However much back and forth play it had
the plague ravished both of us.
You, wife and kids, presumably,
and through crossfire at school
or strife on the grain bus over
a few hands of cereal meal
they die. She grows full of ennui
in the black felt tent in the backyard
for grieving, or something like that.
Me, everything virulent with blight;
say, mother dies, grandmother dies,
house burns to ash and melted plastic by roving meth heads (no reason to avoid the ice now!)
Snow can fall on the ashes,
night can fall on the ashes.
The whole fucking thing can be
perforated! Lets not talk about it!
*
So photogenic that it's the point.
Having read Broodthayers, knows that
superimposed time-stamp takes precedence.
Is it possible that clemency was a big Judas?
loved Christ, really loved Christ, but
couldn't reconcile the worry for everyone else.
Not taking the right thing night after night;
best friend material: works at a gay pub,
has a Yashica T4, lives on
cigarettes and tall gins and regret.
Watched Quadrophonia and he
read from "the Perks of Being a Wallflower" aloud.
Ended the friendship when the fun ran out.
Cut the hair myself and put the neat clumps
into a brown paper bag, because
was so scared of making a mess.
If we cut all of this out I would say "There's useless compositional space on the right." You'd say "That's where the ads go."
*
"Something I can get behind
every four years," as long as not Man. U.
Department blighted, denuded
of people the whole week.
Carrying 'round the cricket bat,
dropping it into the palm and picking it up
while the hair grew out.
*
Like what St. Scott's knave would be like
if the Anglian friar had been canonized.
Tree squirrels and the common vole
would vomit up his drain spouts.
However persistent the rain may be
(and Calvinizing) if an explosion
of calm face, and all the children
in the vicinity died,
or would not have enough to eat
and would surely die later
Cathlio-Anglicans would be like:
"uh," and would think "Prince Valiant"
*
There is only a year left.
What had been a Colossus of flesh
flailed in the night, because of the dark!
bit the nails to the quick, dyed the increasingly transparent hair
bright blue, died it black,
bleached the damn thing out overnight
then died it back. Believed
in science-fictional socialism,
believed in real love, stopped.
*
There is a door that is never open.
Your exotic German boyfriend
bought you a banana stand and fruit bowl.
Took the train into London on the weekend, or flew there.
Then he was all "Sprockets," black
cigarette jeans and french cigarettes.
Increasingly dug the dark arts
and bad Kraftwerk. Hung an ax
over the bed. Moved to London,
fell into the wrong crowd of Giger enthusiasts.
Ended up kissing pigs blood into your mouth,
thought he'd try out being a redhead;
thought there was hope of pulling it out.
He got into crochet and it ended.
*
Sunset, after the sun rises after the last day.
I'm apocalypticisim tonight.
"And death will be their girlfriend."
I have a new tattoo of a melting treble clef
on my calf. It's like a cross of Times New Roman and demi-bold Bondi,
fat didone finials like teardrops
I'm wondering where the dead guy
in the mint green jeans bought them.
There is a lot of blood and I am indifferent to it.
*
These boys,
openly homoerotic,
being penetrated twice
in the same orifice
which is less stoic giggle
into a white lace handkerchief,
less strong silent type in the back of the bar
watching the watchers,
less equivocation when asked
what the wife does.
Any chief officer
would do this
over drinks with the Chinese
venture capitalists
because "what do
the Chinese think?"
If this were 1942
you would have rickets
would not be allowed
to enlist in the U.S.,
get a tip from the recruiter about Canada
and not go there.
*
Putting the thing to sleep
for the umpteenth time,
getting it all wrong: drink
is not tonic that makes
the future happen farther out.
Bingeing on television
is not the Universal Soporific.
Speaking of death,
when the whole house
is covered in white sheets
and only is penetrated by thoughts
something animated is projected
onto the living room couch
from the outside;
like Akira
or All Dogs Go to Heaven.
*
Tells himself "this will be a whole lot of fun
if you can just shut up and enjoy it,"
thinking that friction
caused friction initially.
Remembered everything wrong,
found new evidence to support it.
That blood trace led far and wide,
consumed his many twilight afternoons
in blog posts. Confirmed his greatest fear
that life was worse and hand't changed;
he still loved him, maybe. Though
that in that world of all things
a defect began. The streaming
video feed often went out.
Justin.tv support was no help.
