Favorite Poets, Favorite Poems: Jeff Weddle

Poems 
by Jeff Weddle






Without further introduction, enjoy some poems by one of our favorite poets, Jeff Weddle! Links to books appear below the poetry.

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Goodbye, Someday 


The urge isn’t always there.
I can go weeks, months
without lifting a pen.
I imagine there will come a day
when I write the last one
without knowing, of course,
that there will be nothing else.
Maybe that day is today.
Maybe this small effort
is all that’s left of me.
So, I suppose I should tell you
that I’m looking out a window
at majestic white and grey clouds
moving fast across a mystery sky.
The rain has stopped, though it
was pouring only moments ago
and I feel stupid for leaving
my car windows a quarter of the way down
as a prayer against the tyranny
of Alabama summer.
If this is the last one
if this is it,
I need to tell you that this
small and tawdry show
has been thrilling.
It has been my honor,
my joy,
to poke around in your head,
your heart.
It has been great to fight
blank pages and blank inspiration,
to know occasional victory
amid oceans of defeat,
to carouse with lovely poets and drunks
and the phantom desire which
​guides my fingers across the page.
If this is the last one,
if this is my finale,
maybe you will think of those clouds
outside my window,
those clouds, white and grey,
racing across my private sky,
the sky I give you now. Perhaps I am your mystery,
carved of solitude and awkward phrasing,
and you, dear one, are surely mine.
The rain is back
— oh, my god --
and it is beautiful.

Purchase: It's Colder Than Hell; Starving Elves Eat Reindeer Meat; Santa Claus is Dead

Dance, God Damn it. Dance

This is our hollow place. 
This world that believes a badge makes a hero, 
that victims are thugs, 
that does not remember Tina Modotti, 
that has forgotten Emma Goldman, 
this amnesiac, flattened landscape 
of steadfast plastic and manufactured desire, 
this Titanic an inch from hard ice, 
this death rodeo, 
this land that elevates trendy parasites to high office 
and discards the truly good, 
this nation that hated Eugene Debs 
and murdered Joe Hill, 
that extinguished Martin Luther King 
on a Memphis balcony 
and Medgar Evers in his home, 
that blew Addie Mae Collins 
and Denise McNair 
and Carole Robertson 
and Cynthia Wesley 
to pieces, 
that screams the name of Jesus 
as it lets its children live in squalor 
and praises God as they die in shame, 
this blight, this cancer, this ugly scar. 
This scab heaven. 
This is our hollow place. 
This is Orlando Charleston Sandy Hook 
Aurora Boston Columbine Virginia Tech 
Baton Rouge New York, Vietnam Iraq
your house at the end of the lane. 
This is headline and story. 
This is Joe McCarthy and his questions. 
This is earned darkness. 
This is the sky breaking to blood. 
This is tainted pleasure 
and all the rotten eggs you can eat. 
This is the march of history 
and the revolution that never happened. 
This is a monkey with a gun. 
This is what they will allow. 
This is what makes us happy. 
This is music and liquid flesh. 
This is the Hot 100 and the Host that Loves You Most. 
This is the rule. 
This is our hollow place. 
This is pure sex and death. 
This is the hood you wear. 
This is your shackle. 
This is what they give and what we take. 
This is slow starvation. 
This is our hollow place. 
This is our war. 
This is  our 1930s dance marathon and no one wins. 
This is tomorrow's bread line. 
This is the unseen hand. 
This is politics as usual, 
the opium of the masses, 
the murder of art, 
the  big win for the Gipper, 
the girl you wouldn't give the time of day 
and the heart inside her. 
Remember your parents. 
Remember the Mother Church and the Fatherland. 
Remember the party. 
Everything for the good of the party.  
It is standard procedure. 
It is our hollow place. 
We know all of this, but we jump to the whip
with bright, shining faces. 
This is our hollow place. 
Remember your function: 
Dance, god damn it. Dance.

Purchase: Comes to This

It’s True

This world once had snow in it 
and used car lots 
dirty lampshades and photographs 
of inspired 1916 Bolsheviks
the world had tigers and punk rock 
and drugs to make the young girls 
sling sweat and dance dance dance
classy dames with runs in their stockings 
drinking cheap whiskey
straight from the bottle 
the world had red hair and poets 
even Sylvia Plath 
just imagine a world with trees 
or something beautiful 
almost no one remembers 
but that's how it was 
under these cold and constant stars 
such a long time ago

Purchase: Heart of the Broken World

Bio:
Jeff Weddle is a poet and writer living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He won the Eudora Welty Prize for Bohemian New Orleans: The Story of the Outsider and Loujon Press, and has also received honors for his fiction and poetry. Jeff teaches in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama. 

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