Infinity Blues Read online

  foolishly bought in line

  one stub

  just me

  I do this shit all the time

  think for two

  on my sea-lined shore of fake bars

  with fake lights and fake nights

  and fake drunks with fake drunk fights

  there are holes in my wallet pocket

  from where my lonely chair rubs

  as I write nothing

  but alibis

  and you will not miss this when i am gone

  things

  they might have been different

  had we a map

  anyone’s

  but I am not going back to the airport like that

  even if you died first

  which you won’t

  unless there is some sick sense of humor left

  in a universe of irony

  because

  to you I am certainly dead already, lover

  at least

  those stars

  shine from someplace beyond

  maybe I can go

  but

  I leave with my head hung as low as a gong

  for now

  for you are strong

  and weighted to the ground

  and

  you will not miss me when i am gone

  the million years

  it took

  to become starfigures

  weight-measures

  and moon

  dissolve

  in cups of solitude

  bad poetry and cash registers

  collapsing into a taxi door closed and moving

  slow down

  I came all this way

  he

  he closes his eyes and drinks her

  as if in prayer

  the spirits come take him and

  she is more than that

  I throw a pillow across the room

  and

  fucking

  this is destroying me

  not him

  but to her somewhere

  as if in a dream

  sign the receipt

  go home

  it’s 4

  and i have had enough, my dear, for both lifetimes

  sorry fuck

  so

  so

  so

  sorry

  fuck

  Elf Mountain

  …Elf Mountain,

  i rely on you

  and a soft gang of unicorns

  plus

  the medicine

  to help me find that strange thing—

  that strange valley

  sleep

  i find it so hard to imagine

  or reach

  …Elf Mountain,

  do you have a favorite

  set of marbles in your

  jar of brains

  of things to help you

  do “that” but something

  opposite

  of me when i am awake

  like this?

  I bet

  —suppose we dreamed some people up

  just like ourselves and here and

  now, as i write or you read,

  made them, you know…

  fit and freckled

  or

  you know, whatever tickled your belly

  or my belly, you know, like whatever

  really and we just

  set them free

  like you would

  a butterfly

  no seriously

  if it landed in the palm of your hand

  i know someone

  you

  that this once happened to

  and

  with a smirk and a mouth full of teeth

  and bad ideas and godknowswhat mischief

  and crushed it

  like a bug with wings

  crushed it

  its living colors dying

  fluorescent bloody wings

  oozing guts

  green with

  somebody, somebody so beautiful just laughing

  like in a face,

  beyond god if god were a figure standing

  behind him a thousand shielded angels

  with swords

  ready to engage the wicked

  …Elf Mountain

  you know, she and i barely spoke

  so it never came up

  she and i, we kept it

  juvenile and crass

  like our lives, and that, that romance

  was like smoking cigarettes on the fire escape

  a metaphor of our lives

  in the cold

  of winter

  always

  …Elf Mountain,

  i was admiring your flying machine, that blanket

  with satin at the edges of it,

  a little worn for the worse

  you have a favorite, see we all do

  maybe you build them at night

  like i do

  helpless against dreams

  and silence

  which to me

  sounds like screams or madness or something

  wicked this way always coming

  always

  smoking cigarettes on the fire escape

  his cloak

  glowing

  and rushing to kill me

  so i am riddled with that natural

  or unnatural fight

  against it

  but your hand so freely reaches for the light

  and you dine on your peace

  as a swallow of water should

  but my

  body and soul

  just say no

  naturally to that place of letting it all go

  even though,

  Elf Mountain,

  it is THOSE quiet places i rely on

  so if

  i should happen past her on a street

  my eyes will be as blank

  as

  all the lies that it has

  sweated in a kitchen to make

  so poison pie

  may clog the lake

  and flood us all

  inside my face

  the thinnest walls of a skin

  versus a time, time winning

  always scientifically

  smoking cigarettes on the fire escape

  in the always winter

  i rely on dreams

  and the medicine

  or die

  Elf Mountain, and you

  you

  A Death

  i feel a Dying in me.