"No account with that name exists,"
or is listed.
*
Sucralose,
your pound for pound dynasty,
often,
almost every single day
would demonstrate thinness
and be less saccharine than saccharine.
I promise that I will lose
one hundred and sixty-five pounds
by beach time.
My love, I want to be tender with you
but will trick you for the sugar.
I will put you into the batter with bad eggs
and throw the whole lot out
until theres nothing left of you.
I will call the house so you
cannot see the number and avoid it.
You will answer the phone and feign static
when you hear my voice.
I believe in static.
I believe in Conan,
who said "If you work hard
and are nice good things will happen."
*
This choreography
of finery cascaded
like
the first time I fucked John Brooks Lycanthrope
silently
then with murmured protestations.
And he feyly watched Guffman
over a shoulder,
covered in that sweaty lubricant, sated
the itch.
What Damon Albarn would be like
malnourished.
Chain smoked cigarettes
with the pout-lips of an affected fish.
Moved quick
from the contraposto pose
to the lilting, hurried gait as though
betterness were a block further.
If Damon were taller, thinner,
with hair always plastered to the increasingly overlarge forehead.
Have confidence, young John, your way is wrong but not your body.
*
Nut
into the vacuum's tube attachment.
And he, who like that spunk will
just away.
Just. No further action required.
Belaboring the point misses it.
Labeling the joint "Cherry Bomb,"
or "Three Hundred Thousand and Twenty Koosh,"
is like childhood, all over again,
meandering from here to here:
the cursory preparations for scaling K2,
getting the acrylic paint tubes out
to find that the caps are all paint-glued shut;
cutting the bottoms; wasting most;
eating a little cobalt blue (by accident)
when covering the whole face.
*
Me vivisectionist
you jew.
Someone else
as little Roma girl.
I took Bakis to heart
and harvested haunches
from a toy poodle
to affix to your forearms,
(like the ancient Sumerians before me
dreamed of doing with their flinty knives,
or the ancient Romans
with their brass ones)
all the better for watching
you flail in the water.
I have prepared the Proust questionnaire
and an array of eye-changing dyes
to use on your childhood
—not all in errantly farcical bouts,
not as some capricious lark
for a childhood dream
coming down the mountain!
but nosology;
seeing if I can make me better
—if two hearts are better than one for the running,
if the condition of your tribal race
can be weeded out post-partumly,
if there is a way of making an awake boy
into some sort of man-automobile
with wheels for feet, who
does not run but rolls,
to find the gene that I have
and strongly suspect that you lack;
even unto your ruination;
even if they call me "vivisectionist."
*
Finally, to have stripped you
down to the dhoti,
to liken likening
to a new and final introduction:
"Hello," maybe "My name is Tyler and
from the first time I saw you on the opposite train platform
I loved you. Or did not love
but noticed the 'Queen's Own' boots."
"Hello back. I'm intrigued by what your love
of me says of me."
"Love was the wrong word."
"The noticing, then."
"Noticing." Then a proud people;
then fear; then it does not matter anyway.
Though, on the other hand life was alright.
ATMs did not put the tellers into breadlines
just lessened them in number, gave them
a paperback book of sudoku to do—
even in the downtown branch of a large bank
on a Tuesday afternoon, like two'o'clock
when the afternoon is wearing thin,
when one is jonsing for a Diet Coke with lime
and the other conversation. One is reading a book
and one is wishing that they had a boyfriend.
Wonder, that.
Open the door and push him back out.
Standing, so, erecter though the gait is borrowed,
moving deftly through the ever-growing crowd of people quickly.
Sucking in what is left of the gut
so hard the back hurts.
Remembering the beige boy
who lived across the street in dungarees
when you were young. It was 1974 then,
your mother had a green crystal bowl
on the buffet, an ashtray of the coffee table,
an ex-husband grifting through the southwest.
*
How to move up subtly
from death over the Rhine
and a stainless steel bowlful of ham brains?
It is some dangerous but necessary WWII.
I have hidden an old tin of peaches
to surprise myself with
and when the agony is not scurvy or gout
but gas and the blood flows,
the olfactory begins and cologne goes:
indignant happenstance, pangs,
a trifle, noteworthy, not noteworthy.
*
Your tee-shirt
has a line drawing
that's a thin man
from the waist down
in his underwear
with hairy legs.
