Abrupt

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.

Nobody knows
At night my eyes shoot fire;
Padded cats slink skeptic
Past this frenzy

Fingers fly
On phantom’s keys
Hammer out the fizz
Of synapse, lung and spine
Cathedrals rise

Just a cankered worm
Is all they see
Twisting in the mound

But I am more

Not a resource, not this name
Not a shirt and not a brain

Something more

Can’t you see it?
Every body
Is an eye

Bobbing on antennae
Thousand strong and
Alien and very, very old

Or greener –
Tips of branches
Stirring in the gale
Of eons’ storm

Something more

Until
All eyes shoot fire, thirsting
For ignition on
This humble globe

But they don’t know

I show up smiling
Shaven face, disguised
In shoes

A tuft of fur:
The cats’ affection
Winking at my secret
From below

Out! Out of work –
The workers leave their folds
Into the spacious chaos of
a Texas evening
Bittersweet at the turn of another day

Breathe the blueing sky
its aroma cold
a nocturne of feral cats
slinks in the thicket
Quiet sky, host
to the legions
of an aching beyond
wheeling on and on and on

My car starts with a shudder

Bushman on the savanna
shaking a rock at the sky
Words like desperate fingers, dying
fumble towards him
In the midst of such horror:
“God help me, it tickles!”
Unformed, embryo,
a naive intake of breath
preceding history

There is a cat face peering
through ferns in that window
distant window seen from
someone else’s fire escape
tiny ears listening
for food-like noises
Quiet patient biology
Cat.

We are waiting on fire escapes
breathing air that
is fresher at least
than the closed conditioning
of weekend offices.
It is Manhattan
and we are quietly afraid,
because our complacency
has failed to produce
even monsters.

Or, endless roaring stations
homo transiens
waiting to move again,
waiting to stop moving
Lost in private digestion
of culture’s thin milk
bitter
with the taint
of newspaper ink.
Black spots dot the platforms
gum once chewed

“Ladies and Gentlemen,
I apologize for the interruption.
I am in complete agony.
There is little you can do to help.
Thank you for your time.”

He is a black man
in a stained business suit
singing off key
and pierced by muttered commentary
Spinning in his private world
like a dizzy spider.
I can feel the date on
every coin in my pocket
as I leave the train.