Abrupt

For awhile we could live
where the air blew rumors
of trash barges up the Hudson
and helicopters pounded the dome.

We could watch the ferry boats weave
webs across the space
begun by water and finished with
ratios of styrofoam and steel.

There were no spiders there;
they couldn’t afford it.
There were barely bugs, but even so,
this was cockroach turf.
Except that one time, which only proved the rule.
The spider prowled like a tiny bear
on the marble floor near the loading dock,
a stowaway from Korea.
I crushed its life with my shoe
(no bodhisattva, I,)
saving the New Jersey ecosystem
from certain contamination.

They let me have that one, the spiders,
but they are waiting for me
in the corners of my new home,
in the closets.

They will raid my dreams from their sacs
where the ceiling meets the wall,
dying in my mouth:
a bolus of hair and leg and fang.
They will parachute into my cereal
while I am half awake,
twitch and spawn by the window screen.

They know what I am;
all of spider-dom knows it.
But I will run their gauntlet for the
sake of my children.

In the hedges, orb weavers vibrate in the wind, waiting.

Dr. Phil was angry today.
We talked about my feelings,
which I thought he wanted to hear.
But the man kept shouting at me,
and I couldn’t stop staring at the reflection
of the studio lights on his head.

I think my feelings were wrong.
Then the audience laughed at me and we
cut to a commercial.
When we returned, I was back in the audience again,
watching the show.

The world blinks.
The world blinks
and it is awake,
awake in the dark
beneath History’s load,

Clawing pine to splinters
as the air runs out.

 

 
rough stuff

 

 
tickle

 

 

 

 

 

 
* puff *

 

 

The poem I will write
Will blow your fuckin’ mind
Twenty megatons of Word
Wrapped in brown paper
And left outside your door.

The poem I will write
Will not rhyme
No matter how much you beg
And despite your wandering hand
And that low-cut dress
Which screams, “I like cheap rhyme.”

The poem I will write
Will not appease the scholars
Whose clip and judgment echo in the foyer
Of their own impending fame.

The poem I will write
Will set me free — set us all free:
The Last Poem,
Shining like the City on the Hill.

The Last Poem will be
An ignorant suicide
Note to no one
Scrawled onto scraps
The day of a death
I never saw coming.

“Watch,” he said, and he was digging,
with a plastic cup,
timing the scoops just right,
so in the moment before a wave,
when the sand was still wet from the last one,
he was digging.

It was the standard scene: the tide,
the gulls and salt.
How long did Man stand at this frontier,
having reached the absolute limit,
until the first ships tore through the screen,
and the beach became a beginning?
But I was just a boy, playing here for a day.

“Look!” he said, and in the cup,
I saw a scoop of sand, and some water
he’d collected. And — there –
a small crustacean, scrambling for an exit.
“They live inside the sand.”

He repeated this routine and I watched,
two boys, crouched at the edge of the sea.
But for one plastic cup, we could have been
a million boys, digging on beaches
before history, lost in the understanding
that everything — everything is alive.

I’m going to talk you
to the edge of revelation, tease
one hundred grasping tangents
like anemone that sway
in purple seas.

I’m going to watch you
feel the heat of my attention play
on your assumptions,
till your hidden contradictions
lie exposed. I’ll treat them well.

We have so many edges, lips
that can be touched –
so many combinations
(my creative instinct urging)
in surprising –
in surprising –
ways.

What I do to you in
darkness triggers memories of
morning. Now the scent of secret places
washes over us
in waves.

Reading louder I
intone the words that boom
like milkweed bursting,
fill the air with sweet suggestion
till our wills lie writhing,
synchronizing, intertwined.

In the synapse, charge
is building, lightning’s grinding
clouds are clearing –
and contracting,
thought contracting to a single
iron core.

A tang is tasted — wait!
defenses throbbing
holding back the inspiration –
holding back — then fears and habits
lose their grip and

synapse foaming, information
floods the gap.

Now let’s just lie here,
no more talking, just the
wind in empty vessels
slowly filling up. Another
fruitful session,
you’ll agree?

communist sperm storm consommé-ting
soup rite seed time action

moon pull polyp tide pink slick mucus
micro tube contraction

farmland maximize bleach beach fading
gland knot future fraction

Argyle socks, cozy stoned cats,
lick the ankles of my beloved.
Running through the Texas night
in her panties and socks,
past torchlight and painted sheets,
she eyes me out across
her gracious orbit.

I commemorate the porch
of a railroad hotel,
where metal groans, and cows
bellow at night in the middle distance.
At first, alone, the smell of mud,
as meaning — as words –
collapse and explode,
collapse and explode.
A thousand sunsets a minute –
burned through the Film
by a righteous mushroom mango lhassi.

Now my lover on vicodin approaches,
settles next to me in the Texas air.
She speaks to me through syrup
of permanence and cats,
permanence and cats,
until words
spiral back to me,
haphazard.

I think that I shall never see:
Occipital lobotomy.