Litany Resisting Happiness as the Answer
By Robert Colgate
After Richard Siken
1.
I wanted to make this about happiness because I thought that would be easiest to understand.
How to find a way to move forward
as the light constantly redefines bodies into the dark.
How easy, my little jog down the shoal, how I pulled my shoes on
and cried at my success, those perfectly tied ribbons
and now maybe I could run and billow in the air
like the ribbons I would pull out of my left forearm
over and over
before I knew this had to be about happiness, when I was just alone
in the kitchen looking to loose the pearls inside me
and deflate, take an Advil and sleep for one thousand years.
2.
I wanted to make this about desire, about how to desire desire, how to learn
to want those parts that the massive flatness
wanted to strike down.
I wanted this to be about the constant sensation
that if I just tried a little harder, I could get rid of my schizophrenia.
I sit up tall and squeeze
my shoulder blades together. The feeling is in there somewhere.
My doctor said I was lucky.
Actually, she said, this will last forever
and it is up to you to decide how long that is.
3.
I wanted to make this about adoption, gay agenda, my grandfather
adopted as a teenager
by Dr. Cleon Colgate, Cleon able to do anything
—surgery, astronomy, calligraphy, poetry—
and now all I want is a smallest anything, a small light
for Cleon Jr.,
to turn off the lamp for him before bed with my fluttering hands,
my fluttering forebrain.
The dark heavens wanted to make this about adoption, flipped lights, disability, happy
parents, cured parents, eighty percent removal rates, trying
to convince the domineering sky
that I am a fitting
home, that I am happy like this, that I desire my delusion
like a son I’ll never have.
4.
I wanted to scream
this has nothing to do with happiness,
to erase happiness from the journey, ignore any words anyone has ever said to me
or anyone else besides me.
Let me forget everything, and yes, I am including everything ever
so please do not ask.
I don’t want to know. I never said any of this. There’s no way to prove it.
I rewrote the poem to put happiness back into it
and then no one wanted to read it.
I replaced happiness with a meadow
and still no one wanted it. I bent into the tall dark grasses and crawled.
5.
I wanted everyone to see how you were, CJ.
How you were— don't want to say it— happy— this must be about happiness—
but you’re gone now. My son is dead. My arms are full of loose pearls.
We will never have our first rodeo. I will never get to see
what poems you will write, how your fountain pen
might constellate the space between us.
Let me perform surgery on this line, place my madness inside it.
The part that separates us I will weave into this page.
It is all I am left to do.
6.
I wanted to scream, again, I always want to, always end up needing to crawl
in order to hear myself, and when I hear myself, I can almost hear
the voice of my son.
I wanted our voices to crawl through the park together
so they might finally feel like themselves and get to sleep.
When I couldn’t sleep, I tried making this about sleep, then the guilt of sleep,
then about the crumbs between the sheets—
rest amidst constant small scratches, the bed soft
under its stains, and when I sleep, I no longer have to translate
my screaming, set grammar
to my soliloquy, say anything I don’t want to
about happiness.
7.
I wanted to make this about the great normal expanse, how it only listens
to a mind when given a body.
The law was soaked in so much sugar
it pinched my stomach. A hurt stomach is not ruined.
It is a stomach. It is there to hurt.
My brain is a brain. It is not a stomach. It’s just not, I know
you wish it were, o vast stretch of standard sky,
that would be so easy.
You want to biologize everything, coerce me into adopting dopamine
instead of admitting
that you don’t think I should be a father. You don’t.
You don’t think I should be alive and brilliant like this.
8.
I wanted to make this about how the only guarantee of reality is metaphor.
How my son is so scared of the dark.
He is so scared of sleep. He is just like me.
I will hold his hand and cross into the dark
like a father who holds his son’s hand.
I have spent so long
running into the shapes in the dark, running my hands
over them, running to tell anyone who will listen
that they are there, that they exist in my dark room
even without a way to turn on the light.
CJ, I will not always be there to turn on the light. Walk with me into the dark.
Stretch out your hands. Do you feel that?
Its shape so smooth, a pruned brain, your young arms
growing into their striations, how you learn to wrap yourself in them
to convince your mind to sleep, to be there for your own body
when no one else will.
This is how we must sleep, son‚ like our bodies are proof enough of themselves
and the darkness has no reason not to believe in us.
When the light pushes you, stand tall.
When you are unable to stand, sit and scream
that standing was never a light to begin with.
Do the same when you must lay down and crawl.
Crawl into the joyful dark that you have known
until you feel those smooth edges of happiness.
Rob Colgate (he/him) is a Filipino-American poet from Evanston, IL. He holds a degree in psychology from Yale University and is currently pursuing his MFA in poetry with the New Writers Project at UT Austin. His work is featured in Best New Poets 2020; his first chapbook, So Dark the Gap, was published by Tammy in March 2020.