Oath to my former life
It used to be enough to be bigger
in soul by any means,
whether climbing the water tower
drunk or coked or driving
to the frozen lake on mushrooms
to throw up as the ice breathed my skin in and out.
I can offer no more literal
description of pilgrimage
than seven black pills
and holding my hand
over fire when pain
as the extent of the world was perfect clarity.
If not my overturned dog
moaning at the wanderings
of my fingers across her teats
and just a beer shared with my wife
as two girls across the street
in t-shirts etch their thoughts
with sparklers into the air
is the life I want of all
possible miracles, I promise
to remember how to roll a joint
while steering with my thighs.
How to stand in one corner
of a room while looking at myself
waving back at me. How to have
a mouth but no brain, to sell oregano
to men with guns, to fall asleep
in the middle of a room
like babies do, with my ass
in the air and face on the floor,
to wake in this posture
with sunlight washing my skin
and go out for coffee and a slower
life. How to say yes like a river
jumping off a cliff.
—Bob Hicok
Ah, Bob Hicok does not write poems like a man who’s been workshopped to death. He turns the lines often where you would not expect, and he makes big leaps in between these turns. Take any four or five or even six lines—look at the beginning, for example—and ask yourself whether you expect him to start with the soul and end up with throwing up on a lake. Did you? I didn’t. This poem doesn’t have the stamp of homogenization; it’s a little unpredictable, line to line. Much like life itself. And what a breath of fresh air.
Quirky Bob Hicok’s Virginia Tech bio goes something like this:
I love writing, maybe most of all because it doesn’t matter, because poems don’t lift bridges or make refrigerators shinier. The nakedness of the endeavor—just one person, sitting at a desk, trying to express something they feel in a way that will allow others into their mind—may be among the most human things we do. We are the mouths of the world, and through poetry we speak.
I’m always so thankful he’s speaking.
You can find this poem in Insomnia Diary, part of the Pitt Poetry Series from the University of Pittsburg press.
-R
