a poem by maxwell clark

The Courteous Co-Bane


                                                                —after Kurt Cobain


Who is going to be you when you are gone?
Who else is out there to save me from you?
These questions are so inquisitive to me.
Questions have ways of having no good answer.
This is then when I pass out and sleep instead.
Then it is I am still awake when I am doing this.
The letters just look so pretty to me this night.
I just love it when everyone is being themselves.
Burning fires are in the basement of this place.
Maybe the problem is that there is one.

The spinning of the rinse is very intense now.
That is what I always say when I return here.
Look into the heart of the feral cat and run away.
I won't remember this any better than you will.
It is so good of people to do things for me so.
The fishing materials are very highly technical.
I always try not to dream while I am still awake.
If you are scared of that street then run away.
When it is my time to die I will want to live.
The ingenuity of the trap is that it doesn't work.

This is where I come to do my serious work.
There is no idea that I have of what this is.
Because everyone is so cool I like them a lot.
When this is to come to be so it will be so.
When you kill the innocent that is very bad.
I have the feeling that I am feeling wonderful.
Cannot two numbers be added together?
But that is so very horrible in its stupidity.
Do not enter into the place of my oneness.
As when my special sayings were given out.

Do not do what you were doing to me again.
It is not sad to me that I feel very good now.
The secret path goes into there where it is.
What they are for is to do the things better.
Once you have met me you will not know me.
In as they do so good they are going to die.
This dog has to go into the new place now.
Life is like when I wash my hands or not?
May you please know that I was over there.
What happens when you murder someone?
These words are the biggest words ever done.

More weather patterns are what is needed.
I followed you once into the jungle of my room.
To be real about an issue is just to be honest.
What if you did make me invisible with fire?
Bright alert noises are what I crave so much.
The impossible technical skill is so good now.
Never do what never can be done by anyone.
And if you try really hard then that is so good.
Humans are having many ways of doing this.
The juke in my step is from being homeless.

This riddle has no answer that I can think of.
What happens when it so happens like that?
Then you never remember to be in love again.
This is how the lights go on in the big ocean.
Nonsense is just what others do to you only.
It is better to be like this than to be so not.
I cannot see past the wall on these horizons.
Many of us were once in the cut deeply so.
Do you care to innovate words without work?
Forgive me because you are being so mean.

The prettiness of their dancing is how to do it.
You had to have many for me but whatever.
I know what it is to look carefully at this so.
Do not ever say you are just like that or else.
Distances are very hard to run across so well.
Was that a big spider or was it not one at all?
You have to do this for the glory of the sounds.
To fear anyone is just to run away from them.
I am checking out the food inside this place.
Until we were married inside my little heart.
Please go towards the row where you were.






Maxwell Clark has lived in New Haven, CT, for almost a decade now. The very eminent poet Charles Bernstein himself, in a avowedly rare appearance as the judge of a literary competition, selected Maxwell as the first-place winner of the 2013 SLS Prize for Innovative Poetry—and both poets remain friends, admirers, and confidants to this day. Eileen R. Tabios included his otherwise unpublished aphorism (“The best person is the best poet.”) as an epigram to open her most recent book of memoirs, Against Misanthropy (2015). CAConrad has written him no less than the following in their correspondence: “I love you Maxwell”—(Maxwell also loves CA dearly). Brusquely to an end, then, the issue of his more strictly bibliographical credentials: as Mr. Clark has at present been published in a rather diverse array of independently edited publications approximately 50 times or more, it perhaps suffices here to mention only his three most recent publishers: the Electronic Poetry Center of Buffalo University (for his two e-books: Poesies, also Vows of Poverty), Swirl Editions (for his e-book Of You), and the New Haven Review (for his poem ‘The Cup of Sun’—which is also available in print).