Discharge

Discharge

Here, the buildings are splayed like jack-o‘-lanterns:
the big grin of windows separated by stone
and metal, illuminated by a lamp that may
be overhead or may be in another room.
Orange, yeah. They’re orange inside the
eyes, the mouth, the nose. The outside is
black against gray overcast. It could rain.
It has been and it could again. I do not
watch the sunrise when it has yet to happen.

The first time it started we were both eighteen:
I promised you would start to feel everything.
I want to fuck the trees so you went west
to Washington whose evergreens I have seen.
I was drawn to a pile of leaves last week and
your hair was in it, whispering –like the
filament of a light bulb that is about to go out.

Incendiary Balloons are dangerous.
The Japanese sent them over the Pacific.
They landed in some remote areas of
Oregon and California. They killed a
few children who tampered with their
release mechanisms. The Americans,
at that time, were developing another
kind of weapon that they would also
send over the pacific in a different kind
of balloon. That too would explode.
It took me a twenty-five hundred mile
plane ride and thirteen hours on a train
to learn that the Japanese attacked
America on four separate occasions
between December 7th 1941 and July
11th 1945. I was not surprised: some-
times knowledge takes time.

The moon held a twilight sad. Is that
a line from another poet because the
moon held with it a twilight sad, an
arrow and bowl of tulips. It sighed
What use are things to a form in
orbit? Circles in squares –a massing
of objects– on top of another.
– a body on top of another– in orbit;
Love? Letters. Asparagus. Today
I will take out a life insurance policy.

A friend tells me I should settle down
with a nice woman who is ignorant to
things that keep me preoccupied. What?
Am I supposed to talk to keep her mind
at ease at night? I don’t say this. I lie.
I agree. I listen to her breathe. I want
to be loved like the pediment of a temple
front: ordered around and sat on like a
stylobate. This is a mouth that is much
prettier when clenched tight, kept quiet.

It is nice to be ignorant of language:
in not understanding one is left to listen.

The Walk Home

“The streets were dark with something more than night.”
-Raymond Chandler

High tops sprang toward the base of a fire escape.
It is true, it has been snowing: the iron gives a
gorgonic hiss as residue clumps into a
mess of what looks like bellybutton lint. No, not
enough time, shouldn’t have considered this, three more
floors until the buildings will shade what tracks exist.

The cistern: city beneath another city.
It is calling, the rooftops are unsafe. Below
there are lean byways without traffic lights. Stop signs
made up of canals, the discarded memories
of our bodies all at once, mixing into rags,
Styrofoam cups, half-eaten food squeezed through
tight passages like subway trains. I am afraid.

“Live life accordingly” reads a poster for a
suicide hotline. I dangle a foot in front
of it and drop, stunning a pile of cold muck with
both high tops. For just a second, I’m a compass:
I shudder for direction, support myself and
pivot, responding to the darkness like one half
of a magnet. The city is an attitude

it keeps like a secret, confusing stars with dim
lantern filaments, deeming them unimportant.
I’ve seen myself sweat at sunrise and thought about
loss. I’ve slept in the cistern and walked on rooftops.
If one thinks too much they’ll drive themselves unusual
which can be a good thing if one enjoys funerals.

The Centenarian

Wind swept skirt, there are melodies hidden
in the ankles that drive you forward. Circles
in squares -a massing of limbs- a garden
of delicacy shivering in certain
morning rains. Compose to manipulate;
the face smiles first. Then the bodily curl
of a stomach yawning inward retakes
control as the perianth drools and unfurls.

· · ·

A remembered kiss of excitement. Hand
on hip, then the hiss of metal searing bone
as though a leaf pile devoured a firebrand.
Eschatology warned me of dark cyclones,
hurricanes, earthquakes and torrential rain
but this was not as planned: we met death from all
around. Tools too sick with fits of wolfsbane
saturated wounds and left my men mauled.

· · ·

Tulip, there was a war and I was told
to erase it. I built over the craters
-salt soaked and warm- until there was pavement
in all directions. Unaware of its grim
impact, I used resources like salt in
an ice storm. Sulfur Dioxide? Acid
Aerosols? When the sunset grew more vibrant,
I was told my work was to blame for it.

Prophecies be damned, the world was always ending.
That I survived a few wars means nothing. I know
now there are things worse than the wrath of a planet:
when it decides to not take you along with it.

