Home > Author > Bob Hicok
1 " I like the idea of differenttheres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,a Bronx where people talklike violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehowkind, perhaps in the nookof a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayedanyone. "
― Bob Hicok
2 " i can't prove this but i can't prove you're a good person though i suspect you're a good person. "
3 " Here, when I say I never want to be without you,somewhere else I am sayingI never want to be without you again. And when I touch youin each of the places we meet,in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dyingand resurrected.When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,in each place and forever "
4 " I think clapping is how mourn. "
5 " Other Lives And Dimensions And Finally A Love PoemMy left hand will live longer than my right. The riversof my palms tell me so.Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finishat the same time. I thinkpraying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I thinkstaying up and waitingfor paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension thisis exactly what's happening,it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamicsof mournful Whistlers,the audible sorrow and beta decay of Old Battersea Bridge.I like the idea of differenttheres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,a Bronx where people talklike violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehowkind, perhaps in the nookof a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayedanyone. Here I havetwo hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your backto rest my cheek against,your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.My hands are webbedlike the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezedsomething in the wombbut couldn't hang on. One of those other worldsor a life I feltpassing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's bellyshe had to scream out.Here, when I say I never want to be without you,somewhere else I am sayingI never want to be without you again. And when I touch youin each of the places we meet,in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dyingand resurrected.When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,in each place and forever. "
6 " I love how intimate I've become with failure. "
7 " Making it in poetryThe young teller at the credit union asked why so manysmall checksfrom universities? Because I writepoems I said. Whyhaven't I heard of you? BecauseI write poemsI said. "
8 " In other languages,you are beautiful- mort, muerto- I wishI spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the oceanwere sitting in that chair playing cardsand noticing how famous you areon my cell phone- picture of your eyesguarding your nose and the fireyou set by walking, picture of dawngetting up early to enthrall your skin- what I hateabout stars is they’re not those candlesthat make a joke of cake, that you blow onand they die and come back, and youyou’re not those candles either, how often I realizeI’m not breathing, to be like youor just afraid to move at all, a lungor finger, is it time alreadyfor inventory, a mountain, I have threeof those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if youwere a cigarette I’d be cancer, if youwere a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as faras this tree can say. "
9 " Let us all be from somewhere. "
10 " Then I felt up silence. Then silence and I went all the way. "
11 " My life the only thing that has been with me my whole life "
12 " When I say my nameI hear a burned-down church. "
― Bob Hicok , Elegy Owed
13 " I will beg, will take to my knees, will listen to snow stroking air, a sky of gasps, will open my mouth, swallow, somewhere else the sky is falling, somewhere else it gets back up. "
14 " You might think and be so marvelously right about praise that you open your door one day and the day walks in and stays for years. "
15 " I had no business trying to see you leave, see death arrive, I owe you an apology, an elegy, I owe you the drift of memory, the praise of everything, of saying it was the best decision of my life, to hold you full, hold you empty, & live as the only bond between the two. "
16 " Truth About Love"I apologize for not being Gandhi or Tom the mailman who is always kind. He makes his way every day no matter the mood of the sky with our wordsin a sack and Gandhi made the English give India back without taking a gun for a wife. My contribution to the common good is playing with the alphabet in a little room while the world goes foraging for food. I’m a better poet than man and it’s well known how little my verbs are worth. I am my only subject, being the god of my horizons.What saves me is that just beyond my skin the world of yours is where I’d rather live. The AMA says you’ve added seven point six years to my life. In a phrase, love is a transfer of wealth. This is why Adam Smith gave up romantic verse. In trying to say what can’t be said I’ll take the Dragnet approach. Just the facts. I’d be dead sooner without you, you’ll die faster for being a Mrs., raw deal can’t be more clearly defined. To make amends I offer ten percent more kisses each year. Or do I do more harm the closer we become? If yes, leaving would be love and a better man might. But my thrills are selfishly domestic. I like sweeping words into piles and whispering good night. "
― Bob Hicok , Insomnia Diary
17 " TornThe internet’s all show, no actual cunnilingushas transpired between us. This has beensmoke signals from eye to eye. And justlike the telegraph, the telephonegave us a means to the ends of stayingever closer to home, ever fartherfrom the ear we’d dot-dashor whisper into, what a sad storyfor flesh, marooned. First by the womb,then the word traveled fast and freeof lips, now your hips can thrivein my brain without entering my life.I might as well be on the moon.The evolution of communication’sto mythologize togethernessas we drift entropically apart.That’s what the kidscall a thesis statement. But godyou’re hot, and your crescendoof breath so fully apesthe real deal, is it possiblewe can be islanded and still cometo prefer absence to presence,the digital to the palpable?I fear the question answers itselfby nodding to the fact that Ican write a poem and you read itwith no hand having touched metalor paper or words that don’t dissolveas soon as a switch is thrown.Half of my soul says, Get used to it.The other million percent begs, Don’t. "
18 " When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life, in each place and forever. "
19 " The gift"My wife gave me a tie made of the threadof life. I was afraid to wear a tiemade of the thread of life. That it would snag.That I’d spill coffee on it. But I wore it,and every person who looked at itsaw something different. Onea waterfall, one a lava flow, one a forestprimeval. Coming home, I took it offand forgot it on the bus. When I toldmy wife, she laughed and said,did you really think I’d give you a tiemade of the thread of life? That was a tiemade of silk, which is the memoryof cocoons, which are wombs, you were wearingbirth. I told her her thoughtsare the happy childhood I didn’t have.The sun was in her hair, where it stayeduntil she combed it out that night. New England Review (vol. 31, no. 3, 2010) "
20 " Alice Wakes at Two and Looks Out the Window"A gate, she thinks, I'm the gateof my breathing,of this powdery chant,and I'll always mistake starsfor dust exploding white in the noon sun.They dance, those jewels,as will I,dance to the zoo with my blue feet on, with a silver drum,dance bad words and hard tunes,dance the colors men blush to.Once thereI'll climb the fences, seduce the alarms, I'll move from lion to monkey to lamb and kiss the small packetsof their hearts.Then come home to bed,to warm eternity, to the wheelthat twines my flesh and spins it to sleep. So fall, star,and meet your embrace.I'll name you True Loveand lick you with wishes. "
― Bob Hicok , The Legend of Light
