Taking My Life in Your Hands

Matthew Fouts

Taking My Life in Your Hands

I guess I should have known
when she met me for coffee
in old baggy clothes,
that she profoundly didn’t give

a shit. I guess I’m just a cock
eyed optimist. That’s not true.
The truth: she sized me up
and saw me as a weight.

I fell in love with the glow
of her shiny black hair
and the carefree sound
of her voice. The soup

is hot; the soup is cold.
I don’t think we’re in
the same place. It’s not about
money. Yeah. The truth:

If you don’t fuck someone
you are spun to the outer reaches,
and you may not come back.

Another Saturday Night or Stay Away From the Bell Tower

“It’s hard on a fella when he don’t know his way around.” - Sam Cooke

For some strange reason all of the single guys I know are going insane. Take, for example, an acquaintance of mine. let’s call him Mr. Ex. Well, Mr. Ex recently (actually not so recently any more) broke up with his girlfriend. I suppose “got his ass dumped” might be a better description, but whatever. Apparently Mr. Ex has now taken to imposing his fist upon otherwise  innocent plate glass windows in the late hours. It is also not entirely uncommon to find him, after an evening’s  tipple, outside his ex girlfriend’s house gesturing and hurling a curious mixture of pious love and abject hatred upward toward her closed window.

Another acquaintance of mine, let us call him Mr. Why, seems to have fallen head over heels for a number of women, also acquaintances of mine. I can’t say I blame him in this. Who can resist an intelligent, pretty girl in the flower of her youth. They turn those large, dark eyes of theirs upon you with a smiling glance, and what’s a man to do but make an ass of himself? However Mr. Why would appear to be in a truly awful state. He has been heard carrying on conversations with nobody but himself. On more than one occasion he has exhibited a jealously of others that borders on mania and will not suffer his lady friends to discuss anything but himself. The whole thing is truly freakish and threatens to get worse.

My heart truly goes out to Messieurs Ex and Why. They are both obviously suffering from depression and, as far as I am aware, they are taking nothing for it, nor are they seeing any expert on mental illness.

Being a single man in his twenties can be difficult. Being a single man in his thirties is positively upsetting. I can speak to both of these facts from experience. However I have learned over the years that acting like an escaped mental patient does not increase one’s chances of striking lucky with members of the fair sex (apparently, acting like a complete fucking douchebag  puts you in pretty good standing though).

And so I have a number of techniques which I use to avoid ending up like my unlucky friends. For example, it occasionally strikes me that standing on the roof of the tallest building I can find, in my underwear, and carrying a rifle and a bullhorn, might just get me the attention I am looking for. I am fairly certain that to at least daydream of such an act is fairly normal in a civilized society. Anyway, when this thought strikes me, I simply order a martini (preferably with a bleu cheese stuffed olive in it) and count my blessings instead. Messieurs  Ex and Why might take a lesson from this and belly up to the bar.

I realize of course that any friends of mine who actually read this blog may give me a wary glance the next time I order a fresh round of martinis. However, that is their own problem. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to a man about a drink.

Apologia

Apologia

        For Angela

sorry if I stared
        at you like a dumb
awestruck child.

But I couldn’t find
        the words to say
thank you for showing

me the lovely pools
        of your eyes after
the worst week

of my life.

Poem

I have written a poem for my student who died in a car accident. Let me know if you like it.

Raking Leaves
For Carrie Hilliker, killed 11/09/2007

song in my head.
        won’t quit as I work
my way slowly across
        the yard.

These leaves are the color
        of the Earth.
Brown and red like the
        hem of your dress.

All summer long I sat
        beneath this canopy of leaves
and drank spring wine
        with the pretty girls.

But now it is November
        and they have fallen.
It falls to me to pick up
        these broken pieces

and hope that someday they
        may return,
to the tree from which
        they came.

The Fouts Report: find a happy place

Well, this week has been long and grueling and I am extremely tired now that it is limping toward the finish line.

Monday morning, I received a telephone call informing me that one of my students was killed in a car crash on the previous Friday. This student, an eighteen year old girl named Carrie, was one of my best. She was a very creative writer who would typically turn in essays two and three times a long as they were required to be. These essays were usually only marginally related to the actual subject matter of the assignment, but they were incredibly thoughtful and poetic for someone her age. Once, after class, she even stayed after to comment on how venn diagrams (I had used one in class) were elegant and beautiful. It seemed to her as if you could represent the entire universe in a venn diagram. She was a very pretty young girl and so full of life; it brings me great pain to consider her final moments.

That’s pretty much set the tone for my week. What an incredibly long haul it has been. Oh well. “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

Online Dating III —baked pudding with meat.

Matthew Fouts
Online Dating III

Hello!!!!!
I which tender girl alone one without
the man. I very strongly want will find
the man with which to me well and easy.

To me to like in the man kind and
tender. I very much like to go
to cinema to listen to music.
me to like To walk on park.

o me very much to like to make a tasty
supper I like to prepare for a baked pudding
with meat.

Kyrie

This is a section from a longer poem I’m working on. Notice that it contains an interrobang. Pretty sweet huh?

II. Kyrie

After you left, I told a friend
        that I started taking Zoloft
for depression. She said she
        takes it too and something else
for the other kind of depression.
        The other kind?!
                Christ have mercy.

Online Dating II

Matthew Fouts

Online Dating II

Hello!!!!
I am glad to see your profile.
You very interesting man
and I would like to learn more about you.
You can write to me on likegentlekitty
at yahoo

I with impatience will wait for your letter.
I hope that already tomorrow I will receive it.
Baby

Praeludium

Praeludium

I am waiting for you to come
through the door like the clouds
wait for the sunrise to throw just
enough light to trace the smooth and

supple line of your mouth, or
the curve of your waist. All morning
I have sat here and wasted my time,
until this time. Until this now

when you are about to open the door
and come through, like a sunrise,
like a whisper, and sit across from me,
and say hello for the first time.

Untitled

This is the final humiliation
the clicking of your heels
in the hallway.
the razor of your shoulders,
the sharp, tight skin of your back.
Your neck and your ass,
too small, and your shoes
clicking on the hallway floor.

This is the final humilation
Your smell of jasmine
in his mouth.
His hands in your soft
panties and your arched back
and Oh god, like that
and decades without
your too little ass
and your shoes clicking
on the hallway floor.