Reading the Greek classics while feeling fucked up inside
I want to write something sophisticated
about Leningrad,
tiny black and white earth tones-
nuclear cloud shaped opacity
window sill lovers, references
I don’t have access to,
poetic checks I cannot write.
Being disappointed
these days
is automatic-
filled with convention
mouth full whole
jot the word down
but the world still crystallizes
it’s premise around something else.
Had you the space in your skin
four nights ago,
to allocate some beggars version
of the true tone and terror of this city
into your own blood stream-
have you,
but very little to go on -
to write from place of sophistication
verbal oath and advantage, to make
poetry in that place you have never been-
willing to wake-walk out of.
Clara, things are different now
Kiss sloppy, even worse lay-
bring pillow
near coke, call in
that past, get pissed-
how jail changed something in you
so completely, you would never
find the words for it.
Lay yourself
along that particular
part of carpet
our failure sits, heroic,
high, giving love
to never completely present
bodies.
Anyway, the rent is due.
And there are words for that.
Remembering Froggy, pink wig, drug love and death on Christmas eve
Brought body in that hour
to the cap where star kicked off-
flew so many shards at our loss.
I know, it could not be enough
and with all of your lack, wide open-
you might need some stronger object
to embody just how empty that other side was.
Having been drunk and bound
by the mistakes of other peoples lives,
witness dark glance
on highway of the next life-
that orphan coat felt
bright and at home in this world-
a perfect fit
until only our former selves could be seen
in hours on the go.
Don’t bother sleeping
we are close to not needing it anymore-
can’t you remember, that promise of contentment
was only tenements filled with replicas
of our own beat apart lives, broken stoves-
bad human relations,
if love lived here, it is now a museum piece.
To your side of what happened
I give you the coordinates for fallen star,
the length and miles before road runs out,
before faith bandages over our proof.
Nobody wants to hear that story about how you managed to get to Boston after rehab
The worst verse, then,
was the last verse, left
underneath a cup where you
had hidden someone else’s rent
money, and a mystery (if you expect one)
like a black stocking
(that smell) it’s own story.
Something, it seems, went down
in this building long before
we had arrived.
Not all great love affairs are about
managing one’s nerves, after all,
important things too
can be left in parking lots
with no intent to ever retrieve them.
And you might wonder a whole lifetime
(are you wondering? Don’t answer that)
exactly who I was- younger then,
when wounded, itemized by others,
a legion, it seemed, was doing this.
But never mind that, this (any of it)
drafts can always find their way into a house,
and what then- when we are drafted?
A pillow, a purple, a silo
At first
against the small thing
window, at first
then a scattering where bird form
was
now I am enemy of my own enemy
heated compass
imprinted
across the honey form
foam (foaming)
and our ? earth is lifted
tested
by and from somewhere
distorted drawing hearts
to a source ( a sore spot)
a folk tale (tell)
in fallen timber
goes under color, and stays.
An Italian love song
The voice adds itself to whatever words are around.
Isn't this so? Where were you
when the cleaving heart of earth uprooted its thread count?
Can I tag along to that place you've been trying
so desperately to return to?
Wise men put logic into everything
so that their real lives could be found only in idea.
A song with its wings cut, a crushed berry faceless as the dawn
whose winter whitens even when it isn't asked to,
my world is wood and wonder blunt where edge work
reigned in all of the impossible stuff which sat heavy in my heart
rowing by single hand, nothing disturbed but water without name.
