THE CAR IS JUST A METAPHORE

He was the lost:
Maddening costliness of youth--
I drove him in my car, let him drive

To buy his drugs, repercussions
Of an unnamed heroin. It was the end of something.

We traversed a stupid land decked with lilies,
And bought the closet shut
In my car with a smile.

She and I, also
Drove in my car, repressed by bad directions
My specious infatuation…

She knows everything and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It’s the car; it’s the rebirth of me and what I can’t contain anymore.

It isn’t the car, just
The ability to leave, this stupid star
Preposterously far away
But its there and its family, and I suppose its

The locksmith juggling his own disbelief.
My mind
A pile of unwashed clothes.

Now You Wish She'd Never Come Back Here Again

Piles of clothes on the floor that he moves
around from time to time
in an attempt to tangibly clean.

White walls framed beneath by
clusters of Steel Reserve and the grease of intoxicated handprints.
He has the same gray comforter
she let him take, dense with the smell of
him, night-sweats diffusing the old effect of her.

It's noon and he
lies awake in bed and opens his eyes to stare at the dusty off-white
ceiling fan. He's naked but stays like that for a little while to try
and reverse in his mind the bloated sense of his recent weight gain.

He puts on dirty jeans and nothing else in order to feel that cracking
open a beer and nothing else is justified, and he sits by the window,
tries to think of his new landscape.
choking overpasses decked by decadent palms--
as a good newness--

he doesn't have to think about her anymore.

White Birds Are All Around

There’s a space right here in which everything is awake.
I’d like to wear shades to cover my eyes but the sharpness of this world's addictive, and
so what
if the humidity of claustrophobic comfort divides the lines from time to time, dancing like the water of our constitutions, cause that’s okay, its all the better when it goes away and her legs dance,
quiver slightly as she walks, and his hair is ringed with tips of fire, a halo of gentle reversals.

Behavioral stones that spill from the mouth in embarrassing moments. Your stones are stars and mine
are the boredom of self-effacement.
your stones are stars that you hold so light
dainty in long fingers that wither to the tip of a branch and the clear
air of unadulterated control. (compassion is everything).

The distinction that permeates good conversation, books
of nostalgia that seep in tangled lines, underlying every utterance.
On one side of the world it constricts in gross observation, but on one side
it’s the whistle of unassuming affection, erecting
monuments clear
up in the silent air, awake with the blindness of silent landscapes,

In and out of a white that is nothing, glorious, everything, birds
that shuffle all around, shuddering comfort into abrasive chests,
wary of connection: light monument of the lines that fortify our motives,
awakened from the sedative
forgetfulness of self-involvement.

And then I said the fact I’d been unable to say:
“I’m sorry,”
and I watched her lips give way into smile and her heart
unconstrict as the birds shuffled about.


[Her face is the deep ocean.

Her face is not the deep ocean.
Her face is the grey sky.

Her face is a blind alley.

Her face is her touch is her breath
Is her fingers is what remains
After the laughing is over.]

the design of three locations

Seedy bar: bar stools, alcohol, cigarettes, juke box, pool tables, cues, balls chalk, etc., video poker, the usual video games in seedy bars. Possibility of bar fights, bumping people with pool sticks, sleaze-balls hitting on girls, girls goggling over hustling pool sharks, arguments over music, (dancing?) and the liquid to make it all believable.

Foxhole: traumatized (or bored—perhaps traumatized and bored) soldiers, guns, grenades, explosives of different kinds, deck of cards, some food and maybe some alcohol and tobacco. Soldiers (and the mistress that is hiding out?) are under attack, or are so bored they have to find something to shoot at.

Cage fight: fighters have gloves, mouth guards, and adrenaline. Corner-folk have the fighters’ robes, ice, tape, towels, and suggestions plenty. Young woman announces rounds with numbered signs held over her head, walks corner to corner in bikini and high heels. Fighters enter to music. Obvious conflict, and space for audience input.

it is pretentious to speak of

and he kept on, agreeing and nodding and jostling around. I willed him away but there he sat, intent on asking, intent on finding in me something to hange his cap and gown on. I was embarassed to be speaking, small and hunched behind the table under the heat lamp and I stopped talking about it. I said it is here and everywhere, genocide and war, it is in Sudan now and you and I are having a casual conversation about it. I wanted to spit it at him, a ball of sickness, tied up in brands: mass rape, mass graves, murder, suicide, racial cleansing, DEATH. The wrong people die, the wrong ones mostly. I stopped talking then and watched the timed chess game, watched a Hatian loose on purpose his challenger chanting, "Come to Papie, Cherie, come to Papi."

SHORT

She cried like a puppy
Dog, base and whining yelp of love--
Animal and unaccustomed to human propriety;
"Oh Jesus, no no no no no..."
I woke up to her because of that

And it was like
Like I stepped on her paw
When she saw me--

And me, they propped me up
And I couldn't see, the (white) tubes
Around me stifled my vision

And the emmense effort of lifting my head
From my shoulder, was for her
Mother, ignore

These crass bald veins and blood red eyes,
(She said
They were so red
She couldn't even see my pupils).

