The Woman Dies in This One

At this point in life, I was young and had not yet murdered anyone
and I was working security at this shitty dive bar
that served burgers until three in the morning.

She was the kind of woman you wanted just because she was an actress.
She did something else for a living and she lied more than anyone I ever met,
but in a good way.

It’s a terrible thing about being a man
but when you find a woman
who goes out of her way to make you smile
even when she is torn apart by danger
and sadness and poverty and neglect,
it makes you want her even if you wouldn’t have wanted her before.

She came in and sighed heavily and slid onto a barstool.
I didn’t know much about her except her name and face
and the way she blushed when I looked too long
and the way she twisted her chapstick
and the way that her life was drawn
to a tragedy like gravity,

She drank for a couple hours and no one bothered her and she left
and when she passed by me she gave me a hug goodbye
and pushed herself against me for longer than she had to
and her hands were burning me like the touch of people always did.
At this moment I would have smelled her hair if I could smell
but instead I was stuck there feeling those familiar needles on my skin.
I stopped breathing til she left, but she did not notice or mind.
She was beautiful and kind
and a few years later her husband pulled a trigger three times.
In a different universe she has four children
and they plant apple and plum trees and love everything,
but that is not the world that will have birds and flowers this spring.

Bukowski no. 31

The only lonely nights are the ones where
my friends are asleep. Or maybe they died.
Normal desires are somewhat circumscribed
But you don’t have to be a honeybee
To eat the hive.

Bukowski no. 30

I liked the way that she looked because she was wearing glasses.
I enjoyed her face and the metaphor but I knew I was taking it too far.
I looked at lenses and saw facets of understanding,
I looked at frames and saw the construction of a view of the world.
I knew she saw me through them and so when she smiled at me
I knew that her vision had been corrected, that without the glasses
I was a blurred monstrosity to her
and just because it was true I thought she believed it
so it made me uncomfortable when she wore contacts.

I thought I had run out of olives but I found another jar deep on a shelf
and I ate a few dozen
and the ones I didn’t eat stared at me from behind the glass,
but there’s got to be more to their lives than that.

Carmen 53

I told her that I had scurvy twice.
She laughed at me and told me not to lie.
She was just a waitress, not even mine,
But she smiled at me and sure that mattered
Some of the time.

I slowly fell into the frost and rime
But the air wasn’t cold so that thought died.
She moved across the floor smooth as her jeans.
Each time her legs moved I did not feel a thing.

Maybe that’s all lies, but how could I tell
While I leered at her thighs as they moved twice?
I thought she was a lie but what is a lie
When the one that feels it is barely alive?

Her legs stretched half the way up to heaven
But I knew I had to show up to work at eleven.

Bukowski no. 29

I don’t want to boil water. I am afraid I will forget it
although you are not likely to appear at my door.
If I burn up the pan I’ll have to use the other one
and I do not like the handle on it so I just won’t boil water
and then I’ll be hungry tomorrow too.

I could have made coffee or rice but the moon was almost full
and I felt it like I was shaving with a dull knife
and anyway I never turned the burner on
so the water sat there on the stove.

I thought about nights of us doing cocaine
and the way you’d crawl right in through my bedroom window
as if you weren’t twenty two years old
and I remember all the nights you never came
and the moonlight beats upon my windowpane.

Carmen 52

Her eyes were green but not like mine,
not hopeless or hateful or steeped in disillusion,
just bloodshot ‘cause she did not sleep enough
and green for a much older reason.

I thought she could see the tears in my eyes
but she couldn’t or maybe she thought they were just part of being alive.
I thought I had tears in my eyes
but she was beautiful so she made my past pain dry.

I was so much taller and I looked down at her
like I was allowed to just ‘cause I was taller.
I try to forget about it but a wolf ain’t gonna stop tryin to swallow the moon.

I’m lucky I didn’t kiss her but I wanted to and she could see it.
I’m always joking with her and quoting Scorsese but she doesn’t know the lines
so she thinks I’m a genius and I let her think it.

Her eyes looked up at mine
and instead of kissing her eyes
I went home and cried and poured straight vodka on mine.

Her eyes looked up at mine
so tomorrow I’m gonna stare at the floor the whole time.

Carmen 51

I got so mean. I know how.

I hope I'll burn to death and I won't have to remember this.

I did not think I would get so mean but I look at a mirror and i see.

