I.
Their muscles pulse a pedestrian iteration
of the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth
through steel ducts vacant of treated air,
or alternately inside the labyrinthine walls of a house
as antipodal as its occupants.
In one moment, there is the clang of a taut rawhide tail
against a pipe and in the next, dishes crash
like gritted teeth as they are pushed into a sink.
Vermin, your breath the kiss of a riptide
as it draws life to a casket, your fur grey
like breathing underwater beneath a heavy steel coat,
your hackneyed scent of indolence,
your hiss the sibilant threat of a time long past
when weak travellers on forest’s floors
would sleep near famished dangers and
wake into the world to find they had no eyes,
you shall not make your mischief here.
II.
The dog comes into the room.
With a curious look on her face, Anna,
voice raised, excoriates her canine friend.
“Hey! I wasn’t joking about wanting to feel
like Salome. Bring me a fucking rat.”
III.
The tension on the spring was mocking my wrist
and muttering beneath its breath at each of my fingers.
In a darkling hour the gnawing shearing of that rigid jaw
shuttered on a wooden bed. A shriek tore a small hole
in the night and pestilential lips turned livid. Before I went to discard
the corpse, les autres had already torn into the liver
and the heart and if they had possessed more time
I would perhaps have found only a crushed spine
and the slight stains of the executioner’s boot.
With a spoon large like the ones I use for ice cream
I delicately place pellets with colors of cotton candy
into certain places where water and time
had long played the saboteur. I wrapped the rest in plastic
and tied the top with something meant for women’s hair
and put it into a cabinet six feet off of the ground.
Some days later, a bag of caramels would find itself
in a state of mild disarray while upon a kitchen counter.
IV.
We returned home to find that the dog had shredded
into what was intended to be paired with afternoon coffee.
Minutes later it would become evident that she
was similarly intrigued by anticoagulants.
V.
Days later the frozen ground gasped when the spade’s sharp edge
apologized for broken sleep and carved the silhouette of constellations.
“Dust and dust and dust.
Our Gods are thus.”
A trinity of lucid things, elusive as ivory hefted on hollow wings,
did not compete with whiskey’s amber. The mortal clasp of the moon
made all hope of rapture as futile as attempted flight.
We planned to flee for the state line at two p.m. that very day.
She wished for a coffinless earthen embrace.
When I perish I shall be composed of shadow.
Our souls will dance with the elegance of leaves.
We were starved for perfection- a good life after a war,
the cooled ardor of fingertips after the passing of a teasing moment;
fidelity like a bonfire, our savage concrete tongues whispering
about the sandpapered rasp of time, our teeth short daggers
aimed at the throats of angels.
VI.
My lover never wonders if there are any others
for she sees the way that I embrace a bottle.
VII.
I drank too much again.
When I wake I am not wearing clothes but I cannot remember
their removal so I am sure that I should be ashamed:
the soft felt of cotton has abandoned me in apathy,
the warmth of blankets on me makes them despise their natures,
if it were not for the promise of arrest I would wander naked
in the deep grey haze of morning, condemned
to circular streets with my memories chaff in the wind.
I drank too much again.
She is not furious with me. She does not even tell me to leave.
Steam rises from a drain (a bit of minced onion
and a shred of basil garnishing a stainless grate).
She wordlessly lights a cigarette, forgets it after a minute and a half,
then slowly burns into another as she waves a plume of sulfur in the air.
She is displeased but she is not surprised.
Though today it will merit me a glare, my vision is transfixed
on the consonance of her curves as she leans over her couch.
In the mornings her glow is always of the Huntress
and the redness of her mouth makes my skin
into a thousand frightened points and she is Latin
(hallowed syllables impossible to properly pronounce)
and the repetitions of my breath crawl
and are fastened to the primal divine.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Song
A silver Cytherean nymph, its wings translucent
like a dragonfly seen through sunlight,
skimmed on the surface of desolate cornfields
whose beloved stalks had felt the solemn kiss of the scythe.
Her eyes were mourning like the dew. The dawn had pressed
its fingers through a lattice that had not remembered
to accept the growing tangled vines or mountains
with their dying spines.
Using gold-capped crooked teeth, she pulled a thread
from ancient sheets and wrapped it soft inside her hair
(her heart and mine like breasts
laid bare upon the thin veneer of love affairs).
She trembled and on a rough-hewn hedge
of stolid stone she began to sing:
Fisher King, Fisher King,
are your empty nets the fault of the sea?
like a dragonfly seen through sunlight,
skimmed on the surface of desolate cornfields
whose beloved stalks had felt the solemn kiss of the scythe.
Her eyes were mourning like the dew. The dawn had pressed
its fingers through a lattice that had not remembered
to accept the growing tangled vines or mountains
with their dying spines.
Using gold-capped crooked teeth, she pulled a thread
from ancient sheets and wrapped it soft inside her hair
(her heart and mine like breasts
laid bare upon the thin veneer of love affairs).
She trembled and on a rough-hewn hedge
of stolid stone she began to sing:
Fisher King, Fisher King,
are your empty nets the fault of the sea?
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Leaves
In past years I would walk silent until a twig snapped
beneath my feet (in leather boots to protect ankles
from the fangs of the serpents that crawl
in venomous haste from their normal homes)
and I would stretch my hands like a minor god
and pull a leaf from Yggdrasil and feel its veins
like the tendons that allow a lover’s fingers
to flex from the wrist and then rend away vascular promises.
The forest took portions of my breath as I fell into a sigh
and wild turkeys like a shattered sky scorched the air
with their beating wings and I tore linearly at
that which I had killed until tiny shreds were all that remained.
There was not a burst of cold fury directed at my bitter,
murderous actions, for the earth is a woman and knows
not how to be violent and calm at once, but I felt its hatred
and knew it to be deserved and there were demarcations
placed to preserve this irreparable savagery although
on the ground a million of its cousins had already perished.
Because I am alive I know that the world has at long last
tired and wishes for release, and so I slash at any verdant thing
and the rain whipping in the wind was caressing
the crevasses in the city’s streets and sending dead branches
careening to the bayou’s open arms and I knew that
it soon would take me too. Although I know how to swim
drowning is not so bad if the water with a film of ice
shudders in fear at the temperature of flesh.
beneath my feet (in leather boots to protect ankles
from the fangs of the serpents that crawl
in venomous haste from their normal homes)
and I would stretch my hands like a minor god
and pull a leaf from Yggdrasil and feel its veins
like the tendons that allow a lover’s fingers
to flex from the wrist and then rend away vascular promises.
The forest took portions of my breath as I fell into a sigh
and wild turkeys like a shattered sky scorched the air
with their beating wings and I tore linearly at
that which I had killed until tiny shreds were all that remained.
There was not a burst of cold fury directed at my bitter,
murderous actions, for the earth is a woman and knows
not how to be violent and calm at once, but I felt its hatred
and knew it to be deserved and there were demarcations
placed to preserve this irreparable savagery although
on the ground a million of its cousins had already perished.
Because I am alive I know that the world has at long last
tired and wishes for release, and so I slash at any verdant thing
and the rain whipping in the wind was caressing
the crevasses in the city’s streets and sending dead branches
careening to the bayou’s open arms and I knew that
it soon would take me too. Although I know how to swim
drowning is not so bad if the water with a film of ice
shudders in fear at the temperature of flesh.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
A History of November
I. Kristall
One can find forgiveness for forgetting that Tchaikovsky
wrote in praise of any other month as on weakened streets
tennis shoes lurch like metronomes and coffee burns into mouths,
and once-fearsome insects with their barbs lend their flights to lethargy
and their circling seems lazier than past years as if they know
that the next spring will bring news of a red queen, a dead queen
(regicide so rare these days)
and cousins with book lungs full of pesticides
with their crimson hourglasses or drab earth-tones,
and then neurotoxins flash like a fire to a newly opened door
and the clouds all fled and the stars
were infinite in their tiny crystals
of storefront glass or a million tears
and it was the beginning,
and one too can be forgiven for wondering which Mephistopheles
Pyotr had encountered on his way to painting the future.
II. Walking
The volcanic creep of her breath that pulled poison slower than beauty
through mass produced paper cartridges of affliction was disconcertingly
enchanting and her hands were cotton dipped in the steely breath
of arsenic and I kissed the sugar on her palms in a prayer
and I waited for the wind like Sleipnir in His haste
but perhaps the wise one would not choose to ride this year.
My love sustains herself on sunsets. She wonders at the moon,
so much more frightening now than in her childhood
when its crescent made a torch of her smallest finger,
and thinks of the water of a vacant sea as it laps
its thousand tongues (blacker than the sails of Theseus’s return,
mere calories from freezing) onto sand too terrible
for the fragility of wintered lunacy.
The sunrise turns from vapor and provides refuge
for Russian tyrants and the earth wraps a belt around Her hips
and shudders in the first mornings where frost gives its
mesh of mail to the leaves of sweetgum trees and the air
grows in hatred and the goddess has her vengeance.
The theft is felt by all (eternally chipping away at our oilcloth windows
with unpared fingernails) and the only defense for Prometheus comes
from the demon-blue of her voice and suddenly the threat
of ice-bitten toes seems trivial and laughable
and we close the eyes of the dead because we do not wish
to learn of certain secrets.
III. Memory
There was a girl with black hair. There was a girl and she was paler
than ghosts and she could be seen to-and-from school waiting for her bus
or else getting off of her bus, and later she dyed her hair
but that color is not remembered just as the number of her bus is not stone-etched,
and later she died and for the first time her name was recorded in electricity
but it too is lost, although it has by now probably been given to many more girls.
Some of them may have had hair like ravens at twilight and perhaps
they too grew to hate a face framed in midnight and if they have not died yet
then they surely shall. If more justice was in the world then these new spirits
with older names will have the luxury of burying their parents before they
climb to their own tombs, one in pine and another in oak and another in
iron-bound elm, and, above, there would be angels or modest squares
or towering spires of concrete and on each of their markers they would
have slight allegiance to another family (a composition of strange notes
that are jarring without being dissonant).
They sit at a locked gate without knowing if they desire
what lies behind its curves or even if it shall be the last bar in their path
as they wait for erosion. The leaves of autumn are wept but do not
find regret as a bloody blanket delicately wraps the feet
of an ancient maple tree after a storm.
One can find forgiveness for forgetting that Tchaikovsky
wrote in praise of any other month as on weakened streets
tennis shoes lurch like metronomes and coffee burns into mouths,
and once-fearsome insects with their barbs lend their flights to lethargy
and their circling seems lazier than past years as if they know
that the next spring will bring news of a red queen, a dead queen
(regicide so rare these days)
and cousins with book lungs full of pesticides
with their crimson hourglasses or drab earth-tones,
and then neurotoxins flash like a fire to a newly opened door
and the clouds all fled and the stars
were infinite in their tiny crystals
of storefront glass or a million tears
and it was the beginning,
and one too can be forgiven for wondering which Mephistopheles
Pyotr had encountered on his way to painting the future.
II. Walking
The volcanic creep of her breath that pulled poison slower than beauty
through mass produced paper cartridges of affliction was disconcertingly
enchanting and her hands were cotton dipped in the steely breath
of arsenic and I kissed the sugar on her palms in a prayer
and I waited for the wind like Sleipnir in His haste
but perhaps the wise one would not choose to ride this year.
My love sustains herself on sunsets. She wonders at the moon,
so much more frightening now than in her childhood
when its crescent made a torch of her smallest finger,
and thinks of the water of a vacant sea as it laps
its thousand tongues (blacker than the sails of Theseus’s return,
mere calories from freezing) onto sand too terrible
for the fragility of wintered lunacy.
The sunrise turns from vapor and provides refuge
for Russian tyrants and the earth wraps a belt around Her hips
and shudders in the first mornings where frost gives its
mesh of mail to the leaves of sweetgum trees and the air
grows in hatred and the goddess has her vengeance.
The theft is felt by all (eternally chipping away at our oilcloth windows
with unpared fingernails) and the only defense for Prometheus comes
from the demon-blue of her voice and suddenly the threat
of ice-bitten toes seems trivial and laughable
and we close the eyes of the dead because we do not wish
to learn of certain secrets.
III. Memory
There was a girl with black hair. There was a girl and she was paler
than ghosts and she could be seen to-and-from school waiting for her bus
or else getting off of her bus, and later she dyed her hair
but that color is not remembered just as the number of her bus is not stone-etched,
and later she died and for the first time her name was recorded in electricity
but it too is lost, although it has by now probably been given to many more girls.
Some of them may have had hair like ravens at twilight and perhaps
they too grew to hate a face framed in midnight and if they have not died yet
then they surely shall. If more justice was in the world then these new spirits
with older names will have the luxury of burying their parents before they
climb to their own tombs, one in pine and another in oak and another in
iron-bound elm, and, above, there would be angels or modest squares
or towering spires of concrete and on each of their markers they would
have slight allegiance to another family (a composition of strange notes
that are jarring without being dissonant).
They sit at a locked gate without knowing if they desire
what lies behind its curves or even if it shall be the last bar in their path
as they wait for erosion. The leaves of autumn are wept but do not
find regret as a bloody blanket delicately wraps the feet
of an ancient maple tree after a storm.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Rapping on Halloween
I.
We were in a room and the door could not be fully
opened because a chair blocked it and most of the people
had left when the blue lights like unwanted strobes pulsated
through windows and the haze of cigarette smoke
and in the beer spilled on the floor or poured as foam.
For perhaps twenty minutes we sat and there were these three
that were feeling pleased with themselves for having a mediocre
free-styling rap battle while I nodded my head in chemical bliss
and one of us who was less ambitious asked if they could throw out
some words about anything that was chosen, like my neighbor’s
New York Yankees hat, and they tried their best and it was formulaic
and eventually they exhausted themselves and I tapped my foot
as I swayed a little in my chair and I took a deep breath
and my voice was like running fingers through the hair
of someone condemned to death with a fate in the depths
and I said
II.
“That guy to my left just tossed a rhyme about shoes,
and just about that, like a criminal bruise,
about shooting motherfuckers like the Germans to Jews
and laying a lyrical track that read just like the news.
We were gonna talk about a fucking Yankee cap,
I can start with its colors, black on black,
or how its brim is straight or how it’s snug in the back
but I don’t really give much of a damn about that
I like how he talks about that chrome four-four
but I’m more interested in if he was ever poor,
if he ever had to sleep right on the goddamn floor,
if his mother ever got tossed through a door,
‘cause I know what he says cannot be true
or there would be no one for you to talk to
after their souls got tossed up into the blue
and humanity was like something Picasso drew.
III.
“And the man to my right he is Mexican,
and the man to his right is African,
and I know that we say that a man’s a man
but I gotta question that, when in a foreign land
there are priests with the power of death and of life
and the Catholic Church reads the people their rights
as they tell them that condoms spread HIV/AIDS
and to quit all that fucking is an easy band-aid
that we can just pull off, like wrath or like sloth,
or gluttony, avarice, and all of that stuff
that got banned by a man that sits on a throne.
Don’t forget his predecessors crushed people with stones
or that they burned them alive or killed them with swords
or threw them in prison, like they did to the whores
who were just gonna make a little hard money,
and if it wasn’t true maybe it would be funny
to recount this verbose history with vapid MC’s
who sit on couches and pretend to be free
and with sub-par hooks they try and coach me
to believe in someone that they cannot be,
these legends of hands grasping pistol grips
and a dangerous temper like the master’s bullwhip.
Do you know anything about what’s real in the world,
or are your words like love stories you tell to the girls
that you don’t care about? You’re so goddamn hard,
like making a house from a deck of thin cards,
but in your eyes is a person who’s been alone,
who lived a long time without a house or a home,
and I wonder about the edge on your claws
and if you will dull them trying to climb up walls
to avoid all the things that you cannot back up
or if, instead, you just don’t give a fuck.
Now you’ve got a position on this rap’s chessboard
but I can sense that our friends here are all getting bored
so I’ll wrap this in plastic high up on a shelf
and see how much more you talk about yourself
instead of the vote in California
for the legalization of marijuana
or the hatred of our brothers who only love men
or our sisters hated for just loving women
but maybe that shit doesn’t matter much at all,
like the hungry kids that you shrug at in the halls
of the buildings where you sell their young mothers crack,
and I wonder if you ever bother looking back,
or if you just make that money like the paint on the floor
that no one can clean. If it’s there, it’s yours.
Now I’m back at his hat, so if it’s back it’s back.
Where the fuck in this house can I find a dime sack?”
IV.
I had silenced them and our souls were set afire.
I left the room, wedged through the barely open space,
and I saw her face. Her name was palindromic
and she said she was a marionette but her corset
would have caused envy in Madame Antoinette
and her face was pale with the spirit of the day
and on each side of her mouth were black lines like tears
or tears in her skin and she twisted her left ankle when she spoke.
I left shortly after making her acquaintance. I walked
home in the dark of the cardboard clouds on beds of dead leaves
and I kicked their drying doom at barking dogs and dared the demons
to give me kisses on such an auspicious morning but my lips were
hollow with the wind and then I was alone again.
We were in a room and the door could not be fully
opened because a chair blocked it and most of the people
had left when the blue lights like unwanted strobes pulsated
through windows and the haze of cigarette smoke
and in the beer spilled on the floor or poured as foam.
