submit if willing
THREE LETTERS & THREE POEMS FROM GOPY DARLING
*
Something about today is wretched. Something feels quite off. I feel off base with things, and paranoid about any form of chuckling in my general vicinity. Hey, I know that the way I am sitting is exposing my belly. Ach well. Though I did feel sexy today on my bike by the water. But now I feel bloated and aloof. “Platonic friend” might go to the Cayman Islands for the summer. I said take me with you. There was a silence and I said, but of course, we could never live together. But then I said, awe, we could. Again a hesitation. 

Well fuck him I’m going to go to the pub and not inviting him. I thought to myself in the bathroom before I left – I really battled myself – should I wear these espadrille platform shoes? And be like a braless picnic participant from 70’s era Pasadena? Yeah so I said fuck this – I’m going to wear these platforms. Someone’s gonna see this outfit and like it, like my skirt and my hair and my glasses. Big deal.

Man am I sleepy, I had a long night, so many sailors, so much Fleet Week. You’d think all those men would fill me up with that feeling. Maybe then nothing’s really wrong with me. Maybe I’m just tired. Or perhaps it’s just my monthly bill. How is it, then, that some days I walk around starry eyed, as though my future were some net of looming diamonds about to sweep me up into their opalescence, to some brightness and divine certainty; my future will be lovely, it promises. Maybe I have been placing all this responsibility on my male costars. It’s true, a man’s not a net, and I should bet everything on this one truth. But even in my platforms, I am faltering; I cannot stand steadily, strong, unwavering. I cannot stop doing this; this is my rhythm, this rhythm of longing and drinking and one more for badness. What should I do? Well only one person knows for sure…

Dear Editor,

I did not follow “boyfriend” and submit to his, well whatever wishes he’s got that I don’t know about anymore. Against your better judgment, I’ve stayed behind…I found myself saying, Gopy, get your jalopy of a body out there, get dolled up in your best Hawaiian shirt, sip on wine disguised as coffee in a ceramic mug, and sit outside on your stoop and pray to God that adventure encroach you. God, oh wonderfully greedy hoarder of souls that you are, claiming us with nicotine addictions, among other things, send angels in white polyester to the deli next door to save me from my stoop monotony! 

Things seemed to be going swell on the sailors laps in the back of the taxi at two in the morning, but when Verl the tall married one went on about his cousin’s insurance settlement from the brutal car accident that tore off her face, all her teeth and one arm, I knew then that this would be special! 

I told him, you know Verl, you spend your days protecting our country on a war ship smoking joints and fiddling on the internet, but tonight I won’t kiss not a’ one a’ yer friends, so pinky swear that tonight you’ll protect only me.

Later that night I felt wiped out again, but in a good way, what with the poor circulation in my apartment and cat hairs clogging up ventilators. I took off Verl’s white cap and said sorry, it’s sweaty. He looked cute saying it’s no thang in his Louisianan accent as he got up and covered his dick with it on the way to the bathroom. But when he came back, I didn’t feel like kissing. I was thinking of “boyfriend.” Fucking “boyfriend!” And I maintained a state of kisslessness in remembrance of him. 

But you know, I don’t care what my mom says; all men in uniform are not the same. Even though Fleet Week’s just once a year, you can definitely get more “action” from the boys on a war ship than those giving away a two for one bris at your local mitzvah tank. I mean, one can only take so much pazel in the eye! And anyway, the hole in the sheets business is just too damn complicated, I mean, what are we trying to hide from here, people? On second thought, a sheet could be good. In fact, I feel like doing everything through a sheet! Maintain my shame in some anonounimity, cause I’m not cool enough to date writers that I think are the coolest. And I should be as happy as dear ticks in tits about Fleet Week, but it bums me out thinking I might have to settle for non-artists, you know, go down the rash laden path of mechanics, waiters and basic Joe Blows of the world. 

But hey, this week could have been worse. Look, when I got melancholy, I christened myself with a sailor, toasted a Guinness to air, wiped off my mustache and said God bless fucking America! 

