All Kind of Ruin
by Bill Yarrow
They cracked both of Jimmy's shins.
Gambling debt just like in the movies
except in real life it's a little more
tearful, a little less marauding. Aunt
Anne didn't see it. She was diabetes
blind or dead by then. I don't remember.
The main thing is to avoid heartache
but only the frozen know how to do that.
Look! The arteries of time are running out
of blood. Look! The lungs of love are caked
with soot. When your mind is a runic jewel,
you don't need book knowledge. Still, there
is "the algebra of need," the calculus of junk,
the addict's infatuation with a run of raw luck.
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Author's Note
A version of this poem appeared as "Stevie's Knees" in Wilderness House Literary Review.
Thank you, Irene Koronas!
A version of this poem appears in Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015) and in my chapbook FOURTEEN (Naked Mannekin, 2011).
"The algebra of need" is from Naked Lunch by Wm. S. Burroughs.
Nice one.
I especially like the last sentence, in context, of course.
I like that your poems are clean at the same time as they're complex. That's a neat trick. Teach me how? I wonder if Burroughs meant that junkies calculate the hours in a day by the waxing and waning need for junk. and called it algebra.
I once wrote about the calculus of love -- probably not original, but it seemed so at the time. Favorite line: "The main thing is to avoid heartache,
but only the frozen know how to do that."
The clarity of voice and imagery is unsettling. Very effective. Nice work, Bill.
This poem has punch. *
You are such a fine poet my friend. You always give just the right amount. Personally I would change "only the frozen know how to do that"--which is an incredible line--to "this" just to bring it more into the immediate present with its bite.But it doesn't matter,either way you've written another in a long string of wonderfully realized, beautiful works of art.
"The arteries of time are running/out of blood. The lungs of love are caked/with soot. Stevie's skin was a peerless/ jewel unappraised by the college/ bourgeois."
The poem reminds me of familial love and outsider hate. *