Sunday, February 28, 2010

Calm Down














It is a warm blue,
relative to black,
by eyes towards the inept sidewalk.
Among the ugliest of pavement,
and the moment of actual capture-
the heavy white beauty on the branches
is like stillness on the twenty-sixth,
when the wooden church doors exhale,
wind from heaters nears Dystopia,
like God watching his breath turn cold.


When Jesus puts away his license,
The arms, loose from ham
expended by knives,
The fingers like teeth through plastic,
will retire tonight
behind shampooed hair by the fire.
By Monday, the nailed teeth will wake
and drag the strands out, like children in shops
throwing fits for Change,
the knuckle knees fall at the temples.

Oily faces sit in a circle measuring time.
You poor things will go no where.
in The City of Drawers
she's hollow beneath the black coat and glasses,
pushing her hand out like a need from the inside,
climbing the rope with every vein.
She speaks and the syllables slow down, becoming her,
the fat on her belly, the blonde dye,
the Cocoa pebbles in her brain.


Today is the day, anxious girl, to remember the way
light dies behind clouds,
diminishing in tiers with no stories to deflect the gold descent,
like fallen buildings with batted eyes,
or the sound of God swallowing breath in the darkness.

Sestina: The Festival

I

At the cherry baptism- elephant ears dipped in oil
and Save Your Soul picketers cross Gucci shades at Cool Waves.
A girl with four bright eyes plays the flute in the road for coins-
and the tilta-whirl, fun house, and Ferris Wheel glass the bay.
Disciples from ant holes magnet the bug-zapping cherries-
where you flew too, and the bright burned your chin on the paved road.

II

and you spit cherry pits in the river from the bridge on Cass Road,
but fell short to an Egg with a turkey leg deep fried in oil
so you sulked in the soda shop, your red visor like a dangling cherry.
"Cherry salsa, cherry soda, cherry chocolate or pie?" says the salesman and waves.
You reconciled red sins and crowds repelled from the bay,
from the red wash, your rumble stomach and breath, alone you skipped coins.

III

You rode the penny ponies at Meijer til' you ran out of coins,
And by the wild hills with brick eyes you passed Florida to Indiana plates on the road
and whistled above creeping hymns and beeps from the shopping mall to the bay
where the beach bodies Kruger-link in the sand and roast like Hawaii pigs in oil-
your wrists are hot stilts and on plush boats leather skins dance- their tummies make waves.
Stilts sizzle, your dropped skull guns the blue blanket sky- stitched clouds looks like cotton cherries.


IV

You follow the visor flock to the floats, the red trumpets tromp and jag- promenade of cherries.
Red backs shadow penny wishes- grandpa said 'wish in one hand' so you scoop the coins-
beyond the tots, the fold-able chairs- the Queen, with a crown of ripe fruit- cups a slooow wave.
Karate club, veterans, high school bands and bops on the cherriot slide the road-
awwed- you bury between two beatered boys, whos bis and tris bubble in oil,
SPF splotches your shirt- one brow bows and hollow pebbles vaunt the bay.

V

Like red quacking bills- the visors flock to the shore- the open orange mouth eats the bay.
Bills spread blankets over the sand, over the bumps and lumps- pits of eaten cherries.
In dim light florescents spread from ultraviolet puffs of smoke, like water and oil.
Jeaned tweens 'woo!' as fired lights scream the sky- the billed eyes gloss like multicolored coins.

Red white streams trickle down rear view mirros of west bound Wranglers on the road-
and the coined eyes and the red bills watch the colored sparks drown in the waves.


VI

Then the babysitters and the under agers- haunting ghosts yawn in waves-
pendulum eyes fold the red piped lights and Beatled notes bounce off the bay.
Lazy-eye Bill buys a cherry pint, and you step sip spill with kaleidoscopes in the road.
3 a.m big belt badge says "cleeeear out", a tooth pick prying his pearl bed of cherries-
Lazy-eye swings a fist- you jack in the box- the band stops, and the gutters tink from kicked coins.
The streets strangled, cherry pint hot on your breath- you pray on a stoop, 'damn splotch of oil.'


