Tyler Kieslich writes things.

don’t forget

everyone my age reads bukowski and writes poems about booze and sex or the fading gatsby dream of the girl you left behind.

i will try to remember the moon, the river, the grass, how it sways in the evening wind on my grandfathers farm.

i have a bad memory.

4

He hears only the faint distant hum of a television playing somewhere behind him as he pulls himself up to the bar and orders two beers.

One for now, two for good measure.

“Looks like we’re missing a bunch of the regulars,” he says. His after-work beers are a ritual and at this point he’s afraid not drinking them will amount to some kind of betrayal of the soul or body. He would come here to his last dying breath.    

“Reckon they’re put off by the commotion outside,” the bartender says. “Can always count on you, Joe.” She is not looking at him, wiping down a glass with a towel and making it squeak as she rubs the inside long after there’s anything left to dry. She is staring at the television. Joe is aware that they are the only two people in the bar.

The newscaster on television is talking about crowds. Joe looks at the screen and sees swarming masses of people, shouting, spitting, throwing rocks. Then it cuts to footage of police with riot shields and tear gas guns shooting down from atop trucks and rooftops. The city is at war.

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fuck every poet who makes his words into shapes.

brains

he put his hand on the head to try to hold the brains in but the blood just gushed and she said “no use in trying, he’s just a stain on your shirt” but he kept his hand there and started thinking about ground beef and how it feels like dough in your hands and remembered about the cookies they put in the oven before the bullets started coming through.

warm bleeding night

warm bleeding night back in cincinnati
the city i used to love but never return her calls

with hands who soon used to heal
and eyes who soon used to see
and ears who never heard that well
and the girl who soon used to love me but never returns my calls

homeless man walks up to us
you can’t see his face for his eyes
and he looks at me pleading like
maybe the black might cave in on him or
maybe he just hasn’t smoked for awhile and
he takes out a fiddle and starts singing

“praise be to nero’s neptune,” he says
“the titanic sails at dawn
and everybody’s shouting
‘which side are you on’”

she just looks at him and shrugs but
i give him a dollar because i know the tune
and start walking

or perhaps i’m wrong
perhaps i can’t remember
perhaps i kept the change and the stars started dripping
brief dots of candlelight that set the evening on fire
and he got a good look at us and ran away screaming

but we get rid of him anyhow
and start walking

they all had their bikes locked up
and people we soon used to know are gathered
outside the smoky room
too many first names and not enough gin
so we walk inside to choke

she was talking to whats his name
the band was playing calypso
and i was either looking at her smiling
or wanting that fucker to burn

some man or girl or person
walks up and hands me their
beer or coke or lighter fluid
and i hold it or throw it or drink it all down

the room is dead, the room is on fire
and i am fading into thought

she walks up to me through the smoke and speaks
with her darling blue eyes i want
to keep them or sell them or gouge them out
and i am unhinged

i sure could use what she said to me now but
i had a memory who soon used to speak
and the past is a yellow wall that shines like silver
but it never returns your calls

just the wine

she said the cuyahoga flows straight through to cincinnati, and if i ever felt lonely i could jump in the river and swim. what she lacked in direction she made up for in the cruelest sort of optimism. i remember once we were on ludlow drinking cheap wine and smoking stale cigarettes she found in the drawer her brother keeps dirty magazines. what could she say to me then, with that look in her eye? the city is a lark and at night you can see the distant streaking lights across the ohio. we both knew the future wasn’t the vague glimmer we liked to make ourselves believe in. my mother told me that church was for building good will when you’ve done something you’re ashamed of. if you close your eyes and think hard you can hear your god in the silence. there is always a way where there is desire. where there is desire there is shame. in shame there is blood that flows like a river that forgot which way to go. i told her then that when i close my eyes i would try to bring her back to me. she said “that’s just the wine.”

hands

Hair is falling out, so I side step my better judgement to read all of your old emails and try to remember what it was like before my hands could destroy the things that made it real. Sometimes I think they’re performing some bizarre indian ritual, like maybe those strands are what’s left of it as it was or as I wished it would be. I hope they know what they’re doing.

the rhythm, the rhythm

oh the joy, the joy
the joy of drinking beer
out of red plastic cups
the music and the laughing
and the staring across the room

and you are spitting down their throats
and your tongue is tied, your tongue is in knots

(the rhythm, the rhythm)

and oh how wonderful it is
to get drunk on saturday
and go to church on sunday
and on monday start it over again

(the body is the bread is the blood is the wine)

and you are sitting alone at the
bar in the bowling alley
no sound but sad country
no light but corona
and slowly your dreams retreat
into dust, into sand

(the rhythm, the rhythm)

and slowly you realize that it’s
the rhythm, the rhythm
that you hear late at night
when you can’t sleep for dreaming,
or can’t dream for being drunk

and slowly you realize that
the body is the bread
is the blood is the wine

and the wine,
it tastes good

if you please

your walk is obscene
breath like a jewel
and the sound of your voice is like candy

those two little dimples in the small of your back

winking like a misunderstanding
at a gay bar

i am in love with all of the little things
so, if you please
shut the fuck up

washed out and broken up

i see the eye when
i look deep into the void.

i see myself laughing.

i see the feathers, screeching
in color, air blowing
upward, no sky below.

i see the way you
look when you know
you’ve got all the answers.

i see a little boy
kneeling in the cesspool,
hunched over in ecstasy,
knees cracking, swelling,
limbs the size of skyscrapers,
feeling as small as a mouse.

i see the smug grin,
the vague understanding
as it is hung out to dry
and you burn it in effigy.

i see the eye.

all of it stews,
washed out and broken
up in the orange of the haze.

sometimes there is a
difference between what’s
called upon and what’s needed.

but in the void
it’s hard to tell the
black from the gray.