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.

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