ENVOI

The ROAD pillows your brain barefoot on the bay- Beatitudes inked in the WAVES, and in that blessed parable the lame gives all her COINS... you carefully crucifix the OIL tightrope-- and tilted mirrors gasconade. Bungee ropes below reach leather coffins filled with CHERRIES.

Friday, February 26, 2010

A Cloud in Trousers -- Vladimir Mayakovsky 1915


Prologue


Your thought,
Fantasizing on a sodden brain,
Like a bloated lackey on a greasy couch sprawling,--
With my heart’s bloody tatters, I’ll mock it again.
Until I’m contempt, I’ll be ruthless and galling.

There’s no grandfatherly fondness in me,
There are no gray hairs in my soul!
Shaking the world with my voice and grinning,
I pass you by, -- handsome,
Twentytwoyearold.

Gentle souls!
You play your love on the violin.
Crude ones beat it out on the drums violently.
But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me,
And become just two lips entirely?

Come and learn,--
You, decorous bureaucrats of angelic leagues!
Step out of those cambric drawing-rooms

And you, who can leaf your lips
Like a cook leafs the pages of her recipe books.

If you wish,--
I’ll rage on raw meat like a vandal
Or change into hues that the sunrise arouses,
If you wish,--
I can be irreproachably gentle,
Not a man, -- but a cloud in trousers.

I refuse to believe in Nice blossoming!
I will glorify you regardless,--
Men, crumpled like bed-sheets in hospitals,
And women, battered like overused proverbs.

Part I

You think I’m delirious with malaria?

This happened.
In Odessa, this happened.

“I’ll come at four,” promised Maria.
Eight...
Nine...
Ten.

Soon, the evening,
Frowning
And Decemberish,
Left the windows
And vanished in dire darkness.

Behind me, I hear neighing and laughter
Of candelabras.

You wouldn’t recognize me if you knew me prior:
A bulk of sinews
Moaning,
Fidgeting.
What can such a clod desire?
But the clod desires many things.

Because for oneself it doesn’t matter
Whether you’re cast of copper
Or whether your heart is cold metal.
At night, you want to wrap your clamor
In something feminine,
Gentle.

And thus,
Enormous,
I hunch in the frame,
And with my forehead, I melt the window glass.
Will this love be
Tremendous or lame?
Will it sustain or pass?
A big one wouldn’t fit a body like this:
It must be a little love, --
a baby, sort of,
It shies away when the cars honk and hiss,
But adores the bells on the horse-tram.

I come face to face
With rippling rain,
Yet once more,
And wait
Splashed by city surf’s thundering roar.

Running amok with a knife outside,
Night caught up to him
And stabbed him,
Unseen.

The stroke of midnight
Fell like a head from a guillotine.

Silver raindrops on the windowpane
Were piling a grimace
And yelling.
It seemed like the gargoyles of Notre Dame
Started yelping.

Damn you!
Haven’t you had enough yet?
Cries will soon cut my throat all around.

I heard:
Softly,
Like a patient out of his bed,
A nerve leapt
Down.
At first,
He barely moved.
Then, apprehensive
And distinct,
He started prancing.
And now, he and another two,
Darted about, step-dancing.

On the ground floor, plaster was falling fast.

Nerves,
Big ones,
Little ones,--
Various!--
Galloped madly
Until, at last,
Their legs wouldn’t carry them.

Night oozed through the room and sank.
Stuck in slime, the eye couldn’t slither out of it.

Suddenly, doors started to bang
As if hotel’s teeth
Were chattering.

You entered,
Abrupt like “Take it!”
Mauling the suede gloves you carried,
And said:
“You know,--
I’m soon getting married.”

Get married then.
It’s all right,
I can handle it.
As you can see, I’m calm, of course!
Like the pulse
Of a corpse.

Remember?
You used to say:
“Jack London,
Money,
Love
And ardor,”--
I saw one thing only:
You were La Gioconda,
Which had to be stolen!

And someone stole you.

Again in love, I shall start gambling,
With fires illuminating the arch of my eyebrows.
And why not?
Sometimes, homeless ramblers
Will seek to find shelter in a burnt down house!

