Denim

Why did you love denim
in that way? The long
arm-finger that law abided
and you did not.

Needled itself into the cut
on Christ's chest: warm
inside, and moist,
but not wet. It was like

playing a few silent
hands of hearts and not
sex. Where sex is the
gash that was rent

there the day before.
Lamborghini-gun, how
most of your surfaces are
near parallel to the ground,

with a lupine bent
inclined forward. The basso
plays the main roll on this
one. Coming back:

the organs and soft
and dense and wet
inside that can be felt
through the plasticy casing.

It is scary to touch them.
The entrails are hot
indigo fiber and urea
sloshing about.

Denim stoking it.

a Century of Progress

A century of progress
and of losses. Was
the brass one; after
the gold, and the platinum.

A little return of
clockwork to the way
time went. Cog teeth,
anyway. Interlocking

parts. The coast
line kept moving into the lake.
We'd work harder
for it, and build a shallow

root system dense.
Throw the porcelain things
in crevasses with
a loud din. Report from

the mountains (forming
a wall) on the west horizon,
come back home now.
It isn't working out.

HVAC Indifference

You derisive mite,
I am not doing
what you wilst.
now.

Whatever. Blair was
very, very
drunk that night.
I bet

she wouldn't
remember saying she
didn't love me
either,

when she'd thought
about it. What
were we meant to do
then?

Apoplectic heat-vent,
if your mouth won't shut,
turn it away from
me.

If you are breathing
down my neck,
consult back.
I'm dead

now, but I'm
getting much better.
I'm dying to get
much better.

the Slagheap

A tumbling
slagheap. Briggflatts
if briggflatts meant nothing.
Sulphurous mud and
electrical wiring. Three
fourths the food needed.

Hiring the antecedents,
and then killing them
so matriculation comes
with attrition and slogs
deep.

And there is a ring there,
if it has not returned to
the earth yet (who knows
these days) as nutriment
for the dead soil. Nitrates
and iron.

Scarletina caked in with
where the grass is hard
packed into something
flammable.

Deflation ensued
the excess, for something
like twenty-five years. Yes
the casing seemed slack
over the cylindrical limbs
of boyhood flopping about.
(They were clothing to
keep the cold out and
animus in. That was a hard
fought thing!)

See, gnatsfluff and a can
of aerosolized water for
cleaning off, but leaving
left.

Wesh revenue, waning.
Lush avenue, raining,
virulent microbial growth
on the concrete pileons.
(Wouldn't've thought
they'd make it through
the wastelanding but
did, with fungal aplomb!)
Wish for a current in the dust.
Flash

of living in the dust.
Tidal pools of dust. And
wallow slower. Luddlow,
'till the stoking made of
somnolence was.
What would've insulated
now radiates, which is the
opposite.

Duff that, Cannery!
That there is a transparent
vein in the earth, of magicalness,
that was a nature once.
Cavernous marble amphitheater
carved of water, make nice.
The water underneath
this place is brackish, but
potable.

Nope: boy will too. You
bought a new pair of shoes
and then he bought one.
This jaunt across is fit
for way-early renaissance
heraldry. He indeed wears
a maroon blouse and a
dark velvet waistcoat.

Stark metal things
shining in rubble and ashes.
Mr. Darcy and Mr. Mister talking
art in the parlor that now is
dross—literal and ash camps.
I wish there was a holding
hands part, but there isn't.

Accidentally Going to Winnetka

Oh dross,
dappled with dew.
It is colder again
and you come
in rapid bursts.

Reciprocity until
the point of shaking.
Us trying to get in
the other through
blunt force

on the front. You
lay there limpid,
going about like a
tidal pool grass might.
And then you

did night
for a long time.
Imagine being a
schmuck, sitting
in the grass and gravel

on the side of a road
'cause you're lost.
Take out a cigarette
and smoke it, and
wait to go home.

Fuss over the
boy with the cellphone.
Mothering until
the point that mothering's
debated in small groups.

(It does not look alright)
I do not know if you're
lounging on
that bed of moss
with sex in the air,

or plastered there;
stricken with loss;
just making lists
in your head. Maybe
both is accurate.

for a Gimlet

The equity is
twitterpated,
I am too.

