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tHE poems

YOUR ADVANTAGE

4/16/2021

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Leave it to me to be blathering on. 
Your advantage, though who needs a record  
  
Of any of this anymore. I can’t   
Read my own mind, let alone yours, far-off  
  
Far-out blue fantasy, um, galaxy   
Away. I hear the ding of the doorbell  
  
Pulled from its white plug way back in the year  
1999, a year some others   
  
Remember with much more clarity &   
Fondness than I. I tend to remember 
  
I wrapped my nipples in cheap cellophane.  
I could not let you witness what I was  
 
Becoming—part aardvark, part back-up third  
Baseman, one-part optical illusion   
 
Covered in soot. This was before I knew   
You but also before I did lose you. ​
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OTHERWISE DIFFICULT TO RENDER

4/9/2021

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“And that is how I have cherished you—deep inside  
the mirror, where you put yourself, far away   
From all the world.”   -- Rainer Maria Rilke
 

A self-portrait is hardest to locate in a place.  
Otherwise difficult to render.  
Be it Beijing or the Smoothie King Center.  
Your charming local deli or a dark corner.  
I am prone to distraction.  
Often via the beautiful or the gruesome or the disappointment.  
Often a thing covered in fur.   
A frame cannot contain it.  
The reverberation of the aluminum reflection forced upon me here.  
I am chased by a sense of deterioration.  
I am a half-filled human mask.   
As in, the person I encounter each day will not, has not, will not always be me.  
Or I melt away.  
That old dull argument against the ordinary, the opposite of fear.   
The mirror calls me out of myself.  
Or perhaps it beckons me towards the deepest pit of myself.  
Induces a sort of trance.  
I peel off the layers of my apparent dome.  
Like the rinds tossed into the trashcan.  
A symbol of the poverty of a great raw longing.  
I know I shouldn’t look, but I do.  
Up against the embarrassing nakedness of living.  
I am smudged with makeshift habits & blurred desires.  
I stare into my fish eyes, my little nose, my antiquated teeth, the dent.  
O to translate my radical deficiency into something else.  
To swap ordinary living for the spiritual quest.  
To jot down my dreams each morning.  
Otherwise, I witness & then it is gone.  
The boundaries of the dream contain an image & whatever else might coincide.  
Conscious, self-conscious, subconscious, unconscious.  
Knitting socks out of the hair of the dogs.  
Attempting to capture the lesser-known qualities of light.  
Drowning myself in the tub my grandmother died beside.  
My grandmother & I shared more than the genes for diabetes.  
I am distracted by human relationships.   
Even with the dead, even with myself.  
Badly handled objects scrubbed anew, fresh granola in the cupboard.  
Till the age of three, I was a perfect little girl 
& then the family discovered my ragged inner emptiness 
Which I would like nothing more than to fill. ​
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TO THE BARN TO GET SOMETHING

4/2/2021

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Yesterday I strolled out 
To the barn to get something, the drill  
Or maybe that pink putty, it turns white   
When it dries, & the window was black, buzzed.  
  
Overnight, two hundred  
Or more flies birthed in the barn  
& then the swarm swarmed the window.  
  
Thoughts, these flies, headaches, pandemics--they sweep   
The psyche, the window, this noggin, this nation.  
  
I woke to a nuisance I didn't earn.  
When I flushed the toilet, the sewage rose.    
  
This is what I've become, squatting, shitting  
On paper towel in the garage. 
 
Suddenly it begins to snow.  
  
I don’t know how to say it, but   
The cashier at the grocery has begun 
To harass me, comments on  
The length of my cucumbers, the girth  
Of the chicken breast I buy  
For homemade dog food.  
  
Today she called me a skank, in question  
Form & even worse, the shelves were still  
Bare of toilet paper, matches.  
  
Still I can’t blame her, remembering what   
I said here earlier   
About thoughts flying, the headache  
Of a pandemic, unknown   
Accident or incident prior. 
I zip up my coat & move on. 
 
Once outside of an alehouse  
In Muncie, Indiana, someone mentioned  
Last night’s Sugarland concert.  
  
I said, “I heard they really brought the house down,”  
A stupid joke, my goof-timed cheeking  
At the tragic collapse of the stage.  
  
A guy said, “My cousin died in that collapse.”  
“O fuck,” I said, “Punch me.  
Free of charge,” but he refused.  
  
Surely, countless other accidents  
& incidents I have forgotten, folks  
I have disrespected.   
 
I have lived a long time, made many moronic maneuvers.  
  
Thomas Edison originally believed   
The phonograph a tool   
For recording voices, memos to mother, meanderings best  
Kept secret, though necessary to let   
Fly from the snout.  
Not songs, no, he argued. 
 
Songs are already recorded elsewhere, have to be found. 
 
Here’s how dumb & pathetic I am!  
I still take one of my wife's hairpins  
 
To clean my earwax, though I know  
Lee Gerstenzang invented the q-tip in 1923. ​
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self-worth is something

3/26/2021

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Hi, you must be a robust person.  
Self-worth is something,  
Grasshoppers elsewhere in the tall grass.   
I like myself. I   
Continue being just as nimble   
& punctual as I   
Can be, one who never dares leave  
My home without hands   
& feet. Last night I dreamt about The   
Jerry Springer Show.   
Specifically two memories.   
In one, a dwarf leaves   
Her husband for a guy named Hambone.   
In the other, Gwar,  
That messy metal band finds itself  
Confronted by parents   
Whose kids keep ruining the laundry   
Insisting on fake blood  
For customizing their t-shirts.  
This morn, I remembered   
Jerry Springer was once mayor of   
Cincinnati,   
Recorded a country album, earned   
A law degree. Some   
Things always change, are possible.  
Roast-beef-colored car! ​
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lIFE

3/19/2021

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 This string of seashells on display illuminates  
Life. Look how delightfully it resists being  
Interpreted, interrupted, relegated.  
  