Part II

Glorify me!
The great ones are no match for me!
Upon everything that’s been done
I stamp the word “naught.”

As of now,
I have no desire to read.
Novels?
So what!

This is how books are made,
I used to think,--
Along comes a poet,
And opens his lips with ease.
Inspired, the fool simply begins to sing,--
Oh please!
It turns out:
Before they can sing with elation,
On their calloused feet they tramp for some time,
While brainless fishes of imagination
Are splashing and wallowing in the heart’s slime.
And while, hissing with rhymes, they boil
All the loves and the nightingales in a broth-like liquid,
The tongueless street merely squirms and coils,--
It has nothing to yell or even speak with.

In silence, the street dragged on the ordeal.
A scream stood erect on the gullet’s road.
While fat taxies and cabs were bristling still,
Wedged in the throat.
As if from consumption,
the trodden chest gasped for air.

The city, with gloom, blocked the road rather fast.

And when,--
Nevertheless! --
The street coughed up the strain onto the square
And pushed the portico off its throat, at last,
It seemed as if,
Accompanied by choirs of an archangel’s chorus,
Recently robbed, God would show us His heat!

But the street squatted down and yelled out coarsely:
“Let’s go eat!”

Krupps and Krupplets gather around
To paint menacing brows on the city,
While in the gorge,
Corpses of words are scatted about,--
Two live and thrive,--
“Swine”
And another one,--
I believe, “borsch”.

And poets,
Soaking in sobs and complaining,
Run from the street, resentful and sour:
“With those two words there’s no way to portray now
A beautiful lady,
And love
And a dew-covered flower!”

And after the poets,
Thousands of others stampeded:
Students,
Prostitutes,
Salesmen.

Why should I care about Faust?
In a fairy display of the fireworks’ loot,
He’s gliding with Mephistopheles
On the parquet of galaxies!
I know,--
A nail in my boot
Is more frightening than Goethe’s fantasies!

I am
The most golden-mouthed,
With every word giving
The body - a name-day,
And the soul - a rebirth,
I assure you:
Minutest speck of the living
Is worth more than I can ever do on this earth!


Haven’t you seen
A dog licking the hand that it’s being thrashed by?

I am laughed at
By the present-day tribe.
They’ve made
A dirty joke out of me.
But I can see crossing mountains of time,
Him, whom others can’t see.

Where men’s sight falls short,
Wearing the revolution’s thorny crown,
Walking at the head of a hungry horde,
The year 1916 is coming around.


And when
His advent announcing,
Joyful and proud,
You’ll step up to greet the savior,--
I will drag
My soul outside,
And trample it
So it spreads out!
And give it to you, red in blood, as a flag.

Ah, how and wherefrom
Did it come to this, -
Against luminous joy,
Dirty fists of madness,
Were raised in the air?


And
As in the Dreadnought’s downfall
With chocking spasms
Men jumped into the hatch,
Before the ship died,
The crazed Burlyuk crawled on, passing
Through the screaming gaps of his eye.
Almost bloodying his eyelids,
He emerged on his knees,
Stood up and walked
And in the passionate mood,
With tenderness, unexpected from one so obese,
He simply said:
“Good!”
It’s good when from scrutiny a yellow sweater
Hides the soul!
It’s good when
On the gibbet, in face of terror,
You shout:
“Drink Cocoa -- Van Houten!”

This moment,
Like a Bengal light,
Crackling from the blast,
I wouldn’t exchange for anything,
Not for any money.

Clouded by cigar smoke,
And stretching like a liquor glass,
One could make out the drunken face of Severyanin.
How dare you call yourself a poet
And gray, like a quail, twitter away your soul!
When
With brass knuckles
This very moment
You have to split the world’s skull!

You,
With one thought alone in your head,
“Am I dancing with style?”
Look how happy I am
Instead,
I,--
A pimp and a fraud all the while.
From all of you,
Who soaked in love for plain fun,
Who spilled
Tears into centuries while you cried,
I’ll walk away
And place the monocle of the sun
Into my gaping, wide-open eye.

