the other white meat of cathartic art

...the way you laughed
When I asserted;
“I know you.”

It’s my fault,
I know.

Through ill-timed August rains,
(as they say)
And inconvenient March snow

You let it go.
You let it melt.
Though,

My confessions were heart-felt
Resulting in
(both)
Forms of pain -

Feeling only remorse
And with nothing to gain;
cart before horse.
My heart-feelings were shame.

Not good at games,
or with loops.

Wanting forward movement:

ONLY.

The past cannot own me.

...lesson learned...

But how many bridges burned?
How many mistakes?

When can I truly live well?
Pitied statue of an artist;
With her head in a cloud swell.
Meanwhile;
You draw back the curtains
on your personal hell.

-Really-

Don’t you think I can tell?

When you’re sad
I can’t just say
“Oh well.”

It isn’t enough to break bad
(like you like)
The truth broke the spell.

Making a fist with my right hand,
Never breaking a real thing.
Money on the nightstand,

And,

I know what kind of ring.
I would get.
For you.





Forget what I said to you.

No epithet.
Just “No!”

Lots of
“Oh baby, please don’t!”

AND

With nothing to show,
For all that….

No blood on my hands yet,
But no further to go.

What’s allowed?

Could you trust me again?

I don’t know how.

Can the pain ever end?

I’m sorry,
Not right now.

Can’t we just start over this weekend?
We are friends…
Aren’t we….?
Deep down…?

You,

You don’t need me.

You could easily concede me.

Write me off as a flawed soul.

It is true:
I am not whole.

I’ll have to set a new spiritual goal
Besides self-less love.
I can see that I’ve fucked up.

I can’t go back again.

I deserve this pain.

Too easily I forget.

Not appreciative of things yet.
(enough, anyways)
I have a ways to go.

There are not enough days
That I could
(morally)
Ask you to waste
On me.

It’s best that you be free.

Beauty though I may be,
It’s all in the gaze.

True now and forever,

Even these days.

All of the best,

- Quin C. Greig

Always.

Confused Kandinsky

The prettier humans
with the hair and the spandex,
they look jean jacket;
well-worn, dirt-repellent.
I spoke to expanse
it got up then left.
Sashay back toward
misanthropic disaster.
One second
till downpour
and then it's this
absence radiating
up against
your body.
The coke edit
of the director's film
was sonic-sound baby.
It was lights.
What I don't recognize
is the skyline: Confused
Kandinsky, or an airplane,
in half, on its side.
No windows, painted black,
emitting non-things. Articulated
angles without motion
and flat. Not more
comfortable no more.
Not no more of anything
after the best trip
of an adult life
at eighteen
then twenty-three.
Saw the seams split,
cross-dimensional,
sonic shifts of me
as a kid playing
in an abandoned
apartment building.
This was my last
year at war
with the country.

Double Date

Felt stomach aches on the road today
as a radio host spoke
of an earthquake spending
time in Oklahoma City. Damage
reported Minimal, no worse
than McVeigh and Nichols
vacation except one is dead,
the other in prison.
Personally, I coordinate holidays
alongside environmental disruptions;
airfare extremely cheap
and TSA too fun when relaxing.
The strong-arm described
through the speaker system
above the moving walkway
is long gone with friends
in other places and rooms
nodding secrets into silences.


The Richter scale doesn’t measure
earthquakes recorded over
a magnitude of eight;
I count there on fingers,
or up to the numeral
I’ve slept through seismic
waves in agreement. Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols
conjure a tectonic shift
in an Oklahoma city. Think
of a Djinn: A Genie sprung
from a lamp. Arabian Nights
and an Oxford edition (One Thousand
and One Arabian Nights) I never read.
In 2011 a similar upheaval will befall
a parallel city with thousands more people
but fewer buildings. I feel myself
asleep through after shocks, news updates.

Alchemy

He burned tungsten and raw copper
flickering green and spitting sparks.
He took just about everything
and all the clothes in the closet.
He laid it out on the floor.
“This,” he asked judgmentally,
“is what you’re wearing?”
He sprayed the clothes with glue,
then sprinkled them with glitter.
I was promised a chemical reaction
and I got one—
yes he kissed me.

Emerging limb by limb from the
melted metal, I thought
of poor Aristotle burning everything
to prima material, all the boys gone to bed.
He cried, knowing by candlelight
that matter can only change
as much as nature allows;
gold is found, not constructed
that is, unless you paint it
on everything you see.

After he kissed me, he said
“science is just talking to nature” and
“alchemy, like reincarnation, is possible
if only you can make enough fire.”

In Fashion

‘This afternoon,
there it was.’
-Frederick Seidel

No moon tonight
but I felt it.
An anticipation inflicted
by a dust gale at a bus stop
as people flood streets
to search for the things
they’re not sure about.
Telephoned all friends
while waiting to ride
the city into an evening
until nothing was said in
message machines responding.
The ‘them’ recorded with hair different
in the dress or tie
they felt confident wearing.
Where they are asleep
the rodeo clown ropes
the wrong one again
supposing it to be a bull
but so many cows and calves
and fecal matter distract so
look to the trodden soil
as hand disregards lasso.
It drops itself after a while.

The restraint of language.
Control toward an elegance
accomplished by a tie clip.
Don’t wear green on Irish holidays
and Christmas: do not clash
with the eighties basement
carpet of your grandparents.
I’ll never say this.
I’ll listen to you breathe
and when you’re asleep
in sheets by me
the kitchen sink is a cabinet
for the drinks we made
and couldn’t finish.

When all friends are gone,
who do you dream with?
Memories made-up to clock ticks
or spurned by birds chirping
as the body is unconscious?
I can struggle with this all day.
At night, asleep, I am not me.
Or is it ‘all me’
because when I wake up
I don't feel different.

Water-color sunrise.
A Floridian apartment
painted plaster
in involved sunlight
of anti-gray thrusting rays
pasteling shadow puppets
all colored,
all nameless.

I am not an artist.
I am on vacation just
to masturbate in water socks
amongst the waves
and the things left
drying out to die to be
swept beneath
a displaceable sea.