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.

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views looked at askance or, alternately,
crushed to powder beneath marble table lamps

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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.

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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”

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“and who is this woman that you love?”
“she is qualia”
“oh. I see. good fucking luck with that.”

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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.

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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

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like an immensely expensive guitar
that regally sits upon its stand
as it is never played

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like being in love, you are convinced of the veracity
of memory, but in the automobile accident of solitude
such beliefs are thoroughly concussed

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it is just like me to fall for someone
whose closest approximation is between
a wrecking ball and a da Vinci painting

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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

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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.

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not speaking to you is a war and its murder

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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.

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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

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sounds only clash when we cannot step
far enough away to see the chord

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I know. And I understand. I am left with the idea
that one should never ask of a genie
more than two favors.

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I saw my father in his violent eyes
but he was not my father
and so he could be killed.

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one should only kneel in supplication
at the feet of a lover or else
the scimitar of the executioner

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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

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in a cascade for she had seen herself, a ghost

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Pan troglodytes – the denizens of the land below the land
who share desires with the god of wine

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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.

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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.

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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?