I could kill anyone for anything. The only tragic thing is that I do not.
There is no tragedy. Hamlet is dead and so am I and so are you.

Diary of a Madman

You should get out of your blankets.
You should kill yourself.
You should stretch.
You should do twenty pushups.
You should kill yourself.
You should brush your teeth.
You should take a shower.
You should kill yourself.
You should boil some noodles.
You should eat them.
You should get dressed.
You should kill yourself.
You should go to work.
You should work hard.
You should have two cups of coffee.
You should tell the gorgeous woman at work how you feel.
You should remember she has a boyfriend.
You should work hard.
You should clock out.
You should walk past the bar.
You should brush your teeth.
You should take your clothes off and lay down.
You should kill yourself.
You should kill yourself.
You should go to sleep.
You should do this all again tomorrow.

It is not like hearing voices, because it is only my voice. The same voice that tells me that I hate Wuthering Heights, the same voice that says “Damn that ass is fat!”, the same voice that I use to quote Cicero or Gogol and to talk to my mother and to say hello to dogs or newborn babies. I no longer believe anything I tell myself. I have proved many times that I should not be trusted. I wish I would stop talking.

A History of Madness

No one else in the world was breathing and there was no light
and only the sound of a second-hand window air conditioner
or the clang of a furnace turning on or off.
Depersonalization is one of the benefits of solitude as you approach sleep.
Only in the darkness can you forget who you are
and pretend that you will not wake the next day to the tedium of life.

almost you disappear but there is still something left,
the taste of a cigarette
the sound a hat did not make as it fell to the ground
skipping a day like a rock on a lake in the rain

but you will always wake up
and you will never be free

________________________

The hickory nut fell down as green as the wind isn’t,
taking four dried leaves and another nut (entirely closed) down to closely cut grass.

The leaves fluttered slowly in the air
as if they were dancing
and knew they would never dance again.

The two fallen seeds began a conversation.
The younger was livid and screaming “My mother loves me and you took me from her!”
The other smiled where his skin was beginning to split and said
“My brother, she was always going to drop you.
Perhaps you are too young to fall. Maybe you will rot here on the ground,
Maybe the monsters with long teeth and thick tails will spirit you away
and bury you in a secret place, only to eat you when the world is cold.

But this is how we become a tree someday and many of us die,
and maybe it will be you because I made you fall too early
and for that I am sorry
although you would probably have died anyway.”

The younger thought about this for a moment and suddenly a wizened old man
raked them both up and the four leaves too and put them all on the burnpile.

___________________________________________

Her hair was black and her lips were red
and she drank a different beer than I was drinking.

We were at the Mexican restaurant close to my apartment
where Happy Hour started at about one in the afternoon,
and at the table she sat across from me and I looked at her
and she was beautiful
and her boyfriend was there too and he was loudly talking
about something but I was not listening
because I had a tall beer the color of amber, without an orange,
and I could pay for it.

After a little while I had to take a piss so I wordlessly stood
and walked toward the bathroom.
Before you walked right or left for a door they had these miniature saloon doors,
slatted like window shutters, and I opened them and heard footsteps
so I stood to the side
and then her tongue was in my mouth and she was pushing me against the wall
and before I knew it I could breathe.

I said “Are you trying to get me killed?” and she kissed me again
and my desire was careless so I lifted her off the ground
and her arms were around my neck and she was a flood I could not stop
and I tasted the light beer she was drinking and her lips were red
and then there was a sound

so I put her down and quickly went into the bathroom and locked the door
and said “Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ”
although I never believed in Him
and took a piss and washed my hands and by the time I got to the table
she was sitting there by her boyfriend
so I looked over at Mariano and raised my finger so he would know
that I needed another beer.


_______________________________________

I could hear the wine pouring through the phone into her glass
and she said

“I want a baby. Did you know babies can learn in the womb?
Isn’t that beautiful? They would learn so much from me
and if it didn’t turn out well
I could just give it up for adoption.”

And I laughed in the terrible way that I know and later
she said “I don’t even think you can be sweet to a woman,”
and I said “I can be,”
and she asked me how, so I told her
that I am half-decent at giving massages
and don’t mind giving my money away
and that I know how to brush hair and make breakfast and get water
and hold someone when their cramps start up
and I told her I wasn’t really such a bad guy as I pretended to be
and then I started crying or maybe I was crying all along.

