Adam Watson

THINKING OF WCW
By Adam Watson

Today I was thinking of WCW
not world champeen wrass-lyn
But William Carlos Williams
doctor of poetry and prose
the proto-Beat, the prodigal prequel
Father of Kerouac and Ginsberg and Billy Burroughs
Son of Dickinson and Whitman and Billy Blake
Physician to the America that was
tired, poor and weary ––
You told America to turn its head
gave its balls and labia a squeeze
told it to turn its head
and cough.

I was thinking of your disdain and your love
for the immigrants promising
to pay, then not pay ––
for your plums, so cold, so sweet
but you could not help yourself
could not help but to doctor,
to describe, to write a prescription
punctual and accurate –– handwriting
that your contemporaries could not read
description prescriptions
of chickens and wheelbarrows
that gave you relief
that made you peerless.

I was reading your doctor stories
of drunken doc rivers and
faces of stone
faces of pimples
faces of mouths forced open
to give up tonsil mucus
to give up septic secrets
faces in the feeble, dusky light
facing a stillborn daughter
Surrounded by sons ––
I read of your disgust, your delight
your pity and your scorn
family
patients
paterson
new jersey
america.

My America was born and reborn with you:
Pulling over your car
Midwifing another infant
from the infinite jest
of inspiration
Pencil smacks the notepad
and a poem wails to life.

WCW
I immerse myself
in you
WCW
I amuse myself
in you
WCW
I amass myself
in you.
WCW
I grew up by your sea
on a hot island
inhabited by you
(by mostly you)
And so I sing this song
of praise
For you.

Copyright Adam Watson, 2004.

THE ROOM YOU REQUESTED IS FULL
by Adam Watson


Agape at my agape

Raped by my repartee

I slouch aloof, alone with you.
stayin around for a little clit-chat

el-oh-elling myself hoarse

from unused voicebox
I type monosyllabic mutterings

a neanderthal on digital smack

a plastic primitive in a pentiumed forest
i cyberscuffle and scroll third wheeling

down the dialogue we have uttered

in the dark, in the deep mosque temple twi-lite

a felonious monk

an emoticonvict

a don juan white dwarf, waiting to casanova

i seek you, i summon you to privacy

and in an instant, i shall massage you:

I shall tell you of jon benet ramseying pediophiles

who lurk in the corners under raincoat firewalls

and of the proponents of gender nullification

abandoning the fictive attempt at heteroism

and of the seminal fluidless housefraus
who tactile the synthetic qwertys

as if touching the back of a Baldwin.
* * *
The trick is to

Key bored, and web-whisper microsoftly.
Inside more dim, a modem scream-echos in the cavern

the handshake, firm and confident

and a meat connection is made
I crouch, smoking. I type, nonsmoker

I type thinly, monitor glare wambling over eyeglass

stretched over ears like black elastic

top centered on doublechin cabeza.

I type billy-dee smooth with ladysung blue fontface

stubby fingers shaking and filching fake id

I speak in two hands and type with one.
* * *
so in the roaming, i found you

and u typed, said in all caps

PLEASE HELP ME

and i told you to

quit shouting

i said, alone and hoarse, "quit" and coughed

unable to end the phrase
and you said

please help me

please

i just find out i have kanser

and i typed:

cancer?

and el-oh-elled for real, for hoarse

until she said uncaplocked

im ten

i don't want to live with kanser

i mean cancer
and i sat there in fanwhirl silence.
u there?
(a palsy tic of hesitation)

yes
do you think i should do it

mom says god hates people who kills themself
god doesn't hate people

I say.
then why do i have canser

cancer

lol

and i knew, goddamnit, she really laughed.
god loves everyone
I say

and sometimes, bad things happen to good people

god wants u to live

I want u to live
u there?
yes

do you really mean that?
I don't lie

ok
thank you.
I cannot say anymore, too hoarse

she sits there idle, and finally

she is gone.
and i did not lie

i did not lie about God

because I knew, just then

aloof and alone with you

that only a good God can exist

in a world where ten year olds with cancer

can laugh.

Copyright Adam Watson, 2001.

e r


Didja ever notice how pathetic white can be

from the chuckling chalk of fluorescence

(cool and cunning and unamused)

blurring your skin

as you double lurch from post-vomit stomach lockdown?
it catches you in the room, waiting

clutching to the plastic bowl, and thinking

Yesterday it held a salad, and two weeks ago

tortilla chips

and now, it sits in your lap

an expectant father

waiting for the birth-belch,

Waiting.
we sit, waiting. small shift crew of strangers, less than ten.

we sit, submarine pallor in the parlor room

silent running

missing portholes to check for the

depth charges to drop.

television in the high corner

unreachable, unchangeable.

it too is paled, or perhaps, shamed into dimness

volume soft enough to not really be heard

and not loud enough to mask conversation
waiting alone

I am smiling in the fluorescence

bland cracker illumination settling stomach and mind.

I am eyeballing nurses, disappointed in their pillbox hatlessness

seeing them stare in perpetual slouch,

a medical practiced naval gaze

Zenning out the room with patience

and therefore I missed the entrance of

the boy wonder.
wearily and warily he wore the shock-smock

blank colored, collared by his steth

exhausted from, what? Bicycle puddle jumping?

stealing home in a little league final or

sneaking a late peek at a skinemax double feature

or arriving teenaged in a med school Normandy

and getting doogie howitzered ––

murmuring to the admitting nurse

who admitted with a nod

his quarry:
The madame was waiting.

Middle aged, eyeglassed and non-descript

stroking softly like a pretty pelt

the adolescent jacket in her lap
alone, and waiting

and the doc approached (circled, really)

and she looked up

just in time to meet his gaze

as he gulped grey air and uttered

"Er."
the mono-syllable swallowed the room,

monolithic, Kubrickian, imposing,

immense in its idiocy, before tumbling down

somewhere in the thin tile

beneath her feet

the morpheme injection in the vain

attempt to inform, and instead, infecting

the sterile hope she benignly tumored

and I sat there, two seats removed,

wishing for a louder tv

as she sat there for the doctor
waiting.

Copyright Adam Watson, 2001.




To learn more about Adam Watson, go to www.adamwatson.org