They gutted my stomach and I yelled at them for it:
"You cheated me, You cheated me!"
(such a teenager)

And when I woke up a few days later, I looked in the mirror
Remembered my mother, and tried
To wash off the blood from my thin blue fabric

Stained like I stained her with my brutal apathy

(Forgive me, Lylia)

Jack Scratch I

You have to understand, he wasn’t a big deal to me at all. I only saw him on the periphery, in the corner of my eye, slurred vision of some formidable figure.
There were bonfires in the middle of each bar table, that’s what I remember, and I didn’t have a light.
So I’d say excuse me, politely, and divide his group, dip in and out of the fire with fire and satisfaction in my lungs.

I was going to leave and he bought me a drink. And watered down my defenses, and like a docile lamb I let him lead me:
We sat, we drank, and then went somewhere else.

I remember the glint of night water on the concrete
Outside, as he kissed me
And I had to strain upwards, shooing away the mistaken identity of my attraction.

He said, “I’m gonna bite your neck,” and he did.

Later on, after my introduction
To a strip-bar (his guilty addiction),
I remember laughing at his bed, as it pulled out of the wall.
I think my self-effacement, and effacement of him made him laugh,
He was so unused to it.

And then it was night and we did all those things you do in the dark and the darkness of illogic.

He had a small mouth, I hadn’t noticed it before. And he had
Blue eyes that shocked water throughout my system, the application
Of a freezing IV. And I was so surprised to notice
My hand’s inability to fully grasp his upper arm.
(I didn’t think he was attractive when I first met him.)

In the morning I realized all that we had talked about, the click of immediate intuition.
And the funny part was, he didn’t ask me to leave, after clutching me on the couch the night before,
“I love this girl [me], so crazy much!” not real love, of course, but that other strange thing that
Shoots out of ignorance into some strange half-knowledge.
(he got all my jokes; he was smart and it killed me).

He didn’t ask me to leave, just asked me what I wanted to eat
So we walked half-drunk, through the sudden hardness of cold wind
Into the pizza place, where he bought two pitchers of beer and grinned with that small mouth
And nodded his head at me (dastardly, ha!).

After napping we went out again, and sat at a table, staring at each other, then to that caustic mirror by the wall; he loves to look at himself, and I was shameless
In emulation. Looking back at him was better, though,
I’d let these strange swells of pleasure creep throughout my senses and quiver on my mouth.

I was so proud back then, of my new room, I had painted it
(drunk all the while, I told him, and he laughed),
That I brought him easily into it, giggling madly together,
I guess that’s all I remember
Above the music and joyous rush of seeing him fall off my bed. His embarrassment was hilarious,
Because I knew he wasn't used to that.

And then we did all those things you do when its dark and logic
Is purposely ignored.

And in the morning, he got up
Dull watered eyes reflecting nothing
And he kissed my cheek, and left.

We spoke once, after that, for hours. I made him laugh again which heightened my joy to funny infatuation. I’d think of him at work and smile, with my face getting warm. He was like wine, and all those other addictive joys. I thought I had a boyfriend. I thought he’d want to be my boyfriend.

After not dating in so long (rebirth after disastrous marriage), I didn’t know how it was, I guess.
And he didn’t call me after that, and I found out that he’d gotten his love back.

An I pushed him out of my mind and pretended
That it hadn’t really happened, because it really wasn’t a big deal to me back then.

don't be kidded by the pronouns: memories and their lack

I remember unplugging the phones and locking the doors. I don’t remember when exactly I fell in love with her. I remember my father’s voice, smelling like earth-salt through the phone, “Of course you will loose her.” I don’t remember breathing. I remember her face settling into a smile; the way hair falls always to one side. I don’t remember how I managed to talk to her, heaving with sadness, wrapping my father’s words around my fingers, around my teeth one by one. Everything I said to her was twisted. I don’t remember when she stopped being a child to me. I remember kissing her goodbye like I had known her all my life, no: like I would surely know her the rest of my life.

I remember the way she hung love before me like a limp dick, threatening to come off in my hand and leave me with no body. I don’t remember her. She is nobody, nobody, I am the body she stole. I don’t remember what I had to prove by winning. I remember the consummation of our fighting, like fire, like fear in my belly: all my love for her, all that I hated in her, embodied. I don’t remember if it was to her size or to my weakness that I lost. I remember feeling safe for a few days, having forfeited my will to hers. I remember staying months in my room because of my face. I don’t remember what I looked like then. I remember praying God would take up my cause with furious wrath. I don’t remember when God stopped smiting the wicked and burning the proud.

I remember lighting candles at the church, buying prayers with the money she paid me. I don’t remember praying for myself. I remember notes sprinkled like rose petals in my office, my name in her hand. I don’t remember why she wore a Shiva and not a Brahma or a Krishna. It was Ramana’s white loincloth and sun-brown cheeks that stirred in me an affection for Jesus, sailing on Lake Tiberias, the wind scratching at his beard. I don’t remember when I stopped telling the truth. I remember why. I don’t remember learning to count. I remember my eyes spilling liquid secrets, my veins opening in time, to my surprise. I don’t remember when I realized I was dying. I remember hanging all my weight in her arms. I don’t remember if I ever saw her again. I remember changing my mind about who I am. I don’t remember wanting to live, really. I remember choosing not to die.