Driving around on the Roof When I was little I hit & claimed I was a girl. I quoted lines from old cartoons I didn't understand to little or no effect. "Put out that light," "Don't you believe it," etc. I thought about driving, but didn't know how when you're in a car & "Bridge over Troubled Water" comes on, no-one speaks— then we act like it wasn't because of the song. I bet there's lots of stuff like that I still don't know. But don't laugh—I still know more than most people. Ask me something. Good question. It all started, like most bad ideas, with a train going by a playground. Images of beaches & you don't remember where they are, it'll make you stop walking from time to time, & all those people you never saw again, they're either doing okay, or got murdered, or something. People with my name creep me out—but wouldn't it rule if there was a hot chick named Chris Cook & I banged her? People who have something you want just like being mean, whereas people who are like you want to kill you. My father's mother helped teach me to like knowing things— she'd always say, "You see? I learned something new today." —Chris O. Cook, from To Lose & to Pretend Copyright 2008 Brooklyn Arts Press, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ~
Velveteen
Intestine The
flirtatiously smug
empath with the bob near the papasan took her time in late
Summer comparing my soul to the age when she'd wrap, to the
light of one unshaded lamp, herself in garbage sacks,
pretending they were leather. Parties
are like
involuntary debates over belief in talent. It's time I started
dealing with the fact I won't be famous. When you see me,
apologize. I'll apologize back. Faith is the easiest
thing in the world not
to
have, so cut it
out already. Get to the point where the language
eclipses the grating like rising dough; where the Poem is a
grey cat that acts like it wants to be petted but doesn't.
Gangster-flip an oversized coin skewed guilt
& shame. Skim
it
down your
culture like a dimmed Hall of Fishes. Wait for it to
once-around & back up your spine. Girls imagine wearing
things & boys imagine touching them, only most things aren't
being touched most of the time. When
Edna
Millay was 24
she cut herself with a stage knife somehow over the
heart in Synge's Deirdre
of the Sorrows, then later became like
a story someone tells about how there used to be a rosebush in some certain place.
—Chris O. Cook, from To Lose & to Pretend
Copyright
2008 Brooklyn Arts Press, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ~
Admirable
Fooling
& that's why
Evil will one morning lie buried like broken toy guns
beneath snow & sawdust. I can get away with the
word heartbreaking because I used to cut
myself making paper wizard hats with a whoop-jug,
before passing through the hedgerows to seek out the other
gifted children. The first was Rufus,
deadliest on the seaboard with a crayon but only if you
cooperated. He had a real record player. The last was also
Rufus. He retired undefeated to a mysterious island.
Every Sunday he sends a few jokes I
never get. If the world were my dream people would worship
waterslides & chill with rhinos. You wanna die? Simple.
Put on a Star Wars movie & do
a shot every time something comes across as a double
entendre. I want to know how old you have to be
to start calling people "son," because the world isn't
anyone's dream. Whenever it's a month,
I'm amazed it's that month & it's, like,
always a month. Oh World, are you onto
something or on something? Oh World, if you've got
questions, we've got dancers! World, the thing about
a whoop-jug is, we're bound to brim it
with what we love. Oh & World… when I save you, there'll be this one part where I jump a bridge in a speedboat. It's gonna be so cool. —Chris O. Cook, from To Lose & to Pretend Copyright 2008 Brooklyn Arts Press, LLC. All Rights Reserved.~
Weneht There's nothing new to say about being alone until you find a new way of being alone, in which case, you're not. A cliché is a cross between a medal and a bug in your mouth. I've a stitch from booking after fake boy pain. I knew this guy who was obsessed with Elvis because Elvis bit off one of his legs in 1976. He told me, "Some things best take the shapes of jokes but aren't lies." I told him if a girl has a tattoo it means she takes it in the butt. He said, Dammit. Poems are the jokes you don't laugh at until Heaven would be a good line if there were such a place, like how there was this one field with a big tower with a flashing red light, where girls in sweaters liked to sing & run fast. Sometimes there was a moon. The Poetess with the watercolor mouth to whom I sometimes write e-mails full of facts about animals has a poem called "There Is No Such Thing As Skill." I forced 100 random people to write poems with that title, & some were way better than others. Many of the poems were elegies about turning 30. I called it new & silly. They said, "In all fairness, it never meant failure before." I said Dammit. I pretended to leave the room. People who pretend to leave the room sometimes yell "I'm done." —Chris O. Cook, from To Lose & to Pretend Copyright 2008 Brooklyn Arts Press, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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