Thursday, November 30, 2006
65 Note
“You made a mistake.”
“All I do is make mistakes.
That’s who I am.
Therefore, there are no mistakes,
and I am not.”
Next: Lovers' Wall
71 Lovers' Wall
We were on opposite sides
of a forgotten war.
But the wall remembered the war,
incorrectly.
You were on the other side
of my inconsistency,
waiting for me to settle down—
so we could get on with our lives.
But I could not scale it,
despite the footholds you had etched.
Next: Don't Worry
47 Don't Worry
There is always somewhere to go.
Get rid of breath.
Oxygen is only keeping us
from something better,
from finding health
in some other mixture.
When oxygen fills our muscles—
makes them red with the blood
it chaperones on a dance
from lung to extremity—
we go numb, though we do not know it.
When there is no oxygen,
we can feel our entire bodies:
big, aching cramps,
shriveled into balls,
tight as bullets,
heavy as novae,
shooting through
the hidden pane of glass
separating
this world and the next.
Next: Affinity
17 Affinity
Finished off the first affinity.
Dave Brubeck Quartet Plays “Take Five.”
I feel it working on me already.
It don’t take long.
Doesn’t seem like I got shit else to do—
think about Rev, wherever she is.
Ah, Rev, why did you leave me, me and your trees.
They’re still here, growing for you,
refusing to drink my water.
It’s full of alcohol, they say.
Next: Is The Magnitude?
19 Is The Magnitude?
I ask you. Is the magnitude of how good it’ll feel now commensurate with the magnitude of how bad it’ll feel later? We all have needs, Rev: this present self, that present self—
O, pride, to whom can I be fair?
It becomes a question of proximity, a time & place bias.
I realize it’ll feel bad later but what about the current me, huh?
What about him? When does he enjoy life?
When can he do something not because it’s lucrative but because
it’s a goddam human fucking impulse?
I want to tear magazines apart.
I want to smash tables;
to put my hands through mirrors;
to fuck it all goddamit!
But I won’t want it later, will I Rev?
I’ll want legible magazines;
and tables to have tea atop;
and mirrors to appreciate your beauty;
and faithfulness and loyalty and calm.
Next: Iced Coffee, Part Two
52 Iced Coffee, Part Two
La Rev, you loved coffee, didn’t you? Ah, Rev, I remember how you made us designate each Monday the coffee mug we’d use for the rest of the week. You would pick one out. You had first pick. I was fine with that; even curious to see which one you’d take first each week. Then I’d pick one.
I remember one Wednesday afternoon, actually a day when the words were flowing to me like a river of sumptuous chocolate I could shape any way I wanted. I heard you filling a mug with a handful of cubes from the freezer. I came into the kitchen to find you drinking iced coffee from a mug different than the one you’d picked that Monday.
“What are you doing?” I said. “That’s not your mug this week.”
“Iced coffee’s different,” you said.
At the time I was a little confused. But you know, I’m sitting here drinking some iced coffee, thinking about you, wondering where the hell you are, and it strikes me that you’re right. Iced coffee is different, different indeed.
Next: Reverie
13 Reverie
Who else but she
would cover my feet
once they’d scaped
from the neath
of my sleep sheet?
Next Chapter: That Person Looks Sorta Familiar
8 That Person Looks Sorta Familiar
Meet me someone outrageous
without them being dangerous someone
being underground with expert
knowledge of the bible but
believing none of it. Who’ll
say things I once thought of
but forgot and now, hearing
them again, will lead me to wonder
if it wasn’t in another life I thought
of those things, in another life where
I was this outrageous person
reminding me to be myself,
not dangerous but outrageous?
Next Chapter: La Rev's Creed
6 La Rev's Creed
Just write and
mother-fuckin
drink you
fuckin coward!!!
Death be damned
Love be damned
Life be damned
You didn’t ask for her
but you love her anyway———
Don’t look back
Don’t look ahead!
Next Chapter: Part of Me Has Gone Rotten
67 Part of Me Has Gone Rotten
Right now I’m trying to find out which part.
Somewhere lies a cankered sore,
as on the foot of a bum,
who’s been walking for days with no respite;
offered no help from my brain, my heart, my knees, or my eyes.
My stomach’s a landfill,
through which he rummages parts of last night’s meal,
worn down to bone by the thick, rich stink of unrequited bile.
Upon his surfeited burp, my white cells collapse inward with paranoia,
my lymph nodes hum ever so slightly.
I’m flesh-sick.
My eyes are last night’s cloud-covered moon;
my memory beset by dusty moths hungry for old clothes;
my heart bubbling up through my neck like a fountain of molten coins;
my knees speaking only to the weather, ignoring both nerve and vein.
Part of me has gone rotten.
I’m trying to carve out what’s dead without spilling the rest.
Next Chapter: Track Infinity
43 TRACK INFINITY
There is no CD,
no way to record it.
Either you’re here or you’re not.