I’ll wear colorful clothes, the most outlandish,
And roam the earth To please and scorch the public,
And in front of me,
On a metal leash,
Napoleon will run like a little puppy.
Like a woman, quivering, the earth will lie down,
Wanting to give in, she will slowly slump.
Objects will come alive
And from all around,
Their lips will lisp:
“Yum-yum-yum-yum-yum!”

Suddenly,
Clouds
And other such stuff in the air
Stirred in some astonishing commotion,
As if workers in white, up there,
Declared a strike, all bitter and emotional.
Savage thunder peeked out of the cloud, irate.
Snorting with huge nostrils, it howled
And for a moment, the sky's face bent out of shape,
Resembling the iron Bismarck’s scowl.
And someone,
Entangled in the clouds’ maze,
To the café, stretched out his hand now:
Both, tender somehow,
With a womanly face,
And at once, like a firing cannon.


Take your hands out of your pockets, wanderers.
Pick up a bomb, a knife or a stone
And if one happens to be armless,
Let him come to fight with his forehead alone!
Go on, starving,
Servile
And abused ones,
In this flea-swarming filth, do not rot!
Go on!
We’ll turn Mondays and Tuesdays
Into holidays, painting them with blood!
Remind the earth whom it tried to debase!
With your knives be rough!

The earth
Has grown fat like the mistress’ face,
Whom Rothschild had over-loved!
May flags flutter in the line of fire
As they do on holidays, with a flare!
Hey, street-lamps, raise the traitors higher,
Let their carcasses hang in the air.

I cursed,
Stabbed
And hit in the face,
Crawled after somebody,
Biting into their ribs.

In the sky, red like La Marseillaise,
Sunset gasped with its shuddering lips.

It’s insanity!

Not a thing will remain from the war.

Night will come,
Bite into you
And swallow you stale.
Look,--
Is the sky playing Judas once more,
With a handful of stars that were soaked in betrayal?


Slumped in the corner of the saloon, I sit,
Spilling wine on my soul and the floor,
And I see:
In the corner, round eyes are lit
And with them, Madonna bites the heart’s core.
Why bestow such radiance on this drunken mass?
What do they have to offer?
Can’t you see, once again,
They prefer Barabbas
Over the Man of Golgotha?
Maybe, deliberately,
In this human mash, not once
Do I wear a fresh-looking face.
I am,
Perhaps,
The handsomest of your sons
In the whole human race.
Give them,
The ones molded with delight,
A quick death already,
So that their children may grow up right;
Boys -- into fathers
Girls -- into pregnant ladies.
Like wise men, let new born babes
Grow gray with insight and thought
And they’ll come
To baptize infants with names
Of the poems I wrote.

Athletes glistened in the carriages on the street.
People burst
Overstuffed,
And their fat oozed out,
Like a muddy river, it streamed on the ground,
Together with juices from
A cud of old meat.

Maria!
How can I fit a tender word into bulging ears?
A bird
Sings for alms
With a hungry voice
Rather well,

A poet sings praises to Tiana all day,
But I,--
I’m made of flesh,
I’m a man,--
I ask for your body,
Like Christians pray:
“Give us this day
Our daily bread.”

I’ll climb out
Filthy (sleeping in gullies all night),
And into his ear, I’ll whisper
While I stand
At his side:
“Mister God, listen!
Isn’t it tedious
To dip your generous eyes into clouds
Every day, every evening?
Let’s, instead,
Start a festive merry-go-round
On the tree of knowledge of good and evil!
Omnipresent, you’ll be all around us!
From wine, all the fun will ensue
And for once, Peter will not be frowning,
He'll perform the fast-paced dance, ki-ka-pu.
We’ll bring all the Eves back into Eden:
Order me
And I’ll go,--
From boulevards,
I’ll pick up all the pretty girls needed
And bring them to you!
Should I?
No?
You’re shaking your curly head coarsely?
You’re knitting your brows like you’re rough?
Do you think
That this
Winged one, close by,
Knows true meaning of love?
I too am an angel; used to be one before,--
With a sugar lamb’s eye, I stared at your faces,
But I don’t want to give presents to mares anymore,--
All the torture of Sevres that’s been made into vases.
Almighty, You created two hands,
And with care,
Made a head, and went down the list,--
But why did you make it
So that it pained
When one had to kiss, kiss, kiss?!
I thought that you were Great God, Almighty,
But you’re a miniature idol, -- a dunce in a suit,
Bending over, I’m reaching
For the knife that I’m hiding
At the top of my boot.
You, swindlers with wings,
Huddle in fright!
Ruffle your shuddering feathers, rascals!
You, reeking of incense, I’ll open you wide,
From here all the way to Alaska.