For perhaps twenty minutes we sat and there were these three
that were feeling pleased with themselves for having a mediocre
free-styling rap battle while I nodded my head in chemical bliss
and one of us who was less ambitious asked if they could throw out
some words about anything that was chosen, like my neighbor’s
New York Yankees hat, and they tried their best and it was formulaic
and eventually they exhausted themselves and I tapped my foot
as I swayed a little in my chair and I took a deep breath
and my voice was like running fingers through the hair
of someone condemned to death with a fate in the depths
and I said
II.
“That guy to my left just tossed a rhyme about shoes,
and just about that, like a criminal bruise,
about shooting motherfuckers like the Germans to Jews
and laying a lyrical track that read just like the news.
We were gonna talk about a fucking Yankee cap,
I can start with its colors, black on black,
or how its brim is straight or how it’s snug in the back
but I don’t really give much of a damn about that
I like how he talks about that chrome four-four
but I’m more interested in if he was ever poor,
if he ever had to sleep right on the goddamn floor,
if his mother ever got tossed through a door,
‘cause I know what he says cannot be true
or there would be no one for you to talk to
after their souls got tossed up into the blue
and humanity was like something Picasso drew.
III.
“And the man to my right he is Mexican,
and the man to his right is African,
and I know that we say that a man’s a man
but I gotta question that, when in a foreign land
there are priests with the power of death and of life
and the Catholic Church reads the people their rights
as they tell them that condoms spread HIV/AIDS
and to quit all that fucking is an easy band-aid
that we can just pull off, like wrath or like sloth,
or gluttony, avarice, and all of that stuff
that got banned by a man that sits on a throne.
Don’t forget his predecessors crushed people with stones
or that they burned them alive or killed them with swords
or threw them in prison, like they did to the whores
who were just gonna make a little hard money,
and if it wasn’t true maybe it would be funny
to recount this verbose history with vapid MC’s
who sit on couches and pretend to be free
and with sub-par hooks they try and coach me
to believe in someone that they cannot be,
these legends of hands grasping pistol grips
and a dangerous temper like the master’s bullwhip.
Do you know anything about what’s real in the world,
or are your words like love stories you tell to the girls
that you don’t care about? You’re so goddamn hard,
like making a house from a deck of thin cards,
but in your eyes is a person who’s been alone,
who lived a long time without a house or a home,
and I wonder about the edge on your claws
and if you will dull them trying to climb up walls
to avoid all the things that you cannot back up
or if, instead, you just don’t give a fuck.
Now you’ve got a position on this rap’s chessboard
but I can sense that our friends here are all getting bored
so I’ll wrap this in plastic high up on a shelf
and see how much more you talk about yourself
instead of the vote in California
for the legalization of marijuana
or the hatred of our brothers who only love men
or our sisters hated for just loving women
but maybe that shit doesn’t matter much at all,
like the hungry kids that you shrug at in the halls
of the buildings where you sell their young mothers crack,
and I wonder if you ever bother looking back,
or if you just make that money like the paint on the floor
that no one can clean. If it’s there, it’s yours.
Now I’m back at his hat, so if it’s back it’s back.
Where the fuck in this house can I find a dime sack?”
IV.
I had silenced them and our souls were set afire.
I left the room, wedged through the barely open space,
and I saw her face. Her name was palindromic
and she said she was a marionette but her corset
would have caused envy in Madame Antoinette
and her face was pale with the spirit of the day
and on each side of her mouth were black lines like tears
or tears in her skin and she twisted her left ankle when she spoke.
I left shortly after making her acquaintance. I walked
home in the dark of the cardboard clouds on beds of dead leaves
and I kicked their drying doom at barking dogs and dared the demons
to give me kisses on such an auspicious morning but my lips were
hollow with the wind and then I was alone again.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Helen on the walls
We fought for her, her hair
of raven or crimson or wheat,
her voice familiar or accented,
her skin pale or accentuated
by the sun, a thousand
ships with twenty men falling
to the sand or the shelf
of growing forests, or any place
at all that our sacrifice could
craft an altar of stone or air.
Her hair, her hair, her hair
like waves in the salted wind,
and when our eyes fell
lifeless
we were still in love.
of raven or crimson or wheat,
her voice familiar or accented,
her skin pale or accentuated
by the sun, a thousand
ships with twenty men falling
to the sand or the shelf
of growing forests, or any place
at all that our sacrifice could
craft an altar of stone or air.
Her hair, her hair, her hair
like waves in the salted wind,
and when our eyes fell
lifeless
we were still in love.
Trying to explain
the unexplainable recesses and abscesses of memory,
the fingerprints of fists or wide leather leather belts
or wrenches,
the way that they were always drunk, how even
if they did not drink they were intoxicated
with their rage or violence or past,
and in their eyes was the fast-fade
of crimson food-coloring in a river
as an osprey’s talons clutched a trophy
in a competition without a recorded name,
and always afterward, their chests heaving from exhaustion,
the fire quelled, our misbehavior or existence culled,
they gave their mottled features over to the
ecstasy of brutality while we painted our faces
with the salt of eternal oceans.
If one could be beaten without feeling hated
then perhaps it would not be so bad.
the fingerprints of fists or wide leather leather belts
or wrenches,
the way that they were always drunk, how even
if they did not drink they were intoxicated
with their rage or violence or past,
and in their eyes was the fast-fade
of crimson food-coloring in a river
as an osprey’s talons clutched a trophy
in a competition without a recorded name,
and always afterward, their chests heaving from exhaustion,
the fire quelled, our misbehavior or existence culled,
they gave their mottled features over to the
ecstasy of brutality while we painted our faces
with the salt of eternal oceans.
If one could be beaten without feeling hated
then perhaps it would not be so bad.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Lament
Delilah, Delilah, did you not know
that if you had merely asked I would have
scraped my skull with shears?
If our love was never true, and your aim
always had held steady to thoughts of my betrayal,
I could have been told. On that afternoon
I would have held the current to my breast but
when the dolphins of the dithyrambist visited
their kindness would be refused. I would chase
the fleeing chariot’s tapestry until islands
and inlets became mirages, blown bubbles like a child
until my lungs were full and water became breath
and your indelible laughter reverberated in the ringlets
that I had kept, and we would give the hearts of the cresting
aquarian steeds over to the cause of the assassin.
When they come for my eyes I will scarcely be sorry
to have them gouged. For what reason should I keep
those possessions? Poetry is hollowed and
I care little for the sky and I shall not forget your face
until I depart this earthly prison for the bars of that death
which cannot be destroyed with toothy hacksaw strokes
or a torch blue as false friends or the irises of my love.
that if you had merely asked I would have
scraped my skull with shears?
If our love was never true, and your aim
always had held steady to thoughts of my betrayal,
I could have been told. On that afternoon
I would have held the current to my breast but
when the dolphins of the dithyrambist visited
their kindness would be refused. I would chase
the fleeing chariot’s tapestry until islands
and inlets became mirages, blown bubbles like a child
until my lungs were full and water became breath
and your indelible laughter reverberated in the ringlets
that I had kept, and we would give the hearts of the cresting
aquarian steeds over to the cause of the assassin.
When they come for my eyes I will scarcely be sorry
to have them gouged. For what reason should I keep
those possessions? Poetry is hollowed and
I care little for the sky and I shall not forget your face
until I depart this earthly prison for the bars of that death
which cannot be destroyed with toothy hacksaw strokes
or a torch blue as false friends or the irises of my love.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Fragments 4
When the last two entities in the cosmos
sit cross-legged to play at games of chances
they will still make wagers with stacks of precious metal.
______________________________________________
views looked at askance or, alternately,
crushed to powder beneath marble table lamps
______________________________________________
I wanted to batter bitter rhythms into the frame
of her house without receiving an invitation,
the way her old lovers do, but I have eaten the moon
whole and I for one shall give her nights to peace.
______________________________________________
even though the hands are palsied
and the wood of the piano was warped with age
and water and it will not hold a tune,
a song’s name vibrates in the air and it tremolos:
“chaos is truth is inevitable is progressive”
______________________________________________
“and who is this woman that you love?”
“she is qualia”
“oh. I see. good fucking luck with that.”
______________________________________________
I am carved up, like a goddamn pumpkin
that shall never be placed onto a porch.
I am carved simply because I am and one day
men in a large vehicle will take away my body
inside of a bag that cannot disappear.
_______________________________________________
swaddled like Christ in an ocean of blankets,
and her hands were as warm as my heart isn’t
and birdcages caused by the black of iron oxides
sang and danced on her skin through the dark
________________________________________________
like an immensely expensive guitar
that regally sits upon its stand
as it is never played
________________________________________________
like being in love, you are convinced of the veracity
of memory, but in the automobile accident of solitude
such beliefs are thoroughly concussed
________________________________________________
it is just like me to fall for someone
whose closest approximation is between
a wrecking ball and a da Vinci painting
________________________________________________
and thus the total of our lives become punctuation marks
to us, and though we sound un-tuned to the ears of each other,
by taking a little longer to pay attention to all things,
we see through cacophony that we have
by accident created a symphony
_________________________________________________
I kissed her once for each eyelid,
one for each dimple in her cheek,
and once for each strand of hair
that lost its fire in the candlelight.
__________________________________________________
not speaking to you is a war and its murder
__________________________________________________
Oh my sister I cannot even begin to imagine this world
and I have forgotten the name of our mother
and my life has engulfed a forest’s floor in flames
and because there are printed pamphlets
illustrating the intentionality of this controlled burn
(wait for a day without rain)
inquires are beaded and wiped away
like mercury from mirrors cracked on fault lines.
_________________________________________________
there was an armor to her cruelty
and she marched on like an ant with curiosity
but, linear to the end, she labored until
the sun again shook his head in shame
and drew a circle 'round his feet
then curled within in deathless sleep
__________________________________________________
sounds only clash when we cannot step
far enough away to see the chord
__________________________________________________
I know. And I understand. I am left with the idea
that one should never ask of a genie
more than two favors.
__________________________________________________
I saw my father in his violent eyes
but he was not my father
and so he could be killed.
_________________________________________________
one should only kneel in supplication
at the feet of a lover or else
the scimitar of the executioner
__________________________________________________
in dim light she fingers the nape of my neck
and runs her nails into my flesh and rolls over
like a cornered badger and I become paralytic
with fear when I see in her eyes a thousand demons
__________________________________________________
in a cascade for she had seen herself, a ghost
________________________________________________
Pan troglodytes – the denizens of the land below the land
who share desires with the god of wine
________________________________________________
Oh Anna, Emma, Lesbia,
the crickets write dirges while you rest.
The gunmetal clouds know all of your names
but I will pretend that they have not told me.
________________________________________________
The rails promised they would show fidelity
to their straight lines and one day she fell to them
and held the steel to its word.
________________________________________________
We cannot get out. We cannot get out.
We change our fingerprints on jagged flints held in relief
but not any semblance of color emerged
from what was to be our escape
and the walls of the cavern are endless.
Did we need to come here?
sit cross-legged to play at games of chances
they will still make wagers with stacks of precious metal.
______________________________________________
views looked at askance or, alternately,
crushed to powder beneath marble table lamps
______________________________________________
I wanted to batter bitter rhythms into the frame
of her house without receiving an invitation,
the way her old lovers do, but I have eaten the moon
whole and I for one shall give her nights to peace.
______________________________________________
even though the hands are palsied
and the wood of the piano was warped with age
and water and it will not hold a tune,
a song’s name vibrates in the air and it tremolos:
“chaos is truth is inevitable is progressive”
______________________________________________
“and who is this woman that you love?”
“she is qualia”
“oh. I see. good fucking luck with that.”
______________________________________________
I am carved up, like a goddamn pumpkin
that shall never be placed onto a porch.
I am carved simply because I am and one day
men in a large vehicle will take away my body
inside of a bag that cannot disappear.
_______________________________________________
swaddled like Christ in an ocean of blankets,
and her hands were as warm as my heart isn’t
and birdcages caused by the black of iron oxides
sang and danced on her skin through the dark
________________________________________________
like an immensely expensive guitar
that regally sits upon its stand
as it is never played
________________________________________________
like being in love, you are convinced of the veracity
of memory, but in the automobile accident of solitude
such beliefs are thoroughly concussed
________________________________________________
it is just like me to fall for someone
whose closest approximation is between
a wrecking ball and a da Vinci painting
________________________________________________
and thus the total of our lives become punctuation marks
to us, and though we sound un-tuned to the ears of each other,
by taking a little longer to pay attention to all things,
we see through cacophony that we have
by accident created a symphony
_________________________________________________
I kissed her once for each eyelid,
one for each dimple in her cheek,
and once for each strand of hair
that lost its fire in the candlelight.
__________________________________________________
not speaking to you is a war and its murder
__________________________________________________
Oh my sister I cannot even begin to imagine this world
and I have forgotten the name of our mother
and my life has engulfed a forest’s floor in flames
and because there are printed pamphlets
illustrating the intentionality of this controlled burn
(wait for a day without rain)
inquires are beaded and wiped away
like mercury from mirrors cracked on fault lines.
_________________________________________________
there was an armor to her cruelty
and she marched on like an ant with curiosity
but, linear to the end, she labored until
the sun again shook his head in shame
and drew a circle 'round his feet
then curled within in deathless sleep
__________________________________________________
sounds only clash when we cannot step
far enough away to see the chord
__________________________________________________
I know. And I understand. I am left with the idea
that one should never ask of a genie
more than two favors.
__________________________________________________
I saw my father in his violent eyes
but he was not my father
and so he could be killed.
_________________________________________________
one should only kneel in supplication
at the feet of a lover or else
the scimitar of the executioner
__________________________________________________
in dim light she fingers the nape of my neck
and runs her nails into my flesh and rolls over
like a cornered badger and I become paralytic
with fear when I see in her eyes a thousand demons
__________________________________________________
in a cascade for she had seen herself, a ghost
________________________________________________
Pan troglodytes – the denizens of the land below the land
who share desires with the god of wine
________________________________________________
Oh Anna, Emma, Lesbia,
the crickets write dirges while you rest.
The gunmetal clouds know all of your names
but I will pretend that they have not told me.
________________________________________________
The rails promised they would show fidelity
to their straight lines and one day she fell to them
and held the steel to its word.
________________________________________________
We cannot get out. We cannot get out.
We change our fingerprints on jagged flints held in relief
but not any semblance of color emerged
from what was to be our escape
and the walls of the cavern are endless.
Did we need to come here?
Monday, October 11, 2010
Fragments 3
black spirals of ruined paper
and in the distance a siren tolls
and I wonder if it legal here to burn
___________________________
The sun bakes pieces of pavement
along the traces started by
the refracted wavelengths of light.
The heat radiates images false as our gods
from a base of causeless thankless rock made molten
so that it could later be walked upon.
____________________________
lips of wine with a tongue of vinegar
____________________________
It is a singular subtle untruth, like the recording
of a lover’s voice scratched onto
mass produced speakers.
_____________________________
I never wanted to be a poet.
Whatever that is.
______________________________
a rose, my love, its bulb flowering
in the dark of an autumn night,
need only be brought out
when one wishes to tempt the thorns
______________________________
a voice like tattered sheets
as she drives away whispering
“you don’t mean that much to me”
______________________________
my fingers bled onto the strings bound to the maple
like a war god on an evergreen tree
______________________________
and their love was a vial of old cyanide
locked in a small chest which could be opened
by any key in the world
and in the distance a siren tolls
and I wonder if it legal here to burn
___________________________
The sun bakes pieces of pavement
along the traces started by
the refracted wavelengths of light.
The heat radiates images false as our gods
from a base of causeless thankless rock made molten
so that it could later be walked upon.
____________________________
lips of wine with a tongue of vinegar
____________________________
It is a singular subtle untruth, like the recording
of a lover’s voice scratched onto
mass produced speakers.
_____________________________
I never wanted to be a poet.
Whatever that is.
______________________________
a rose, my love, its bulb flowering
in the dark of an autumn night,
need only be brought out
when one wishes to tempt the thorns
______________________________
a voice like tattered sheets
as she drives away whispering
“you don’t mean that much to me”
______________________________
my fingers bled onto the strings bound to the maple
like a war god on an evergreen tree
______________________________
and their love was a vial of old cyanide
locked in a small chest which could be opened
by any key in the world
Friday, October 8, 2010
Devil
I. Dream
She asked if I would murder for love, and I brushed her hair
behind her ear and mumbled, half-removed from lucidity,
“Je suis assassiné tous les jours. Je peux rendre cela.”
We were laying on the floor; the only people in the world.
The remnants of the boys and girls that we had ceased to imagine
were heavy with the dew, like leaves or discarded garments.
Through an idle feat of focus we had made that room of ours
into the only room still standing. Elsewhere out there the time-worn
buildings were all as torn as the paper in school hallways on the first
true day of summer. The sun’s chariot lingers on such occasions.
Even if there had been a god attempting espionage for some nefarious,
vague purpose, It would have been paralyzed at the window.
She would have stood like a sorceress and enumerated the crimes
of these last ten thousand years. Her eyes would rivet It helplessly
to the windowpane, and while It desiccated like venison in the wind
on an October afternoon I would spill a glass of icy water.
She was soaring on a swing-set, then she leapt off and she said,
“I think everything about love is a trite fiction in our heads,”
then she breathed just like a hummingbird and in my arms
she was lithe and wild and carnivorous and I thought that
she might tear through my skin with pointed teeth
and so I waited. The architect of hell twisted in the sunset.
Then she disappeared in the death-throes of a train station
and she hovered on the benches with a cigarette
hanging from her perfect mouth or else between two
thin fingers. It is unsure who it is that we were,
but on a hallowed evening we masqueraded
as two hollow metal crutches and we assisted each other
as we limped across limpid suburban streets
with only painted lines to serve as guides.
