Mothman Apologia Quotes

“I Remember You Best as the Man

asleep on my chest, warm breath somehow
the exact opposite of sex. How I came

to know you take your tea with honey
if I got any. Sugar? Then nothing. It's true

we teach each other how we want
to be held. You brimming hot - another mug

I had to shuffle-step up a narrow stair. Once
right after waking and always again, but decaf

before turning in. Because loving you
was another impossibility, who was I

to notice when it happened? When it did
it bloomed in me, milk in the sleeping dark.”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia

“Listen
I am trying to find a way to tell you this.
There are things that trying solves but this
is not one of them.”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia

“About the Phones

Closing my car door, you always say - Watch
for deer and text when you get home.
I want to, I do, but I will forget.
Time moves and I forget. - Look
I am trying, I am, but it's not the kind
of thing that trying solves.

Once
on the side of a highway, a cop told me
about dragging a full grown buck out
the windshield of a wrecked car all by himself.
About the sounds it made, Like the devil learning
what regret feels like. About the woman it kicked
to death in the driver's seat. The phone call
he had to make to her grown daughter after
whose first question was, Did the deer survive?

Different cop, different time, different highway.
Said she keeps her phone on silent then spoke
about securing the crime scene in that classroom
in Blacksburg where one student shot
all the others. Every single one of them
had a cell phone, she said, and for hours after
every single one rang and rang or vibrated
across the floor in the same slow way
that blood pools. No one was allowed to answer,
no one, so instead the phones rang all night
until batteries were empty, voicemails full
of a thousand Call me when you get this so I know
you're okays. Turns out time moves the way
blood does. Batteries too. Runs out
like a startled deer across a road. - Listen
I am trying to find a way to tell you this.
There are things that trying solves but this
is not one of them.”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia

“Walking Blues Not Packaged for Individual Sale

I learned the word bodega
the same day I learned arbitrage
riding with you down to Richmond
to buy armloads of the cheap cigarettes,
the ones you'd packed duffled
aboard a Chinatown bus to resell on the sly
in Brooklyn. Back on Earth,
driving your truck home alone, I turned
both words over in my mouth
again and again, polishing the gemstones.
My mother learned bodega from
'Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes'
and asked me to take a picture
of the first one I saw when I visited you
When I tried, you told me Don't preserve
the evidence, dumbshit so I never got one.
Besides, whatever glitter Paul Simon
burnished onto the word had gotten lost
among the toilet paper rolls and
rubber gloves that lined the ceilings,
though I found a glimmer of it
napping on the warmth of the ATM, a cat
who was named Lucy not after diamonds
but after the cigarettes. This was back before
you figured out how much more
you can make by just stealing what you wanted.
Back when I still thought of myself
as the kind of friend who would visit you in jail.”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia

“I Never Knew What They Meant by Flyover Country

until the first time someone put me on a plane, windowed me
into the congregation looking down on our fields stretched out
endless in orderly blanks, redactions in the transcripts of the trial
of man versus nature. All this holy squinting at scrimshaw country
roads draped with power lines - trip wires lying in wait for the giants
we just sort of mice around. I watched the others look down on
our Fridays racing Opal Road to hit the tiny hill that drops stomachs
like a roller coaster, headlights off for cops. Eighty; Ninety. Ninety-five
in a fifty-five, how Kyle's brother talked about defusing IEDs on tour -
snip whichever wire you want, you'll only find out if you're a hero.
We learned a word for this, its reckless in court, predestination
in church. Funny how a thing gets a different name there. Robe becomes
vestment. Bench becomes pew. Truth grows a capital letter. Anything
to help believe, Mom says, though when it comes to theology we are
Presbyterian in casseroles only. This is the word of God, says the pastor
into the microphone. See you at the picnic after. See you at the finish,
says Kyle's Honda Civic. See you never says his brother's IED.”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia

“(The Mothman at the Psychiatrist's Office in the City)

It is a good idea not to be traumatized by fire
because if you're looking for it you'll find it
everywhere even the engine of your car even
beneath the stovetop sleeping quietly even
the shirt pocket of your friend who also keeps
it on the tip of his tongue and in a candle
on the corner of the bar it is a good idea not
to be traumatized by fire because if you are
alone with it you become alone with its
thoughts and hoo boy let me tell you fire
thinks some real awful awful awful
it is a good idea not to be traumatized by fire
because there are whole parts of West
Virginia named after explosives which is
where they saw the first of us mothpeople
and yes it is a good idea not to be traumatized
by fire because if you fixate on it you can't
rule out the possibility of summoning it with
the pale force of your fear it is a good idea
not to be traumatized by fire because it is a
good idea not to be traumatized because it is
fire not an idea to be traumatized by but fire
actual fire I'm telling or I'm trying to tell you
I'm not afraid of the idea but the thing itself”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia

“Sixth of Ten Elegies for Fire and Oxycodone

The Greek myth goes like this you probably know it but I had to look it up
Prometheus steals fire from Zeus and the other gods gives it to humans
heaven's prowess now mortal Zeus sticks it to Prometheus cause he knows
knowledge knows how sharp its edge can be chains him to a rock an eagle
eating his liver all day the liver regenerates every morning the eagle keeps
eating keeps eating keeps eating with the patent for Oxycontin set to run
out in 2013 Purdue Pharma reformulates it gets a new patent lobbies the old
drug illegal no one steals from the gods no one dulls the blade of knowledge

-

That summer my first desk job insurance intakes at a doctor's office
the relief of air conditioning pharma reps catering our lunches released from
the fear of dropping a ladder on a foreman of threading my thumbnail
with another drill bit the good doc scheduled in five minute increments
I retyped patient addresses all hill towns sixty miles off the waiting room
so full and grumpy I wondered about the etymology of patient but never what
makes a person drive hours through the mountains wait hours for a flicker
with the doc I was not paid to wonder I quit before I ever typed your name”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia

“Seventh of Ten Elegies for Fire and Oxycodone

Larry Levis living down in the flat part of Virginia draws his life
In a Late Style of Fire his obituary doesn't say it but drugs killed him one
way or another of course they don't print those sorts of things in
papers didn't used to in poems neither where he wrote about jacking off
sending meth for god to try he was teaching then at the same college
we'd find you or you'd find yourself getting kicked out of for growing
weed I wonder what Levis knew about Rome its firemen the most
American things you ever heard of that never heard of America

-

When that great aunt died we included After a long battle with breast cancer
in the draft of her obituary the paper took out breast too sexy for the news
when you died nobody included how in the paper for the sake of decorum
as if they were pulling something off as if people around here saw an obit
for a 25-year-old no listed cause of death thought anything other than
overdose or suicide the only folks fooled are those from the future
the ones combing death records to find out how we lived the trouble with
decorum the future won't know who did this to us who and how bad”
― Robert Wood Lynn, Mothman Apologia