Let me go!

You can’t stop me!
Whether I’m right or wrong
Makes no difference,
I will not be calmer.
Look,--
Stars were beheaded all night long
And the sky is again bloody with slaughter.

Hey you,
Heaven!
Take your hat off,
When you see me near!

Silence.

The universe sleeps.
Placing its paw
Under the black, star-infested ear.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Incarnation


This is where I will return.
To the brink of light between the trees,
Where there is no break between the birds,
Where the bee taunts me
for being too close to livid plants,
and my skin grows gold
While I'm circled by flying dots
and the leaves move like a migrating swarm.

Misplaced

All of the dumb bare legs and cold-hearted skirts,
stand in silence,
thinking about their own faces.

She winks when she says hello.
The tall group that wore soft cotton
toasted small, blue glasses.

identical strangers,
their collars whisper,
'you know you don't belong here.'
each night louder, angrier,
filling caverns in my brain
and slapping my heart with hours .

and outside the snow is soft, dissipating,
slower than music.

Everything is dark and quiet in the brick building
with shadows of chairs
and paper smells,
while all of the weekday sponges
are waiting in line to feel nothing.

I felt alive with the laughing kids,
and when the winter sun played spring for a day,
an inch of the mile of joy that came
on the day I was born, and the day that I died,
When I first breathed you in.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Stay in School

Those photographs that the dead girl took
of me running through fields in Indiana
with them that are dead to me,
are likely
the view from those heavy blue eyes.
Grey in exposure,
depleted faces, and fine, accurate lines.
Scans of bobbing ponytails through
tall corn and cloud skies.
She was tall,
and exceptionally kind.

Somewhere in Boston
in a white room by a tub,
heavy blonde hair kissed the tiles,
and that blue world view,
diminished into a dot.

Personally,
Every time I die,
from childhood,
skyscrapers,
rolling cars,
hibernation,
mixed pills in a blackout drunk,
I wake the next morning,
underneath warm blankets.

Maybe she was only
half serious too,
somewhere in the red wine,
and cobbled stone streets,
but woke to empty lungs
underneath cold soil.

Sadness,
if it is conceived,
is stealing.
A girl in the lane beside me
only had one leg.
And a son in the Congo
ate his mother's leg.
the man in the commercial
is in a million dollar debt,
but all of the heavy heads here
are adorned with bricks,
pictured with slick,
selfish assholes.

All of them,
in converging coats
celebrate the fact that it's Tuesday.
Or Wednesday.
Or winter.
The notion of why,
tucked deep into abysmal pockets,
mixed with lint and pennies.
Thanks to the snood,
in her high ceiling tomb,
stealing ballots and checks,
those kindly waves
and ill written essays,
are her products of stupidity.


Tonight in the blanket snow,
blue and noir and light,
I'll keep becoming little worlds perhaps,
in new domes,
expanding, and uglier.
The ants have smaller brains
and bigger mouths here.

In the east nothing is orange,
or pink
or bright,
but breathing is okay,
thanks to the living woods,
and more breathing room
without the restraint
of suburban brains,
has become the better option.

MAYAKOVSKY- Frank O'Hara

1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

A Face in the Dust

My night often unfolds in a similar pattern, with the unwinding of routine or the commencement of the same necessary rituals. I walk home, turning right or left when appropriate. I cut the street between the third tree, because it's fastest. Past the house with too many flowers I look at the store with wide empty windows, and think "I like those". If it is cold, I wear a jacket, and if it is warm, I may sweat enough to think, "God It's hot". Sometimes I shuffle faster passed the allies. Sometimes I pick leaves from the bushes just to tear them in my hands. Once I get in my house I throw my briefcase on the floor in the foyer, letting the papers and appointments between those leather snaps just sleep. Those printed words can sit in the boxed darkness tonight, because in the morning at my office I will unleash them, and they will pull me like gravity.

