you were pulling
a wasp’s sting out of my back
after our fight
you were playing doctor
and i was patient
the wasp was scared
and i could feel you pulling
the hot sting out of the wasp, too
kissing the reddened skin
and saying gently, “don’t jerk”
and i could feel the release
of a thousand and one
wasp stings pulled from the frightened world
by your sad fingers
and tired eyes
In order to have a complete nature
Full of all experiences
God needed to sin
To count it among His powers
So he made you and me
To commit our adulteries
Mature creations doing what God wished
Yet not what He ordered
Because All comes from God
God birthed Himself to forgive Himself
Which is all theological longhand
For this:
I have already forgiven myself
After the fashion of The
Being Who Needed to Know
Just like you, another piece of God, have done
the train moans like a ghost
and if it’s hauling coal
or cars of people
it’s pushing carbon
there and back
a ghost groans like a train
but do not ask of sonics
or metaphysica, for i am
a humble journalist only telling
what i heard
is it so, so mad
to wire a robot thus?
that it would metronome
a truer beat than people
in the way angels worship more cleanly
the consciousness of the giraffe
is what “looks” at me through black lashes
and not the entire giraffe at once
when i say unto you
the giraffe popped its neck looking moonward
there are more things in head and heaven
than there are in reality
that list in god’s brain always-and-eternally
incomplete of all things-at-once
(it is not so unusual upon waking)
I’ll divine meaning from your insides
And watch which way the birds fly
I’ll put your face under my pillow
And learn about you while I sleep
I’ll wait for lightning to strike a willow
And ask the ashes which tomb to sweep
And when I get my answers
I’ll let you know immediately
Out curls
Serpentine smoke
Into a Byzantine midnight
.
I can’t read these heiroglyphs
I carved for myself on the walls
Of my memory
My fingers pass along the grooves in the stone
But unread and unknown,
I keep a secret from myself
.
My memory holds a door with no handle,
A box with no locks,
A moldy book with wilting pages
And an hourglass with one grain of sand inside
For telling the present moment
.
Since my memory can’t photograph
It paints with watercolor
On a canvas of sand. I can make out
Serpentine smoke curling into a Byzantine lung
.
I can’t read these Arabic numerals.
These envelopes have dried my sandy tongue.
I can’t focus
At this oxygen bar, too many Cheshire cats smiling
At this hookah lounge
At the bottom of the dark, green wine bottle
Of my memory
.
My memory curls out
Like serpentine smoke
Into a Byzantine midnight
the fear
is a clear aether:
cloying, clinging
like trapped vapor pressing
on my heart with twelve oceans
(thoughts: blocks)
then grains of peppery static
then stardust: fuzzy logic
my words blur and buzz
like a numb arm on a neon light
sweat evaporates
from me like a desert mirage –
my brain a red anthill,
my mouth breathing instead of my lungs
“my apologies, i just need one
chronic minute, one brief lifetime
for this to pass over”
my body moves these dreams
up from the quantum
to the atomic
so that dream sticks to dream
and rolls like soft, white snow thought
into the cold water i munch
with you at daybreak
on the mountain
i’m going to need you
on a specific date in your far future
but the distance will stretch its arms
and yawn
as if my electromagnetic pulse
disabled communication systems –
the city turned quickly country
the wind, the stars, the quiet sound
of dead batteries and black phones
resonating like a wood house
painted actually black
i’m going to need a living car to reach you
i’m going to need to tell you
the old words
What of the sailor doomed
On doldrum seas? Is she
The lesser captain who
Wills the Wind Within gust
When the wind wills ill hush?
Her quiet fight at night,
One of calculation,
Many bearing-takings,
Bad nightly monologues,
And her dazed will to row
Home: no tempest-taming.
“Yet, yet,” slaps the water
Under-oar, and the cold
Stars above grin like cons
Cheating death again and
Forever, hallelu
and airplane hum
and cicada drone
and sucking cigarette swish
with dazzling embered bursts upon extinguishing
and a dream’s end: switchblade’s realized function
and every goddamn star
and their reflections in black coffee’s surface
(and white grains of sugar underneath, grinning)
and the second-story tabby
and her objective stare past switchblade dreams
and what dazzling hope burns unextinguished underneath
and my six alarms
and yesses that accompany the morning, yesses
and their ontological function
yes to the miracle of pain
and suffering
and coffee
and starlight, upside down like a ceilinged scorpion
and noise from the a/c clicking on like claws on glass
and the dank tobacco smell like raisins
yes and the airplane suspended like a slow comet
commenting on the cicada
and the drone with my package of switchblades
⨀ 