The Shakes

From Two Hands himself:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dictated by Two Hands to lowly web intern:

"Hi Jake, my name is Two Hands, poet extraordinaire. I received this name because of my ability to write two different poems simultaneously with each of my two hands. My real name has been lost in the burned pages of the prose I used to write professionally many years ago.

As a reader of your blog, and as an optimist watching your hunt to land that perfect poem in that perfect magazine, I was wondering if it might be possible to read some of the poems that are being submitted? Probably the rejected ones as I'm sure you wouldn't want to publish something on here that will one day be read by the masses holding and caressing your work in their gentle, tiny hands."

End of dictation.
----------------------------------------------------------------
So here's the longest poem I've sent out, which I suppose means has the least likely chance of being published. It's called "The Shakes" and it's 1,226 words, which I'm learning to be too long by about an average of 800-1,000 words. It's about four or five pages in a word document. Again, way too long for most magazines. Online is different. But as for print magazines, a bad call on my part.

Anyway, I wrote this once when I lost my shit. I didn't edit it at all because I wrote it shaking and wanted to keep it shaky. If I changed one thing, it'd lead to more changes and then it'd read too calm. It'd be too structured and it'd lose the title's meaning. So I left it exactly how I wrote it. And I wrote as fast I could.

I repeat a lot of words, like "dusty" and variations of "rattle," but that's how I thought of everything in those minutes. Repeating words bothers me, unless I'm trying to keep a subtle rhythm. I used the phrase "charred remains" as a subtle rhythm in another poem called "Brilliantly Ruined Brilliant Ruins," as one poem inspired another. Kept the connection there. I wanted this poem, however, to read like a frantic mess of speech. Maybe I got that, maybe I didn't. But I didn't edit anything, as everything's more honest and childish before you go back with an ego. You're running on the most basic emotions in a first draft.

The second half is much better than the first half, I feel. The whole poem becomes about something else entirely almost, but with the same frustration I wrote in the first half. There's more heroic defeat in the second half, which is a better way to end than cowardly defeat, which the first few paragraphs have.

Also, I did actually delete five paragraphs out of frustration before going outside to have a cigarette. I was also writing a poem about Charles Bukowski earlier in the week at the time, so maybe there's some influence there too.

Anyway.

"The Shakes"
by Jake Kilroy

The shakes came from the stereo,
dusty in the wall,
myself in place like a dirty rug.
Tie the room together, tie the lovebirds together.
Watch me, get a picture, let the nerves lessen,
shake, rattle and roll.
Isn't that how we played it the last time I saw you in a blue dress?

Goddamn these old pictures, the dusty bins of lovers,
the rattling of flat skeletons trying to claw their way out;
oh, how the hair stands up when I think of you,
how I ultimately want to take a hammer to the walls,
get the perfume off, get the scent out, it'd give me a new art.

And just for the record,
I never wrote you back because I thought the paper was cursed.

Instead, I...well...you'll never know, I guess...

The shakes...oh, you can see the black lines in the thinner air,
a plague of demons marching towards your kitchen,
just looking to drink all the milk you left out.
Just let 'em come, just let 'em drum,
just let 'em drink.
What else does it take to be a great writer?

Show 'em what you got, and they'll clap their bony fingers together,
leaving the air to be a faint stale taste of modern ruins.
The shelves aren't long enough to keep your boxes,
so I left them out in the rain and watched them collapse,
while I smoked what I thought was a pack by the stove.
I thought the rain would surely flood the garage.

And I waited.
And I waited.
And I waited.
And I waited.
And I waited.

I scratched my arms for so long that it look like I had burned 'em,
a prairie wind couldn't have carried me home.
So I let 'em burn for everything that didn't.

Why not?

Burn it, baby, you better burn it, so you can sleep;
so I can sleep; so we can sleep;
burn it on the beach by your parents' house when you come home,
let it go to waste when you spend a winter's week here,
left without refuge, no call, as you'd rather sit in the dark,
than let me see you and bring up the charred remains of us.