I do not know
how or why what that dregs up
is the second beige coat
of paint on the penis.
When it's used it flakes off
and more beige paint
is underneath.
*
"I think I am still depressed."
Not even enough to break a sweat.
Like, say you are doing your pushups
and squat thrusts because you are still twelve.
That you, maybe, have a gym membership
but are afraid of going to the gym for whatever reason,
maybe you over-intellectualize everything
and people get exhausted and concede the point,
or maybe you are too quiet, or whatever.
So, sweating into the threadbare gold couch,
dedication to the point of loveliness.
Long striated cliff face to the point of loveliness,
because it is a stoic bitch,
has watched over New Hampshire for these long millennia
(even before he was recognizable and thus cognizant
in the minds of those cunts).
Held himself up through inertia
(he never moved).
Just grew smaller all the time
in the x-axis.
Grew down for want of staying up,
fell off, on account his own weight.
Died in a quarry.
*
And then doing grand romantic gestures
is a thing again.
In the open field,
where dedication to the point of loveliness
means kids are off the table,
you not running a theme night at Miss Demeanor's
is out of the question,
anyone can buy anyone anything:
you have had a long day at work and Rick
who speaks for the sales staff
has been in or around your office each day for a week
with his stale coffee breath, his promising anything
to the posh pricks from Merill Lynch,
and his overlong tie tucked into the brushed stainless steel Target beltbuckle,
a trait you found endearing and fashionable
when the Dos Equis man from the Sartorialist tried it
but is now passable for treason.
I could arrive home from my long day with two Volcano tacos
in a paper bag.
You, reflexively inside your head could do the same thing
and when I got home equally tired (though this is not a competition)
and saw the Taco Bell on the kitchen table
heard you undressing in the bedroom,
the Empire Strikes Back playing in sync
from all the screens in the house,
could say "Of course I bought you the tacos I love
and you are so so on. What more important
could I give to you." Or something like that.
I could buy out the whole girl scout
of cookies, could construct a large fort with the boxes
over the concrete bowl where your keys go
so that you could not miss them when you got home.
I could, upon meeting you for the first time after a long absence
say something like: "It has been a long time.
You look well," and could smile.
You could be "…nice. I look nice."
And I could refrain from saying something like
"No. I mean you look as though you are well. Like, you are in good health."
*
There is an organic pinwheel
that is almost like a nautilus shell
cut in half; intricate spiraling white
like bone: like flesh in the way that
light's dispersed inside it, all inside
a delicate encircling O ribbon.
Some things are engineered to catch the wind
and turn despite their windsock/weathervane appearance.
Like the pinwheel thing which seems like
air would pass right through it but
instead turns.
*
How could luck've
coincided with me so much?
First having the most desirable thing
to steal; so much that hiding from the friends
was like second nature, (so much
jealous anger: a surfboard
with two wet papayas on it
glinting off the Junesea to some
southerner Pacific, while one
is mired in beach sand
in a less fashionable area of La Jolla)
to giving up on second nature out of hunger.
To being in the gunnel
where something newer's more desirable
but not better.
It'll all go away soon though
accounting for the poorness makes the riches.
They are making a new Mac store
conditionally contingent
upon improving
public services.
*
Recreating Felix Felicis
as if it were a real sauce;
good times in a little crystal phial
like golden syrup in ample portions.
cowling the ice away by thought
*
Not at all difficult to distinguish:
one too thin, and
suffering distention of the belly.
One robust chest
and arms like the twin
barrels of a large gun
in a tank top;
in the sun,
virulent as ground cover,
prancing as playfully
as though those photons
were made of everclear,
overdone and genuine.
One awful with hard work
though maybe stumbly
with words.
One diffident toward motion,
though an accomplished sophist
in a mire
where the essence of youth is all that is left
but gone sour
and turned to affectation.
*
Chintzy furniture of thought
that the mind made up.
*
How when the treehouse fell out
of the nook in the low-slung branch
you tended the weeping children,
laid with them in the grasses
and in a hushed voice
pointed out Horlogium,
Camelopardalis, and the Lupus Majorum.
The inverted dark and flinty dish
was disastrous
even beyond what as small kid can imagine—
but made tumbling
tolerable.
And that harlequin appearance
where each bit shows a different depth
as if McGinley lanked in
and did an infectious patchwork of youth.