Adorned With The West Side’s New Black: Men in White,

Gopy Darling

P.S. I get turned on when I overhear my head chef tell the line cooks about the curious pornographic emails he receives. Should this bother me? Or should I just go with it? I mean, bringing myself to orgasm with kegals behind the bar just isn’t as fun as it was in college under desks during exams I hadn’t studied for. Or I don’t know, what do you think?

*

Dear Editor,

I sit here at the bar before noon in the heat and I’m desperate!  I told the bike messenger “Ranger” over Guinness last night at the Emerald, as we clinked pints, Cheers then to love, which both sucks ass with a capital A and is wonderful.  He said, True dat, true dat, as we gulped there, together, side by side, underpants soaked, butt cheeks raisin fleshed from getting caught in the storm on 47th and 6th during “Critical Mass.”  I offered him shorts, before in my flat, and he offered me a hearty, Na chill, b.  Yeah so I was tellin him, I’m burnin’ up for this dude I met last night, this Irishman who’s only been here for seven months but already lost most of his accent, except when he says any denomination including the number three, which drives me utterly, utterly mad!  I can’t stand this!  I tell ‘em.  I mean, I can and I will!, I haven’t burnt up like this for someone since “boyfriend,” since forever it seems!  Not someone so new and cute and funny with dimples, oh no never a dip of a dimple!  Whose valleys indicated the sweetest of sweet deeevine inclinations.  What inspiration!  I met him at a tattoo convention, he was the ticket taker, he’s blue collar, but fuck it!  And he’s also a WRITER!  A designer of giggles!  A geyser of giggling spewed out of me every moment I was in his company.  Even when he kissed me, he said, what’s so funny?  Yer a bret of fresh air he told me.  Editor, I’m so happy I could kegel myself into seizures!  And it’s all thanks to Steve Delahoyde!  His skills have transcended many a great state, like Missoura, where my best friend incidentally is telling her beau Flottbutt, RIGHT NOW, that they are pregnant with their first baby!  A baby!  She’s flabby!  And about to expand into Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade float-dom!  Wasn’t it raining two Thanksgivings ago?  Well it was Hella pouring last night, raining nightingales and pigs, and praise Allah for the inspiring if not completely poignant and/or predominantly for shits and giggles yet highly printable works by Mr. Delahoyde, like Forum, Traumarama, Rumpled, Blah, and the ever wonderful Literary Escort Service interview, Why, a pack of cigarettes (which are as expensive as gold) and the very number of my Irish dispenser of  kisses and tickets Would Have Been Toast, ink run amuck from the rain in my purse, making illegible the only thing I’ve got, to get to the only thing I’ve got to get to with a quickness!  What I’m trying to say in other words, or just one, employment!  Do you think pear shapes will ever return as the “hot” shape in the stripping community?  Maybe in like, Camden County, right?  ‘Cause love costs money man, among other things.

Slightly Overweight Yet Predominantly Starving Artist,

Gopy Darling 

*

May 31, 2002 in Union Square, hot and waiting with bike messengers

So I look like total ass, sweaty and uncombed and greasy, it's humid. My lovely little Michael, sweathearted, black haired and gentlemanly, didn't come tonight, he just woke up he said in a letter.  I haven't shaved my legs, and I'm wearing a black top with a brown skirt.  How I asked for him today, how I longed for him.  And he was at home sleeping!  Alas!  I have been beat by sleep!  >:-O !!!  At least I am here.  At home with these freaks.  Ah - but what joy was last night with Michael? He was sweet and devine and his singer coworker, vouched for him sweetly. He was so sweet with me. And I so have to piss so bad....the way he sat near to me, kissing me with his soft lips...

June 1st, Saturday @ the bar, but at night with the patrons.

Lee wrote that he would publish another letter on Monday or Tuesday. I'm psyched. But more importantly, oh gay wet diary, he came to see me! :-O ! Can you believe that. He was in the neighborhood, but still...how exciting! Now Brian has called and must be sweet on me - I'm all, thought he was Mattie Long, when he called. He must have felt like an ass. Ach well. He even offered to ride me home, but I was all, no, I have shit to do, like, twice.  I mean he's nice, but come on now! A woman of my caliber could never go for a dude like him. Yet "boyfriend" never felt that way, though he was infinitely smarter than me - he liked my company, regardless of how many times I interrupted him. (***I was just told by Robert Glass the waiter that I looked so bohemian sitting at the bar alone smoking and writing.  I'll take it as a compliment, I told him and he agreed with an arms gesture.)