We dyed our insides brown with whiskey. We made sparks
in the lanterns of the sprawling caverns of the world.
There were alarms in the early morning that were mimics
of the sunrise. We had locked that inevitability with our creator in a box
previously reserved for a woman of clay. She was strumming
a five-stringed guitar and we sang that we were not yet ready for time,
no, not at all prepared for that infinite energy carefully apportioned
into the spoonfuls of applesauce that wipe the sorrow from our lips.
She stood up and I felt aching in my bones. She took her sweater
from the floor and draped three heavy bags over her clothing and
became the colors of the dawn and the damned as the door closed.
I slowly unfold in the sun like a heathen king of antiquity
and wonder why the dryads in these dying trees
do not take the time to warn of catastrophe.
II. Divination
She was a farmer and in her fields were a hundred furrows
filled with corn that stretched higher than the reach of her arm.
That had been one part of her ambition, to have all the whiskey
that she could drink. Any paradise of value does nothing differently
from the mortal coil, save that it unwinds time like a golden wire
to give to the Chosen world enough to fabricate their heavens.
One of her figments of humanity, now long in disuse, had once
advanced the opinion that results were not penultimate;
that magnificence could be achieved by the machinations
produced in past days without expectation for a future.
Promptly she had banished him, and that night sat with a jar
hooked to her index and ring fingers and said to herself, for now
she was the last, “There is nothing free.”
She went walking the next morning. In the heat of the day
the moon still shone brightly somewhere in the East.
She had a group of horses that she no longer rode. Most of them
were in normal colors but a few were in lurid shades of red and blue.
There were dogs running in a meadow that was dotted
with dandelions that were used for food in centuries past but now
sufficed only to preserve themselves perpetually. Like many things
that also had outlived their usefulness, she did not destroy them
although it would have taken a mere snap of finger to thumb
to do so. Instead she kept to her custom and abandoned them
entirely to their own defenses. Although the flowers knew she no longer
cared for them they sacrificed their florets in attempts to brush
against her ankles or to land onto her palms or, oh rapture,
to be ensnared in her hair. She arrived again at her cottage
and came to her door from her stairs of fitted and smoothed boulders.
She took an Otis Redding vinyl record from its case and pierced
the first track with a needle. She took a drink from a clay jar
that she had cast on a wheel before painting upon it two X’s.
She never slept and she played guitar through the nights that she
permitted to occur and, though she remembered her words
as Narcissus remembers his cheekbones,
she never would sing something the same way twice.
III. Dimanche
He was sitting with a curved iron knife that was licking
the bark from a willow tree and through nights
illuminated by the uncountable corpses fastened
at blinding speeds to the void, every hour
like a clock-worked chime the blade would lose its edge
and he would take it as a lover’s lip between his teeth
and make of them a whetstone and the wood’s chips
became sandstone weeping like descending leaves.
His sanguinity raced itself to pool in clefts
left by an epoch of saltation. His carving
pushed an operatic timbre into the orchestra of dusk.
It beat the air in conquest of lust and betrayal.
Generations of men were pared off in crooked lines,
notched in a binary language that no one could read
and so they returned to carbon and nitrogen
and they had never truly been.
For six days he counted sins from the outside in
and peeled two hundred promises as the fragments
of the trunk ran down his arms like the bodies
of the Armenians on their short drop from shipboard
to the sea of the rishi Kaśyap. With a mighty groan,
the elder’s victory became clear and he directed his voice
to distant clouds. “The man to fell the last tree rooted
on Easter’s isle was daydreaming of girls with blue eyes.
He did not even hear the moment when the branches first
laid their sanguinary mouths to the dark dead earth
that had been a loyal nursemaid long before
the mothering and molting of the tallest mountains."
Though it once had strove like Babel, the highest point
of the last dying contrivance now was three feet
from the ground and, holding his breath, he punctured
the pad of his right index finger onto the spire.
The dull rumbling of static came to nothing
and the spirits of the stones turned to silence
from their elegiac strain and a wizened man
with eyes of pure white suddenly took the place
of the corpus of murdered timber. The god laid
propped onto his arm as if he were sitting for Goya.
He spoke in the low tones of a trumpet,
“My oldest friend, how have you been?”
The shade of ephemeral empire sheathed one of his weapons
and gritted his teeth for an instant before replying.
“Alright. All right. al-Right.” They laughed in the slow way
characteristic of men who have known each other too long
to find each other pleasant. The air escaping the man
with Medea’s eyes rattled like the wind passing through
the abandoned cloister of Oransay and with his maraca
he intoned, “You and I, oh ambitious one, are as proud
and useful as embroidery on a funereal shroud. I told you
of your future. Cassandra’s harp I gently plucked while
your hope degenerated into sanctified demise of heat
and now at long last you see that my soothing was not a mere
creation for my comfort. You can taste the blistered ocean,
hear the sound of nothing living, feel the soil that will never
again bear grass crumbling like palms in a furious
seismic oscillation, and every breath is of a conflagration.”
A sliver of ash was squeezed from the tip
of his life’s cigarette and his soul was riddled with splinters:
a bullet of ice, a club of gold,
a briefcase of things that cannot be sold.
The god chuckled, though it pained him,
took a flask of gin from the ether
and pulled juniper into his heart.
“I know that you have lived longer.”
The sage was speaking in the clipped malleable impressions
left by the cadence of horseshoes on a road of graphite
and crude oil. “I have come to abdicate. Fictitious Peter
at my gate sent to you what never should have been.
I had nearly forgotten who you were and this ignorance
is at my carotid like coruscant spurs and everything
is rust and this earth is not enough for us.”
The devil shrugged and stood six feet tall and blinked his eyes.
A god turned into fireflies that did not know to shine goodbyes
to proteins never meant to fold. They beat their wings
into the unbound cold and with nothing gained
and nothing lost their faces turned sharply into the frost.
She asked if I would murder for love, and I brushed her hair
behind her ear and mumbled, half-removed from lucidity,
“Je suis assassiné tous les jours. Je peux rendre cela.”
We were laying on the floor; the only people in the world.
The remnants of the boys and girls that we had ceased to imagine
were heavy with the dew, like leaves or discarded garments.
Through an idle feat of focus we had made that room of ours
into the only room still standing. Elsewhere out there the time-worn
buildings were all as torn as the paper in school hallways on the first
true day of summer. The sun’s chariot lingers on such occasions.
Even if there had been a god attempting espionage for some nefarious,
vague purpose, It would have been paralyzed at the window.
She would have stood like a sorceress and enumerated the crimes
of these last ten thousand years. Her eyes would rivet It helplessly
to the windowpane, and while It desiccated like venison in the wind
on an October afternoon I would spill a glass of icy water.
She was soaring on a swing-set, then she leapt off and she said,
“I think everything about love is a trite fiction in our heads,”
then she breathed just like a hummingbird and in my arms
she was lithe and wild and carnivorous and I thought that
she might tear through my skin with pointed teeth
and so I waited. The architect of hell twisted in the sunset.
Then she disappeared in the death-throes of a train station
and she hovered on the benches with a cigarette
hanging from her perfect mouth or else between two
thin fingers. It is unsure who it is that we were,
but on a hallowed evening we masqueraded
as two hollow metal crutches and we assisted each other
as we limped across limpid suburban streets
with only painted lines to serve as guides.
We dyed our insides brown with whiskey. We made sparks
in the lanterns of the sprawling caverns of the world.
There were alarms in the early morning that were mimics
of the sunrise. We had locked that inevitability with our creator in a box
previously reserved for a woman of clay. She was strumming
a five-stringed guitar and we sang that we were not yet ready for time,
no, not at all prepared for that infinite energy carefully apportioned
into the spoonfuls of applesauce that wipe the sorrow from our lips.
She stood up and I felt aching in my bones. She took her sweater
from the floor and draped three heavy bags over her clothing and
became the colors of the dawn and the damned as the door closed.
I slowly unfold in the sun like a heathen king of antiquity
and wonder why the dryads in these dying trees
do not take the time to warn of catastrophe.
II. Divination
She was a farmer and in her fields were a hundred furrows
filled with corn that stretched higher than the reach of her arm.
That had been one part of her ambition, to have all the whiskey
that she could drink. Any paradise of value does nothing differently
from the mortal coil, save that it unwinds time like a golden wire
to give to the Chosen world enough to fabricate their heavens.
One of her figments of humanity, now long in disuse, had once
advanced the opinion that results were not penultimate;
that magnificence could be achieved by the machinations
produced in past days without expectation for a future.
Promptly she had banished him, and that night sat with a jar
hooked to her index and ring fingers and said to herself, for now
she was the last, “There is nothing free.”
She went walking the next morning. In the heat of the day
the moon still shone brightly somewhere in the East.
She had a group of horses that she no longer rode. Most of them
were in normal colors but a few were in lurid shades of red and blue.
There were dogs running in a meadow that was dotted
with dandelions that were used for food in centuries past but now
sufficed only to preserve themselves perpetually. Like many things
that also had outlived their usefulness, she did not destroy them
although it would have taken a mere snap of finger to thumb
to do so. Instead she kept to her custom and abandoned them
entirely to their own defenses. Although the flowers knew she no longer
cared for them they sacrificed their florets in attempts to brush
against her ankles or to land onto her palms or, oh rapture,
to be ensnared in her hair. She arrived again at her cottage
and came to her door from her stairs of fitted and smoothed boulders.
She took an Otis Redding vinyl record from its case and pierced
the first track with a needle. She took a drink from a clay jar
that she had cast on a wheel before painting upon it two X’s.
She never slept and she played guitar through the nights that she
permitted to occur and, though she remembered her words
as Narcissus remembers his cheekbones,
she never would sing something the same way twice.
III. Dimanche
He was sitting with a curved iron knife that was licking
the bark from a willow tree and through nights
illuminated by the uncountable corpses fastened
at blinding speeds to the void, every hour
like a clock-worked chime the blade would lose its edge
and he would take it as a lover’s lip between his teeth
and make of them a whetstone and the wood’s chips
became sandstone weeping like descending leaves.
His sanguinity raced itself to pool in clefts
left by an epoch of saltation. His carving
pushed an operatic timbre into the orchestra of dusk.
It beat the air in conquest of lust and betrayal.
Generations of men were pared off in crooked lines,
notched in a binary language that no one could read
and so they returned to carbon and nitrogen
and they had never truly been.
For six days he counted sins from the outside in
and peeled two hundred promises as the fragments
of the trunk ran down his arms like the bodies
of the Armenians on their short drop from shipboard
to the sea of the rishi Kaśyap. With a mighty groan,
the elder’s victory became clear and he directed his voice
to distant clouds. “The man to fell the last tree rooted
on Easter’s isle was daydreaming of girls with blue eyes.
He did not even hear the moment when the branches first
laid their sanguinary mouths to the dark dead earth
that had been a loyal nursemaid long before
the mothering and molting of the tallest mountains."
Though it once had strove like Babel, the highest point
of the last dying contrivance now was three feet
from the ground and, holding his breath, he punctured
the pad of his right index finger onto the spire.
The dull rumbling of static came to nothing
and the spirits of the stones turned to silence
from their elegiac strain and a wizened man
with eyes of pure white suddenly took the place
of the corpus of murdered timber. The god laid
propped onto his arm as if he were sitting for Goya.
He spoke in the low tones of a trumpet,
“My oldest friend, how have you been?”
The shade of ephemeral empire sheathed one of his weapons
and gritted his teeth for an instant before replying.
“Alright. All right. al-Right.” They laughed in the slow way
characteristic of men who have known each other too long
to find each other pleasant. The air escaping the man
with Medea’s eyes rattled like the wind passing through
the abandoned cloister of Oransay and with his maraca
he intoned, “You and I, oh ambitious one, are as proud
and useful as embroidery on a funereal shroud. I told you
of your future. Cassandra’s harp I gently plucked while
your hope degenerated into sanctified demise of heat
and now at long last you see that my soothing was not a mere
creation for my comfort. You can taste the blistered ocean,
hear the sound of nothing living, feel the soil that will never
again bear grass crumbling like palms in a furious
seismic oscillation, and every breath is of a conflagration.”
A sliver of ash was squeezed from the tip
of his life’s cigarette and his soul was riddled with splinters:
a bullet of ice, a club of gold,
a briefcase of things that cannot be sold.
The god chuckled, though it pained him,
took a flask of gin from the ether
and pulled juniper into his heart.
“I know that you have lived longer.”
The sage was speaking in the clipped malleable impressions
left by the cadence of horseshoes on a road of graphite
and crude oil. “I have come to abdicate. Fictitious Peter
at my gate sent to you what never should have been.
I had nearly forgotten who you were and this ignorance
is at my carotid like coruscant spurs and everything
is rust and this earth is not enough for us.”
The devil shrugged and stood six feet tall and blinked his eyes.
A god turned into fireflies that did not know to shine goodbyes
to proteins never meant to fold. They beat their wings
into the unbound cold and with nothing gained
and nothing lost their faces turned sharply into the frost.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Pygmalion
I. Prologue: Elissa
The goddess came to him and fluently
pressed her hand onto his shoulder.
After he turned, she playfully narrowed her eyes
and said, “Pygmalion, dear, you know my name.
You have raised your arms in the air.
What is it that you would say?
Shall I breathe into this shining light
the vapor that will turn the alabaster sheen
of her eyes to the shade of the crest of a wave?
Shall I press my lips upon her lips,
my gentle son her hand to kiss?
Oh, why would you desire this?”
He found his breath and then replied,
“I simply want to know her voice,
the burning of her tongue in my ear,
that she may hear the terrible fears
which course my veins in endless nights.
Propoetides have sickened me,
each shameless face looking the same,
each different name the same damned name.
I am elementally free from normal ties,
the vipers coiled in my eyes attest to this.
“Bring her to life. I want no other.”
She said, “It shall be as you wish.”
II. Introduction: Pygmalion
A few years after the miracle, Elissa left Pygmalion
for an island far from the shores of Cyprus.
It seemed to him that she’d floated away like the light
reflected by the edge of a knife, and with no candles
he sat on dull starless nights and drank blood-red wine.
He locked his tools into a laurel box and
banished it into the depths of a cupboard.
He would craft nothing more for princes or kings.
Years later, Pygmalion was returning home
with a gallon of wine when a man’s voice rose
over a gathered crowd. “Where are the seeds
of the pomegranate now? This hallowed paradox,
so despised by the Gods for exposing their idle treachery,”
said the man pontificating in the village square,
“uplifts our gaze to plans of building bridges
that will bring our blades closer to Hades’s blackened throat. “
He may have been a madman. On certain days
even the most grievous blasphemy can be forgiven.
The brick and mortar netting of the city’s streets
made a subtle trap for the heat cast by Hyperion.
Pygmalion was passing by the square when a very large block
of material the color of midnight caught his eye in the morning sun.
He walked closely to it so that he could see his reflection and
twisted his head from one side to the other . “I must have it,”
he whispered to the merchant. The man drew back in surprise,
reverently pressed his fingertips together, and said,
“Maestro, it is yours. I will accept no payment.”
Pygmalion nodded curtly and spun himself around the earth until
he found his house. He drank and slept and woke again,
and he began. For months he did little but drink and eat and sleep
and sculpt and drink, until one day he finished and slumped into a chair.
He leaned back for a moment, inhaled sharply, stood,
and made nearly noiseless foot-falls until he was face to face with his creation.
He touched his fingers to the hair behind her neck and whispered,
“Oh, Atropa belladonna, whose petals cut through thread,
I have seen the face of your favorite daughter.”
III. Hubris
The burning candles hissed and he turned in their direction.
“You,” he spat. Behind his words, a crescendo burgeoned.
“You. The most foul thing to find birth in a mutilated man.
You. The final meal before the hemlock cup.”
She laughed with the voice of the bells from a ship adrift
in the fog and deathly afraid of running aground. She sadly said,
“I am the one homegrown sapphire. I crown a diadem
encrusted otherwise with jewels bearing bloody histories
taken in raids of doom and fire from lands past the horizon.
I am Love, the only thing born exclusively from murder.
I must confess myself confused, my most darling, zealous artisan,
for I have come to offer you once again a gift as only I can give.”
He shook in fear and rage and nearly growled, “Say what you mean,
immortal devil, pollution upon our holy loam. Say what you mean.
What is it in her darkling eyes that you envy so intensely?
Does her beauty threaten yours, oh spirit of the deep?
Has the moon led your tortured thoughts to this scourge
of emptiness and loss that you now propose to repeat?
“You rule nothing but misery. Can you not see my beating broken heart,
or that your artifice’s caustic theft of all the tears that I have wept
has been sweeping me into your birth-cursed sea?
How dare you presume to steal my work again,
to ruin the sinew on the legs of men,
to carve deeper scars into ancient calloused skin?
I would be a slave behind a cart, a sacrifice
to your cousin’s rust-red jaws, or a frozen
wrist-slashed marionette before I would let your dulcet tongue
play the fox in my home and rob me of my masterpiece of ebony.
“Was your first great evil not enough? What have I done?
What have I done? For you I slept beneath the stars.
For you I melted golden coins into arabesques
that inspired praise for your visage on countless days.”
She bent at her waist and whispered his name.