Slippery, was merely pieces once, haven’t cinched   
To maintain a singular space. We can all see   
The friction invested in their surfaces over   
  
The centuries. Much bounces off my string of seashells.  
Humor, agony, ecstasy, boredom, doubt, self-  
Referentiality. Say God put these shells   
  
Here. You would be wrong, interesting premise, but   
You would be wrong. One cannot glance upon these shells   
Without maintaining his or her own preference.  
  
We all misbehave for our own purpose. A kind   
Of collection of what I was thinking at each   
Given moment. This one for when grandmother died.  
  
This one for the envelopes I dropped beneath  
The tires of the tractor. This one for the snake   
The redneck kid pulled out of Lukens’ Lake. This one   
  
For my first dislocated shoulder, my seventh.  
This one belonged to Matthew’s dead hermit crab. I   
Never cared if a seashell signaled a thing, more   
  
Interested in the next seashell I will happen  
Upon. You can feel this sort of energy grow.  
I was thirty-one & I thought to myself: 
  
This is a nice way of making something, a way   
To remember what I’ve seen in the crashing waves.  
Two unanswerable questions rose to the surface.   
 
Are we ever beyond the pulling? Do you think?  
Always seemed harder to surf without a surfboard.  
Failures of reference, shifty variables   
  
Near the equator. You & I both know I am   
Talking about something without saying exactly   
What it is, a fairly recent concern. I hope   
  
This will take my string of seashells to impossible   
Limits. On the other hand, it might just be this. 
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more than six years old

3/12/2021

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First day on the bus, I couldn’t have been  
More than six years old, yes, mother dropped me   
Off each day of kindergarten, baked in  
The loaf of her brown sedan, no A/C.  
 
A single seatbelt, mine. But then she flipped 
Jobs, from the Crisco plant to the psych ward  
& no way she was rising so early. 
So thus take the bus I did. Anyhow 
 
That first ride, no seats are left, & yes, scared 
I am halfway to hell. My little sack  
Of bones, my little sack of ham sandwich. 
My little sack shriveled upward inside 
 
Till the dang kindest cowboy to this day  
I ever met, a high schooler named Jude  
He lifted me without a word onto  
His lap, & no, not in a way creepy  
 
Sexual, or uncomfortable, no.  
It just was & I rode there like he must  
Atop his horse & my heart sequestered       
Its mighty pitter & my blue eyes brushed  
 
Off its patter. I saw it right there out  
The dusty window—the fattest turkey  
In the whole county. Knew it to be true.  
It ducked behind the truck Dad left behind. ​
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he had to argue

3/5/2021

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I spent today insulting him.  
He had to argue.  
I banged on the wall with my bell. 
  
I entertained the thought.  
He ran into the road.   
I carried the smell of whiskey.  
  
He wondered aloud if the law had been broken.  
I distrusted the government, only briefly.  
He sympathized with the bug on my windshield.  
  
I sliced his thigh, got it over with.   
He misses driving calmly together.   
I developed a new tick.  
  
He wiped his hands on my pants.  
I was defeated by time. ​
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to the future

2/23/2021

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I've decided no more traveling   
To the future, which was far   
Easier than shifting to the past   
Which was chock full of problems  
 
& trees. Personally I would love  
To catch up with the present. 
These gadgets I can’t properly swipe. 
These words can’t help but lead to  
 
Stark, untimely death. “No more dying,”  
Replied Frank O’Hara, who 
After saying did a bit of his  
Own dying, squeezed from the tooth- 
 
Paste container of life by what I  
Assumed for nine years was called   
“A doom buggy,” a mistake Frank might  
Return a nod, slight giggle. My mom  
 
She once demanded I eat as much  
As craved & act terribly.  
We arrived at Daytona Beach  
& I learned if a family  
 
Listens to a sad sack yap for some  
Thirty or so long minutes  
About a condo, or seven if  
Your pale child behaves poorly   
 
Enough, they’ll let you grab freely from  
Their rack of donuts, Slurpee®   
Machine, plus you will receive  
A coupon for a free dune buggy  
 
Rental. Of course, this happened after  
Someone done ran over Frank  
O’Hara on Fire Island, but  
Before it was said “Uh...no  
 
More dune buggies on the beach.” Simpler 
Times, my hair was thick like sand. ​
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    ​You can call me a project-oriented poet. A big beam of obsession & confusion & delight shines down & I'm hooked for a bit. My two full-length collections of poems are WHAT IS WHO (my self-published MFA thesis at the Michener Center For Writers, 2018) & More Wreck More Wreck (published by Coconut Books in 2014). My most recently-released poem-project is FUTURE BARN, available for FREE both in PDF & audio form.

    I'll post new poems every Friday from my forthcoming collection, ​I ONCE WAS SOMEONE ELSE & OFTEN STILL AM. I'd be honored if you gave it a read, a possible share. Thanks!

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