"Like a gunshot," I'd say.

"Like hell," you'd say.

And then we'd kiss.

And then it'd fade to ivy, crawling up our skin,
like we were the statues on an east coast campus,
cracking and letting the sunlight do good damage.

The shakes get in me, when those dusty songs play;
god, leave me brutal, buried in a stash of postcards,
rattling the walls, kicking off the dusty scent of charred remains;
the sour taste of my own fingers won't do, rattling inside my mouth,
scared of the medicine it takes to rightfully rid myself of the shakes,
wrongfully, doubtfully, a new miracle sparking the sky darker,
you know I won't stop until I'm riding every cliché on wheels,
straight to your door, straight to everything that I want to knock,
let it go, let it go, let it go, settle, settle, settle,
let that dust burn in the next fire I set to already twice charred remains.
This former flame is growing.
Oh God, pretty soon, the post office will be on fire.

I have to stop, I have to stop, I have to go.

[five paragraphs missing]

I botched half of this poem because I lost my nerve,
because I can't ever finish what I start.

I had a cigarette.

I smoked it so quick I thought I ate it.

I coughed up what felt like my small intestine.

I rid myself of health.

I forever pray to false idols.

I won't ever sit in a church without shaking.

I tossed the cigarette in the gutter.

I heard the buzz I had been searching for,
as the cigarette sunk to the bottom of the dirty water.

I tried to count the stars but got dizzy. I came back inside.

I sat through another lightning storm that wasn't here yet.

I came back to finish what I had started,
wishing I had never gotten rid of anything.

I wish I was a better packrat.

I wish I meant more to my paper.
I wish this paper could achieve more.
I wish I could leave blank pages out in the rain,
and just wait for nature to be a real poet.

And instead of any new year's resolutions,
I just start every new year with a cocktail.

Chase tail, drive fast and don't listen to anyone.

Not a single philosopher.

Not a single wise man.

Not a single nomad.

Why?

Because they don't drink, they don't smoke, they don't lie, they don't steal,
they don't travel by their pockets, they don't chase tail,
they don't drive fast and they want to hear what the world has to say.

Well, that's not a religion I'm going to buy. I can promise you that.
I'll build a well and pour down all the milk the demons drank
before I let you convince me that I could use the well for wishing.

All coins have ever done is buy me more reasons to chase tail,
drive fast and not listen to anyone.
And drink. And smoke. And lie. And steal.

And travel by my pockets.

Not wishing. God help me, not wishing.

Wishing is for boys, regret is for men.

Am I right?

It's not the guns, it's not the gambling, it's not the gin.

It's regret. That's a man's best game, isn't it?

Christ Almighty, why not die for our regrets?

The more, the merrier. The lore, the lighter.

But not for me anymore. I've got a poem to finish, you see.

I can't fly through your town anymore.

I have to pull over, I have to dig my feet into the grass of that hill,
overlooking the beach, overlooking the sunken ocean,
a well for wishing if I ever saw one;
last time I was there, a drunk driver almost hit me,
but I was listening more to ocean's waves, maybe my own traffic,
louder than the shakes of the road, I suppose.

God help me.

God help the shakes.

Give me more than prayer.
Give me more than bread.
Give me more than wine.

God never gets the shakes, I hear.
At least that's what the girls told me in school.
He doesn't even pray to a higher power.
And if he's not praying, why the hell should I?

What does Heaven have that Earth doesn't?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry;
it always comes back to this plague;
a plague of whims, a plague of words, a plague of well-wishers.

You were on my side when this poem started,
but like any good verse, I've charred enough of the battlegrounds (again)
to forget the war.

Let me just say this:
I will forever be sorry,
I will forever be a mess,
I will forever wish you were here,
I will forever wish that years haven't passed
I will forever fear old age,
I will forever fear the quiet moments,
I will forever create destruction,
I will forever create,
I will forever tell you what you already know.

And the real reason I never listened to the philosophers,
the wise men or the nomads was because none of 'em ever got the shakes.

And that's the truth.