  a death

  like my inside cat knows

  like,

  It eyes the door

  and i am not

  not helping

  today i held the door like a gentleman

  yes sometimes for real sometimes pretend

  who looked up at me

  from her winter hat

  White Eye, one

  and the other

  its gaze straight through me into infinity

  beyond blues

  laughed

  she wheezed a healthy laugh this woman

  as i hovered round the cash register

  and i swear

  she acted like

  a death

  i had a handful of dvds on the Dalai Lama

  she asked me what they were i said “movie tapes”

  or she said “oh those are those movie tapes

  that go inside the television box”

  how ancient

  she smiled

  and it scared the man who rang up my things

  i paid in cash, which is also ancient

  and it was like he had forgotten what that was

  stared but tried

  not at that woman

  that woman

  a death

  on rollerskates so to speak

  eyes like the devil

  ancient and evil

  for the seeing of the littleness of an everything

 
; fuck her, i thought

  i see the balance

  and i choose the light

  into the sun and never a night

  wins against my lonely

  insides

  grizzly bear hibernation lonely

  but full of wonder

  books

  stacked where a woman goes

  if she were to find my bed

  hidden now from even me

  location protected

  by geography

  and time

  still

  my toes do not stop their locking

  and that pain

  like my body knows

  a death

  still

  my knuckles and toes

  do their ghostly locking

  and unlocking up and down

  my legs and arms

  my body

  so quiet

  creaks like a door

  in a ghost house

  and that pain

  like

  i feel a dying in me

  a death

  but seriously

  so

  fucking

  what

  whatever

  right?

  ha

  One Sharp Ending

  the natural law says no

  that’s what

  that is why your eyeballs hurt

  when you think of dying

  why they blur from printed skirts

  and static

  why your chest heaves as she goes

  into what

  that pain is now

  not her

  but you

  and your feelings, mister

  it is like a jewel within your brow

  your brain only a machine with legs

  now

  made of butterscotch minus drinks

  and cigarettes

  and loose tears

  falling into neighbors’ sinks

  body upright

  head, over and down

  hair everywhere

  over your nose

  as you sniffle out the rose

  and let in the air

  no letters home from italy or somewhere

  haunts you like a flu

  in a flu hotel

  that girl does

  it is why you were born, reader

  to fall in love

  over and over

  to die again

  and push pain over

  on its side

  so the stories will spill out

  war stories

  about your mother and father

  and nazis

  scumbags, all of them

  like children bent bad

  playing follow-the-leader

  listening to the sound of their own roar

  the lighting of the churches

  follows the ceremony of madness

  that world

  was burned to the fucking ground

  blown straight to hell

  for the making of new evil empires

  or a mid-game Christ rebound

  half-court shot

  nobody knows really, only time will tell

  either way

  do this, if only for me please

  redeem the powers of the gods

  somehow

  you can look at that part in her dress

  where the shadow moves like a golden cat

  undercover

  in a strawberry mess

  and

  you could get busy dying in that

  however many tiny deaths

  it takes

  to make your eyes roll back

  or

  if you let it pass

  if she liked you

  and

  you give her a chance to undress

  or she undresses you first

  it would flow

  out the sides

  those stories of her fathers or mothers

  through your mouth and insides

  could root

  or seed

  and if it rained, which it will

  it would let the growing come

  up a city block of grainrows of you and her

  to repeat

  that doom

  that cycle of living and dying

  for every child brought into a hospital room

  has no idea

  there is a leaving to be done too

  so cruel

  Man

  a monkey with a stick

  with

  one crushed handle

  from bludgeoning skulls

  and the other

  thinned to a point

  by nature

  with

  one sharp ending.

