All language subtitles for Jeff Tweedy - Adult head _ poems - 1967- 2004

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Adult Head

A Nightingale Edition

Adult Head

Poems by Jeff Tweedy

Zoo Press

The author thanks the editors of the following journals in which

some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in slightly different

forms:

Ecstatic Peace: "Breaking News," "Prayer #5" and "White Kitten

Snowcone Two"; Lit: "When I Say My Heart," "At Night," "Ein

Moment," "Kitten Epic," and "Easy Bake Oven"; Painted Bride

Quarterly: "Pure Bug Beauty" and "Prayer #3"; Unpleasant Event

Schedule: "Prayer #1," "Another Great Thing," "I Am One of You,"

and "Why the Hat."

Copyright © 2004 by Jeff Tweedy • All rights reserved

Zoo Press

P.O. Box 22990 Lincoln, Nebraska 68542

•

Printed in the United States of America

Distributed to the trade by The University of Nebraska Press

Lincoln, Nebraska 68588 • www.nebraskapress.unl.edu

Cover design by Janice Clark of Good Studio © 2004

www.goodstudio.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tweedy, Jeff, 1967-

Adult head: poems / by Jeff Tweedy.-- 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-932023-16-X (pbk.: alk. paper)

I. Title.

PS3620.W44A67 2004

811'.54--dc22

zoo020 / night001

First Edition

2004002254

Table of Contents

Satan Explains

Singing Combat

3

4

6

When I Say My Heart

Prayer #1

7

Unlikely Japan

8

Another Great Thing

9

Pure Bug Beauty

10

Poison Color

11

The Black Hours

12

Prayer #2

13

At Night

14

I Am One of You

15

Blueheart Chrome

16

Ein Moment

18

Capital City

19

1

Way of Light (Christmas, 1978)