It had been a day, not a particularly long or stressful day, but one which made my mind white blank, while my cunning hands mechanically put the cubed ice in a glass, and poured the Chivas Regal scotch to the rim. I drank the scotch and opened the kitchen shades. The windows were already open and the crisp air brushed against me like a cat longing attention. The wind breathing into my kitchen is the closest feeling of company I'll care to count, and the sound of ice clanking in my scotch is the only nightly conversation my kitchen walls will hear. Sometimes when the windows are down, I'll hear the couple next door screaming hell at each other. I can't ever make out the argument, but they yell and the walls bang with thrown pans and shoes, then pelts of words like knives. They always makeup just as ravenously though, each time closer to the brink of disaster. "Damn fools", I say to my scotch glass when I hear it all. The ice clanks back.

She threw a glass at me once. It wasn't scotch though, it was a wine glass. There had been a purple stain on the kitchen wall for years afterward. I painted over it, but the paint layers couldn't make me forget the exact spot below the window where the wine dripped onto the floor, and the exact way she breathed so furiously in that moment; like she was trapped inside herself. I didn't kiss her though. I didn't ravenously makeup with her. I said words instead, released them into the room like a balloon escaped towards clouds, never to be retrieved. I came into my bed late that night, and didn't touch her when she cried. I drowned her out of my brain and went over the next day's schedule in my head. It's been ten years since she died and I can still hear her next to me sometimes while I lay in bed, making that awful snotty noise.

I closed the windows and poured another glass of scotch, this time with a dash of water. My reflection from the glass blurred before me, "Old man", I said, "Don't think about that!" Loosening my tie, I walked down the shadowed hallway and up the stairwell towards my bedroom. At the end of the hallway I could see that the door to my room was partly open and the light was on inside. I never leave the lights on in the morning, and I always close my bedroom door.I stood silent, cautiously holding my glass. Slowly I moved to the hall closet, reached behind the coats and pulled my rifle from the corner. I crept towards the open door, moving slowly passed the smiling eyes framed in the portraits on the wall. The photos of her, sitting by my side, haunted every cautioned step towards the lit room.

I opened the door with the riffle barrel. The old hinges creaked. The windows were both wide open, and the white curtains blew with the wind furiously. The bedside lamp was on. I walked slowly to the closet, opening it in a wisp. Empty. I moved to the bed, raising the bed skirt with the barrel, I knelt down quickly. Aside from a single storage box, the floor was empty. The air was cold, and the wind howled lowly like whispered breath moving from one octave to the next in a panic. I sat on the bed, turned off the bedside lamp, and drank the glass of scotch in one ravenous swallow. I fell backwards onto the cool cotton, my rifle across my chest.

The whirled curtains made dancing shadows on the walls. Above me, a dusty configuration on the ceiling fan created an apparition of a face. The face, as my imagination manifested, was opened mouth and wide-eyed. It was a face of surprise. I hadn't dusted the fan, and had taken the habit of talking to the dust face.

"Who was here?" I asked.

The shadowed face, it's open mouth paralyzed and permanently appalled, gaped back at me.

It wasn't the first time something peculiar had happened in this room. The old floor boards crept in the night. Taps on the window had woken me before. Sometimes the door closed and opened. One night I came home, and the bed covers were disheveled and unmade. The bottom cover was even un-tucked from the mattress.

I look at the dust face, and I know it sees all. Like God himself. It watches me while I lay. It saw the covers un-tuck. It saw the light turn on.

"What does she want?" I ask it.

The moon rose, illuminating the walls, and splashing silver and grey on the shadows in the rectangular room. My eyelids, heavy with scotch and cool air, belted closed and strained for sleep. My drifting brain, elevated to a minor drunk, dizzily surveyed the notions of my life like passing scenes on a Ferris wheel. There was my job. The appointments and clients, court dates. A crisp new suit. Flashes of my watch with the time. Me, answering the phone, "It's unacceptable. Yes, of course. I'll see you at 8 a.m sharp." Hanging up the phone. Jotting down a note, importantly.

