& said that this was his
House. It was a thousand degrees
Beneath the sink lights.
I wanted to ask why He was in the ladies’
Room, but the twists
In my gut froze me.
Razzmatazz slopped
Across the tiles. My life
Story appeared in the mirror
Steam when he stormed
Out. I don’t remember
There being such a dearth
Of good music, so many
Apples gonging on tin roofs.
more wind
I watch the beautiful
Charity of a body peeling,
The heart floating
In a bathtub for hours
Before sinking to the reddy
Bottom. Sing, I love you
Like the sea-salty kiss Of death while toweling
Off & my finger will rap
The window glass. I swear
My intentions are pure—
But damn—those bags
Under your eyes are
Dynamite. What kind
Of hotness are you smuggling
In there? I’m too brittle
For Twister, so come on,
Let’s play spin the neuroses.
I swear there won’t be any tie ’em
Up & spank spank. Not one
Second of Boggle, I promise.
Out here it’s the land of the free.
Home of the craven.
Come out, come out—
Show me what you can
Do with a dozen skunks
Nailed to a dead man.
it had only been dead a few hours
What a strange paradise this is—
languid apricot trees & birds
of paradise. Tire-flattened
oranges in the alley & ants
in the hummingbird feeders.
Neighbors peek from the blinds
when the sprinklers torque on
& I cannot romanticize this
ultimate torture test. You say
your foot is killing you?—well,
hot damn, you are dead
nuts, right on. That is the essence
of all of this, isn’t it? So let me tell you—
they begin as piles of bones,
the animals in my dreams do.
Each night, they clink & clonk
& rise like a time-lapse video
of skyscraper construction.
One animal turns into a man
& the man gives birth
to a dead dog. In just seconds
the other animals have rent them apart
& then, I’m awake. Night swallows
knife through the morning
fog as I stand at the window
listening to the coyote song.
My entire body is killing me,
& I have witnessed my own death
& lived—I whisper my wagers
against disaster into the dark air.
haunt
In the beginning there was
the beginning there was bafflement
in the beginning there was
in the beginning the bewildered
asking questions you’ve got to be kidding there was bafflement in the eyes in the beginning & then in the beginning there was blood in the mouth there was blood there the blood was thimblefuls & cups & then whole slopping rivers baffled & bewildered in the beginning with footsmears of blood the train tracks & song all baffling lines of clouds never moving & what waves from the backseat of cars that little hand that wonders what it means to have your face scalped neatly away & hung in a loose mask over the back of your skull the grotesqueries of this place can you imagine wearing such a bloody thing what happened to the beginning? the bodies of murdered children are dumped at the edge of town oh it’s time lord everyone must go
the floppy instant
FOR MA
I felt like I was
In the presence
Of dynamite,
Deserving of
Everything. Outside,
The hallway bubbled—
Travelers realizing
They had something
Better in mind.
It is the human
Situation, stewing
& bewildered