Later she explained to me that she did not want to date me or fuck me
and all I could think to say was “Man, I never asked you.”

________________________________________________

A History of Madness 5 is spurious.

_____________________________________

The present controls the accuracy of memory
more than the past ever could.

Often, in some shitty sports bar or cup of coffee
I have tried to summon the ghosts that kiss me to sleep at night.
Who knows what lies I have whispered to those shadows and plumes of steam?

I find that I feel guilty for any injustice that could be imagined,
even if it existed in fiction. The mere names of countries can fill me with dread,
knowing that at any moment my brain will begin a demonic litany:
Years, numbers of the slain, names of villages that are no longer villages.
And why should I bear the hate of mankind
upon my shoulders as if they were broad enough to hold it all?

I do not mean to suggest that I identify with the victims or their families.
I do not believe that I am capable of any such emotions,
but many times I have worn the bloody boots of monsters as I drift through sleep.

When I created the world I never meant for any of this to happen.

________________________________________

I stood on a slab of concrete
killing ants.

When I was a younger man I knew their Latin name,
I could define their mandibles and thoraxes
but now I crush them
by the hundred beneath my heel.

I believe, though I do not know why,
that their dying sends a chemical signal to the others.
I see them shy away from a fallen friend,
but what does an ant know of death
and why should it be feared?

There were two carrying a corpse larger than they were,
the others scurried past them but they walked crab-legged
across the concrete slab without getting anywhere.
I chose one and smashed him right through the brain.
The other struggled, unaware that his comrade had died—
he carried the worm first one way and then the other,
he tangled it in the fallen leaves, he abandoned it
but none of the other hundreds took up that burden.
He waited for about fourteen seconds then walked along the line the other ants had made.

I watched him, my eyes focused on his black armor,
and I thought of her
so small against my chest,
her black hair flowing all around
while the devil told me his daughter’s name.

I let the ant go into the hive after he tore up a piece of a butterfly
and placed it in his jaws before beginning the long walk home.
I will kill him tomorrow.

_____________________________

Once I was proud of the things I had learned.
Any moment could remind me of another—
Ivan Grozny murdering his son could be evoked
by drinking vodka on a cold and rainy day,
the phantasms of summer evening were more terrible still
and arose of their own accord,
and any woman could be brought to life
through the touch of a different woman.

Memory is not an insurmountable thing,
but most times we are not willing
to make enough fire to entirely burn our library.
We are left with husks:
proper nouns
the shading of green in a lover’s eyes
the words she says when she is asleep.

Nearly everything is dying again.
I have been waiting for winter all year
but it does not satisfy me.

I loved a woman once and she lives on
like the pine trees that are planted
to hide a forest that has just been cut down.

______________________________________

The actions of man are as easily explained as the vagaries of the weather.
Any account of a moment or a life is necessarily colored
by the one who is aching out their remembrance so that we may understand.
Who benefits from these exchanges?
People are either capable of telling the truth or they are not.
We must believe that all the souls of humanity are not base liars,
But who among us has not recalled in detail a conversation that never took place
or a childhood summer spent on the shores of a lake that cannot be found on a map?
It may be that time is changing behind us, and that all our stories were once true.

_________________________________________

I said,
“I went looking for you in the winesinks and in the bars with sawdust floors—
You were not there.”

I said,
“I went looking for you in the whorehouses,
where the women have the names of gemstones
but their eyes are dull and dead—
You were not there.”

I said,
“I went looking for you in the jailhouse and the gutters,
where I kicked over a hundred bums looking for a tattoo as evil as yours,
a blade carved deep with runes that told of devouring hate and desire—
You were not there.”

When I found you floating by the river
your lips were purple like the toga of a god
and the back of your head where the bullet made its exit
dripped slow crimson tears into the water
and you told me many things and afterward I let you drift away.

___________________________________________

After sleeping on the floor for three months
I realized that I had not learned a thing.
I slept or did not sleep. Women arrived
Or they did not, it was the same to me.

I did not understand then that a man lost in a forest is lost in the past, although a forest was outside my window. Even now I do not understand.

__________________________________________

Like any other god I am sustained by belief.
For many years I have labored to reduce the faith of my cult,
but they stubbornly persist.

Always I long for death but their prayers keep me here.
I am cruel to them, inconsiderate beyond reproach,
but they insist on forgiving me.