There She was. Before everything. Before the daily tension, and the courtesy small talk, the silence... She wore a plain blue dress the day I met her. It fell just above her knee, and flowed gracefully on her pale skin when she walked across the cafe. She sat at the table parallel to me. With perfect posture, she tucked loose strands of dull brown hair behind her ear. Her elegant hand moved the spoon in her coffee, mixing the cream and sugar clockwise. Her eyes followed her book, but looked up towards me awkwardly every few pages.

And there She was again.. mixing the cream into her coffee at our kitchen table, in the same way years later. She was still a ghost to me now. The silence between us became tension, tension became annoyance, annoyance became hate. Our marriage was a wound ignored. Soon I hated that way she moved the spoon. I hated that way she sat so straight in the chair. I couldn't stand the sound of her gulping the coffee, and clearing her throat. "Ehhhuuum".

She always looked at me so thoughtfully, like she was reading a screen too far away. I used to like that mystique about her. Eventually it made me feel like she was appraising my every move. "What are you looking at!" I'd yelled to her. I'd pour a glass of scotch, I'd talk on the phone with clients, and she'd look at me with those dark discerning eyes. "I can have a damn drink if I want one." I'd whisper. "Ehhhumm". She'd clear her throat. The sound of it made me sick.

And there I was as a child. Sitting outside the principals office, my arms crossed and my feet swinging below the chair. The secretary shook her head at me. I'd pushed Becky McPhee off the monkey bars. She was just sitting there next to me, peering out towards the playground. I pushed her thoughtlessly. She skinned her knee. "What made you push her?" the principal asked me. "I don't know," I'd said. I didn't know. I just didn't like her. I didn't like her in the same way I didn't like mustard.

"She reminds me of mustard." I told my father later that night. The excuse cost me a belt spanking, and an hour long lesson from my mother about Jesus, and the parable of the mustard seed. "Now go kneel by your bed and say ten Hail Mary's so God will forgive you." My mother told me. She watched me kneel, my hands together towards the sky. I looked up, reverently. Really I wasn't praying. I was wondering if God was peering down at me and shaking his head, in the same way the secretary had in the office. "I still don't like mustard..." I thought to myself.

And there I was, sitting at my desk one night. I'd accomplished the better half of the Chivas Regal, and I sorted through a clients' file. The room was dim and my forehead sweat anxiety and scotch. It was a high profile case. Arthur Gooden, an affluent Real Estate agent was awaiting trial for first degree murder. One of his residential listings had burned down. His wife was in the master bedroom. She was his partner in business, and known around town as a cold, pushy shrew. However, her mind for business management was brilliant. He was the face of Gooden Realty. She was the backbone. Now that sales smile was all over the news, and the district attorneys' case had evidence of arson, and an eye witnesses of Arthur leaving the estate. He did have an alibi though, and with that I calculated and planned, the nuts and bolts turned in my brain like a machine. I sat there in my desk that night, building a manipulation of words, a persuasion of his character and reputation... sips of scotch barreled down my throat like gasoline into a Greyhound. It fueled my jotted notes, plans for Arthur's redemption.

She walked passed my office door, back and forth several times. Her dark eyes darted into the dim room, watching me work, until finally she crept through the doorway, a cup of tea in her hand. She wore a floor length white night gown. "Ehhuuuum." She set the tea on my desk. Her eyes converging with the papers before her, and her lips slightly open, on the brink of words. "Well what is it?" I said, irritated. "Here is your tea, huuusband." She said. She called me 'husband' on occassion, with a patronizing tone. She did it to emphasize some sort of duty I'd neglected. Some sort of passive way for her to tell me I'd failed her.

