You Have to Cry, by Clive Matson
“You Have to Cry” (“Song Twenty-Five,” Chalcedony Cycle), by Clive Matson | Cellist, Gael Alcock | Videographer, Victor Owens
Song Twenty-Five
(from the Chalcedony Cycle)
Don't you know you have to cry?
You have to cry.
You have to cry out all those tears.
They numb your spirit, their sad pressure
warps your cool, their brine
leaches from the world its color.
Flowers cry. Buildings cry.
Rocks cry and trees cry.
Sky cries and millennium
mountains reduce to silt and sand.
Pull your mane across puffy, reddened
brows, wish you had hair enough
to hide abraded nostrils and the wet!
Curl up in my arms and weep.
Weep, weep yellow chick in the rain,
wail drenched cat slinking like a half-drowned rat.
You have to let those tears all out.
They crowd your sockets,
tears will burst out corners' creeks, cut grooves
through cheekbone ridges, flood ravines
until alluvial fans enfat your jowls.
You have to cry out all the tears.
Talk of lovely geese and wind-combed
foxes trotting into forest green
but you cannot see the sky or trees
through teardrops! The windshield roughed
with heavy dew and vision ruptured, scattered
all convex pixels.
You cannot see until the tears are gone. All gone.
What, you have no tears? You cannot cry?
Thump your chest and test how dry.
Bruise knuckles on hard ice,
a crusty hunk
where cartilage meets at plexus,
at elbows, knees, and pelvis
more frozen chunks!
How can you open arms to sun and sky?
How can you dance?
Mom and Dad slow waltzed on hardpan
over uncried tears. Sister and brother lug
transparent cisterns. Lovers make up faces
tears roasted out and ironed young.
And you, you have a glacier
dusted with twigs and throw rugs
and asphalt roads.
You have to melt that ice.
Thaw that cold boulder from six months old
and let it flood your cheek ravines!
Overflow the storm drains, wash out
gulches and culverts until your features
disappear
and tears gouge erosion facades into your bones.
Do you know how my skull feels
cupped in your hands while dual rivers
frame my face? How my nipples hum
when tears have damped the dimpled skin?
Stand on river rock and shake in orgasm wind.
Torso an empty ring of bone
the air blows through.
Sun warms ribs’ innersides.
Ropes swing through trees.
Here comes spring green.
Here comes high noon.
Here come storms.
Here come flash floods crashing
through my hollow chest.
Put on your rain hat! Grasp our hands
tear-lined palm to tear-lined palm.
Let's tromp
the sodden streets in sudden galoshes.
This videopoem originally appeard in WordSwell literary journal, Volume Two.
Clive Matson began his writing career among the Beat Generation in New York City in the 1960s, mentored by Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, John Wieners, and Diane di Prima. He received his MFA from Columbia University in 1989, and has published nine volumes of poetry, numerous articles in literary journals, and the writing textbook Let the Crazy Child Write! He was the recipient of the Pen Oakland “Josephine Miles National Literary Award” in 2004 and the East Bay Express “Best Writing Teacher” award in 2006. He participated in the European Beat Studies Network Conference in Paris, in 2017, where he gave the premier performance of his newest work, Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Goodbye. In 2012 the City of Berkeley honored Clive with their “Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry.” Currently, he is both founder and editor-in-chief of WordSwell literary journal. More at matsonpoet.com.
