Monday, July 30, 2012

chances are / spies

and it is late in the miracle evening and
a soft savage breeze demarcates the remnant sand caught between eyelids and
angry language and
it is a kind of strength he
finds himself saying to no one

it will be weeks someday
at some point he will eat a muffin
or stamp out a capricious cockroach before bedtime and
like every other dead thing it will
be dancing
patient in the tufts of his hair
it is arguable that he will be listening to music
or reading a random book from his shelf by the guide of a torn
receipt shoved meaningfully in at page 97
he will give a woman money for a thin bottle of clear rum and
she will hand it to him with practiced boredom

chances
are
he will remember the lines in that Peter S. Beagle novel again
the ones that circled his pre-adolescent mind feverishly
utterly rapt
almost repulsed by
their symmetry and ungainly honesty
he will walk a short circuit through a one bedroom apartment
speaking with someone on the phone and instantly forget who he was
speaking with until their voice returns
he will consider this no meager victory

there will be long pauses followed by cruel activities
he will step on her foot in the crowded bus
a child will kick him gently as he exits

back on the streets
he will be staring at a sign for a breakfast special in a faceless restaurant for a while
he will not know or understand if he wants to eat here
someone nearby will be angry at someone else
somehow this will cause him to come to a decision

he will remember the lines in an old novel
in the way one recalls closing a book
more intimately
than opening it

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

egress from a brightly lit land (part 3)

i tread these roads with some modicum of trepidation and
neatly stored fear
gathering supplies in wait of the requirement to pursue new roads
with a nuzzle she motions to the horizon as if to
a new purchase or series of bad scenes
when he turns around she
disappears

appears

here there is soft music around the dying fire and
other adornments for sleep to shudder through
the crackling fibers and whispered conversations and

though nothing is secure or steadfast we hum in
unison to the sunlight to come

til it is the middle of night
and one mind might be awake in a sea of muted
voices
alone on this night he finds himself leaving the security of
fabric to find a private surface upon which to
feel the blue air of the evening and ponder curious
calendars yet to be made real in

months that flutter into time made
disturbed and intricate
into a flipbook of hours
of pretty faces and ill-received mentions or malapropisms pasted to
beloved tattooed skins

he communicates to nothing and nowhere in self-interested playlists
merges with his own dishonor
becoming one thing
a mutant of his faith in the ideal and his own
craggy movements through the pride exhibited by strangers with quick
smiles
trust really a peculiar currency always at the ready
bartered handily with the faces that darken these roads and yet

not sure why
the bold reaching of irrational misspent youth has gone black and dry
he is old now
as grasslands frozen gold in repetitions of sunlight
a consummate liar possessed with disbelief
alone for these mere moments in the dying firelight

maybe at a loss for the dramatic yet making
manic urges
blood rushing to hungry arms

alone on this night
perhaps leaving these fellow travelers behind and scraping the dew and dirt to
fill up my footprints

before him
every highwayman and cold trickster and solipsistic gypsy feeding off the milk of the road

leaving his blankets and bandaged remnant gear

neither alone nor released
he has shaken off her fragrance
clothing only smells like me and moonlight

the only sounds elemental
the only sky grey then forgiving the early morning
the only shirt soft from repeated washing and wear
the only reason a promise wasted on a lover's burning glance

the only movements these movements
owning nothing but clenched sentences

the only thing real is this place

the only thing that leaves it is
what's left

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Swarms - Old Raves End

http://swarmsuk.bandcamp.com/album/old-raves-end

An absolutely incredible, lush and ponderous record.  You can hear it for free on Bandcamp or kick the people a few euros to keep it in your headphones.  Well worth it.

Just wanted to mention it, since track 3 was an inspiration for the previous poem and was played on repeat as I wrote it.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

ojo ojo ojo

the flicker of your eyes
renders dollar store shelves of
rainbow colored plastic shit smashed
with riotous sledgehammers

the flicker of your eyes rushes crowds
of well meaning itinerant children
into tomorrow's parks tugging at
shirts haggled on tables in times
square

the flicker of your eyes destroys unopens
destroys unused gated fields suffocated with the idle
debris of unthinking candy bar wrappers and
erects quiet faced guardians to stand
watch over lost spaces and welcome
those who need them and everyone
needs them

the flicker of your eyes drinks every
bottle in a bar dry and fills every vein
dead with clumping heroin slurry and
every bronchial tube with sweetly
violent smoke violet through diner
neon and burns every hangover

the flicker of your eyes is a cruel
irresolute madness backbroken on
the quick injurious words of a lover
seething across a street learning a
penetrating truth

the flicker of your eyes is a child
touching everything in the store
and getting the shit smacked out of them forced
to the parking lot in hideous
unjust tears and finding a space too
massive to even understand filled
with more people who don't
understand or care than it seems
there are grains of sand on a beach's
anthills