Though I have never told them,
I feel they are aware that their love keeps me alive
and so nothing I do can dissuade them.

They do not even know that when I die I will destroy the universe.
They are doing it just for me.

finis

A History of Madness 12, Final

Like any other god I am sustained by belief.
For many years I have labored to reduce the faith of my cult,
but they stubbornly persist.

Always I long for death but their prayers keep me here.
I am cruel to them, inconsiderate beyond reproach,
but they insist on forgiving me.

Though I have never told them,
I feel they are aware that their love keeps me alive
and so nothing I do can dissuade them.

They do not even know that when I die I will destroy the universe.
They are doing it just for me.

finis

Klara

He was an honorable man so he readily understood
that it should fall on me to tell my mother that she had breast cancer
and that she must prepare for immediate surgery
and that this surgery was unlikely to save her life.
I felt the tears flowing down my face and was ashamed at my weakness.

Though I had only seventeen years I found the words to thank him.
I bowed to him as I left his office and went into the waiting room after wiping my eyes.
I managed to smile at my dear mother and as we walked into the street
I gave her my arm as I had done for years,
though now she seemed heavier than in my youth.

It was a cold day in January and we walked through the door.
It was cold inside but not so frigid as the street had been.
It was always cold inside.
We spent what little we could afford on fuel and stole the rest of the heat
from the walls of our neighbors or the sun.
I led her to the sofa and closed the door and turned the lock
and I heard the metallic thump of the bolt or my heart.
I walked to her and sat down and said,

“Mother, give me your hands. Let me hold them. Mother you are dying. The doctor says that it is breast cancer and that it is very advanced. We have arranged a surgery in three days time. Most of the tissue must be removed but there is a chance that you will live. He says that you cannot possibly survive without the surgery and that even with it the chances are small.”

She closed her grey blue eyes as if she were praying and she swayed a little
and as I reached out to support her, her eyelids flew open suddenly.
She looked at me with pity and said,

“My boy, I am so sorry. God calls for us all but it is cruel that you should have to tell me these things. Still, you are the head of the family now, and it was your duty. We will have the surgery and God’s will shall be done. I will pray to Saint Peregrine. I beg that you go to the church and ask the priest to pray for my soul.”

How could a soul made of steel be in danger of hellfire?
I walked the cobblestones with bitterness and rage as my companions.
I wanted to scream and smash my fists into the windows of buildings
but when I came upon the church I quietly opened the doors
and stepped forward until I was standing beneath the altar.
I delivered my dreadful message to the priest
when he arrived in his nightcap with wine still in his eyes
and then made my way back home.

She was asleep in her bed, piled high with thin blankets.
Near her bed, hanging on the wall, was a watercolor I had painted when I was a boy.

She had put it on the wall then too and when my father asked why, she told him
that I was going to grow up to be a great artist,
so he sneered at her and bloodied her lip with the back of his hand
and then beat me with his wide belt for being vain and lazy.

She always believed in me and told me that I must honor my father
but that did not mean that I must always believe him.
After his death she took my watercolor out of some secret place
and put it on the wall again.

The surgery was as successful as it could have been but it was too late.

The cancer had already invaded
other parts of her body. She became so weak that she could not climb the stairs,
even with my arm to aid her, so we took what little money we had and moved our residence
outside of the city. She was brave and pious and accepted her fate readily but I did not.
I made my way through the city streets and came to his office. I took my hat off and went inside.

The woman who handled the doctor’s appointments looked at me with expectation
but I was resolved to wait silently and I sat in a chair with my hat in my hands.
He was too kind a man to smile at me. Instead he nodded and brought me into his study.
I had never seen it before. The fireplace was comfortably warm and he had many books.
He was said to be a wealthy man but his desk was simple and without ornamentation.
He asked if I would sit so I sank into one of the chairs in front of his desk.
He sat beside me and asked why I had come.

All through my journey to his door I convinced myself I would be stoic and emotionless,
simply ask him for a consultation and inform him of the facts,
and to inquire if there existed some way to alleviate the pain that flooded over her.

I do not remember what I said but I know that I shamed myself again and cried.
The doctor said all hope was not lost,
that an experimental chemical treatment could perhaps slow the progression of the disease.
He warned that it was not certain to make anything better and that the pain would be unearthly.
A long moment later, he mentioned in a whisper that the treatments were quite expensive.
I told him that I would give him all I owned and even the clothes I wore,
my future inheritance, and any other thing he could ask for if he would only try to save her.