Christmas, 1978, Later 23

2

Sister Invention

24

Laughs

25

Kitten Epic

26

This is New

27

Yachting? 28

Damen Avenue

29

Prayer #3

30

I'm a Wheel

31

Half-Pill

32

This Child

33

Easy Bake Oven

White Kitten Snow Cone Two

34

Prayer #4

36

20

35

3

First This

39

Knives and Forks

40

Study 41

War is Coming

43

The Bench-Warmer's Daughter

44

Breaking News

45

Muzzle 46

Doris 47

Prayer #5

49

Temper, Temper

50

Why the Hat

51

The Next Ten Years

52

Hell

53

vi

For my brother Steve,

for introducing me to the word

1

Satan Explains

there is no fire in my fireplace

there is no time left to understand

the fortunes of these minor souls

I have replaced my disorders

with a passion so deep and pervasive

to never sleep the fugitive-sleep again

the guns are going off

the rockets exploding

the jambs splintering

the life unfolding

the dreams

to gaze undaunted into this

miserable play

again and again

recombine

elope to finer cuts of grass

steal away to softer skin

hold tighter those objects

charged and bleeding

the path greater loves have hardened

walk slowly and persist

let's wear momentum

how honor pulverizes this now

like nothing else

it's happening

so loosen your body

to me

Singing Combat

just as you approach...a package

pulling at its bow, I see your face

retreating from singing combat

from falling down a flight of stairs

our good days, our parents old, radiant beauty

back there behind the sunshine

I believe your sorrow was sunshine

murdered for longing, your broken package

a crushed open can of a pure bug's beauty

crawling up lip and lash on your face

before afternoon smiled for climbed stairs

all because your laugh suggested combat

it seems worthwhile to wish for combat

steadying knees knotting in the sunshine

bracing knuckles unskinned on stairs

where the tree-lit pattern and wrapped package

conceals no thoughtless purchase of your face

and kills no surprise of beauty

attacked by love laughing with beauty

the four winds blow and the brave combat-

ants have no weapons, no face

no fear, no mirror to hurt sunshine

they pry to know this ticking package

but none can climb so many soft stairs

they fall in heaps at the bottom of these stairs

wounded and comforted only by beauty

they come tangled in twine to tie this package

and limping away whisper combat

and say later it was a somewhat shaded sunshine

approaching along with your face

and the starlight we're running to face

scales slowly twisting the stairs

how love stops blood in sunshine

not worth the fight but for beauty

we will all go far away from this singing, combat

and become ourselves armored packages

to face sunlight, starlight, sunshine

packaged with beautiful notes scaling stairs

you are not above saying combat

5

When I Say My Heart

I mean

an emergency

worse than a clarinet

or an old man who just won't

stand out of the way

I don't mean a parking lot

but the pretty twisting oil slick

the waving arms

of awful drinking

false teeth

an unpopular child

on a swing set

or the least wanted crayon

sometimes I mean

a foil moon

checkpoint charlie

or a ghost

or sitting duck

V

a bouquet of disasters

to be grown

the orchestra

Prayer #1

is proving the dead again

red flashes are

the bells ringing

hide with me

alive in the weeds

the flowers paused

are the fury

and dead song, waiting...

Unlikely Japan

when I say that she's the rapist

that really isn't what I mean

it was all in my imagination

to be claimed too easily

with almost loving force of will

what would have been given sadly

without deceiving me with skill

she was still only taking

what I should give more carefully

(but now) religion enters in

god cracks through her moist skin

and twirls from her baton

her hair suggests a roller skate

he whispers through her perfume

just above shallow watery surfaces

ripples with actions lovelike

there is no voice so thin

she knows what she wants.

that she wants what she knows

she wants this to mean nothing and that sounds fair to me

a made-by-hand halo and new-fashioned wings

she is blind to be an angel that's rare to be

she's not so well rounded

she has points you don't see

she does whatever she wants

(and I swear)

she wanted me

the best way

to feel

is to lie

your

tell bold lies

Another Great Thing

blood

about books

(even better)

say

you write

listen,

lying won't help at all

unless,

you pick the right people

people who know

how to write and lie

o, and then the blood will pound

discoteque-esque

otherwise

it won't at all

り

Pure Bug Beauty

I attack with love

folded, my wings

crawl up to you

and your afternoon

I've been puking

you move so slow

a steady crushing hand

over my body

a company

in my back

hide your soft skin

your sorrow in sunshine

listening to my eyes

they are full

of bloodful tunes

you learn so slow

old fleshy beauty

I curve my flight

under your bent knee

I will always die

so you can remember me

10

Poison Color

we had to invent the poison color

the color poison

the venomous hue

because we had spent all the roads between the roads

and society must keep its figure

because we had other solutions but they wouldn't admit they had problems

because we had already accomplished love

and the furnace kept freezing

the flowers had paused

because no one could remember how not to talk in the third person

and we needed the rest

11

The Black Hours

-GMH

are almost gone

the night is dissolving

in a cup of god lifted

to toast the lightning

lightly tapping

high-pitched as it hums

and as your spine shines

with your soul, a shiver,

a fist so clear and trying

to climb into the unlit sky

you can see

there's so much less to this than you think

your mind's a machine

that's deadly and dull

it's never been still

and its will has never been free

it's almost dawn

and it's snowing again

I have never seen so much night

12

Prayer # 2

when dogs laugh barking

I say angry

some say laughing

they don't stop and they smile

we are sure they can't get us

bite us

but I think the fence does nothing

and that's why they are laughing

and they bark because they know

13

in the southern galaxy

at the tip of the letter k

At Night

I'm afraid to look at moving pictures

in the jukebox din

scratched to silence

breaking bread

I hide from the flux of time

the burning light

funneled into perfect holes

I'm content to know

that I'm not a spot of unsung melody

afraid to look at moving pictures

14

I Am One of You

I am one

stupid-

looking book,

a thick song

too tired

to half-talk

Corner me

the window-way

out of the object

with only

this to say

and this will sing to you

or write around you

outlined in

the mirror-way,

a chalk performance

15

16

Blueheart Chrome

temper is the day long

in white robes

I loathe this troubled mind

hovering over my skull

swindling and swindled

half-happy to know

jesus what I am not

a spot

of unsung melody

in the southern galaxy

at the tip of a written word

afraid to look

at pictures moving

the flux of time

an un-imagined wheat field

of forgiveness systems

the rays of focused burning light

funneled in holes

translated poetry

for a blue calloused heart

neighboring seething songs

feeling what is good inside me

also holding bread

breaking the brain

in jukebox din

scratched to silence

while the attendant stares

talking about last night's episode

of the parrot ghost

or I'm an idiot

or I'm smart

so I gave up the

walk, singing

drunk on science

the stuff the kind pirates drink

I discovered her

super structure looming

goddess at thirty-two

why is it taking my voice so long...