the flicker of your eyes is a fucking bitch with
finger deadset in chest coloring you with each
bit of pressure knowing you and rendering you
soluble in dust with each knowing pierce

the flicker of your eyes knows me through you knows
this through this finds me thinks me whole runs
me lost past post offices closed from disuse in the
reflection of caribbean goods windows and ghetto
doctors offices chased by the slow gait of a woman's
decisions like music flickering

the flicker of your eyes fucks with parallel universes and
unchanges changed decisions and changes and decides and
drops judgment like tropical hail rattles the walls of jails with
hope and mystical longings makes the free feel chained up and
ruined with jagged movements in your eyes

the flicker of your eyes tries makes efforts for me it walks with me
through the cities that won't stalk my failures for me following
me swallowing edges of manhattan in pieces guardrail by stoop stairs by
moonlit bad choices stacking bits of a hundred country's voices til
babylon is a bar i decide on on a moist summer eve i find the roads
where your dilated pupils migrate the movements of intoxicated strangers that
touch my arm reminding me to hoist expectations while murmuring the
lyrics to car alarms your eyes

flicker making me healthy urging each sidestep to danger no closer to better
off without the observation of sirens either bad intentioning females or police
textures watercoloring the contents of my pockets violently transfixing a
touch to my shoulder insecure your eyes flicker and ask directions demure and
unknown standing before the map lacking the craft to find stations which
fill me even alone empty and unknown standing in wait like my passion will
speak for itself as it disregards the words that insist to wait for

the flicker of your eyes bold and unyielding and standing on chairs too loud talking
loud yet fucking with sarcastic prettyboys and debonair rooftop partyclub
gogetters smacking fourteen dollar drinks out of their hands like WHAT and
screaming shitty obscure options to deejays on tuxedo dancefloors with utter
sincerity prepping moves in mirrors to shake strangers to

the flicker of your eyes intelligent unbelieving melted salt caramel confrontational
anarchic confounding predictive debunking thrift store riches and favorite
cookbooks with flair

the flicker of your eyes is a one dollar fifty special on hot dogs at gray's
papaya panhandled on a wednesday afternoon to the tune of vegan supermarket
muzak and samples of mexican food dropping quarters in the empty guitar case
of a travelling headfucked hitchhiker playing blackjack with bad acid trips for
good ones and doubling down

your eyes flicker and mountains go unclimbed and elementary school poetry withers
unrhymed and awkward in the hearts of bad students with more ink in the margins
than homework assigned accomplishing empty gibberish for the bathroom stalls of
their furious fearless minds learning curse words to mouth in the mirror to present
snickering to bullies before untold acts of cruelty

your eyes flicker and everything stays serene to contrast the stutter of a pair of ill-
fitting denim pants at the shindig you thought you'd stand out at spitting game to the
pinkhaired character smiling at the goofy unkempt bold motherfucker who keeps
ducking out to smoke his pack of unfiltered social anxiety in the windswept solace
of lamplight leaning on the brickwork in torpor

your eyes flicker and the city speaks cruelty even in the lack of your flickering
eyes looking for judgment and redemption in a smile to accommodate these
wasted yet urgent grasps for reason and the cosign of a strapless bra shuddering
close to my blathering mouth territorial for purpose in your effortless mouth
territorial

i flicker when you watch me
jumping in and out of your vision
surreal and televised
conquered and yielded
your most minute graze thrilling
your most particular shift documented

ruined in your careless glance
a jazz solo in a muted cough
the flicker of your eyes annotated
footnoted and obscured to smaller text

muted trumpet when you speak
never speaking when you speak
you are here with me

the city only ever a memory
witnessed
replete with imagery cataloged in disfiguring prose
the flicker of your eyes recording me in silence
epoch in a grateful glance

we could be nothing and you'd forget each of these words
but when you watched the sidewalks shifted alignment
i stepped north to go east
then you ordered hispanic sodas in the confusion and

all i tasted was sugar

Sunday, July 8, 2012

palabras

some of these sundowns the dreams somehow
pierce some of the blank blackness echoing every
single night and
i could be remembering something i lost months or years ago

could be finding it like a drawn breath in
dawn light and i fight suffocation
to return to it

recline into the chemicals of waking like
rubbing the arms of a long lost green chair before standing up
to breathe in all the incineration i've caused

it's fast and slow
like the drift of her through hallways last night
a phantom adjusting the stupid things i've placed around
the house

woke up today and cleaned it like life or death
put together the broken shelf and replenished it
with scattered minutes and hours we spent in dusty
bookshops
finding fragments of her poetry bookmarking half-read chapters in her
messy script

i'm sitting on a freshly vacuumed carpet
squinting and cleaning my glasses to discern these
words