"Fine. Now please leave me be, I have work to do, wife." I said. I laughed furiously, for just a moment. Her skin glowed in the dark room, almost matching the pearl shade of her night gown. She'd taken to drinking a bottle of Merlot in place of her dinners, I'd noticed. Her cheek bones, high and darting in hunger now, so emphatically adorned her sneered lips. And that look, that disdainful look, she gave it now, castigating me to my core. "I know you. I know what your 'working' on. That man. That murderer. Your defending him, and you know that he's guilty." Her lips hadn't moved, but I saw the words in her eyes, judging me, scorning me with each piercing gaze. "Get out. You're worthless. You're barren..." I whispered furiously at her. My fingers clenched the desk wood.

And there I was the day after that, waking alone in my bed. I showered and shaved. I pressed my crisp white shirt. I fixed my tie, perfectly. I slipped on my leather shoes. She must have passed out drunk on the couch again, I'd thought. I made the bed and closed the bedroom door. I walked down the stairs, grabbing my brief case and securing its' contents. The downstairs bathroom light was on, and in the silent house a dripping tap echoed from the open door. The house was dry and dark that morning. I walked into the bathroom.

There She was. She hung from the shower rod, turning slowly and gracefully, like a charm on a music box, a foot above the floor. Her skin so pale, it hurt my eyes. And her face, with that same thoughtful expression, was now empty and blank. The black eyes arrested me, "look what you've done," they said. I turned away from the body, and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I fixed my hair with my hands. I looked at my watch. It was 6:26. My green eyes were footed by black bags. I contorted my face and huffed my lungs, digging for mourning, for shock. Stopping all efforts, I brought my eyes close to the mirror, releasing a great smile."You're running late." I told myself. I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. I turned off the bathroom light, leaving the door open and behind me.
________________

And suddenly there was a tapping noise, constant and loud. It bumped me into a half sleep, and the dreamed Ferris wheel scenes collided with the reality of the tapping. My eyes opened, and strained to adjust. Above me in the dust, the face appeared contorted to discern. It was her likeness suddenly; her dark thoughtful eyes and sullen cheeks. Her mouth small and closed. The apparition peered at me, her discern and likeness intensified. My heart sped, and the feelings of hatred and guilt came rushing back to me in tidal waves.

"WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT!" I screamed into the night. In a thoughtless motion I picked up the rifle from my chest, and fired it 3 times at the face on the fan. The shots rang in echoes after, and the bullet holes crumbled chunks of ceiling onto my bed, hitting me like chalky hail in the face. The fan quickly dismantled from the ceiling fixture, and crashed down on me like a great spider descending on prey. Paint made falling coughs, with a sound like the clearing of a throat, while bits of ceiling and fan shredded down from the smoky hole.

The room became silent and dry. The tapping sound of blood dripping onto the hardwood floor collided with mental drifts back to Ferris wheel scenes.

And there She was again. That discerning face turned coy, slightly smiling, her blue dress flowed in the wind.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

epidermister














a
ll of these shapes
the points
and grapes
are less than fine
from personal flakes,
dictated based on
six hundred cakes
compared to selves
of older makes
and a starry night painted
fluorescent and gold
by one gutted comment-
covered in mold.

protruding through
the folding pleats
like a pretty flower
in a basket of wheat.
after the rose
is thrown away.
the web sticks
and weaves into clay.
these decorative wrinkles
are quite unfair,
or the mark from the time
when I fell over there.
Or the burn from the pan
when I cooked for a day
or the bump on my head
from my uncouth play.

a photograph,
attending itself,
is tabbed for review
and appears as wealth.
with regard for eyes
and regal guys
and moves in mirrors
and fireflies.
singing along
with catchy songs
and wondering
and worrying
and it is I,

she said,
alone in this room,
alone in my head.
and here i am, skin,
stuck inside until I'm dead.
with the blow of sharp wind
and the drought of the sun
in tightness from tension
the exit eyes gun

some of us are delighted.
some of us are quite content.
with regard for eyes
and regal guys
and skin labyrinths
with brains as spies.

a constellation,
a freckle pavement
the road for lungs
and sugar plums
and coveted words
to fall like crumbs,
'shh' be quiet,
said my heart-
'my skin will hear,
because it's smart.'
like falling bricks
or falling stars
organs leave
like westbound cars
and empty out of
these laugh lines,
these covers
feel like porcupines.