“Pygmalion, dear, you seem deranged by promises I never made;
your sorrow has made you invade levels of antipathy
that are mostly the reserves of my enemies. You simple fool,
I love you still for the glory you’ve provided me,
for that perfect woman in a prison of ivory,
and, too, for this new soul with a uniqueness
like that of the shifting silver of Olympian snow.”
She straightened her poise and seemed titanic in height
as she reached out her hand as if to brush the cheeks of his vision.
He shouted, “Touch her not! I forbid it. You may come
without a knock, for I cannot seal my door to such as you,
foul Efreet, with your breath as sweet as the six small seeds
that marked your kind’s most foul deceit of another,
but you shall not condemn me again to the butcher’s blade.
You shall not obliterate this love of mine!” He made as if to seize
his statue’s heart then sunk to his knees in feverish reverie.
She slowly shook her head and stared through him at a serpent.
“Oh, my poor, drink-sodden, maddened Master,
how do you twist towards me such blame?
In your nights that bear no flame, you think
still of her in those foreign valleys, but do recall
that I did not say that she would love you, or any other man,
for all her days, and yet you castigate me as though
I was a murderess. You dumbly sought to find redress
in wineskins but ended with despair penned deeply in your chest.
Have you noticed that in all these years you have not even
spoken a word about her happiness? Are you even curious?”
She sighed. “It is your home, and I shall leave,
but do remember that things can spring to life on their own.”
Like the blinking of eyelids she was gone.
He rolled over and returned to sleep and woke
when the planet’s star began its daily ascent.
He glanced at the web he had built to hold his walls
to the earth below and to the empyrean
expanse above that was the crown on the luxurious villas
that ruled from eroded hilltops. He said goodbye
to his silent love and plodded along the beaten path
toward the vendor that sold the vine’s slowest poison.
The goddess came to him and fluently
pressed her hand onto his shoulder.
After he turned, she playfully narrowed her eyes
and said, “Pygmalion, dear, you know my name.
You have raised your arms in the air.
What is it that you would say?
Shall I breathe into this shining light
the vapor that will turn the alabaster sheen
of her eyes to the shade of the crest of a wave?
Shall I press my lips upon her lips,
my gentle son her hand to kiss?
Oh, why would you desire this?”
He found his breath and then replied,
“I simply want to know her voice,
the burning of her tongue in my ear,
that she may hear the terrible fears
which course my veins in endless nights.
Propoetides have sickened me,
each shameless face looking the same,
each different name the same damned name.
I am elementally free from normal ties,
the vipers coiled in my eyes attest to this.
“Bring her to life. I want no other.”
She said, “It shall be as you wish.”
II. Introduction: Pygmalion
A few years after the miracle, Elissa left Pygmalion
for an island far from the shores of Cyprus.
It seemed to him that she’d floated away like the light
reflected by the edge of a knife, and with no candles
he sat on dull starless nights and drank blood-red wine.
He locked his tools into a laurel box and
banished it into the depths of a cupboard.
He would craft nothing more for princes or kings.
Years later, Pygmalion was returning home
with a gallon of wine when a man’s voice rose
over a gathered crowd. “Where are the seeds
of the pomegranate now? This hallowed paradox,
so despised by the Gods for exposing their idle treachery,”
said the man pontificating in the village square,
“uplifts our gaze to plans of building bridges
that will bring our blades closer to Hades’s blackened throat. “
He may have been a madman. On certain days
even the most grievous blasphemy can be forgiven.
The brick and mortar netting of the city’s streets
made a subtle trap for the heat cast by Hyperion.
Pygmalion was passing by the square when a very large block
of material the color of midnight caught his eye in the morning sun.
He walked closely to it so that he could see his reflection and
twisted his head from one side to the other . “I must have it,”
he whispered to the merchant. The man drew back in surprise,
reverently pressed his fingertips together, and said,
“Maestro, it is yours. I will accept no payment.”
Pygmalion nodded curtly and spun himself around the earth until
he found his house. He drank and slept and woke again,
and he began. For months he did little but drink and eat and sleep
and sculpt and drink, until one day he finished and slumped into a chair.
He leaned back for a moment, inhaled sharply, stood,
and made nearly noiseless foot-falls until he was face to face with his creation.
He touched his fingers to the hair behind her neck and whispered,
“Oh, Atropa belladonna, whose petals cut through thread,
I have seen the face of your favorite daughter.”
III. Hubris
The burning candles hissed and he turned in their direction.
“You,” he spat. Behind his words, a crescendo burgeoned.
“You. The most foul thing to find birth in a mutilated man.
You. The final meal before the hemlock cup.”
She laughed with the voice of the bells from a ship adrift
in the fog and deathly afraid of running aground. She sadly said,
“I am the one homegrown sapphire. I crown a diadem
encrusted otherwise with jewels bearing bloody histories
taken in raids of doom and fire from lands past the horizon.
I am Love, the only thing born exclusively from murder.
I must confess myself confused, my most darling, zealous artisan,
for I have come to offer you once again a gift as only I can give.”
He shook in fear and rage and nearly growled, “Say what you mean,
immortal devil, pollution upon our holy loam. Say what you mean.
What is it in her darkling eyes that you envy so intensely?
Does her beauty threaten yours, oh spirit of the deep?
Has the moon led your tortured thoughts to this scourge
of emptiness and loss that you now propose to repeat?
“You rule nothing but misery. Can you not see my beating broken heart,
or that your artifice’s caustic theft of all the tears that I have wept
has been sweeping me into your birth-cursed sea?
How dare you presume to steal my work again,
to ruin the sinew on the legs of men,
to carve deeper scars into ancient calloused skin?
I would be a slave behind a cart, a sacrifice
to your cousin’s rust-red jaws, or a frozen
wrist-slashed marionette before I would let your dulcet tongue
play the fox in my home and rob me of my masterpiece of ebony.
“Was your first great evil not enough? What have I done?
What have I done? For you I slept beneath the stars.
For you I melted golden coins into arabesques
that inspired praise for your visage on countless days.”
She bent at her waist and whispered his name.
“Pygmalion, dear, you seem deranged by promises I never made;
your sorrow has made you invade levels of antipathy
that are mostly the reserves of my enemies. You simple fool,
I love you still for the glory you’ve provided me,
for that perfect woman in a prison of ivory,
and, too, for this new soul with a uniqueness
like that of the shifting silver of Olympian snow.”
She straightened her poise and seemed titanic in height
as she reached out her hand as if to brush the cheeks of his vision.
He shouted, “Touch her not! I forbid it. You may come
without a knock, for I cannot seal my door to such as you,
foul Efreet, with your breath as sweet as the six small seeds
that marked your kind’s most foul deceit of another,
but you shall not condemn me again to the butcher’s blade.
You shall not obliterate this love of mine!” He made as if to seize
his statue’s heart then sunk to his knees in feverish reverie.
She slowly shook her head and stared through him at a serpent.
“Oh, my poor, drink-sodden, maddened Master,
how do you twist towards me such blame?
In your nights that bear no flame, you think
still of her in those foreign valleys, but do recall
that I did not say that she would love you, or any other man,
for all her days, and yet you castigate me as though
I was a murderess. You dumbly sought to find redress
in wineskins but ended with despair penned deeply in your chest.
Have you noticed that in all these years you have not even
spoken a word about her happiness? Are you even curious?”
She sighed. “It is your home, and I shall leave,
but do remember that things can spring to life on their own.”
Like the blinking of eyelids she was gone.
He rolled over and returned to sleep and woke
when the planet’s star began its daily ascent.
He glanced at the web he had built to hold his walls
to the earth below and to the empyrean
expanse above that was the crown on the luxurious villas
that ruled from eroded hilltops. He said goodbye
to his silent love and plodded along the beaten path
toward the vendor that sold the vine’s slowest poison.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Jacob, called Israel
Later on the road I met a man who explained
that even as I fled my deception was already formed.
I had been a herder for all my days,
so when it was proposed that the labor of seven years
would, in turn, grant me a great love, it was not hard
to accept. After many changes of the tide I did despair,
beating my chest and wailing in a manner beyond compare,
“Shall I break my back for three more years,
so that, tearful, she may tell me of my wasted time?
Why not turn this shepherd’s crook into a spear
and then wander for my remaining life
until an novel enemy presents herself?
I will toss to her my weapons and place my hands
behind my head and tell her to gash my side like Christ’s,
but she will care little for those ancient rites
that best belong to unread books upon a shelf,
and shake her head, dropping the spear onto the veldt,
and walk deliberately away with the sky balanced atop her hair,
whistling slowly as the sun burns up in the night,
before turning with eyes like hellfire and giving to me a new name."
Later on the road I met a man who explained
that even as I fled my deception was already formed.
that even as I fled my deception was already formed.
I had been a herder for all my days,
so when it was proposed that the labor of seven years
would, in turn, grant me a great love, it was not hard
to accept. After many changes of the tide I did despair,
beating my chest and wailing in a manner beyond compare,
“Shall I break my back for three more years,
so that, tearful, she may tell me of my wasted time?
Why not turn this shepherd’s crook into a spear
and then wander for my remaining life
until an novel enemy presents herself?
I will toss to her my weapons and place my hands
behind my head and tell her to gash my side like Christ’s,
but she will care little for those ancient rites
that best belong to unread books upon a shelf,
and shake her head, dropping the spear onto the veldt,
and walk deliberately away with the sky balanced atop her hair,
whistling slowly as the sun burns up in the night,
before turning with eyes like hellfire and giving to me a new name."
Later on the road I met a man who explained
that even as I fled my deception was already formed.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Slow Fade
Like most of these places
there is not toilet paper
nor murdered trees with which
to wash your hands.
The commode’s lid has duct tape
placed upon it although
it does not make a seal.
Sometimes there is nothing to say,
but mostly such delusions
vanish with the wind’s breath.
The precursor of our loaded hand
was decent enough,
I must suppose.
There was an appropriate lack
of
aesthetic contempt
musically formulaic emulation
(and
of brilliance)
although I am sure
that they labored with all
of their faculties.
People around me stare.
They are unaware of my imminent
fame and canonization.
Am I intended to begin
a litany of what
I have yet to see?
I know their bass player’s skill,
their drummer’s passion and intensity,
the desperate flailing of a talented singer,
the uncommon poise and perfection
of Our Angel of the Cello.
I have heard these songs before.
I have pressed my head to walls or doors
and found a tiny solution amidst the conflagration
of our time.
I have lived long enough to hate a rhyme.
Oh, but you should have seen it all,
and then make attempts to awake
the same as you had been
before.
there is not toilet paper
nor murdered trees with which
to wash your hands.
The commode’s lid has duct tape
placed upon it although
it does not make a seal.
Sometimes there is nothing to say,
but mostly such delusions
vanish with the wind’s breath.
The precursor of our loaded hand
was decent enough,
I must suppose.
There was an appropriate lack
of
aesthetic contempt
musically formulaic emulation
(and
of brilliance)
although I am sure
that they labored with all
of their faculties.
People around me stare.
They are unaware of my imminent
fame and canonization.
Am I intended to begin
a litany of what
I have yet to see?
I know their bass player’s skill,
their drummer’s passion and intensity,
the desperate flailing of a talented singer,
the uncommon poise and perfection
of Our Angel of the Cello.
I have heard these songs before.
I have pressed my head to walls or doors
and found a tiny solution amidst the conflagration
of our time.
I have lived long enough to hate a rhyme.
Oh, but you should have seen it all,
and then make attempts to awake
the same as you had been
before.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Fragments 2
I watch her in sideways mirrors.
We know who we are,
but she disappears so frequently
and it leaves me breathless
and poisonous
_____________________________
I woke this morning to her breath on my lips
but
it was only the oscillating blades of a fan.
Perhaps they can be sharpened
to be congruent with her wit.
_____________________________
When we abandon pretense
there is murder in our mornings
that we do not bother to mourn.
_____________________________
She is lovely
but
she writes
beautifications
of
modern devils.
_____________________________
It is not as if a train
can choose its tracks
and jump and change
into a life where
the men with flailing symbols
are unable to control each swing and strain.
_______________________________
-a cross made of axes,
a peasant's sword.
He promised them a voice.
Beware of such men.
________________________________
"I will not be a spine!" she says,
though crippled by a crime made on her behalf.
I tire of these diamond rings
that my friends give girls to squeeze
so that they will never know what they'll become
when deprived of self-affirming craft.
Smile at their open bars.
And who are you, or I to send
our fingers to the eyes
of those pitiable hopefuls,
while somewhere someone more sadistic
smashes bricks onto
our tiny faces and says,
"I await a cliche description
of the way we die."
?
_________________________________
Terrible as an army
with blood on their breath,
their whispered death padding
the cacophony of iron-shod feet.
_________________________________
Oh, baby, if you don't believe me,
then why do you look so afraid?
If the truth sets us free, then a lie
is a whale in the waves, powerful
until it's spun around and lands onto the sand.
We grab harpoons to protest
this encroachment of our pristine beach,
break a spear-tip in a skull and throw the rest
into a sparkling sea-side cave, and drink fermented life
until the water washes all the sin away.
We know who we are,
but she disappears so frequently
and it leaves me breathless
and poisonous
_____________________________
I woke this morning to her breath on my lips
but
it was only the oscillating blades of a fan.
Perhaps they can be sharpened
to be congruent with her wit.
_____________________________
When we abandon pretense
there is murder in our mornings
that we do not bother to mourn.
_____________________________
She is lovely
but
she writes
beautifications
of
modern devils.
_____________________________
It is not as if a train
can choose its tracks
and jump and change
into a life where
the men with flailing symbols
are unable to control each swing and strain.
_______________________________
-a cross made of axes,
a peasant's sword.
He promised them a voice.
Beware of such men.
________________________________
"I will not be a spine!" she says,
though crippled by a crime made on her behalf.
I tire of these diamond rings
that my friends give girls to squeeze
so that they will never know what they'll become
when deprived of self-affirming craft.
Smile at their open bars.
And who are you, or I to send
our fingers to the eyes
of those pitiable hopefuls,
while somewhere someone more sadistic
smashes bricks onto
our tiny faces and says,
"I await a cliche description
of the way we die."
?
_________________________________
Terrible as an army
with blood on their breath,
their whispered death padding
the cacophony of iron-shod feet.
_________________________________
Oh, baby, if you don't believe me,
then why do you look so afraid?
If the truth sets us free, then a lie
is a whale in the waves, powerful
until it's spun around and lands onto the sand.
We grab harpoons to protest
this encroachment of our pristine beach,
break a spear-tip in a skull and throw the rest
into a sparkling sea-side cave, and drink fermented life
until the water washes all the sin away.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Staring Back
I. Morning
When I went to sleep
Either/Or
was just starting.
I woke before
From a Basement on a Hill
finished,
rousted by the jaunty chiming
of my phone.
I rolled on my sleeping bags and
hit the button on the side
of that blue alarm clock
as it sat
on top
of my Yale’s Complete Shakespeare.
I stretched, stood up,
and walked to the kitchen.
We had found ourselves without creamer
the day before, and for this reason
or some other
she had not set the auto-timer
on the coffee maker.
In the bathroom
I brushed my teeth and spit
a little blood out
with my baking soda/peroxide toothpaste,
jumped in a shower that was too hot
and jumped out a little over seven minutes later.
I always brush my teeth too hard.
I am a wrecking ball to a toothbrush.
I put the same boxers on as before,
measured two cups of water in a pot,
set the burner to High,
and went to her room to wake her.
She made a noncommittal sound.
I dropped the ramen into the boiling water,
set a timer for three minutes,
went to my room to put on pants and a shirt,
walked past her bird’s cage
(draped in black for a funeral)
and loudly said,
“Yo. Get the fuck up.”
She, muffled by her pillow, replied
“I am up.”
I told her that it didn’t count until she was sitting.
She acquiesced.
I ate my ramen
and pinned a bluebird over my heart
and waited until it was time to go.
I put my sunglasses on
and locked the door
as I shut it and stepped out
into a surprisingly pleasant manifestation of Sol.
II. Noon
I had forgotten my sandwich
and my stomach was again
a hollow bone that had yet to be made into a skeleton key,
sitting with that fledgling demonic grin,
smiling with every promise of a cavernous future,
yawning with a gaping maw that sent shudders
to my bloody-bitten fingernails.
I silenced it.
I had not asked its opinion.
I licked my tongue over my gums
and became troubled.
I pushed through a set
of lightning-flashed-sand doors
and found the nearest mirror.
Most of the time I do not like those
masterful reflections in polished glass.
They remind me too much
of something out of Nietzsche.
This time that shiftless mass blanketing one wall
was useful.
Leering back
were things vaguely scorbutic but completely unacceptable.
III. Sun Falling
If I had a soul
It would be twisted up in a circle
like a broken guitar string in a foreign town
and tossed surreptitiously into
the corner of a room,
where It would remain
quite satisfied
with the occasional brightness
of a smile.
If I had a soul
It would be decrepit
like a battered sixty-five year-old book
and
It would sit on a desk
while a mockingbird sang
from its ancient lunar perch.
If I had a soul
It would be hidden behind mirrored sunglasses
and the permanent shadows in photographs
and
It would spend all of its time
treading water
with a mermaid grasping on, giving soft laughs
as she thrashed her tail ever deeper.
IV. Midnight
I unlocked the doorknob and pushed.
Nothing.
I moved the key up to the deadbolt lock,
having trouble with even common tasks
as it stuck halfway in.
She opened the door and I stepped inside.
There was only one package of ramen in the cupboard.
There were no pieces of bread,
no butter,
two eggs,
and one flour tortilla
dancing in a controlled climate.