Which, in a weakness
returned to
what was easy,

adolescent fantasy.
Like Schiele
done up with full shading.

It was not funny how
you seemed as though
from your head

to the bottom of your spine
had been stretched out!
Luminosity of the

flesh, yes. Firm
nipples that seemed
inflated, young

boxer face; small features
and deep set eyes
and big ear lobes.

You had a smooth face
and eyes that were like
spheres of water, not

connected to you necessarily,
taking everything in and
putting it somewhere.

Remember your Marfan
Syndrome? And what it meant
to the Frank Herbert people?

That the spice floes
were growing thinner
meant something.

That the huffing of tea breath
was growing thinner,
though the mounds were growing

met our expectations.
Oh God! the whole kitchen
is a mess of pans boiling over,

an old gilt sacle,
sheaves of papyrus,
and the things for a gimlet.

wild

How much more
to drop a bomb on us?

Luring doubt
from the den,

which was an
affable sprite

who sought
the very nice

and only
just gave up.

Who owns the onus
of stuff like this:

that the stockpile
of drugs ran out

when the hurting
returned, that the

haircut was a result
of not cutting,

the green stripe that
got wider

on one side?
wild, did you

not drop the /e/
to camaflouge

your first footfalls
on Ellis Island?

In your havoc of
research, missed

the chorus and
two verses

that're everywhere?
It is all off.

The lines then
must meet,

refract past
one another

and show a red stripe
beneath.

You escort
doubt back

around
the old environs,

introducing him
the the Pashmina scarf

that was popularized
during his absence.

Worlds are like this:
a set of little wheels

and a slip, a jersey
plinth and spam boat,

a thunder
of recognition

and resounding
disappointment

when the legs
did not

go all the way up
but stopped at the crotch.

Coming back
down with a bout

of finding the
fine eyes

in some way
inhospitable

and the evidence
beer left.

And wild intoned:
"It's the over-forties

at one table. And
I'm on the bitch-stick."

And true enough!
Doubt went dumb,

didn't know
which one

to talk to less.
Both seemed

a mess. If
the whip hand

was the one that
one used to jerk off!

what a feat
that would be!

of life
reunited!

The lip cleft
on one,

the anglicizing
brother (wild)

would not raise
indifference

but'd talk about it,
in a mire,

to the extent that
other people would.

And in that mud,
ire was not

the comatose
counterpart,

raising a child
toward indifference

and eventual
submission.

Doubt has
a prehensile appendage

and it is
slender.

Unto, again
submersion.

Yes. He was a nice boy
unto ire

and aspersions!
How is that?

That a smile
incurred sickness

and drove
him under earth

where the glance
wasn't?

Yes. He drove
the simpleness

to scurvy
of another sort.

Yes. He dressed
his hair

with crushed rosemary
and clumps of marjoram.

The car would
not start, yet

when it
did start

the drive
to leave was gone.

the Mawkish

Those years we lived on blood
and bong water. Had things taken out
and replaced in a hospital.
If a fair amount of love was

ours by right it was
a time of fasting to preserve the feedstock.


Andrew, you were
born in 1972. We had many
dinner parties, then lived
the thin life.

We gnawed the platelet
of good strife, mocked patient zero
for the mawkishness because it
was a good time, had only just begun.

the Window

Not being here costs much,
going where he is not.
And having one clue left
but not using it. Austin was far off.


Churning the old truth:
the first autumn was hard enough,
having moved on, even!
Sex and being cold.


Zeroing out all thought
and blissed out on what's left
which is ash, beer-ends,
and having eaten too much;

like a dirge Thanksgiving.
You are unrightly cold,
indian summer notwithstanding,
full of old magic; deep earth;

videogame cartridges;
and the poster of Elvis Costello
drained of mirth,
looking toward the window.

Memorial Statue

This past quarter century:
you did a lot of aging,
who was seventeen,
didn't know what to do.

You quit changing a while ago
when the breathing
became difficult.
Vocational school seemed

not so good an option,
the space pool didn't exist yet.
Antediluvian footholds
in the cliff-face. High school

was wearing thin. You
climbed the flagpole, somehow,
hung out eye to eye with
William Henry Harrison.

Memorial statue, now I am
seventeen years your junior, again!
This is the blue-black nadir
of trying to love men.