Catholic King

This terrific Week
A grayscale in seven hues
At a loss for fine cutlery in
A decadent decade
I’m getting by
With my plastic forks and knives
Temporary fortification
Against things too tough to swallow whole:
Like 3rd degree burns
And sculptures that are 6 feet tall

One lime green
Thigh/High stocking
Solemnly pulled over my bucksome flank
Worn as a complementary side
In symbolic tribute
To a more perfect romance
That once happened on the internet
Getting started on the right foot
Dressed in psychedelic files
As I hand you my coat
Stars collide
And we are reduced to a shimmering dust
The triumphant survivors stand below
With their eyes closed
Trying to catch us on their ruby tongues

It’s just one thing after another
In this hit sit-com
On and on through our afternoon re-runs
Like sand through the hourglass:
These Are The Days Of Our Lives
After the first commercial break
The plot is re-explained
Still, I’m lost
In a funny fantasy
That I’m trying to live out
You caught me practicing my routine
Candy-clad palm on the small of my back
And we’ve struck emotional gold
Just riffing on the soundstage
Sitting high on folding chairs
We know the full-moon is above us
But it’s invisible
With metal beams and wires obscuring
Our view of the midnight double-feature

These recent days everything
Has the feeling of a one-night stand
Some sort sexual impermanence
In my complete extension outward
A sentiment of singularity
In all my latest handshakes
I become my own entity
The more I stand alone
On a dance floor by myself
I am exultant
Kindred spirits with their bodies pressed
Against the XXX of the speakers
And amps
Can’t stop shaking
With all the good vibrations
My heart swelling
With the a special sort of tenderness
For all these pretty strangers

I am optioning the various rights to my story
And you seemed keen
On making a movie
Where I was the star
You envisioned the trials of a hypnotist
“In a world she never made”
You saw me as a beautiful destroyer
The sturdy descendant of a milkman
She, Himself
With mysterious cuts and bruises
And an artist
You wanted me to play my own character
Mercifully relieving me of the audition process
Although, I had come prepared with a song
We have now forged a business relationship
Prepare to become attuned to my vision
Be courageous in the face of my audacity
I’ll be your idea man
You can focus on the details


I will now admit
That I’ve dabbled in the occult
With a special minor interest in palmistry
I have money in my hands
And charcoal on the tips of my conical fingers
There is a discernable narrative
Amongst the mounds of Apollo and Jupiter
Two nights ago
I unconsciously incurred
Some significant little wound
Running boldly parallel to my heart’s line
I see my life line interrupted
A vision of me
Standing in the shattered glass of what I am
With another self-same revelation
Of what I may become
I am but a child
And a *-soldier of fortune-*
Winning February’s contest,
Hands down.

In such rotten times

I brought my work home with me that night
and stood to watch sweating orators
grow big and tall with the richness of rhetoric.
Speaking certainly or saying something
about that which they cannot live without;
sexually satisfied essentially repressed proud Americans
with some real shit to talk about:
"There's independence in the open wound,
Which is to say that we can heal so soon."
They raised a stage, erected beneath
the shortest, most important buildings history keeps.
Coughing up chewed pencil lead, my eyes to the page,
decorated in work's sweet sweat and love's neck on my breath,
the words I heard then seemed to lack the passionate sexual regret
that marks the end to a fight well said.
Something is really going to start on fire tonight.
Don't ask me how I know.
Why?
The erected statue for which I could not bear to crane my neck,
which they said resembled the empty Cicada shells of those died unwed,
they built it out of wax, grease, fumes and wet stems.
Tonight protesters gathered on the National MAll to tell the general public exactly how and when they want what they want. It was hot, the crowd was cranky and most news outlets did not bother showing up. One committee member said of the event, "It is not a matter of life or death, but the will to knowledge for all the repressed."
They speak clearly and are so well read,
I can't think of a better way at all to distract from the sketches I make between interviews
like Michael Dukakis rolling his tank over Berlin
and across the binding Mussolini dropping napalm from his upside-down gallows.
A couple in matching tracksuits jog by, man mumbes
"If all they wanted were their genitals back, all they had to do was ask."
My wardrobe fits right in the puzzled crowd
But I can't seem to keep my head to the ground.