I found and opened a can of ranch style red beans
and heated them in the microwave.
She said “Poverty is the best diet.”
I found it hard to argue.
I ate them with a spoon. They were not half bad.
I went to the cabinet where her medicines
and various vitamins reside.
I took a B supplement to fight off beriberi.
My eyes had been lousy for a few days
and I thought I’d found something to blame.
I didn’t want to get glasses, even ones for reading,
and in any case I couldn’t afford them
though they have them for a dollar in certain stores.
I saw a bottle of Women’s Once-a-Day vitamins
behind the translucent orange,
clutched it in my ugly hands and spun it around to see
if there was C in it. There was.
I asked permission, checked for iron content (not alarmingly high)
and took three.
You have to be one hell of an idiot to not notice
early symptoms of scurvy once you’ve had them before.
You have to be
one hell
of a something
to exhibit
the early symptoms of scurvy once you’ve had it before.
When I went to sleep
Either/Or
was just starting.
I woke before
From a Basement on a Hill
finished,
rousted by the jaunty chiming
of my phone.
I rolled on my sleeping bags and
hit the button on the side
of that blue alarm clock
as it sat
on top
of my Yale’s Complete Shakespeare.
I stretched, stood up,
and walked to the kitchen.
We had found ourselves without creamer
the day before, and for this reason
or some other
she had not set the auto-timer
on the coffee maker.
In the bathroom
I brushed my teeth and spit
a little blood out
with my baking soda/peroxide toothpaste,
jumped in a shower that was too hot
and jumped out a little over seven minutes later.
I always brush my teeth too hard.
I am a wrecking ball to a toothbrush.
I put the same boxers on as before,
measured two cups of water in a pot,
set the burner to High,
and went to her room to wake her.
She made a noncommittal sound.
I dropped the ramen into the boiling water,
set a timer for three minutes,
went to my room to put on pants and a shirt,
walked past her bird’s cage
(draped in black for a funeral)
and loudly said,
“Yo. Get the fuck up.”
She, muffled by her pillow, replied
“I am up.”
I told her that it didn’t count until she was sitting.
She acquiesced.
I ate my ramen
and pinned a bluebird over my heart
and waited until it was time to go.
I put my sunglasses on
and locked the door
as I shut it and stepped out
into a surprisingly pleasant manifestation of Sol.
II. Noon
I had forgotten my sandwich
and my stomach was again
a hollow bone that had yet to be made into a skeleton key,
sitting with that fledgling demonic grin,
smiling with every promise of a cavernous future,
yawning with a gaping maw that sent shudders
to my bloody-bitten fingernails.
I silenced it.
I had not asked its opinion.
I licked my tongue over my gums
and became troubled.
I pushed through a set
of lightning-flashed-sand doors
and found the nearest mirror.
Most of the time I do not like those
masterful reflections in polished glass.
They remind me too much
of something out of Nietzsche.
This time that shiftless mass blanketing one wall
was useful.
Leering back
were things vaguely scorbutic but completely unacceptable.
III. Sun Falling
If I had a soul
It would be twisted up in a circle
like a broken guitar string in a foreign town
and tossed surreptitiously into
the corner of a room,
where It would remain
quite satisfied
with the occasional brightness
of a smile.
If I had a soul
It would be decrepit
like a battered sixty-five year-old book
and
It would sit on a desk
while a mockingbird sang
from its ancient lunar perch.
If I had a soul
It would be hidden behind mirrored sunglasses
and the permanent shadows in photographs
and
It would spend all of its time
treading water
with a mermaid grasping on, giving soft laughs
as she thrashed her tail ever deeper.
IV. Midnight
I unlocked the doorknob and pushed.
Nothing.
I moved the key up to the deadbolt lock,
having trouble with even common tasks
as it stuck halfway in.
She opened the door and I stepped inside.
There was only one package of ramen in the cupboard.
There were no pieces of bread,
no butter,
two eggs,
and one flour tortilla
dancing in a controlled climate.
I found and opened a can of ranch style red beans
and heated them in the microwave.
She said “Poverty is the best diet.”
I found it hard to argue.
I ate them with a spoon. They were not half bad.
I went to the cabinet where her medicines
and various vitamins reside.
I took a B supplement to fight off beriberi.
My eyes had been lousy for a few days
and I thought I’d found something to blame.
I didn’t want to get glasses, even ones for reading,
and in any case I couldn’t afford them
though they have them for a dollar in certain stores.
I saw a bottle of Women’s Once-a-Day vitamins
behind the translucent orange,
clutched it in my ugly hands and spun it around to see
if there was C in it. There was.
I asked permission, checked for iron content (not alarmingly high)
and took three.
You have to be one hell of an idiot to not notice
early symptoms of scurvy once you’ve had them before.
You have to be
one hell
of a something
to exhibit
the early symptoms of scurvy once you’ve had it before.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
All I was expecting was a wooden song
I feel as though
I had walked
through an ancient forest
and the wind was whispering/whipping sonnets
then
suddenly,
I found myself
freed from the fierce vines and Mimir’s guardian branches,
in a clearing
under
a half-lit canopy of stars.
In this place I discovered a precarious stone,
encircled with knife-sharp spines that were
endless threats,
but which had,
as an exception,
one smooth hollow, like Baldur’s throne,
within which I then rested.
In an instant a strange and powerful mist
was clinging to
my eyes
my face
my hands
and the grass beneath my feet;
indeed it enveloped all things
living and dead and dying.
It did not obscure the stars.
I closed my eyes and let
the mist take me.
For a moment I could no longer hear
the sounds and screams of war,
as if such barbarity were a
fanciful
indulgence of imagination
and not a grim reality.
The mist became less dense and a vapored entity
quite gingerly appeared. I did not know what to say,
most attempted greetings had made little sense to any other delusions,
so prudently I kept my hands by my side and I was silent.
She asked me what I could tell her of the world.
- It seems to be here entirely by accident. It is a speck
in the grandiose expanse, like the blood a pin-prick
pools into a miniscule bead on the pad of a lover’s palm;
one that would bring you to the brink of impulsivity,
a consuming desire to pull her hand to your lips and
gently take the blood to be your own- which is to say that
generally clarity of self is valued above evaluation of a broader situation.
The human inhabitants all have murderers as antecedents.
There are many other animals and their pedigrees
share that same black shame.
I asked her if she had a name,
and if any were like her.
- My name is Atlanta, chosen because I have a fondness
for the myth and for both of its themes. One of them
demonstrates that with great ability and a… certain amount
of guile and assistance, one can escape an undesired Fate
(though no threads are then changed upon the loom).
It also serves to remind people that they will not receive
the necessary extraordinary help required to avert
their varied mundane crises, and so stifle and diminish
the surprise on shocked faces when ill news first arrives.
And to answer your second question, if there were others
like me, then I would not be Me at all, would I?
She asked of the state of the world.
- As always it is a state of wealth enmeshed
with alarmingly frequent bloodshed. Some
have said that we descend quickly to Hell.
Because millions die from enemies too small
to even crawl or even creep but they create
crevices so deep in those that survive,
and even in their families huddled over one dinner plate,
because children starve and their hair is red,
because a man can be murdered for a loaf of bread,
many visit church services to escape…
others prefer a whiskey drink or even
swimming out to sea to sink. Old alliances
are dead as dense-packed stone. Only one
power can do anything at all and all others
stew in their own bones as they await a clarion call.
I asked if there was anything she'd like to say.
-I was captivated for a time by the French language,
and how within it there were subtleties that could emerge
that would bring a crowd of nobles to their knees
in fits of laughter. For example, the word for death is la mort,
while love is l'amour. However, when pronounced
they sound identical, which has had interesting consequences
in the French vernacular. There is much to be said when love
and death sound the same, but I shall not say it. I am quite tired,
you see. I have lights to stare upon and miles more to go.
I was about to beg her to stay,
to gash my knees and back and neck
on the rock and stone;
if it was required,
to dispose of sanity
and follow her forever
and she laughed lightly (droplets falling from her lips).
“I must leave,” she said. “Your eyes betray your intent,
your intent betrays your discontent,
and though once before, with valiance,
I ran so swiftly that I could match the stallions
on the first real day of spring,
I do not owe you such a thing.”
Most of the mist turned to steam,
quickly brushed away by the wind.
On my lips it lingered longer
as I stood again and forced my way
with breaking branches towards the glen.
As soon as the starlight faded from view
I instantly knew that if I should attempt
a return, that the rock and trees and clearing
may well remain, but that I would not see her again.
I found the narrow corridor
between the mountains
and heard the preening of a peahen.
They have been accused of being drab,
but it is only because they are
more versed in holding onto secrets
that they choose to appear in this fashion.
I clear my throat and say my surname
three loud times.
“You’re late,” a chorus chimes.
“It is not my fault. I met someone
who I did not expect but now
she’s disappeared and I shall never
find her again.”
“He’s exhausted, can’t you see?”
some well-intending soul says.
“Quick, someone, bring him some water.”
I refuse this kind offer and lay my head
on a carpeted floor, intent on
dreaming the dreams
that I allow myself to dream,
with the mist's embrace coolly burning
its unique feeling into memory.
I had walked
through an ancient forest
and the wind was whispering/whipping sonnets
then
suddenly,
I found myself
freed from the fierce vines and Mimir’s guardian branches,
in a clearing
under
a half-lit canopy of stars.
In this place I discovered a precarious stone,
encircled with knife-sharp spines that were
endless threats,
but which had,
as an exception,
one smooth hollow, like Baldur’s throne,
within which I then rested.
In an instant a strange and powerful mist
was clinging to
my eyes
my face
my hands
and the grass beneath my feet;
indeed it enveloped all things
living and dead and dying.
It did not obscure the stars.
I closed my eyes and let
the mist take me.
For a moment I could no longer hear
the sounds and screams of war,
as if such barbarity were a
fanciful
indulgence of imagination
and not a grim reality.
The mist became less dense and a vapored entity
quite gingerly appeared. I did not know what to say,
most attempted greetings had made little sense to any other delusions,
so prudently I kept my hands by my side and I was silent.
She asked me what I could tell her of the world.
- It seems to be here entirely by accident. It is a speck
in the grandiose expanse, like the blood a pin-prick
pools into a miniscule bead on the pad of a lover’s palm;
one that would bring you to the brink of impulsivity,
a consuming desire to pull her hand to your lips and
gently take the blood to be your own- which is to say that
generally clarity of self is valued above evaluation of a broader situation.
The human inhabitants all have murderers as antecedents.
There are many other animals and their pedigrees
share that same black shame.
I asked her if she had a name,
and if any were like her.
- My name is Atlanta, chosen because I have a fondness
for the myth and for both of its themes. One of them
demonstrates that with great ability and a… certain amount
of guile and assistance, one can escape an undesired Fate
(though no threads are then changed upon the loom).
It also serves to remind people that they will not receive
the necessary extraordinary help required to avert
their varied mundane crises, and so stifle and diminish
the surprise on shocked faces when ill news first arrives.
And to answer your second question, if there were others
like me, then I would not be Me at all, would I?
She asked of the state of the world.
- As always it is a state of wealth enmeshed
with alarmingly frequent bloodshed. Some
have said that we descend quickly to Hell.
Because millions die from enemies too small
to even crawl or even creep but they create
crevices so deep in those that survive,
and even in their families huddled over one dinner plate,
because children starve and their hair is red,
because a man can be murdered for a loaf of bread,
many visit church services to escape…
others prefer a whiskey drink or even
swimming out to sea to sink. Old alliances
are dead as dense-packed stone. Only one
power can do anything at all and all others
stew in their own bones as they await a clarion call.
I asked if there was anything she'd like to say.
-I was captivated for a time by the French language,
and how within it there were subtleties that could emerge
that would bring a crowd of nobles to their knees
in fits of laughter. For example, the word for death is la mort,
while love is l'amour. However, when pronounced
they sound identical, which has had interesting consequences
in the French vernacular. There is much to be said when love
and death sound the same, but I shall not say it. I am quite tired,
you see. I have lights to stare upon and miles more to go.
I was about to beg her to stay,
to gash my knees and back and neck
on the rock and stone;
if it was required,
to dispose of sanity
and follow her forever
and she laughed lightly (droplets falling from her lips).
“I must leave,” she said. “Your eyes betray your intent,
your intent betrays your discontent,
and though once before, with valiance,
I ran so swiftly that I could match the stallions
on the first real day of spring,
I do not owe you such a thing.”
Most of the mist turned to steam,
quickly brushed away by the wind.
On my lips it lingered longer
as I stood again and forced my way
with breaking branches towards the glen.
As soon as the starlight faded from view
I instantly knew that if I should attempt
a return, that the rock and trees and clearing
may well remain, but that I would not see her again.
I found the narrow corridor
between the mountains
and heard the preening of a peahen.
They have been accused of being drab,
but it is only because they are
more versed in holding onto secrets
that they choose to appear in this fashion.
I clear my throat and say my surname
three loud times.
“You’re late,” a chorus chimes.
“It is not my fault. I met someone
who I did not expect but now
she’s disappeared and I shall never
find her again.”
“He’s exhausted, can’t you see?”
some well-intending soul says.
“Quick, someone, bring him some water.”
I refuse this kind offer and lay my head
on a carpeted floor, intent on
dreaming the dreams
that I allow myself to dream,
with the mist's embrace coolly burning
its unique feeling into memory.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
All that was required of me was that I sit very still
I.
I told her,
“I’ve seen the future,
when your mouth is bloody as Garm’s.”
And she said
“Oh, you be silent,
These are not slim chains on my arms.”
She set up a table
with two folding chairs around it,
and I lingered on her couch
while she lit three wicks
in one candle
then shut off so many lights.
Perhaps it was the scent of vanilla
or the prism of the water in my glass,
but I savored every bite I took
of that exquisite tomato/basil sauce
over chicken and rice with
vegetables that I didn't hate
and rocked my toes to Louie’s jazz.
You can’t know the future
(that thought is a vulture)
but it’s one that seems to last,
and even though the converse is attractive
to actors, murderers, and poets,
our memories are mangled by our past.
When she was not watching
I stole my napkin,
in truth a folded paper towel,
and made it into a square.
I put it my wallet
before I was caught.
II.
We never have choices even if we have the voices
of the Gods inside our heads. We hold on to the present
even when it’s evident that our time is short instead,
and that we should be furious, venting fire and flooding
at the way we spend our days. It is of no comfort,
or perhaps just a small one, that we can make such
uncomfortable things a haze to wave our fingers through
in the midst of crumbling through a maze.
I thought that I could love her, for one fleeting moment,
but I killed that fancy there. It was just as she said,
a total impossibility, one that inexorably leads to a coffin
or perhaps an electric chair.
She had me utterly frozen on a cushion
and I knew my time had come.
She would paint me so that no one else
could see I only had one eye.
Under those bright lights I joked and said
“Come on, I’ll tell you what you want to know”
She said “I am not curious, I’ve lived quite a while,
and know that Odin has no soul, so you don’t have to worry.
This shred of intimacy will end when the camera dies.”
She said “You seem startled that I could recognize you
without that absurd wide-brimmed hat. You may have fooled
every human frame but I am just a body hiding flame.”
She caught me unaware and I was feeling quite insane,
she laughed and said “The wise are rumored to have
some small bit of trouble with the memory of names.”
“You remember me, the immense serpent
chewing on my tail, the paper-pale guardian of hell.
You thought I was the other one, but in truth I am all three
and so you will spend your life like many others
in your endless dreams of me. You cannot evade
this charming little wraith. Even if I let you run
you would not want to escape this perfect cave.”
III.
Eventually she got the photograph
that she wanted and she was beautiful.
I had embarrassed myself earlier by opining thus
as she was leaning in her doorway and I was sitting quite still in awe.
And so there I was,
captured for a moment
as I truly am,
a demon who takes light
and with parlor tricks twists it to darkness
so that no one can see my face;
a mercurial Mongol
sleeping in the saddle,
never staying in one place
long enough to see what I have wrought,
or the chaos in my wake
that must have such a dreadful cost.
I tell them to be careful,
that I wreak destruction and I burn what’s in my way.
I do not give the trite cursory glance at my trail
to falsely remember the beginning of decay.
Oh, it started before me, don’t be made a fool,
we all come from somewhere else;
whether born on the bayou or melted out of a furnace,
you’ll have to tighten your belt
when food is the enemy, that horrid preserver
of all our torrid ways.
You can hate the sunlight,
yes we all hate the sunlight,
and the things it makes us do.
We can burn up within it or avoid all that static
and end up with wind-swept knees.
Then it was over, yes, it was All over,
and she took me back to my house.
Until next time I said- not knowing the future,
immune to the future. (the Norns had given back my eye)
“You weren’t using it at all!” came their deep and dusty call.
With rage I tell the roots that nothing changes if you try.
IV.
I scream out “I am a monster! I am a monster,
but I can break right through your chains!
Just because I know what the future does not mean,
it still has possibilities and these are things I will profane!!”
A woman’s voice says
“How long has he been this way?”
I give a slashing cry.
“Forever! Forever! A heart of iron
cannot have the freedom you assume
when moving into a dusty room;
it must carry out its horrid task
until it becomes time for its doom.”
“You’re plugging cords into themselves
and knocking groceries from the shelves.
You’re ripping tile from the floor
and you are calling it a door,
but when I put my head inside
I find a place where I awake
but not a land where I can hide.”
I told her,
“I’ve seen the future,
when your mouth is bloody as Garm’s.”