words used to be all we had but they transformed in the grind
of years
drained of their direction she
angled them into herself
we used to sit and read to each other passionately in that shitty
studio apartment with the junk lamp and the proud
futon i purchased and pushed home in an abandoned shopping cart

it happened a little bit, later
sometimes we found a passage here and there in someone else's writing
and escaped for a minute sitting close together with averted gazes

but she stopped reading me poetry
very quietly
in her way that she has
in her voice always too loud (i called
it her portorican voice
sweetly) in her abrupt and running movements were
the silent withdrawals she demonstrated
the ones i pretended to ignore

words used to be all we had
we wore them and placed them around each others necks
and kissed them and fucked them
we strung them through the house
we machinegunned them with cocaine and
sometimes even took the ones we didn't say and
said them to each other

in my dream she's a laughing spirit
flaunting through burning doorways
destructive
troublesome
angry
i drink her fury and chase her
tearing at myself
pulling off outfits of myself
her distance mocks me
i stop chasing her because it is
the only way i can imagine that she will
find the joy i neatly removed

i wake up and clean the house
i put all the words away and they are neat (not neat
like she used to put all the words away) and square
and spilling over with her blood

i sit on the carpet and read the words she left
behind
almost none of them are complete
little fragments
i find myself mouthing my name written in her hand as if
it is her words mouthing my hand written in her name

i am still sitting here
i've been sitting here for months
not knowing how to write myself a space where she remains

i put the words back into the words and put
them back onto shelves of words with other
words of hers maybe hiding in the the words of
others that i haven't found
that maybe she hasn't even found

i know them
i don't have to look for them anymore

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Gabo

Marquez has dementia and phones
his brother with simple questions

his life unwritten unfurls as a banner on an
endless battlefield
wrapped around the forgiving and
contemplative eyes that always stared at me from the severely
worn paperback with the Rousseau cover

i miss Gabriel Garcia Marquez

i miss the music of his poetry describing a thousand
foolish characters and the smells
of his cities
i miss not knowing who he is when i read him and
not caring
i miss the bookmark his work of loneliness crafted
connecting me to my love
and the sound of her laughter when she found herself
reading it again

i have always been proud of him and i don't know why
have always lived with his souls
have nestled in his blankets in awe

i still find myself
returning to his words like the door of a
lost home filled
with antique intimacies and the voices of dead relatives and
the feel on my cheek of chilly fog emanating from
the wondrous ice of gypsies who will
die and never leave

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

putting things away


know it kinda starts to look that way

stricken and healing
dug below the soil like a dog in summer
reaching for the cooler
myths lower than the sun
denser that the last seven
words we shared
searching for below

after enough nights of
composing strength and excuses in
decomposed brain cell
reverie
we signify and play together in the
ambivalent sun
and scraps of our connective
memory circulate in these
lone meanderings
linked by the returns and bent streets of
our lives
choked as the
dream of you
shimmers

maybe all of these swept recollections
define a
cracked child
who looked for
you
never looking for anything
or
a crass thickheaded adult
who (looking for a
cracked child) kept time with your
sincere agreements
who smiles when he's insecure
he looked for you
when he didn't know what
anything looked like

it starts to look like him
this
scavenged cave graffiti
clueless notes wet with past
intoxicants in the
scrawlspace of notebooks or
the blank pages of novels

he
would fill the blank pages diligently
looking for the answer in an awestruck phrase or
a pretty fist of words

he had a lot of ideas
they formed dense cancers of
unfulfilled infuriating notions
sometimes
they were merely
anecdotal and weightless
filling the conversational air with
strangers
sometimes
they were
precious and secreted away and they
weren't real without you
until and
of
you and even
with you

i'm in the process of
forgetting your smile
a very dry and witless task like
a prep cook rendering nature
to compartmentalized
utilitarian
refrigerated
contents
i find myself cutting your smile into
thin rings of wet amethyst like red
onions staining every surface of
memory
i collect their perfect order
scattershot into
plastic containers and seal them
against the elements
taking your bent sleepy legs to freeze next
to crushed basil and coffee ice cubes
i gather your hungrily offered kisses
slightly parted with reassuring tongue behind
the supplies for our dead pets that
we couldn't bear to discard
i fold the sweet way you correct
the bottom left corner of your panties with a gentle
snap into the linen closet tucked among
medicine and cocoa butter

i somehow do these
mundane things
with love
very carefully
sullenly
without defiance or anger
very softly
with a kind of stupefied distance
i know it appears diligent
inspired even
maybe it might appear as if i understand it completely
scientifically
maybe it seems as if i accept it or i'm facing it with
confidence and verve

it starts to seem that way
bereft of bitter self-destruction but
a little bit fascinated with my own movements
listening for your echoes in
strangers
watching for your echoes
i know it looks like i am buried by them

it starts to look that way but
i am unfettered
sprawled in these pages
nothing pulls me down