wolf mask if we want

or look like reflections wandered off.

Eventually armor, eventually sunk.

You wanted love and expected what?

A parachute? Morphine? A gold sticker star?

The moment you were born—

you have to trust others because you weren't there.

Ditto death.

The strongest gift I was ever given

was made of twigs.

It didn't matter which way it broke.

~ Dean Young

from Poetry, Nov. 2011

art by van gogh

scarecrow on fire

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We all think about suddenly disappearing.

The train tracks lead there, into the woods.

Even in the financial district: wooden doors

in alleyways. First I want to put something small

into your hand, a button or river stone or

key I don’t know to what. I don’t

have that house anymore across from the graveyard

and its black angel. What counts as a proper

goodbye? My last winter in Iowa there was always

a ladybug or two in the kitchen for cheer

even when it was ten below. We all feel

suspended over a drop into nothingness.

Once you get close enough, you see what

one is stitching is a human heart. Another

is vomiting wings. Hell, even now I love life.

Whenever you put your feet on the floor

in the morning, whatever the nightmare,

it’s a miracle or fantastic illusion:

the solidity of the boards, the steadiness

coming into the legs. Where did we get

the idea when we were kids to rub dirt

into the wound or was that just in Pennsylvania?

Maybe poems are made of breath, the way water,

cajoled to boil, says, This is my soul, freed.

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~ Dean Young

from Fall Higher

Word comes that a heart has been found for Dean Young and surgery is proceeding. 

The heart is beating. Gratitude to the donor whose gift is making such a difference.

thanks to rebel girl for the update!

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ash ode

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When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks 

shouting your name then realizing it wasn't 

you but some alarmed pretender, I went on 

running, shouting now into the sky, 

continuing your fame and luster. Since I've

 been incinerated, I've oft returned to this thought, 

that all things loved are pursued and never caught, 

even as you slept beside me you were flying off. 

At least what's never had can’t be lost, the sieve 

of self stuck with just some larger chunks, jawbone, 

wedding ring, a single repeated dream, 

a lullaby in every elegy, descriptions 

of the sea written in the desert, your broken 

umbrella, me claiming I could fix it.

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~ Dean Young

I Am But a Traveler In This Land & Know Little of Its Ways

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Is everything a field of energy caused

by human projection? From the crib bars

hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed 

desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts

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surrounds the soccer field of what if.

Sometimes it seems like a world where no one 

knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes 

both directions. How about a polymer

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that contracts in response to electrical

charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor? 

King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone

who has traveled here knows the discrepancies

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between idea and fact. The idea is the worm 

in the tequila and the next day is the fact. 

In between may be the sacred—real blood 

from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—

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landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas

are best sprung from actions like the children 

of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette, 

another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable

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wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams, 

waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened 

nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head: 

good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.

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The stranded whale, guided out of the cove 

by tugboats, turns and swims back in. 

The violinist will not let go her violin 

which is 200 years old and still on the train

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thus she is dragged down the track. 

By what manner is the soul joined to the body? 

Answer: an arm connecting a violin

to a violinist. According to Freud,

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there are no accidents. Astrologists

and Presbyterians agree for different reasons. 

You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake. 

You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.

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Human consciousness: is it the projector

or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits 

and spray the grass so everything dies

but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka

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what he thinks. Sometimes they give you 

a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest 

is your problem. In one version,

the beggar turns out to be a king and grants

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the poor couple a castle and a moat and two 

silver horses said to be sired by the wind.

That was before dentistry, which might have been 

a better gift. You did not want to get sick 

in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.

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So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided

but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master 

of the short story. After the kiss from whom 

he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,

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touches a bush in which birds are singing.

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~ Dean Young

from Skid

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As you may know, Dean is in need of a heart transplant.

Over the past 10 or 15 years, Dean has lived with a degenerative heart condition--congestive heart failure due to idiopathic hypotropic cardiomyopathy. After periods of more-or-less remission, in which his heart was stabilized and improved with the help of medications, the function of his heart has worsened. Now, radically.

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a video by D.J. Dolack of the recent benefit reading for dean Young at the National Arts Club in Manhattan.

Readers include Robert N. Casper, Joe Di Prisco, Matthea Harvey, Edward Hirsch, Mary Karr, Matthew Rohrer, Gerald Stern and Dara Wier.

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...and Dean Young on the telephone.

To make an online donation, please visit Dean Young's page at the National Foundation for Transplants.

thanks to Rebel Girl for the update

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Elegy on Toy Piano

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You don't need a pony 

to connect you to the unseeable 

or an airplane to connect you to the sky. 

Necessary it is to love to live 

and there are many manuals 

but in all important ways 

one is on one's own. 

You need not cut off your hand. 

No need to eat a bouquet. 

Your head becomes a peach pit. 

Your tongue a honeycomb. 

Necessary it is to live to love, 

to charge into the burning tower 

then charge back out 

and necessary it is to die. 

Even for the trees, even for the pony 

connecting you to what can't be grasped. 

The injured gazelle falls behind the 

herd. One last wild enjambment. 

Because of the sores in his mouth, 

the great poet struggles with a dumpling. 

His work has enlarged the world 

but the world is about to stop including him. 

He is the tower the world runs out of. 

When something becomes ash, 

there's nothing you can do to turn it back. 

About this, even diamonds do not lie.

~ Dean Young