I was in a dream that
I was in a city
One of impossible rivers
Flowing up and at right angles
We rode a slow gondola on waters
Which flowed through gigantic, plastic playtubes
A huge old Discovery Zone
The size of Venice at nighttime
My companion: a Blur
And our destination:
The difference between
You and Khufu
Can be measured
In paragraphs
You pair of legs
You Mercedes-Benz
(Or are you the girl
Hit by one? What
Was her name)
it was tuesday
and diluvian? or
obelus? was the word
of the day – one of
them for sure
no – it was thursday
that i noticed
a different crush:
another holy person
gone. i forgot
their name – the cliché is
still true sometimes
Terrified
Gorgonized
By the constellating
Flashbacks
All branded
In my crystal cabeza,
This soul case
So riddled with
Mnelactites and
Cracked watercolors
Of us here, and now
Us there then, too –
God it is troublesome
To forget you
Without drenching
My thoughts in snake
Oils sourced from
Underneath the earth,
Taken from Leviathan
Lying open
In wait.
I collect myselves
And shake out of
My pillar of salt:
Motherfucker I
Will look back
When I want to
Standing –
Actually
Looking around – inside
Of some withering memory
Can prove
Scary:
Parts and wholes all mixed and mangled,
Branches where limbs once swung,
Boiling solids,
Tattered
Liquids
(Were furniture)
Dim in the living room;
Red as blood because it is blood
((Not real
Brain blood))
Close friends and strange people twining,
Combining, but all wrong.
And finally
It’s gone
i will try to remember your face
but it’ll be sand on the surface
of the water, and i’ll rely on
dreams to get your smile right
but time will send rain
and then the paint runs.
one day the boutique will
stop carrying your perfume
and the eumelanin of your hair
will pale like a sunfaded photograph
and our relatives will begin
to die around us, still i will
try to remember your face
but it will come to me as pixels
or a monet painting viewed too close
and i will fail to quote you
correctly anymore, and finally,
finally
i’ll start forgetting your name
you are trying to read a book
outside, but a mosquito nips
your ankle
(the world could be harsher:
a thousand different conditions
could be worse)
you will your attention back
to the words, whatever “will”
and “attention” are boggles you
(glass could shatter more easily,
or honey might expire, or some
apex predator may hunt you)
your book is beginning to make
sense again, and its narrative
influences your total memory
(maybe wasps are fatally venomous
in the harsher world, maybe people
are just less cooperative)
your favorite character is falling
in love in this particular chapter –
to her demise, you suspect
(it could have happened that in
this world, your father’s immune
system was too weak)
you are trying to read a book
outside, but a beetle hums near
your ear and you startle
(the world could be a harsher
place, but it sustains you in a
cradle of correct conditions)
your character is trying to read
a book outside, but her “lover” plans
the murder like an apex predator
(maybe your favorite character never
got to feel love before she died –
like a sad mosquito lacking memory)
you close your book and wonder
if “love” without the narrative that
memory provides is just instinct, a nip
(the world could be a harsher place,
but it is apparently just difficult
enough)
How long have I chewed herbs,
Trying to forget you?
What was once a music inside me
Is now only my heartbeat
Your face ripples –
A reflection on the Lethe
The arpeggio of your laughter
Looped like a wormhole in my memory
How many suns did I reject
After dreaming of you?
What was once a heartbeat inside me
Is now only a muscle contracting
Your face is an amalgam
Of other portraits now
The decrescendo of your sigh
Cut in half like an earthworm in my memory
How many moons will I pocket
Trying to white you out?
tracing the subliminal
power lines trace my memory
a fearsome power
electricity cold as fear
beneath the liminal
the iceberg groans beneath me
my thoughts a hot iceberg
hot compared to your touch
tracing the memoricon
memories diffuse into dream
like coffee into dream milk
we drank coffee in dusklight
subliminal rave
a memory is like a raven
swathed in dream-like shadow
and the memory of a raven: a shadow
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
⨀ 