Ein Moment

the peach colored payphone

in a bathroom in Munich

is calling America selfishly

the self-styled warlock

with tincture of lotus

holding a hand-held recorder

to my beak-I'm an interviewee

as if to say this is important

now I know you're not listening

this is what love is for

IS

Capital City

in a capital city skyline photo

skyscrapers shine with sun

low in the blue sky

but the secretaries at the hot dog vendors

and the car horns honking at bicycle messengers

make no reply

I can't call with a subway token

besides the phones are all broken

I wish you were here, or I was there with you

you wouldn't like it here

you better stay there

a breath in the country air

as I consider if it's unfair

no longer pretending I care

why I should wait for you

19

Way of Light (Christmas, 1978)

arrive slow keep driving

turn off your lights even

if it's well before sundown

keep the windows up, locked

look at the outlines of wise men

two dimensional and flat

see the shepherds and of course

Jesus would be beautiful

this is the way of light

and we are here mid-day

we see the wires and plastic bulbs

the guts of light

and where the light would be shining

if it could be shining

if there was darkness

instead we idle almost

toward thousands of candles

a shrine unlit no flames

and a

a grotto of poured painted cement

where I assume people pray

so we can speed away then

20

2

Christmas, 1978, Later

paper piles up Christmas on the carpet

glossed printed rolled cut folded taped fingerprinted

torn rippled ripped smashed fisted into balls

degifted

23

Sister Invention

I invented a sister

populated her confession

with knives

encouraged her crown

colored her disagreeable

taught her town jokes

but she was poisoned by the earth

and she had

luggage with ladders

so I let her search the roads

between the roads

where she got lost

and finally moved away

the greatest songs

are never sung

but the grass

gets cut

and spelled

in children's hands

how the sun is yellow

but also cold and sutured

...blue

the best laughs

never leave your lungs

and the best life

is art

never made

Laughs

15

seeing not so well

falsetto failing

and irregular

chasing children

like an epic

the kitten

epic

upon freeing

breaking away from

the motorcade

finds us both

lonely for a throne

where the waves

are pewter

blankets of dull

silver motion

26

Kitten Epic

This is New

this is new

this is

the new

the new me

the new them

the new us

this is

the path

greater love has hardened

walk slowly

persist

wear the momentum

care less

honor only this

nothing else

can happen.

to my body

Yachting?

I have never been yachting

or on a boat

but

I imagine it

a passionate bath

with an older brother

gentle then turning

competitive

as he studies

for the bar

28

Damen Avenue

six kids down the street

I am thinking automatically (six kids down)

she touches the outside

of every boy she climbs on (and climbs off)

countless kids across

the city-street-smile

silent pistons beat

crushing our hearts (street success)

there's nobody listening

my suspicion is this

the hardest part is

shaking the tongue (sweetness gone)

is it fiction because

someone said it was so

because someone said

it was love (functional)

please don't ever

fall for that (I hope I hope)

here it is like this

her parents split

29

Prayer #3

I have pondered

the long unpublished poems

of someone's only son

that dead laugh

spun over stone

where french-kissed teenaged girls blush

and flash teasing tooth-pouts

lasting moments less

than real hope stirring

symphonic shouts

again slack

in service of dread,

mocked continents drifting

stems already shooting

across time's seamlessness

I have enjoyed these hours more

with you not by my side

30

I'm a wheel

I will...........

hold on

I'm a Wheel

turn on you

you risk exciting me

once in Germany someone said nein!

once in Germany someone said nein!

hold back

hold your breath

and count to nine

'm a wheel

I will...