So now I'm loaded on sangria's, recommending dishes to patrons and lawyers in admittedly tight pants, wondering which poem to send to the contest, hoping Michael has at least left me a message. And what of Bryce? Should I tell him to exercise? To alleviate his melancholiness, he's told me in the past, that it's this which does drive him?  I miss him sometimes. 

My back was just in someone's photograph.  My hair, my bikini, my ill-fitting skirt....Sangria....you woo me, to write such pleasantries, it's okay Gonzalo, don't replace my ashtray.

I just said in my sing songy voice, Gonzalo, Gonzalo, and he patted his chest with his fists like a gorilla, Means I love you?  I asked, and he smiled.

Okay the point of bribing you with this diary entry, which is probably very boring (but I thought how cool would it be inside someone's diary? but then maybe the person would have to be cool in the first place, so.......:-p .....) was to get you to be objective, and look at the following poems - even though you are very busy man with an unusual bounce in your walk - because I want to submit to this "poetry in motion contest." mock me, I'm retarded, any adjectives, it's okay, but I like you and I trust you, so tell me either which one is coolest or which one sucks the least - know what I'm saying?? Okay, I'll give em all a go - now look at the attachments..

Okay okay, you could think me a dork, a cheese dick, a floozy drunk on sangria, all of which are true, sitting in a basement office that smells like sneezes ten hours after my shift, I, like Steven (Dela-who) said in his story blah, writing whether or not I could ever be professional, doing it anyway, because I have to, because it pleases me, tell me lee, for the sake of no reason, which poem should I submit?? Advise ms. darling, please.  out of pity, or sweetness.

Smell ya later, Gopy
 


The Nightingale & The Pig

A nightingale lay tethered with tea leaves lay chirping, and burping tea under and eavesdropping beach tree.

A stumbling paunch piglet rolled round there quite sniffing, with snorting grandeur and her trapezoid dripping,

“I say may I squat here and ruffle your feathers, for I smell word truffles and chocolate sauce letters?”

He thought for a moment and pondered the question, and fondled in his mind her cowlick suggestion.

“It ‘tis a fine gesture, but what makes you so sure you’ll stumble upon there your little pig treasure?”

She measured the moonbeams on both hands one raised, eyes spark’ling with mischievous mud-puddle gazes, declaring in shrill giggling snorts that she gave,
“T’matters not what I find, but the snuff there instead.”
 
 

You & I Are One Veiled Fire

you and I are one veiled fire 
ablaze on the floor
neither ceasing nor increasing yet, 
burning evermore
although it had grown hotter 
I stamped in giant leaps
and poked with my toes ashes 
of the blackened heaps
and as the choking smoke 
filled the passage to my chest
I knew then that the fire 
kept my hung heart from arresting
so falling on my knees 
and splitting skin I have become
to gently wafting quickly 
asphyxiated and struck dumb
unable to extinguish 
it lays in it’s dormant sleep
and I shall blow the embers 
till the fire again creeps.

Tree-Shaped Poem

I can only seem to sit and peel this bulbous orange
perhaps it will assist me in the mending of my stomach
which wandered in the swiv’ling doors, both leaving and then coming persistently with my coat caught in weaving and in numbing now who’s to say one always knows the bowels of the mind? and really who would fancy one so lazy and confined? so pull your sweet self out dear from the cave in which you fell brush away the dust, it’s time now for the grandest spell and why don’t I just gaze the light emerging from your chest?
wait and scout till there’s 
no doubt you soon too 
will attest that our love, 
fine love falling 
feathery from above 
is nothing no match
for what is 
coming up.

*

Dear Gopy, 

Please review our updated recommendations regarding poetry.

*

Dear Visitor, 

Read more Gopy letters here and here.

 

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