Hear it?
That’s the sound of your life,
a song which has not yet ended.
Next Chapter: Tea For Whoever's Left
61 TEA FOR WHOEVER'S LEFT
Untouched cheeks
plague me like
gum in my stomach.
My heart is too aware of them:
it sends out chemical warriors
to cleanse body and mind
of thin-armed remembrances.
Like the tender turf of a battlefield
my spirit is impressed
with the sound of hoof-beats.
As I clean up afterward,
sorting shield and sword,
ghosts of the fallen beg me
to lessen desire, lessen desire.
Next Chapter: Backscratcher
28 BACKSCRATCHER
My head is bored
with cardboard boxes;
hammered with
tequila and bubblegum.
My jaw just went through
a title fight;
my neck is sore with shame
and unrestrained contemplation;
my instinct is aching in my stomach,
turning my innards like a rotisserie.
There’s a spot on my back
that I can’t quite reach.
It is sunburned
and itching
with wait
for you.
Next Chapter: Is This The Pineal Gland, Of Which I've Heard So Much?
56 Is This The Pineal Gland, Of Which I've Heard So Much?
I was here not long ago,
this rocky alcove of my mind:
watching memoirs made and lost
from within this frosty rind;
chasing anger through its hairy maze;
falling into tryst with lust and desire;
asking pride to sit back down,
remove its gaudy feather; and
catching again the scent of humility,
its precise purpose here unknown.
Next Chapter: You're The Reason
62 YOU’RE THE REASON
As long as I don’t
lose my reason,
I’ll change my thinking
any way you want.
I’ll parole
the worst killers,
Make loans
to the hopelessly insolvent.
Make sense to me and I’m yours.
Next Chapter: The Lamp
70 THE LAMP
For it burns like a fox in autumn
so you can see the way
to this, my love.
Next Chapter: There Is A Fire Somewhere
5 THERE IS A FIRE SOMEWHERE
And my love, like a fire engine
on a crowded street,
charges, honks, wastes hoses
on water that won’t even
mist, runs lights and
screams at shuttered cabs
to get, get out of the way.
Next Chapter: Baptism
11 BAPTISM
They put Galileo away for believing
Copernicus who believed in the Sun,
even more than the Sun.
They could put me away
for believing in you, La Rev.
Ah, Rev, you’re the church
with the highest steeples.
Your water is beyond holy.
You baptized all of me
when you kissed my forehead.
I felt my whole body go under.
I shocked the ocean and killed its fish.
But you brought them back.
You invented air conditioning
but I’m still hot.
Kiss my forehead again.
My love grows for you
like the inverse of a tumor.
I know no malady
that I know you.
I’ll follow you, La Rev,
in your celestial orbit,
in your quest for the rest of space.
Ah, Rev, you take me
beyond the Space Station,
you take me far beyond Jupiter,
you take me into the niches
of insane comets
and undetected planets.
Next Chapter: Screws
48 SCREWS
I could pitch myself
down these stairs
as a cry for help.
But what good would that do?
Which god would that appease,
but the grinning god of death?
Broken bones can heal
only themselves,—
not the rest of the body,
not the bones of other bodies
(nor bones already in the ground).
If this back is broken,
twisted with sin
and my own damn fault,
I’m gonna have to have
you rub it,
before I hit the floor.
Because below the floor
is dust and screws,
thousands of screws,
like rusty rocks in my shoes.
No one knows what they go to,
and I don’t want to find out.
They can just sit there,
planes strangling
the life out of levers.
All the screws in the world,
and everything forgotten.
Arguments that should’ve
held together;
notes that never
reached the addressee.
Things I shouldn’t have done,
this bed of screws,
jumping like a static shock
when I reach for you,
chirping like crickets,
untouched by the wind,
and running for dark
when you set your light upon them.
Next Chapter: How Do Things Happen?
32 HOW DO THINGS HAPPEN?
“You’re like a molting robin,” she said the other day. “Your breast should be warm red. Instead, it’s a dingy brown and white. There’s rings around your eyes and you’re going to need some time.”
Maybe there are rings around my eyes. I don’t know how things got this way. La Rev, what about the trees? Ah, Rev, an alder would be nice right now. A place to make our nest, a new nest? The old one, made of mud and sticks and parts of plastic bags, let’s get rid of that. I’m spreading my wings for you, Rev. Come home. There’s room for you on this branch that shakes with pleasure whenever you are near it.
Next Chapter: 66 Airplane
66 AIRPLANE
You worried about me, didn’t you? You didn’t want the worry. You didn’t like the thought of me coming off of you, the tremors I would have. You tried to take your worry to the bank, but they wouldn’t cash it. They are smart those moneychangers, you said in exasperation.
But you brought me back, didn’t you, Rev? You strapped me to the hood of your car. You made me aerodynamic. Like an arrow, like a rocket. Like an airplane composed of skin and bone. I flew, Rev. And you were right there with me.
The end.