.shine

I invented a sister

don't invite me

populated with knives

hang up and call my other line

once in Germany someone said nein

fall backwards and count to nine

what's this attack

I am will and I turn

I will feel you and you

will...

feel me shine

on you, turn on you

31

the roof held its charm

tight against the rising

orange half-pill

the moon and myself

a sculpture

and my ear

a shy sculpture

smashed against a phone

receiving the static

and my son's

tutelage

in a moment of ar

a translation

lost forever

Half-Pill

This Child

toward the end

of an emergency

worse than a universe

of musical instruments

an old man

stood out of the way

and watched

time's distortion of oil

the awful waving appendages

of false teeth

drinking

pivoting with his laugh

one child is not popular

a front line drawn in crayon

knows how to kill the feel

of a swing set

impresses a broken tooth

into the face of his mother

and fills it

with moons of foil

33

34

Easy Bake Oven

I wish I could

move you like a millionaire

however I please

make you sing

chocolate cupcakes and other

teen recipes

I wish I could

move you like a millionaire

remember what you made

a poet down on my knees

spray-painted pink shoes

filling up all your pans

you made stink

I wish I could

fuck you like he thinks he does

before he falls asleep

but I've never been that tired

and I've never been too sad

to eat

White Kitten Snow Cone Two

no one

will tell you

you are not

a rainbow

but the white kitten

is a snow cone

blank ice frozen

flavored water

awaiting

the thick syrup, great

and sickening

self

with no where

to vibrate

but in you

through you

sculpted, still

air decides

how long

back to air

35

Prayer #4

to be a saint

you need to have everything

rigid speech

leading nowhere

as little as we are

saints need to be smaller

actually on the page

looking up stupid

not just words

ink

36

3

First This

I'm full but not finished

with a first thought

I know now

I speak kindness

but a darkness holds

the shy apology

in my heart

also, I know first thoughts

last traveled along

my keyless skull

to make me now a father

to my father

as you were to your mother

a mother

on the playground

many things passed me by

until the first hard word

left my lips

a fist to myself

outside myself

watching myself

hating

myself

fitting in

39

Knives and Forks

knives and forks

perform over my bed

fiberglass insulation,

a migrating pink dream

saying

pull the broken brake

hard

pulse it

quicken the

slip

someone was right

training drinks

to feel like school

broad with information

pressing for more,

forming bruises

where (into this drawer)

I am waking

40

44

Study

from the valley

toward the mountain

(you get there)

through the valley

(you go) eyes down

a flash

a stream

golden and small

relentless and understood

(you find things)

and then the hills

you know they are in front of you

and behind you

what's behind is erased

they are there

small and they are

all you see

beyond maybe mountains

but for now

to have at least an

incline, steady slopes

back to the valley

study it before the

hills now you're sure they exist

is there something here

that will help you climb?

was it worn

have you missed

the valley arrangements of

smaller deserts and

microscopic deaths

less and less evolving

+1

42

giants zoomed in

focus on plants

and the life you can't name

you know they have names

forget the mountain

the depths of dreaming

and the valley and

feel each foot fall

and the climb

and ignore the peak

surrender just fall softly

and let the petrified

be destroyed

and destroy

War is Coming

to be near you soon

I can see the stretchers

from a Hilton in Adelaide

eleventh floor

tiny teeth closing

on the horizon

almost invisible

not hiding

even the sea

right here in our city

we have room

for seventy of them

patients for our

white and black

overweight nurses

well designed

triple failures

pocketing the pills

bedside

43

The Bench-Warmer's Daughter

the poor devil is living some psycho-somatic Beethoven com-

plex selected from memory. he can't hear, not even his own

bleating, maintaining a steady diet of tunes nonetheless deaf. it

only took him a year to learn how to read. poetry starting to

blink out from under a dull gray cap. he ate the heavy greased

song and it tasted like all he'd ever known. everything else tast-

ed like thin air. per diem. laid out platters of shit so vile, john-

ny john johns, drawl-boy and the new-kid would stuff their

guts and feel it burning in their necks and flushing down their

pink apple cheeks and piss it with cold beer. all equations and

measured intersections droned and dutifully finished his

melodies. now there wasn't time left for you-knife-who. she...

she dissipated the last of his adult head and good night, rode

off over the phone lines that reeled in him jerks and pulls

scraping the finished gloss of an imagined book-style master-

piece. he could hear her. was he or would he ever again be

warming benches?

