Author: R. Brookes McKenzie

what fresh hell is this

spanner

when things seem to be
looking up, that’s when I become
intensely fearful. it can’t last, it’s too good
to be true, when’s the other shoe
going to drop? the wheels
are turning so smoothly
right now, the gears are going
like gangbusters and it’s too
scary and I can’t bear
the suspense and so
I feel compelled to stick
a spanner in the works.
this tactic has backfired on me
a million times and yet, I still
do it. it’s the waiting
I can’t stand. the not knowing
just how my world is going
to crumble, from whence the blow
is going to come.

I put an end to the uncertainty
of waiting for life to fuck me
over, by breaking it myself first.

the consolation of philosophy

really, Boethius? just how much
consolation was philosophy
when you were waiting to be
executed? did it help?
did it stop you from
dying, or just make you feel
more philosophical
about your inevitable death?
it waits for us all, but for you
I imagine it was a bit more
urgent.

if you figured out any secrets
about how to be okay
with the fact that I’m dying,
please let me know. send me
a dream, or something. or I
could just read your book.

Zodiac

I’m sorry that I’m the way
I am. I tend to get a feeling
of free-floating anxiety, like
something is horribly
wrong, but I don’t know what,
so then I try to find the ways
that I fucked up, the things I did
wrong, the reasons and the proof
that someone hates me.

I think part of it
is that I assume
that everyone will hate me
eventually, that I’m an awful
person who drives everyone away
so it’s just a matter of time
until it happens with you. I’m
probably conditioned by
having parents who lied
and said everything was fine
when it clearly wasn’t
and then got divorced.

now
I take all the little things
that by themselves are meaningless
and may well have nothing to do
with me, but in my mind
they add up to being
a big bad picture,
like detectives in a movie
when they’re trying to catch
a serial killer, like the Zodiac
or whatever, and then I assume
and make an ass out of u and me,
but mostly me. so anyway I’m sorry,
and it will probably happen
again.

the things I didn’t know

I didn’t know
that when you asked me
that question, you were reading
far more into my answer
than I intended.

I didn’t know
that when I lied
and said those two
things were not related,
you actually cared so much
about my answer.

I didn’t know
that you were angry
at me last night. I wondered
why you were behaving
the way you were, and I felt
like something was wrong
but I couldn’t figure out
why.

you’re not the only one
who sometimes realizes things
way after the fact.

and really, given the extremely mixed
messages
and lack of communication
going on here, can you
blame me? oh wait. I guess
you can.

should you ever
care to forgive me,
I’ll be in the corner
wearing my dunce cap,
wondering if I’ll ever
get out of the doghouse.

fine.

if everything is fine,
why am I biting
all my nails
to the quick?

if everything is fine,
why are all your latest
songs so very
passive-aggressive?

nothing feels fine
right now. there’s a disturbance
in the Force. I’m sure
it’s my fault somehow.
great. another Gordian knot
and me without my magic
sword.

confessions

I may have lied
last night. you
were the miller in that
second poem too, the one who
earned his rest by creating.

I don’t know why
I lied. something in me
was very wary, very afraid
to admit it. maybe because
I keep getting burned
whenever I reveal
my heart. so to protect myself
from fire, I buried that secret knowledge
six fathoms under. well, the skeletons
are floating up now!

also in that poem, I seem to have
devalued the lady’s writing poems
because to me it doesn’t
usually feel like work, and also because
I’m the one doing it.
you work at yours, I see it.
anything I do
doesn’t count as work
in my mind. unless I’m
making big bucks and/or
digging ditches. it’s probably a
daddy issue. gee, what a surprise.

and remember your favorite
devices: poetic license, literary
detachment and writing in
characters? the lady is both
me and not-me, not all of me
anyway. she’s a voice in
my head telling me I’m
worthless. she doesn’t know
shit.

the whole analogy
falls apart anyway,
the center cannot hold
because her writing poems
invalidates the entire metaphor.
if she had a mortar and pestle
and secretly ground her own flour
to bake illicit cakes, that would
be in keeping, but it would also
be ridiculous.

plus I didn’t think of it
til now. should I edit?
does the world really need
The Mill 2.0?

wish granted?

I don’t get it. I
thought that this
is what you wanted:
for me to stop
pestering you
with my unwanted
affections.

yet now that I’m
over you, you’re sulking
like a little boy from whom candy
was taken away, candy
that he claimed he
didn’t want to begin with.

dude. make up your mind,
already. do you even know
how hard it was
to make myself stop
being in love with you?
it took everything I had.
if you don’t mean it, don’t
tease me. I’m not your
weathervane. don’t blow
in my direction and expect me
to twist. been there, done that,
made me miserable.

that time I tried to buy merch from Jeffrey Lewis

the first time I heard Jeffrey Lewis play,
I was quite impressed.
my little brother
had told me about Jeffrey,
I think he sent me a link to
the video for “Williamsburg
Will Oldham Horror”, and Jeffrey
was playing at Sidewalk and my
brother told me to go. I remember
he played that song “Anxiety Attack”
and it struck me as being very
honest and not a little bit
brave, because he wasn’t trying to
whitewash anxiety or in any way make it
seem like anything other than
what it is, which is shitty.

after the gig I spoke to Jeffrey
I think, and then I went home
and went on his website
and bought two t-shirts,
one for me and one for
my brother, who’s such a big
fan. Jeffrey wrote to me
and said that he had noticed
that I lived in New York and
so did he, so if I wanted to,
I could come find him at the
Sidewalk Open Mic that night and pick up
my shirts in person and he would
refund me the twelve dollars
I had already paid
for shipping. his email went
to my spam folder and I
didn’t see it til
the next day. I wrote back
and tried to be cute and ended up
sounding pretentious and
invited him to Catweazle, or
he said I could stop by
his apartment but I was too shy.
we played email tag
for a month and then he finally
mailed them to me and
when they arrived,
one of them was the wrong size
and I was too embarrassed
to say anything
after so much hassle –
until now.

every time I see him at the mic
I look away and hope to god
he doesn’t recognize me.
at one point my then-boyfriend tried to book him
for our show at Sidewalk
and there was a lot of emailing back and forth
but it didn’t end up happening.
so that’s my pitiful story
of how I tried to buy merch from
Jeffrey Lewis and embarrassed
myself in the process. I still like
your music though. in fact I am writing this poem
at one of your shows. sorry dude
that I’m so weird.