  52 Pieces

  silence

  broke you

  into 52 pieces

  while

  i watched

  i saw you

  you

  you

  were en route to buy wine

  you

  you were leaving

  somewhere

  already

  and i

  i think i liked that

  and

  i think you knew

  you

  you knew i would rip open the air

  and

  make a space

  large enough

  large enough

  for two

  so

  you could go through

  because

  i am always going through anyway

  like

  changing my destiny every hour

  time travel

  easy

  is the same thing

  same thing

  as if i delivered pizzas

  no bike

  and

  those portals are my version of the subway

  which i dislike

  my version of public transportation

  is sitting still

  and waiting for new clicks

  on the wheel

  of time

  and

  also

  i saw you smile

  and

  i thought i could catch that in a jar

  like you were a lightning bug

  and

  you knew i had holes poked in the top

  from a flat head

  pressure drop

  me with my can full of holes

  for a head

  and

  the glass was as deep

  with me

  and

  the glass was as thin

  as the idea

  of

  a fluttering of wings

  easily shattering

  offering

  some release

  as thin

  as the idea of where

  where my bedroom door closed

  and

  where my bed began

  and this

  this

  this is our story

  for now

  A Sister Scowls

  a sister scowls

  at the monster

  she knows

  she knows

  it has arms and legs like a spider

  and a stinger

  boxed with booksmarts

  plus poison

  fucking monster she sees

  in a form

  of family

  and YOU know

  and she knows

  and

  a sister scowls

  a red overcoat protects her skin

  under a sweater you gave her

  you got from somebody

  from letting someone in

  into, you know

  the kingdom,

  blah, or yuck

  your mother’s daughter, she is

  your mother’s jewel

  your father’s memory

  of stilts

  and heels

  and wheels

  and bells

  and observations of machi
ne-gun fire in a belly

  surrounded by nazis

  one of them

  maybe from up North

  maybe who made a mother

  out of us all

  us children

  later

  a delicious woman who likes pasta

  and gin gimlets and artist fodder

  but sometimes with boys

  my dear,

  your memory fails

  your baby-fat face with eyes low

  under the fire of some mythological color

  i so desperately desired

  a halo and a heart

  in the form of a fire

  no gasoline tanker could start

  for its cargo and shell

  felled

  like trees clogging the drain

  in a sink if it were a well

  of bad ideas gone wishes

  and

  nobody left to tell

  you

  a wildflower blowing a breeze blown round

  party to party

  endlessly

  endlessly nobody

  collecting personality confetti

  after-hours

  before the floors are swept

  for good

  matching colors your designs allowed you

  entrance

  with a face

  and an accent

  like that

  whatever that is, that day, anyway

  somewhere

  your father lurks

  a chamber of bones

  his mouth

  bloated germanic snob loud

  and screaming at the monster

  on a tiny pink telephone

  with his stuffed rash bark

  that dog

  that useless patchy fog

  of half ideas

  on a loudmouth answering things

  no one person might ever resolve

  oh god

  blah, and yuck

  and YOU know

  and she knows

  and you will never cry

  for a time before a sound

  tells you

  why

  and

  how

  for a thought hits under your heels

  and smashes to the ground

  underneath the wheels

  of my rig

  full of cock and hope

  and eventual betrayal

  and you know

  and she knows

  and I did not

  but she is full of fear

  which makes me hot

  because you scare us all

  and she gives or gave me hugs

  with every ounce

  of an arm

  she got

  from your mother’s lovely make

  and skeleton gift

  and

  her name is genuine

  as her gaze

  in THIS dimension

  nervously she laughs

  all of us

  aware

  of a why

  a when

  and a how

  but still

  she knows

  she knows

  and in your direction

  unaware

  at the monster

  a sister scowls.

  Rain on America

  so dirty

  so dirty and so mean

  is a rainbow

  is a letter-stained

  is a blowhole sewer

  that’s right

  just a touch of little america

  in a small town

  wishing you were gay

  or allergic