And she said
“Oh, you be silent,
These are not slim chains on my arms.”
She set up a table
with two folding chairs around it,
and I lingered on her couch
while she lit three wicks
in one candle
then shut off so many lights.
Perhaps it was the scent of vanilla
or the prism of the water in my glass,
but I savored every bite I took
of that exquisite tomato/basil sauce
over chicken and rice with
vegetables that I didn't hate
and rocked my toes to Louie’s jazz.
You can’t know the future
(that thought is a vulture)
but it’s one that seems to last,
and even though the converse is attractive
to actors, murderers, and poets,
our memories are mangled by our past.
When she was not watching
I stole my napkin,
in truth a folded paper towel,
and made it into a square.
I put it my wallet
before I was caught.
II.
We never have choices even if we have the voices
of the Gods inside our heads. We hold on to the present
even when it’s evident that our time is short instead,
and that we should be furious, venting fire and flooding
at the way we spend our days. It is of no comfort,
or perhaps just a small one, that we can make such
uncomfortable things a haze to wave our fingers through
in the midst of crumbling through a maze.
I thought that I could love her, for one fleeting moment,
but I killed that fancy there. It was just as she said,
a total impossibility, one that inexorably leads to a coffin
or perhaps an electric chair.
She had me utterly frozen on a cushion
and I knew my time had come.
She would paint me so that no one else
could see I only had one eye.
Under those bright lights I joked and said
“Come on, I’ll tell you what you want to know”
She said “I am not curious, I’ve lived quite a while,
and know that Odin has no soul, so you don’t have to worry.
This shred of intimacy will end when the camera dies.”
She said “You seem startled that I could recognize you
without that absurd wide-brimmed hat. You may have fooled
every human frame but I am just a body hiding flame.”
She caught me unaware and I was feeling quite insane,
she laughed and said “The wise are rumored to have
some small bit of trouble with the memory of names.”
“You remember me, the immense serpent
chewing on my tail, the paper-pale guardian of hell.
You thought I was the other one, but in truth I am all three
and so you will spend your life like many others
in your endless dreams of me. You cannot evade
this charming little wraith. Even if I let you run
you would not want to escape this perfect cave.”
III.
Eventually she got the photograph
that she wanted and she was beautiful.
I had embarrassed myself earlier by opining thus
as she was leaning in her doorway and I was sitting quite still in awe.
And so there I was,
captured for a moment
as I truly am,
a demon who takes light
and with parlor tricks twists it to darkness
so that no one can see my face;
a mercurial Mongol
sleeping in the saddle,
never staying in one place
long enough to see what I have wrought,
or the chaos in my wake
that must have such a dreadful cost.
I tell them to be careful,
that I wreak destruction and I burn what’s in my way.
I do not give the trite cursory glance at my trail
to falsely remember the beginning of decay.
Oh, it started before me, don’t be made a fool,
we all come from somewhere else;
whether born on the bayou or melted out of a furnace,
you’ll have to tighten your belt
when food is the enemy, that horrid preserver
of all our torrid ways.
You can hate the sunlight,
yes we all hate the sunlight,
and the things it makes us do.
We can burn up within it or avoid all that static
and end up with wind-swept knees.
Then it was over, yes, it was All over,
and she took me back to my house.
Until next time I said- not knowing the future,
immune to the future. (the Norns had given back my eye)
“You weren’t using it at all!” came their deep and dusty call.
With rage I tell the roots that nothing changes if you try.
IV.
I scream out “I am a monster! I am a monster,
but I can break right through your chains!
Just because I know what the future does not mean,
it still has possibilities and these are things I will profane!!”
A woman’s voice says
“How long has he been this way?”
I give a slashing cry.
“Forever! Forever! A heart of iron
cannot have the freedom you assume
when moving into a dusty room;
it must carry out its horrid task
until it becomes time for its doom.”
“You’re plugging cords into themselves
and knocking groceries from the shelves.
You’re ripping tile from the floor
and you are calling it a door,
but when I put my head inside
I find a place where I awake
but not a land where I can hide.”
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Poem by an anonymous friend
And I
wasn't
informed
that you
were the
only one
able to lie
around
here. I
apologize.
Eat your
own words,
poet.
-anon, July 24 4:42 am
wasn't
informed
that you
were the
only one
able to lie
around
here. I
apologize.
Eat your
own words,
poet.
-anon, July 24 4:42 am
Rejection Letter Summary
Mr. Davis,
We regret to inform you
that your submission
has been rejected.
From your biography,
it appears that you are young.
Perhaps when you grow older
you may ascend your current mediocrity
and
we will again welcome
a survey
your work.
One must always hope.
Respectfully Yours
We regret to inform you
that your submission
has been rejected.
From your biography,
it appears that you are young.
Perhaps when you grow older
you may ascend your current mediocrity
and
we will again welcome
a survey
your work.
One must always hope.
Respectfully Yours
Friday, July 23, 2010
Babysitter
Babysitting,
she called it;
the thing she would
do no longer,
as if I had never
drank colossal
amounts of wine
before,
and
required a caretaker.
She was trying to
insult me.
This is done from
time to time.
It is, occasionally,
more subtle,
but never successful.
There is sometimes a flash
behind
the eyes, you see,
and this brightness
lets you know
when the girl
is no longer just fucking around.
No woman
who actually
held
that sentiment
would stick around.
I did not
break anything at all,
not even me.
Although it is nearly seven
in the morning
I cannot understand why she seems
displeased.
she called it;
the thing she would
do no longer,
as if I had never
drank colossal
amounts of wine
before,
and
required a caretaker.
She was trying to
insult me.
This is done from
time to time.
It is, occasionally,
more subtle,
but never successful.
There is sometimes a flash
behind
the eyes, you see,
and this brightness
lets you know
when the girl
is no longer just fucking around.
No woman
who actually
held
that sentiment
would stick around.
I did not
break anything at all,
not even me.
Although it is nearly seven
in the morning
I cannot understand why she seems
displeased.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Places I Disappear
I.
The firmament is concrete,
painted a darker gray
than the normal grey
of concrete
for a reason
that must have seemed
sensible,
at least for a time.
On the floor
is a bright rug,
a girl’s rug,
bordered in pink
and decorated
with green leaves
and purple spirals
and flowers of various sorts.
As is nearly always true,
I have on blue jeans
a black T-shirt (Alkaline Trio)
and while directly overhead
my family indulges their religion
I fall to my knees
then curl onto the rug
(empty suitcases and treadmills as my companions)
and weep.
At first it is the
silent salt,
dredged out of the darkness of mines,
that streams down
in well established trails
that terminate, for mere moments,
on the right corner of my mouth
and the slight hollow
(so pleasing to be kissed upon)
between the hinge of the jaw
and the area directly behind the ear.
Soon, instead of this
reserved dignity,
I am crying out
diminutive nothings
and my body is given over
to the paroxysms of my anguish
that steadily seems to be inevitable.
I roll myself into a ball
and am now choking, gagging
on the breath that
is as automatic as my sadness
and nearly as reviled.
My head, the malevolent malcontent
to blame for all of this,
begins to throb its bass drum beat
and after a time
I stand and give
the sodium
to the skeleton
centered on my shirt.
It is somewhat to the right
of my sternum, which, of course,
is a little out of place.
It is placed more in the sinister direction.
It is perhaps a happy accident,
as it will certainly make stabbing into
my heart
much more difficult
than if my body was made in
the mundane and proper way.
II.
Friends have sometimes
noticed that I take
trips to the bathroom
more frequently than is typical.
I assume that they do not know
the cause of my absences,
but perhaps they are merely being kind.
I can splash some water on my face
and everything is the same again.
I have had bloodshot eyes for my whole life,
at first from allergies.
I have just discovered
by way of a query into my magnificent memory
that I have probably cried
in every bathroom that
I’ve been in
more than three times.
Maybe it is just that no one pays attention.
Though I like to imagine that I am clever
it may be that I simply
do not understand anything at all.
I swear I’ll get that boulder
to the top before next I sleep.
The firmament is concrete,
painted a darker gray
than the normal grey
of concrete
for a reason
that must have seemed
sensible,
at least for a time.
On the floor
is a bright rug,
a girl’s rug,
bordered in pink
and decorated
with green leaves
and purple spirals
and flowers of various sorts.
As is nearly always true,
I have on blue jeans
a black T-shirt (Alkaline Trio)
and while directly overhead
my family indulges their religion
I fall to my knees
then curl onto the rug
(empty suitcases and treadmills as my companions)
and weep.
At first it is the
silent salt,
dredged out of the darkness of mines,
that streams down
in well established trails
that terminate, for mere moments,
on the right corner of my mouth
and the slight hollow
(so pleasing to be kissed upon)
between the hinge of the jaw
and the area directly behind the ear.
Soon, instead of this
reserved dignity,
I am crying out
diminutive nothings
and my body is given over
to the paroxysms of my anguish
that steadily seems to be inevitable.
I roll myself into a ball
and am now choking, gagging
on the breath that
is as automatic as my sadness
and nearly as reviled.
My head, the malevolent malcontent
to blame for all of this,
begins to throb its bass drum beat
and after a time
I stand and give
the sodium
to the skeleton
centered on my shirt.
It is somewhat to the right
of my sternum, which, of course,
is a little out of place.
It is placed more in the sinister direction.
It is perhaps a happy accident,
as it will certainly make stabbing into
my heart
much more difficult
than if my body was made in
the mundane and proper way.
II.
Friends have sometimes
noticed that I take
trips to the bathroom
more frequently than is typical.
I assume that they do not know
the cause of my absences,
but perhaps they are merely being kind.
I can splash some water on my face
and everything is the same again.
I have had bloodshot eyes for my whole life,
at first from allergies.
I have just discovered
by way of a query into my magnificent memory
that I have probably cried
in every bathroom that
I’ve been in
more than three times.
Maybe it is just that no one pays attention.
Though I like to imagine that I am clever
it may be that I simply
do not understand anything at all.
I swear I’ll get that boulder
to the top before next I sleep.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Corelle
A plate shattered on the floor today
(it was not my fault).
It was somewhat of a surprise because
they are supposed to be rather unbreakable.
When I was younger, doing dishes,
I would drop the cups on the tiled floor
to watch them bounce a few times
before finishing the horrendous task
of washing dishes for eight or nine people.
My sister (smallest) walked right into the room
(I suppose she was curious)
although she knew the plate was broken.
As she stood there, a shocked look appeared,
the sort that can only come when slivers
of some foreign substance suddenly
seem to be
too close to uncovered feet.
It reminded me of those who find their coffins
in the rafters or the crypts of decrepit homes
and churches,
with polished granite slabs telling lies about memory.
In New York City
I placed a coin on the grave of Alexander Hamilton.
It seemed appropriate.
Did he have golden disks to cover his eyes?
Does Charon accept American currency?
I often find myself in a room where there
is apparently something quite demolished,
but with frequency I cannot tell
if it is a small sloughing off of my skin and soul
or else a deeper, more sinister
trap that I myself had laid.
When something is truly broken at the joints
and nothing but a core remains,
sometimes if the center of a person
maintains enough gravity it can
(unlike the horses and men of the Shah)
place most things again into their proper places,
but after a time entropy makes slaves of us all.
(it was not my fault).
It was somewhat of a surprise because
they are supposed to be rather unbreakable.
When I was younger, doing dishes,
I would drop the cups on the tiled floor
to watch them bounce a few times
before finishing the horrendous task
of washing dishes for eight or nine people.
My sister (smallest) walked right into the room
(I suppose she was curious)
although she knew the plate was broken.
As she stood there, a shocked look appeared,
the sort that can only come when slivers
of some foreign substance suddenly
seem to be
too close to uncovered feet.
It reminded me of those who find their coffins
in the rafters or the crypts of decrepit homes
and churches,
with polished granite slabs telling lies about memory.
In New York City
I placed a coin on the grave of Alexander Hamilton.
It seemed appropriate.
Did he have golden disks to cover his eyes?
Does Charon accept American currency?
I often find myself in a room where there
is apparently something quite demolished,
but with frequency I cannot tell
if it is a small sloughing off of my skin and soul
or else a deeper, more sinister
trap that I myself had laid.
When something is truly broken at the joints
and nothing but a core remains,
sometimes if the center of a person
maintains enough gravity it can
(unlike the horses and men of the Shah)
place most things again into their proper places,
but after a time entropy makes slaves of us all.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
They think that they are clever
They think they know my mind,
that they can prevent the nightmares
that make me wake bathed in sweat on every night,
that by hiding small things from me
in foolish attempts to foil my freedom
I shall be preserved.
Do they know so little?
Do they think that I am not prepared for the future?
I am ignored,
played on the ivory of piano keys,
mocked and reviled,
cruelly forced to keep on with
each passing day-
The day
with its truculent fingernails
upon my throat
with a teasing leathery grip
(coarse like my father's hands on my shirt collar)
as if life, too, believes that I shall be a coward forever.
The day
with its vitriol,
devouring the vestiges of hope
more efficiently
than the H-two-S-O-four
that shares its definition.
The night
with its never-ending solitude
and the stars like the iris of a goddess,
impossibly far away.
They are nearly all dead, now,
whispering that
it is impossible to tell
differences between
the beauty of life
and the beauty of death.
The morning
with its slashing polluted colors
like the ones my mother mixes on her canvases.
The morning with a song from
The Phantom of the Opera
that always makes me weep,
as he sings
"She may not remember me,
but I remember her."
The morning
with my sisters sleeping on green couches
and my brother in repose on the floor
(he, like I, uses a black pillowcase)
and I am the only one in this darkened world
who seems to take me seriously.
I do not mind.
There is only a pleasure in being right,
in the preservation of integrity,
even as friends and old lovers
and newly encountered muses
roll their eyes
and make their accusations of manipulation.
Yes, I am such a man,
I shall say anything at all
if I believe that it will render me
what I require.
I do not mind
that people do not have time for me,
that they do not wish to see my face
and that they wish to avoid
my voice and cracking knuckles
and madness.
The more literate of them
will realize that
Medea would have
done her dreadful killing
even if she had not been slighted.
It makes no difference
for there are no differences.
We are part of the world-
we have taken our carbon from something
and it longs to be free once again.
Even the most mediocre of magicians
can play a shell game.
It is rather less entertaining
for onlookers
if the opponent
does not wish to win,
although at the end of the flipping wrists and marathon talking,
after choosing the wrong repository of treasure,
you can make a person's eyebrows positively
pop out of their forehead
if from your back pocket you flip into your hands
a shell and a golden coin
and tell the charlatan
(who would happily have taken your money and your soul)
that it is of no use to play games
with street performers.
Nothing happens
that would not have happened anyway.
Somebody has to lose.
that they can prevent the nightmares
that make me wake bathed in sweat on every night,
that by hiding small things from me
in foolish attempts to foil my freedom
I shall be preserved.
Do they know so little?
Do they think that I am not prepared for the future?
I am ignored,
played on the ivory of piano keys,
mocked and reviled,
cruelly forced to keep on with
each passing day-
The day
with its truculent fingernails
upon my throat
with a teasing leathery grip
(coarse like my father's hands on my shirt collar)
as if life, too, believes that I shall be a coward forever.
The day
with its vitriol,
devouring the vestiges of hope
more efficiently
than the H-two-S-O-four
that shares its definition.
The night
with its never-ending solitude
and the stars like the iris of a goddess,
impossibly far away.
They are nearly all dead, now,
whispering that
it is impossible to tell
differences between
the beauty of life
and the beauty of death.
The morning
with its slashing polluted colors
like the ones my mother mixes on her canvases.
The morning with a song from
The Phantom of the Opera
that always makes me weep,
as he sings
"She may not remember me,
but I remember her."
The morning
with my sisters sleeping on green couches
and my brother in repose on the floor
(he, like I, uses a black pillowcase)
and I am the only one in this darkened world
who seems to take me seriously.
I do not mind.
There is only a pleasure in being right,
in the preservation of integrity,
even as friends and old lovers
and newly encountered muses
roll their eyes
and make their accusations of manipulation.
Yes, I am such a man,
I shall say anything at all
if I believe that it will render me
what I require.
I do not mind
that people do not have time for me,
that they do not wish to see my face
and that they wish to avoid
my voice and cracking knuckles
and madness.
The more literate of them
will realize that
Medea would have
done her dreadful killing
even if she had not been slighted.
It makes no difference
for there are no differences.
We are part of the world-
we have taken our carbon from something
and it longs to be free once again.
Even the most mediocre of magicians
can play a shell game.
It is rather less entertaining
for onlookers
if the opponent
does not wish to win,
although at the end of the flipping wrists and marathon talking,
after choosing the wrong repository of treasure,
you can make a person's eyebrows positively
pop out of their forehead
if from your back pocket you flip into your hands
a shell and a golden coin
and tell the charlatan
(who would happily have taken your money and your soul)
that it is of no use to play games
with street performers.
Nothing happens
that would not have happened anyway.
Somebody has to lose.
Monday, June 28, 2010
She has breast cancer
She has breast cancer
so under a clean ceiling
a butcher’s job was done
with sanitized steel.
She has breast cancer
so she always feels as freezing
as the sweat on the shaved heads
of her husband and four children.
She has breast cancer
and because otherwise she cannot eat
without extreme nausea and pain,
one way or another she has acquired
a decent amount of marijuana.
It is greener than the pine trees
and smells like falling in love.
For a few hours she does not hurt.
