A short poem about Ernest Hemingway
by David Ayers

Ernest Hemingway
Was licking the dust no
licking the dust no
no
licking the spirit

no, the carpet, the unclean drape
In some old fashioned cinema
(and the room kept changing,
and the room was the part that changed)

And the room was a storybook
Without a door
Its dedication was broken
Everything was Hacked off
Straightway

it put its pages on
(The snake did)

The mantle of some old-fashioned livingroom
snakeden parlor

And it said
I want some whiskey

And they kept burning

*

But what was the cause of this burning

Could it have simply been, being?

No

Yes

But a being without

He wouldn’t have wanted matches
Since there is no wishing washing
In Tale-telling
It’s all Fidgeting Incendiary

Ernest Hemingway wanted fire

westerly fields they don’t tell you how they grow
wonderful/do they

1/2 acre spreads a lot
Of wildfire
Don’t it

Losing branches
And bark

Leaving the paper
So wet and horny
And tender

So addictive

So much like a death mask you could feel it

So, reader
He began to make some dialogue

*

I’m not sure
He said

Ho do you keep
Bombs in the kids

I mean the idols
Baby goats
How do you keep

Baby Owls
Baby Dolls
Doll headaches

How do you keep up with that which is in
your belly

Marshalled there
Like a universe

Or in your heart

your mind which is like a mind running
Like a swift gate

(He said this to bartender, his mother wife daughter)

And she said
Because I am playful
Because I symbolize
I am joy

Because In your stories
You agonize over

Life just wanders
out of its own pregnancy
Present situation present state

And the skin is a skin
That you can cast away so easily
(And touch)

Plus You make up people

Lizard
Baby nasturtium/purple Palabrum

Rose of my Sharon My
Nipple

(Niece)

My little wonderful
Little wimple

Little amelia swollen fat and beloved

(Such heady things)

This is my beloved

You ought to say to her
She is a clock she keeps winding down

(But Ernest Hemingway knew,
she was beginning to confuse him with John Steinbeck,
and others)

*

blow up
(He said)

Hello
(He said)

big
mantle-ledge
how do you cope

how do you keep the superb
middle

fundament
from the real

Without drinking or doing anything

Without fucking or coming
Or yelling at everything once in a while

How do you do it, without the kill the terrible hunt
proximity or fangs

But the mantle, being a mantle, couldn’t answer

Ernest Hemingway said Oh Hell

*

Old man, you fascinate me with the short story

You and your peers
You amaze me

John Steinbeck
William Faulkner
(Scott Fitzgerald)

where are you now?

So I have said virility

I have said
The old man of the sea

Really

A Rose for Emily
The Pearl

Gatsby where are you?

But no one answered
who answered

Fuck it

(No one answered)

*

Ernest Hemingway had three vices

drinking
drink
the usual

(above and below)

they kept him from coming
Also from realizing

this-from-the-that

(The difference between
the bar and The Bartender)

which kept him from the dream
he wanted to be in
and the one he starred in

Wake him up
Wake him up
No he’s passed out

Nevermind

*

What is it that you do

I have different job
on the ghetto
I say scale

and that means
To augment
the slip
down

I have put them in a car
I move them west

that is why it is called a worm
and i call myself a worm

(This was John Steinbeck at the grape arbor,
looking at the beautiful grapes.)

*

Ernest Hemingway wanted to throw up
By now he was fat
He was a movie star

Frank Sinatra
Elvis Presley call her

(In the motorcycle jump suit
Looking strong
Terrifyingly famous)

How can you top that
How can you best it

with the 39 virgins promised to you
and the Roman wine
The rice, villa, and the rich corn

It was a cinch
Ernest Hemingway was in heaven

*

(No those are the notes she left behind
That is eye shadow
That is a towel
That is her lipstick on the glass
That poem is pornographic–don’t look)

No those weren’t rules
that was Ernest Hemingway

He fell

by now the arms and legs
free
of any musculature

Ernest Hemingway was dying