From that day on he came to our apartment, early in the morning or late at night,
even on the day which his religion holds sacred he came to us.
He arrived when he could and soaked bandages in the chemical
and pressed them into her wounds and though she was brave and strong
she sometimes screamed and cried.

We moved her bed to the kitchen, since it was the warmest room.
He came every day without fail and continued the treatments though
her condition constantly deteriorated. He was always optimistic when speaking with her.
Only when I walked with him outside did he tell the truth.
He put his wide-brimmed hat atop his head and told me that I should prepare for the worst.

Her throat became paralyzed and she could not eat.
She was terribly thin even before she lost her speech
but soon it seemed that she was made of only bones.
Her breath rattled while she slept.
She would wake as if from a dream with a mad fury in her eyes
and try to raise her body up.
In her eyes you could see that she was desperately trying to speak.
Her every muscle shook weakly as she made these attempts,
her skin was paper with water flowing through it.

She could not form a word or hold a pen but I knew she would want a Christmas tree.
I took my axe and walked miles deep into the forest and found a proper tree.
I hacked it into ribbons then found another tree and mutilated it in the same way.
The third tree I chopped down properly and I drug it to our ground floor apartment
and my sisters and I decorated it while she slept.

Days later she died with the shadow of the tree looming over us
and I sat beside her and sketched her face as I had known it. Before it was so very thin.

The doctor came, I know not why. Perhaps my sisters sent for him.
He signed the death certificate and we laid her body to rest beside my father
the next day. My sisters and the others walked away but I stood by the grave.
Sometimes I believe I still stand beside it.

A few days after her burial I approached the doctor and told him
that I wished to settle my family’s financial obligations.
He named a sum that was impossibly minute:
less than a man would spend on potatoes in a month.
I stared at the floor, composed myself, then took his hand and told him
that my gratitude to him would endure forever.

Hagiography

I kept finding myself entranced. I heard her singing once
but she was embarrassed at my eagerness and never sang again.
She would walk past me and delicately place her hand above my hip
so that her fingernail grazed against my floating rib
while I inhaled her hair and smelled nothing
as she walked by and finished the ordeal of the day.
She would look at me and my tongue turned to ash.
She would look at me until I remembered the hunger of a starving man,
and then she would still look at me but when she smiled she meant it.

I bought a white orchid and a box of chocolates
with a vaguely European name emblazoned on the front.
I took brown card-stock paper and with my black pen I wrote

“In Saint Valentine we find the curious case of a man and legacy remembered by a world that never knew his voice and may not have ever known his face. Even now men confuse him with his precursors or descendants, thinking that he died pierced with arrows and many sorrows, or for romantic cause. But can they be blamed for this? Valentinus of Rome has never been well attested. We find in his holiday the ideas and repetitions of Lupercalia, that much is true. But we also see throughout time that in each of the stolen, timeworn, pagan festivals there was an aspect of a god who came among us, who separated from our lives earthly toil and worry. We never find specifics of the life of Valentinus, his death, or even why he should be a saint. And yet he is a saint. If humanity can venerate someone for centuries without mentioning why, I hope you like your chocolates.”

I folded the paper and felt its thickness give way under my fingertips.
I wrote her name on the outside and put the card on top of the box.

I thought about it for a little while and decided
that her man would probably not appreciate my daydreams.
I doubted that she would appreciate them, either,
so I took the card off of the chocolates
and let the labors of foreign chocolatiers melt into my tongue
piece by piece

with punctuation marks of whiskey
drowning out the sunset.

I did not know what to do with the card,
but I burned the orchid as soon as I felt drunk enough to make a flame.

Prosody

You begin with yourself and then let the cracks develop. At first nothing breaks but slowly it begins to appear that everything is being pinned beneath the weight, that everything is bending. If you look very closely each grain of sand is unique and odd and potentially horrifying, but who has the time to look at that much sand? While I was looking through the lens of my magnifying glass my house was buried in a mudslide and I with it. 

A History of Madness 11

After sleeping on the floor for three months
I realized that I had not learned a thing.
I slept or did not sleep. Women arrived
Or they did not, it was the same to me.

I did not understand then that a man lost in a forest is lost in the past, although a forest was outside my window. Even now I do not understand.