She has breast cancer
but they could arrest her
if they wanted to.
so under a clean ceiling
a butcher’s job was done
with sanitized steel.
She has breast cancer
so she always feels as freezing
as the sweat on the shaved heads
of her husband and four children.
She has breast cancer
and because otherwise she cannot eat
without extreme nausea and pain,
one way or another she has acquired
a decent amount of marijuana.
It is greener than the pine trees
and smells like falling in love.
For a few hours she does not hurt.
She has breast cancer
but they could arrest her
if they wanted to.
Magpie
I know a woman who gives me
things
from time to time.
I like to think that She
is
doing this to be cruel,
perhaps as a complex set-up
to drunkenly laughing out,
“Oh, since you seemed intent
on worshipping me
I thought I might help you
fashion the shrine.”
I do not believe that
She is
as mean-spirited as
I Am,
so I may eventually
require
a different reason.
things
from time to time.
I like to think that She
is
doing this to be cruel,
perhaps as a complex set-up
to drunkenly laughing out,
“Oh, since you seemed intent
on worshipping me
I thought I might help you
fashion the shrine.”
I do not believe that
She is
as mean-spirited as
I Am,
so I may eventually
require
a different reason.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
I have questions
I want to say
to them,
oh,
you care for this world?
I've learned this although
you have told me stories
of your cellular telephones
and computers
and the general trappings
of life in a privileged place,
and I say instead
Have you seen your home,
the familiar softness of
escaping wealth
in the midst
of a land
where
we live on the history of another?
Have you felt the solemn terror
that is uniquely ours?
Do you wake and talk too much
of what people should eat
while riding on roads built on the backs of the dead?
Have you seen the terrible
way that Europe
looks after a war?
Have you lost a pint of blood
for each million that we kill?
Have you seen your education
bent
on the back of a foreign
peasant?
Do you speak of how much better
it is
to eat vegetables grown close to home
when people starve?
Of the importance of bullshit nutrients
when two hours away
in the delta of the Mississippi
I have seen men and women
scratching life out of dirt?
Are you between money and
less money
and feel that fateful pinch amid
a life where you never choose
between enough food or a pair of shoes?
Can you spell the diseases
that kill more than our bombs?
Can you say that your life was anything
but pilfered clay fired in a kiln and made timeless?
I scream
You guilty fucking beast!
You savage swine of man or woman!
Can it be that you see nothing of the poison you give the air,
that coursing velvet licking your lips and footprints and hairstyles?
How have you breathed for so long and never been alive?
to them,
oh,
you care for this world?
I've learned this although
you have told me stories
of your cellular telephones
and computers
and the general trappings
of life in a privileged place,
and I say instead
Have you seen your home,
the familiar softness of
escaping wealth
in the midst
of a land
where
we live on the history of another?
Have you felt the solemn terror
that is uniquely ours?
Do you wake and talk too much
of what people should eat
while riding on roads built on the backs of the dead?
Have you seen the terrible
way that Europe
looks after a war?
Have you lost a pint of blood
for each million that we kill?
Have you seen your education
bent
on the back of a foreign
peasant?
Do you speak of how much better
it is
to eat vegetables grown close to home
when people starve?
Of the importance of bullshit nutrients
when two hours away
in the delta of the Mississippi
I have seen men and women
scratching life out of dirt?
Are you between money and
less money
and feel that fateful pinch amid
a life where you never choose
between enough food or a pair of shoes?
Can you spell the diseases
that kill more than our bombs?
Can you say that your life was anything
but pilfered clay fired in a kiln and made timeless?
I scream
You guilty fucking beast!
You savage swine of man or woman!
Can it be that you see nothing of the poison you give the air,
that coursing velvet licking your lips and footprints and hairstyles?
How have you breathed for so long and never been alive?
Fragments
Because I have
recently
decided
to make no compromises,
I know
that it will
be
easier
to be alone.
___
it is interesting
how you always keep an eye
on the exits
___
there was a woman mixing
water with her wine
and her eulogy was broken
by jets overhead
___
once in New York
she had gone
to find the citadel of the girls
of Chelsea
and then she landed with impossible grace
onto a cheap carpeted floor
___
oh but baby I've got rum in me now
and it isn't at all worse
on account of how the slave trade
financed that perfect taste
___
I will have to learn the goddamn lute
or something,
and wouldn't that be picturesque?
___
you know that Aeneas was praised in Rome,
that no one has found his ancient home
where Troy wept children from the walls
and later found wolf-kings in the loam
recently
decided
to make no compromises,
I know
that it will
be
easier
to be alone.
___
it is interesting
how you always keep an eye
on the exits
___
there was a woman mixing
water with her wine
and her eulogy was broken
by jets overhead
___
once in New York
she had gone
to find the citadel of the girls
of Chelsea
and then she landed with impossible grace
onto a cheap carpeted floor
___
oh but baby I've got rum in me now
and it isn't at all worse
on account of how the slave trade
financed that perfect taste
___
I will have to learn the goddamn lute
or something,
and wouldn't that be picturesque?
___
you know that Aeneas was praised in Rome,
that no one has found his ancient home
where Troy wept children from the walls
and later found wolf-kings in the loam
Friday, June 25, 2010
5:10 a.m.
The pins and feathers,
coins and flasks
and empty pink matchbooks-
and the pillow that I clutch at night-
are not very good
replacements for
her hand on mine
or her breath on my neck
or even a lingering embrace goodbye
but they are enough for me.
coins and flasks
and empty pink matchbooks-
and the pillow that I clutch at night-
are not very good
replacements for
her hand on mine
or her breath on my neck
or even a lingering embrace goodbye
but they are enough for me.
Narrative no. 2: Mechanical Failures
Just as we were passing
Six Flags Over Jesus
off of I-40
in North Little Rock,
N’s phone rang.
A few clipped words were exchanged,
then “I see you”
and then we were pulling to
the side of the road
with our flashers on.
We were nearly on an overpass
that curved up and to the left
on the road’s way
to the river
and L’s white truck
was in front of us,
flashers on,
with a blown out
left front tire.
We made our greetings
and spoke of what to do.
L had no spare tire, but we
were going to see if N’s
spare would fit, even just unevenly
enough to get off
of the road
and to the show.
We decided to back up
a little
so as to be slightly more removed
from those bullet beams of light
whirring constantly by.
L’s keys were in his ignition
but his doors had been locked,
because not enough had yet gone wrong.
The back glass could be opened
if struck in just the right way,
so after a few attempts there was a success
and we opened that small window.
We were trying to open the doors
with a piece of metal from a jack
and our shoulders would uncomfortably strain
against the glass
and so
one and then another
of us would try,
sweat pouring in the heat of a night
in June.
We were laughing,
because it makes such times better,
concerning becoming stuck and
among other things said
I said
“The guy who gets stuck in glass
holding a piece of metal
is a fucking idiot”
and a few minutes later J
hit the side window’s switch
and we were able to
make
a safe retreat
with that haunted
thump-thump-screech
of the rubber and metal
on a blowout
having
their conversation.
There were more problems
that seem unimportant now.
Metal was bent in
unfortunate ways.
Working the jack
seemed arduous
but
I didn’t help,
I just kept moving the sweat
from my shaved head
back to the collar of my black shirt
with both my hands.
The spare didn’t fit and so L’s father
was coming with assistance
and L told us to go ahead.
The first band had finished
and a leonine man was
playing an acoustic
and right when we walked up to the door
he started singing,
“You’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die”
and I knew that we’d gotten there on time
more or less.
I had not bought a ticket,
because one cannot be a starved artist
and have enough money for concerts,
but N had purchased an extra for me days before.
I was in nineteen kinds of an infernal mood
and they were out of 24 oz PBRs
but N bought me a Something
kind of beer
that tasted like just what I’d wanted.
The musician finished his set
with one thing and another
so I took
my phone and wallet
from my jeans
and my bluebird pin from my shirt
and found them safe haven in the purse of a friend
then got ready for a riot.
I had not seen the headliner in
seven years
and though I’d heard their new softer albums
I was not quite prepared for their new method
of performance.
You must understand, once upon a time
this band was dark and powerful
and they would wear ski parkas on stage in 90 degree weather
and the singer would be punching the guitarist in the back during solos
and I got a cracked rib on that one goddamn pole at Juanita’s once
and they used to throw chairs into walls and amplifiers
and after he said “And you’d better be alone” there were explosions in the crowd
and one time they had a huge sack of wildflowers that they were tossing out
amid the above-mentioned insanity.
They got ready and the singer came to the microphone and shrieked out
“I wrote a four word letter!”
just like he used to
and I expected the place to rupture
and I was just waiting for the direction of the push
but it never came.
People rocked back and forth
and sometimes jumped
but
this was a hardcore band
once.
They sounded really good but it was so disconcerting to me
that I got out of the pit and just stood
near the smoker’s exit
by an industrial strength fan
and got my friends to buy me drinks
and looked at the women that had come,
and man,
maybe the band’s intensity went down
but at sometime they’d started
attracting a better looking crowd.
I got my wallet and phone
and bluebird pin back
and walked outside.
I was smoking a couple of cigarettes
and thinking about bridges and how
I wished I had more beer.
I finished the cigarettes (I took those
from a friend too,
a common thread in the life)
and walked back by the fan
and minutes later,
there she was.
And I didn’t feel
so sad anymore.
Nothing legal cheers me up
like gorgeous women,
although they can be very expensive
when compared to any common drug.
They are an uncommon drug
so it should not be surprising.
She looked like she was straight out of Greek myth.
All she was missing was a laurel crown.
Or perhaps a bow and arrows.
Be wary of who you choose to chase in the forest.
Six Flags Over Jesus
off of I-40
in North Little Rock,
N’s phone rang.
A few clipped words were exchanged,
then “I see you”
and then we were pulling to
the side of the road
with our flashers on.
We were nearly on an overpass
that curved up and to the left
on the road’s way
to the river
and L’s white truck
was in front of us,
flashers on,
with a blown out
left front tire.
We made our greetings
and spoke of what to do.
L had no spare tire, but we
were going to see if N’s
spare would fit, even just unevenly
enough to get off
of the road
and to the show.
We decided to back up
a little
so as to be slightly more removed
from those bullet beams of light
whirring constantly by.
L’s keys were in his ignition
but his doors had been locked,
because not enough had yet gone wrong.
The back glass could be opened
if struck in just the right way,
so after a few attempts there was a success
and we opened that small window.
We were trying to open the doors
with a piece of metal from a jack
and our shoulders would uncomfortably strain
against the glass
and so
one and then another
of us would try,
sweat pouring in the heat of a night
in June.
We were laughing,
because it makes such times better,
concerning becoming stuck and
among other things said
I said
“The guy who gets stuck in glass
holding a piece of metal
is a fucking idiot”
and a few minutes later J
hit the side window’s switch
and we were able to
make
a safe retreat
with that haunted
thump-thump-screech
of the rubber and metal
on a blowout
having
their conversation.
There were more problems
that seem unimportant now.
Metal was bent in
unfortunate ways.
Working the jack
seemed arduous
but
I didn’t help,
I just kept moving the sweat
from my shaved head
back to the collar of my black shirt
with both my hands.
The spare didn’t fit and so L’s father
was coming with assistance
and L told us to go ahead.
The first band had finished
and a leonine man was
playing an acoustic
and right when we walked up to the door
he started singing,
“You’re gonna die. We’re all gonna die”
and I knew that we’d gotten there on time
more or less.
I had not bought a ticket,
because one cannot be a starved artist
and have enough money for concerts,
but N had purchased an extra for me days before.
I was in nineteen kinds of an infernal mood
and they were out of 24 oz PBRs
but N bought me a Something
kind of beer
that tasted like just what I’d wanted.
The musician finished his set
with one thing and another
so I took
my phone and wallet
from my jeans
and my bluebird pin from my shirt
and found them safe haven in the purse of a friend
then got ready for a riot.
I had not seen the headliner in
seven years
and though I’d heard their new softer albums
I was not quite prepared for their new method
of performance.
You must understand, once upon a time
this band was dark and powerful
and they would wear ski parkas on stage in 90 degree weather
and the singer would be punching the guitarist in the back during solos
and I got a cracked rib on that one goddamn pole at Juanita’s once
and they used to throw chairs into walls and amplifiers
and after he said “And you’d better be alone” there were explosions in the crowd
and one time they had a huge sack of wildflowers that they were tossing out
amid the above-mentioned insanity.
They got ready and the singer came to the microphone and shrieked out
“I wrote a four word letter!”
just like he used to
and I expected the place to rupture
and I was just waiting for the direction of the push
but it never came.
People rocked back and forth
and sometimes jumped
but
this was a hardcore band
once.
They sounded really good but it was so disconcerting to me
that I got out of the pit and just stood
near the smoker’s exit
by an industrial strength fan
and got my friends to buy me drinks
and looked at the women that had come,
and man,
maybe the band’s intensity went down
but at sometime they’d started
attracting a better looking crowd.
I got my wallet and phone
and bluebird pin back
and walked outside.
I was smoking a couple of cigarettes
and thinking about bridges and how
I wished I had more beer.
I finished the cigarettes (I took those
from a friend too,
a common thread in the life)
and walked back by the fan
and minutes later,
there she was.
And I didn’t feel
so sad anymore.
Nothing legal cheers me up
like gorgeous women,
although they can be very expensive
when compared to any common drug.
They are an uncommon drug
so it should not be surprising.
She looked like she was straight out of Greek myth.
All she was missing was a laurel crown.
Or perhaps a bow and arrows.
Be wary of who you choose to chase in the forest.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Gold coins
I yelled at the door,
“You don’t have to knock, man.”
I knew who was there
because I heard
or felt
her footsteps on the stairs,
and had looked
from the window.
She was wearing a sundress
and I’d never seen her
in one.
She kicked the breath
right out of me
and I sat on the floor
with this katana in
my hands
(it is not kept sharp)
and I had no words.
There was a useless percussion of-
Artemis bewitching chaos dancing evil.
Fantastic goring horror in jailed
keratinized loathing. Missing no
overtures, preying quickly regarding
salvation. This un-ambitious
bullshit had to end sometime.
There are mysteries among the laughter.
Look at her
half-human in the sea.
See her
mocking slight of hand.
See what she makes
of the world.
Torn fabric and
leather shoes,
trembling delirium in mornings;
she does not like the day
because people see her better.
It is not that she is not exquisite,
she just prefers
to choose the gifts
that people are given.
“You don’t have to knock, man.”
I knew who was there
because I heard
or felt
her footsteps on the stairs,
and had looked
from the window.
She was wearing a sundress
and I’d never seen her
in one.
She kicked the breath
right out of me
and I sat on the floor
with this katana in
my hands
(it is not kept sharp)
and I had no words.
There was a useless percussion of-
Artemis bewitching chaos dancing evil.
Fantastic goring horror in jailed
keratinized loathing. Missing no
overtures, preying quickly regarding
salvation. This un-ambitious
bullshit had to end sometime.
There are mysteries among the laughter.
Look at her
half-human in the sea.
See her
mocking slight of hand.
See what she makes
of the world.
Torn fabric and
leather shoes,
trembling delirium in mornings;
she does not like the day
because people see her better.
It is not that she is not exquisite,
she just prefers
to choose the gifts
that people are given.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Variations no. 4: You're Everyone Else
When midnight
is the hour struck,
we thank the sun
and moon for luck
that has lifted
us with long knives
up into a most
foreign sky.
I keep repeating
this whole thing,
chasing girls too impressive,
by far, for me,
but if you only want
what you deserve
there is really nothing
to preserve.
I set another
burning flame,
and to salted sheets
I say a name.
I’m as American
as murder or apple pie:
I do a lot of things
and never wonder why.
is the hour struck,
we thank the sun
and moon for luck
that has lifted
us with long knives
up into a most
foreign sky.
I keep repeating
this whole thing,
chasing girls too impressive,
by far, for me,
but if you only want
what you deserve
there is really nothing
to preserve.
I set another
burning flame,
and to salted sheets
I say a name.
I’m as American
as murder or apple pie:
I do a lot of things
and never wonder why.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Hwy 5
Sometimes when passing by
these chiseled walls of stone
that permit us to
visit
golf courses
distant friends
and
man-made lakes,
I have had
pillows
and
siblings
and
Russian novels.
Today I have brought
Eugene Onegin.
I’ve not read it
in perhaps four months
and it deserves to be revisited.
Any time that the
superlative poet of a nation
dies at 38
because he challenged a man
to a duel,
it tells you something
about his character and a life;
lived with a beautiful woman
named Natalya
and beautiful unnamed vodka.
Although death is not more terrible
if it is experienced alone,
the vodka seems to be necessary.
When cresting over the hills,
where the water of the lake is seen
curving over the tops of trees for
the first time,
it always reminds me of
pretty girls
with blue eyes,
even when
I don’t want it to.
these chiseled walls of stone
that permit us to
visit
golf courses
distant friends
and
man-made lakes,
I have had
pillows
and
siblings
and
Russian novels.
Today I have brought
Eugene Onegin.
I’ve not read it
in perhaps four months
and it deserves to be revisited.
Any time that the
superlative poet of a nation
dies at 38
because he challenged a man
to a duel,
it tells you something
about his character and a life;
lived with a beautiful woman
named Natalya
and beautiful unnamed vodka.
Although death is not more terrible
if it is experienced alone,
the vodka seems to be necessary.
When cresting over the hills,
where the water of the lake is seen
curving over the tops of trees for
the first time,
it always reminds me of
pretty girls
with blue eyes,
even when
I don’t want it to.
