Peter Marcus

August 6, 2015

“And They’re Running” by Peter MarcusPosted by

Peter Marcus

AND THEY’RE RUNNING

running in their Reeboks their Asics their Saucony’s running
with their iPods MP3s and Blackberries their cell phone plan
with unlimited minutes and playlists longer than the 10,000 things
inscribed in the Tao Te Ching
they’re running in spandex breathable cotton tank tops golf hats
bare-backed bare-chested some with tattoos the width of murals
some with dogs—dogs ahead behind beside the pure bred
pedigreed Border Collie Bichon Frise Labradoodle Whippet
Standard Poodle groomed like labyrinthine shrubbery
they’re running for their lives to look better in the boardroom bedroom
on the dance floor in the mirror gasping sweating grunting
as if one could make exhausted love with oneself
they’re running with their newborns their infants toddlers half-
legal adoptees from China Ethiopia Belarus Honduras
their in vitro twins saddled in designer strollers
they’re running one assumes away from death away along the river
while others chose to march and pray to sit and sing refuse
to move in Zuccotti Park in the freedom to be still and gather
they’re running through daylight savings time time saving saving
time a belief in amassing the disappearing hours
collectible as postage stamps Nikes snow globes sea glass
while others run towards God pedometers wrapping biceps like tefillin
No one seems to notice the anomalous walker immobile because
he’s exhausted afraid of failing falling out of breath breathless
while the sun sprays shattered gold across the Hudson
For anyone bothering to look at all closely would’ve known
he’d fallen that something fractured tore or broke within him
but they’re running running running running and the only others pausing
seek to lessen the lactic acid build-up to stretch and stretch out
pressing palms against a wall or railing as if suddenly apprehended
for a nameless crime patted down and frisked by un-seeable detectives.

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

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Peter Marcus: “Living is New York and my feelings about my life here are fraught with contradiction. This city that continues to energize and exhaust, exhilarate and fatigue, as it hums, dances, burns and crashes on its streets and behind myriad closed doors. New York, like the universe itself, seems ever expanding in its breadth, an endlessly unfolding map that I purposefully or aimlessly, addictively wander. Likewise, I often experience New York as a fathomless well in whose depths I’ve been fortunate to draw from and been sustained by, especially in periods of loneliness, depression or loss. Over the years, I’ve found innumerable niches and nooks inside the maelstrom of city life, spaces where I can commiserate within, places of refuge and solace: in Central Park, on the Highline, amidst empty church pews, in oft-empty side rooms of grand museums, on various wooden stools inside day-dark bars. There is too much in this city that I rail and rage against, and too much that I equally adore and celebrate. New York is excessive in both the wonderful and repugnant, as it compels and repels me, often within a single day, sometimes within single hour. The city figures as both central character and backdrop in many of the poems I’ve written over the twenty years that I’ve lived here. And much like the speed and drive of the poem in this issue, on many a day, the city leaves me, for the worse or the better—breathless.”

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August 7, 2011

“The Boundaries” by Peter MarcusPosted by

Peter Marcus

THE BOUNDARIES

… and I must save them,
High fires will help
—John Berryman

Rebecca the angelic Greek had tributary scars coursing up and down her arms.
Sharon with the waist length hair redder than a fire truck and skin Kabuki-pale
would light a cigarette, take one drag or two, then extinguish it against her breast.
Holly was a sweetheart, her sketchbooks filled with self-portraits in the nude.
Pastels with thighs spread wishbone-wide to point where the damage had transpired.
Terror, does it emanate from outside or within? Fine question, Sarah, but why
now do I think of Berryman falling toward his end? All these students traumatized
by violence and neglect. Liz explained, after years of being groped and probed,
she’d watch her hands in dreams turn gangrene—her fingers fall off one by one.
How many others have sat squirming in that leather chair, sinking, as they mumbled,
When the ground gave way, I crumbled. But tell me, Mr. Bones, what true words
might I utter to the chronically bereft? What about her fantasy, it’s better after
death? Maureen watched her stepfather drag her mother like a pulltoy by the hair.
The guy was really crazy when he drank. A trichotillomaniac in reverse. Even worse,
when he picked me up from school, instead of driving home, he’d detour to the woods,
demanding that I show him how I eat an ice-cream cone, but to do it on his dick.
When I was bleeding, Jennifer made clear, my mother’s boyfriend wouldn’t want
to fuck. He’d spit into my face and scream, What a dirty little bitch! Then take
revenge on my pet rabbits, slit one throat and order me to cook it for his supper.
What now might I say to offer comfort? Men are more despicable than ogres.
Given only a diploma and the language tool, I started to uncover all these girls alive
beneath the rubble. Carrie described how her step-brother would crawl into her bed
at night, purring like a kitty-cat. He’d lick me head-to-toe, cleaner than a milk bowl,
then leave his glue-white puddle on my breast. A doctor resolute in mind. I wouldn’t
touch you ever, except in dreams and only with my eyes for I too want to heal and live
again. Spirit-loss, possession by ghost, symptoms in a diagnostic book. What Henry
aptly labeled, the horror of unlove. Lord knows, how many times I found you crouching
in the scum, huddled at the bottom of a well. It’s madness, insists the doctor in his notes,
to descend without a lantern or a threat—taking nothing with us but the will. Though
Jeanette said it better near the end of one sad session, Some walls are made of love.

—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010

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Peter Marcus: “Working with trauma, especially early trauma as I did some years ago, takes heart, much heart. Delving repeatedly into the ravages of loss, of betrayal and (of Berryman’s word) ‘unlove’ are unfortunately germane to this work. Sometime during my therapist years, I was re-reading The Dream Songs: The beautiful madness of Henry’s character as expressed through Berryman’s wonderful syntax. Moreover, the only way I have ever found adequately to write about mental illness or psychotherapy is to indict the protagonist/therapist in poems, so to avoid the superficial and inaccurate dichotomy of doctor as well and patient unwell. I’m never confident as to whether my psychology poems succeed in this regard.”

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