++

Breaking News

every house

is dark

coming down

coatless

energy

sliding open

black a dim yellow light

enters the gospel

flooding my contented

little radio

+5

Muzzle

there's a random

painted highway

and a muzzle of bees

my sleeves have come unstitched

from climbing your tree

the sun gets passed from tree to tree

silently and back to me

a breeze blown through

pushed up above the sea

finally next to you

when dog's bark they look like they're smiling

I don't think they're mean

some people get frightened

despite fences in between

and the green gets passed...

to you as you begin to cry

I said maybe if I leave

you'll want me to come home

or maybe all you mean

is to sting a silence in me

you're irresistible when you get mad

isn't it sad I'm immune

and I thought it was cute

for you to kiss my purple black eye

even though I caught it from you

I still think we're serious

46

Doris

let's start in the room

where we were born

the irons were hot

overused and underslept

like doris

the women

the daughter of

the woman next door

she was crazy

she hadn't bought clothes

in twenty years

she held her shirts together

with big yarn stitches

and safety pins

her glasses

had only one arm

we weren't allowed

to wear red

when we played

in the backyard

because it inspired

worse than normal fits

she saw the devil

in anything red

she also saw

the sirens that

often came

to take her

back to the sanitarium

her mother would

show up

in our yard

47

timidly knocking

bloodied from falls

down the basement stairs

when she died

they took doris

away forever

and she died

sooner than that

48

the snow is making

frying sounds

like an enormous

audience of glass

and paper hands

we can tune this out

unlike the woods

early black spill

or our engines

Prayer #5

49

Temper, Temper

temper is honey

I see cars crashing, a cop flashing

I turn the TV off

the heart is a hollow fist

on mornings like this

there isn't enough to believe

home isn't satisfaction,

retroaction,

is this feeling your arms

remember your temper, honey

you're not the only one loving

living raw, hovering…..

is a white, scalding robe,

a laughter passing in strobes,

welcome it again

one sees it after dark

the small glowing are

of moonshine behind you

temper remembers you, honey

and the bees have stopped stinging

as we keep coming home

which isn't cars crashing,

isn't light flashing

isn't this feeling I'm having in your arms

50

Why the Hat

I caught a glimpse of myself

in a closed circuit television screen

I was wearing a hat

a fraud

a punctured white watch

I hadn't changed

51

I want to begin

The Next Ten Years

where the dilation charges

and juries weep

over half-opened wombs.

Where god staggers in

cleft chinned and brooding

dizzy, sick with creation.

I want to begin with this,

minus infinity.

When the devil came

he was not red

but chrome

and he said

Hell

come with me

you must go

so I went

alone

where there was no fire

no torture

no hate

everything clean and precise

towering polished diamond skyscrapers

glittering ice avenues

translucent blues and silver signs

marking every turn

I was welcomed

with open arms

unmarked

all lines of defeat sanded away

I felt no fear

I received every kind of help

the air was crisp

sunny late winter days

springtime yawning

over the cottony horizon

hell is chrome

I believe in god

hell is chrome

55

praise for Adult Head: "America's finest troubadours have always broken our hearts,

and Jeff Tweedy is no exception. In this glorious first collection of poems-wise,

delicate, wry and compelling poems-Jeff Tweedy reminds us again of the quiet

oscillations in every life between the willed courage of humor and the inevitable tides

of sadness. Don't be surprised to discover that this book is, at its very core, a deeply

spiritual sequence of meditations and adventures." David St. John

"Jeff's a poet. Always has been. That's apparent to anyone caught by his voice and

guitar. He's not a 'rock' poet. Adult Head is not some ego lark. Jeff writes words

to convey his soul with a wholly natural sense. He has his heart inside the

literature of poetry in all its straight-up and experimental lyrical historicity. He

thinks maybe barking dogs are laughing! He thinks maybe the world is some kind

of kitten. He still thinks we're serious. Word magic. And we're lucky he can sing it

so sweet. A fair amount of you can't hug Jeff; he's on stage. But you can hug this.

book. It hugs back." Thurston Moore

24

Jeff Tweedy has dedicated the last twenty years of his life to

being a songwriter and musician, currently for the popular

music band Wilco and formerly of the band Uncle Tupelo. He

lives in Chicago with his wife and two sons.

US $14.95 / CAN $19.95

ISBN 1-932023-16-X

5 1 49 5

9 781932 023169

Cover design: Good Studio | Chicago

08-DCU-979

Zoo Press

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