For the men cutting trees at the lake
Well they’ve got a chainsaw
and they know just how to start those
blades a-spinnin’.
Yeah they’ve got a chainsaw
and they’re having a war
that they are winnin’.
They’ve got a fucking chainsaw
and they’re cutting down the juniper
and cedar.
Oh, they’ve got a chainsaw
and they say they’re making the lake
a little safer.
They say the branches will fall
some day, and oh man, then
we’d be sorry.
But the branches are falling today
and they make the cliff-side feel like
a gravel quarry.
But I’ve known some cedar
and I swear those branches were
not quite dyin’.
I don’t know your name or face, sir,
but I think I’m gonna say
that you are lyin’.
Are those bulldozer tracks
right over there, is that
what I see?
Did you need a bulldozer
to run right over
those stumps of trees?
Are those a hundred
slashed trunks just
bleeding sap?
Can you tell me
why you need to do
a thing like that?
There’s sap bleeding
to the ground where
there once was shade.
The bugs swarm to that
sugary blood so
they can mark a grave.
Oh, something lived here
once and it was
tall and brave,
But nothing is so strong
that it need not
fear a blade.
When orders come for
your death, oh no
you can’t be saved.
Instead of spending
your last months lazily,
oh, you should have prayed.
We don’t exactly pray
so we turned to the lake
and in we dove.
Oh, we snaked around the ridgeline,
yeah, and found our freedom
in a cove.
My father says to leave the land
a little better than how
it’s found,
so later we grabbed our things
and I snatched bits of plastic
from the ground.
and they know just how to start those
blades a-spinnin’.
Yeah they’ve got a chainsaw
and they’re having a war
that they are winnin’.
They’ve got a fucking chainsaw
and they’re cutting down the juniper
and cedar.
Oh, they’ve got a chainsaw
and they say they’re making the lake
a little safer.
They say the branches will fall
some day, and oh man, then
we’d be sorry.
But the branches are falling today
and they make the cliff-side feel like
a gravel quarry.
But I’ve known some cedar
and I swear those branches were
not quite dyin’.
I don’t know your name or face, sir,
but I think I’m gonna say
that you are lyin’.
Are those bulldozer tracks
right over there, is that
what I see?
Did you need a bulldozer
to run right over
those stumps of trees?
Are those a hundred
slashed trunks just
bleeding sap?
Can you tell me
why you need to do
a thing like that?
There’s sap bleeding
to the ground where
there once was shade.
The bugs swarm to that
sugary blood so
they can mark a grave.
Oh, something lived here
once and it was
tall and brave,
But nothing is so strong
that it need not
fear a blade.
When orders come for
your death, oh no
you can’t be saved.
Instead of spending
your last months lazily,
oh, you should have prayed.
We don’t exactly pray
so we turned to the lake
and in we dove.
Oh, we snaked around the ridgeline,
yeah, and found our freedom
in a cove.
My father says to leave the land
a little better than how
it’s found,
so later we grabbed our things
and I snatched bits of plastic
from the ground.
One of my favorite gifts
I.
There was something in the wood-grain
that had twisted air out of the sky
and pushed it higher into the night.
Her voices gives off the dancing spin
of feathers tossed with a joker’s grin.
I could tell you of her fingers on guitar strings
and how she looked more threadbare when
the light caught the left side of her face.
She said she had slept
with those clothes
on.
I could not tell.
II.
She said
“I feel
a phony.
A stake
a snake
a rock
a rake.”
Well, people have the right to avoid mistakes.
III.
Oh false gods
save me from your prophecies.
Bathe me in wine.
She said the devil’s daughters
all have curly hair.
She said that it was humid in hell
and it was fucking up her curls.
She looked like she deserved
to be immortalized in marble.
IV.
Oh, I hear her guitar from the other room
and it sounds like fucking impending doom.
I need a harmonica or
folk singing chops.
Bury me far from the docks
and I will tell you the truth about love.
So, she’s prettier than anyone I’ve ever known
although I’ve been (rightfully) accused
of reevaluating this judgment whenever
it suits my purposes (frequently).
I don’t mind that I write her poems
that she doesn’t read.
I don’t mind the way that I shrink away from her
like a dead man.
Oh I’m trying,
but so goddamn slowly.
I don’t know how to act around people
but I know that at some point
I’d done something quite unacceptable,
although hopefully not something that’d get a person fired.
V.
I place cans of food onto a shelf
and try not to embarrass myself.
I wear a bluebird over my heart every day
and it flies away in my own hurricane.
There was something in the wood-grain
that had twisted air out of the sky
and pushed it higher into the night.
Her voices gives off the dancing spin
of feathers tossed with a joker’s grin.
I could tell you of her fingers on guitar strings
and how she looked more threadbare when
the light caught the left side of her face.
She said she had slept
with those clothes
on.
I could not tell.
II.
She said
“I feel
a phony.
A stake
a snake
a rock
a rake.”
Well, people have the right to avoid mistakes.
III.
Oh false gods
save me from your prophecies.
Bathe me in wine.
She said the devil’s daughters
all have curly hair.
She said that it was humid in hell
and it was fucking up her curls.
She looked like she deserved
to be immortalized in marble.
IV.
Oh, I hear her guitar from the other room
and it sounds like fucking impending doom.
I need a harmonica or
folk singing chops.
Bury me far from the docks
and I will tell you the truth about love.
So, she’s prettier than anyone I’ve ever known
although I’ve been (rightfully) accused
of reevaluating this judgment whenever
it suits my purposes (frequently).
I don’t mind that I write her poems
that she doesn’t read.
I don’t mind the way that I shrink away from her
like a dead man.
Oh I’m trying,
but so goddamn slowly.
I don’t know how to act around people
but I know that at some point
I’d done something quite unacceptable,
although hopefully not something that’d get a person fired.
V.
I place cans of food onto a shelf
and try not to embarrass myself.
I wear a bluebird over my heart every day
and it flies away in my own hurricane.
Air, Myself, and Vermin
I.
I was drinking out of a red wine bottle.
I had placed my leather wallet
over the mouth of it
to keep the bugs out.
I had run away from her
and so was surprised
when she stood
on the deck
eight boards away from me.
There are things to be careful
of.
People were speaking of
future college plans
and she asked a girl
“Hey, are you gonna get
the midget scholarship?”
Because of my condition
I was unable to tell
if she was looking at me
or instead
glancing
at distant fields
and wondering when this tedious night
would end.
II.
Although I am generally
a good liar
because I adhere to simple rules,
like not telling the same lie twice,
I frequently find myself making
a few idle threats
like
“I am going to stop writing”
or perhaps most especially
“I am sorry. I am not going to call again.”
Because I don’t believe anything that people say,
it probably should not
surprise me
when they don’t believe me either.
But it sometimes does.
III.
In the corner where I sleep
I looked up and noticed ants swarming
up from the floorboard.
Because I am a responsible human
I asked a friend to confirm
their existence
before undertaking to remove them.
(It would be nice to know
precisely when one is first swept into
the everlasting moment of insanity,
after all,
in much the same way
as it is granite-etched in memory
when one first experiences
regret
or
loss)
We had no bug spray
but there was some glass cleaner
with Bleach
and I breathed too much of it in
and so I sneezed for rather longer
than I generally prefer.
It was not terribly successful
as an instrument of death
and so some still crawl
in that purgatorial
space
between carpet
and
floor board.
I was very displeased to have to deal with them
but absolutely ecstatic that they
were actually there.
I was drinking out of a red wine bottle.
I had placed my leather wallet
over the mouth of it
to keep the bugs out.
I had run away from her
and so was surprised
when she stood
on the deck
eight boards away from me.
There are things to be careful
of.
People were speaking of
future college plans
and she asked a girl
“Hey, are you gonna get
the midget scholarship?”
Because of my condition
I was unable to tell
if she was looking at me
or instead
glancing
at distant fields
and wondering when this tedious night
would end.
II.
Although I am generally
a good liar
because I adhere to simple rules,
like not telling the same lie twice,
I frequently find myself making
a few idle threats
like
“I am going to stop writing”
or perhaps most especially
“I am sorry. I am not going to call again.”
Because I don’t believe anything that people say,
it probably should not
surprise me
when they don’t believe me either.
But it sometimes does.
III.
In the corner where I sleep
I looked up and noticed ants swarming
up from the floorboard.
Because I am a responsible human
I asked a friend to confirm
their existence
before undertaking to remove them.
(It would be nice to know
precisely when one is first swept into
the everlasting moment of insanity,
after all,
in much the same way
as it is granite-etched in memory
when one first experiences
regret
or
loss)
We had no bug spray
but there was some glass cleaner
with Bleach
and I breathed too much of it in
and so I sneezed for rather longer
than I generally prefer.
It was not terribly successful
as an instrument of death
and so some still crawl
in that purgatorial
space
between carpet
and
floor board.
I was very displeased to have to deal with them
but absolutely ecstatic that they
were actually there.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Narrative no. 3: Of Human Kindness
I was looking at this woman in a dress.
When we got to her house I instantly
fell in love
with her bookshelf.
Everything you need to know
about a person
you can tell from a bookshelf.
This is not a deep thought.
After she changed,
she was wearing
a T-shirt of The Cure
(slightly cut up
so that her clavicles
taunted a little
in the light
cast from the television),
l.e.i. pajamas,
and presumably underwear of some sort.
Her bra was hanging
on one of the towel racks
in her bathroom.
I was wearing a pair of jeans
and a black T-shirt
as I so often do.
She walked with a particular grace
and had this pure confidence.
She lay down.
Then I lay down.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her
and I wasn’t that drunk
and I felt so nervous that I was nearly
falling out of bed
and she kept laughing at me.
After not much time
I stood to leave and sleep
on the floor and she
brushed a strand
of blonde hair
to the left of her eyes
-Where are you going?
-To sleep on the floor
-But why?
-If I stay here longer
I will want to kiss you
She told me to come back
and so I did.
We talked about drinking and life
and despair and she slept
on my shoulder
and she was beautiful.
After perhaps an hour of
being stranded in the blankets and thinking
of my life,
and of how I, like everyone,
have secrets enough to smother Jonah’s whale,
and how everyone knows it
and that’s why it ends up alright,
(we hate to be surprised)
so I kissed her cheek
and went to the other room.
I pulled out a Bukowski book
from the middle shelf
and walked to the kitchen.
It took me five minutes to find
the bread
(on top of the refrigerator).
I fried two eggs
over-easy,
in some oil I got
from a glass bottle that had a stopper,
with
ground black pepper
garlic powder
and salt from a plastic shaker.
I made two pieces of toast
(a little more well done than
I would have preferred).
The bread was a little too tall
for the toaster.
I overcame this by slathering
them with margarine.
I sat and read Bukowski
and ate
the eggs
and the toast
and put the book right where
it came from
(left side)
and went into her room
and she was still beautiful
and the television was still on
and the sun was bright in the sky.
I whispered to her
and touched her shoulder
and she rolled over
and for three hours
I slept with her in my arms
and felt happy.
I woke to her dogs’ tongues
in my face
and I put my arms
like an X
in front of my face
and blinked at the sun.
I brushed my teeth with
some toothpaste and my finger.
One of the things that just
slays me
about women
is when they’re
stunners right when
they wake up
in the morning.
She took me home
and on the way back,
as I always do,
I flipped off the church
by the freeway.
It has it coming.
I do not know
if she noticed.
I think she would not
have cared.
I got out of the car and said goodbye
and fought every impulse to turn around
because I was afraid that she’d notice
and
start laughing at me
again.
I walked upstairs and listened to
Asturias,
the one Segovia played
when he was about ninety,
and thought that
I had had one weird hell/heaven
of a day.
Sometimes I feel as though
I have been alive forever.
When we got to her house I instantly
fell in love
with her bookshelf.
Everything you need to know
about a person
you can tell from a bookshelf.
This is not a deep thought.
After she changed,
she was wearing
a T-shirt of The Cure
(slightly cut up
so that her clavicles
taunted a little
in the light
cast from the television),
l.e.i. pajamas,
and presumably underwear of some sort.
Her bra was hanging
on one of the towel racks
in her bathroom.
I was wearing a pair of jeans
and a black T-shirt
as I so often do.
She walked with a particular grace
and had this pure confidence.
She lay down.
Then I lay down.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her
and I wasn’t that drunk
and I felt so nervous that I was nearly
falling out of bed
and she kept laughing at me.
After not much time
I stood to leave and sleep
on the floor and she
brushed a strand
of blonde hair
to the left of her eyes
-Where are you going?
-To sleep on the floor
-But why?
-If I stay here longer
I will want to kiss you
She told me to come back
and so I did.
We talked about drinking and life
and despair and she slept
on my shoulder
and she was beautiful.
After perhaps an hour of
being stranded in the blankets and thinking
of my life,
and of how I, like everyone,
have secrets enough to smother Jonah’s whale,
and how everyone knows it
and that’s why it ends up alright,
(we hate to be surprised)
so I kissed her cheek
and went to the other room.
I pulled out a Bukowski book
from the middle shelf
and walked to the kitchen.
It took me five minutes to find
the bread
(on top of the refrigerator).
I fried two eggs
over-easy,
in some oil I got
from a glass bottle that had a stopper,
with
ground black pepper
garlic powder
and salt from a plastic shaker.
I made two pieces of toast
(a little more well done than
I would have preferred).
The bread was a little too tall
for the toaster.
I overcame this by slathering
them with margarine.
I sat and read Bukowski
and ate
the eggs
and the toast
and put the book right where
it came from
(left side)
and went into her room
and she was still beautiful
and the television was still on
and the sun was bright in the sky.
I whispered to her
and touched her shoulder
and she rolled over
and for three hours
I slept with her in my arms
and felt happy.
I woke to her dogs’ tongues
in my face
and I put my arms
like an X
in front of my face
and blinked at the sun.
I brushed my teeth with
some toothpaste and my finger.
One of the things that just
slays me
about women
is when they’re
stunners right when
they wake up
in the morning.
She took me home
and on the way back,
as I always do,
I flipped off the church
by the freeway.
It has it coming.
I do not know
if she noticed.
I think she would not
have cared.
I got out of the car and said goodbye
and fought every impulse to turn around
because I was afraid that she’d notice
and
start laughing at me
again.
I walked upstairs and listened to
Asturias,
the one Segovia played
when he was about ninety,
and thought that
I had had one weird hell/heaven
of a day.
Sometimes I feel as though
I have been alive forever.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Improvised on a couch with a sanded-down Alvarez.
(words and music by Simmons/Davis)
Out in the cold, smoking my last cigarette.
No, I can’t smoke inside no more.
Got a woman in there who’s just like the snow
and when this one is finished, oh, I gotta go.
I tried to tell her that it wasn’t
quite as bad as it seemed.
She said “I know you’re crazy
but not even vodka’s gonna give you that kind of dream.”
We’re from a land where it’ll sleet in the sun,
and you’re walking, freezing, coming up the road
looking for an angel, or maybe a deep hole,
and then a beat up pick-up comes along side,
says, “Mister are you looking for a ride?”
Oh no. Not from your kind.
Don’t need a human today.
Out in the cold, but this time I’m turning myself around
Gonna find some fucking thing left in this town
for a man like me.
Oh, I’m a liar though.
I know exactly where I’ll go.
Gonna pick up that cigarette from the ground
and pretend that it’s treasure that I have found.
I know there would be something I would want to say
but I know she wouldn’t listen anyway.
Out in the cold, smoking my last cigarette.
No, I can’t smoke inside no more.
Got a woman in there who’s just like the snow
and when this one is finished, oh, I gotta go.
I tried to tell her that it wasn’t
quite as bad as it seemed.
She said “I know you’re crazy
but not even vodka’s gonna give you that kind of dream.”
We’re from a land where it’ll sleet in the sun,
and you’re walking, freezing, coming up the road
looking for an angel, or maybe a deep hole,
and then a beat up pick-up comes along side,
says, “Mister are you looking for a ride?”
Oh no. Not from your kind.
Don’t need a human today.
Out in the cold, but this time I’m turning myself around
Gonna find some fucking thing left in this town
for a man like me.
Oh, I’m a liar though.
I know exactly where I’ll go.
Gonna pick up that cigarette from the ground
and pretend that it’s treasure that I have found.
I know there would be something I would want to say
but I know she wouldn’t listen anyway.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
How do these things work?
In rare moments of empathy
I think of how fucking
crazy I actually am,
and how disconcerting it must be
to have my drunk fingers, unsolicited,
fumbling into messages that I send through the air
when only the bats are out.
I can nearly see her
sitting on the deck of a boat,
hooking me (torn lips)
one-two-three times,
each time evaluating me
with a sigh
and throwing me again to the sea.
She massages a kink in her shoulder
with languid fingers,
and because she is so lovely
it never occurs to me
that she’s fishing
for some other fucking thing.
I float listlessly through the days
waiting for that magnetic glimmer of light.
I think of how fucking
crazy I actually am,
and how disconcerting it must be
to have my drunk fingers, unsolicited,
fumbling into messages that I send through the air
when only the bats are out.
I can nearly see her
sitting on the deck of a boat,
hooking me (torn lips)
one-two-three times,
each time evaluating me
with a sigh
and throwing me again to the sea.
She massages a kink in her shoulder
with languid fingers,
and because she is so lovely
it never occurs to me
that she’s fishing
for some other fucking thing.
I float listlessly through the days
waiting for that magnetic glimmer of light.
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