Can You Sign My Tentacle?

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Can You Sign My Tentacle? Page 3

by Brandon O'Brien


  and dances in the step of the old ones, too,

  it grasps, it owns,

  it turns swift and has a handsome dip

  to it. Every curve insists.

  * * *

  It insists.

  It isn’t always right, but it insists.

  * * *

  Perfect.

  Young Poet Just Misses Getting MF DOOM’s Autograph

  I just wanted to ask about the mask.

  I just wanted to ask about having a spare self,

  a decoy for before worries. I wanted to ask about

  leaving a talented neighbor my cloak to bear

  the burden of my heavy lurid verses while

  you’re elsewhere sculpting the scheme in the

  next scene. I just wanted to ask about the name.

  I could never imagine being

  the lord of so any realms, with so many realms

  within me fighting to escape all the time. Not escape—

  debut. I just wanted to ask about the mask.

  I wanted to ask about being a whetstone

  and a blade all at once, steel against steel,

  tongue as a stun gun weaving words for the young ones,

  running with homespun puns willing worlds never undone

  I just wanted to ask about the name,

  the pride in becoming the villain

  in places where that was all we could excel in

  * * *

  but I never quite got within autograph distance,

  and that’s fine, maybe in another moment.

  Kanye West’s Internet Bodyguard Asks Hastur to Put Away the Phone

  Damn, this thing just

  loves to find something that means something

  so it can swallow it in swirling jaws and erase it all.

  * * *

  He was just walking down a Twitter feed late one night

  looking ironically for a hamburger

  and he met the mess rushing upward on the sidewalk,

  * * *

  swearing across the cold while some other VIP walks away

  chuckling. He takes out his phone to catch Ye

  in the entire internet. He spins a slick caption

  * * *

  underneath to snare a couple likes as they crawl upwards.

  Hastur shouts Worldstar! out of sight, a gleeful

  judgment-sound, lucky no one will hear

  * * *

  until it fades into the midnight. The whole block

  puts a part in their mouths, laughs their little laughs

  with their mouths full, oh he so crazy!

  * * *

  When I see it, I remember nearly passing out

  with my own desire to disappear. I remember

  the sidewalk of my own timeline rising up to meet my nose

  * * *

  and strangers kneeling to ask me if I was dizzy,

  bringing tepid water, wiping my bloody forehead.

  I wonder if Ye brought any friends with him to the club.

  * * *

  I wonder why no one’s taken Ye to bed. I wonder

  why no one’s taken Hastur’s phone. I wonder why the street

  is always so full when Worldstar and always so empty when world-weary.

  * * *

  The video stops trending eventually. Maybe we’ll

  think about it so we can redirect our

  judgment, feel better right after feeling bad.

  But the video never comes down.

  the one

  830, 831, 832, 833—

  on his digits he can

  see the crumbs of past attempts at family.

  He licks the strawberry stains

  and lists them in turn:

  • rejection via drowning at a river in Estonia

  • so many silver baubles as he wooed British royals

  • a dozen unique moments when

  men wanted blood more badly than he did.

  In a new almanac flyleaf he scribbles

  I keep counting on the One—

  952, 953, 954, 955, nine-fif—

  teeming with restless numbers,

  he goes into the university racket,

  slings pure uncut figures,

  counts the hairs on students’ heads for boredom,

  knows each test-catalysed yawn or sigh in a tally,

  tries to keep his failed love number small:

  962 times I thought I’d found the One.

  Too many years meet each other

  and concentrate into indefinite

  infinity, the kind of

  thing he hates not fathoming.

  The bookstore owner is also an infinity:

  she resembles that one free belle

  when he nursed wounds in Georgia,

  her giggle takes him back to

  a brook in a countryside he barely

  remembers but closed his eyes to hear

  each drop.

  * * *

  She is briefly

  the only thing that makes sense.

  One whole thing or

  a collection of points in space or

  {all the fears you can have in your body | those fears < boundless joy} or

  P(reciting an old poem he hadn’t heard

  since Dickinson waved the page at him herself > the attacks that come to her in the middle of the night sometimes when the wrong song plays on the radio)—

  * * *

  they touch and

  the only thing that counts is her.

  * * *

  What were the odds?

  She’s read enough lifetimes to

  feel just as old as he does.

  In the small spaces between lines of postmodern poetry

  he can count entire continua

  clashing for a chance to sound.

  Cthylla Asks for J. Cole’s Autograph

  ask a creature of contradiction

  and unfathomable mathematics

  about the paradox of

  how does a man better himself

  in the same sentence he uses ‘bitch’?

  preceding praise for promiscuity.

  maybe you’re only saved from the mayhem

  by thinking from the basement.

  Cole slides out the front of a Bentley—

  rented; true power is spending money

  on transient glamour—and their eyes

  meet in the meat of the avenue.

  he ain’t headed nowhere in particular

  she’s in the area for him

  you can hear bluebirds somewhere

  she can still unravel the fact that

  he says the word bitch eight times

  in the first five minutes of meeting

  two of those times he whines awake

  that he should stop

  but they aren’t even the last two

  she doesn’t care

  if anyone needs rescue last, it’s her

  she smiles at every scratch of wit

  asks coquettish for an autograph

  a pic for the ‘gram

  he takes a blue sharpie to her chest

  barely smiles into the camera

  someone shouts across the street

  that she should stay away from him

  he waves the shout off as haterade

  as the girl-god distends her jaw

  don’t save her

  Lovecraft Thesis #3

  (There Existed an Addiction to Blood, Track 12)

  * * *

  The fact is, you are just a chalice

  for the ritual of melding truths.

  Your ribcage holds them badly,

  but you are.

  * * *

  Because of this, the death

  your poorer historians have stored to ink

  is never the true suffering.

  * * *

  It is always forgetfulness.

  Don’t even let them offer you the instability

  of your walls of thought.


  * * *

  You can let each fear of forgetting

  fall against your tongue crimson like wine,

  like nebula dervishes rich with dreams,

  and in you is a chalice for them all,

  * * *

  and you go running toward the fear

  and drink deep,

  get lost in them,

  you love the way control fades.

  * * *

  You are less fragile, then,

  than you suppose.

  The Metaphysics of a Wine, in Theory and Practice

  whereas many more presumptuous

  theories suggest an interpretive dance

  in five deliberate movements (Marling &

  Batmanglij 2017) or else a general physical

  denial of body through writhing-as-dance

  under strobe-lit dark,1

  the newly discovered academic consensus is that

  multidimensional transcendent astral travel

  is only possible through

  wining

  the dancehall take me

  to Heaven last night

  and I wish I coulda stay

  the adequate performance of gyratory sublimity

  is capable of euphoric states, restoration of

  stamina, and treatment of anxieties,

  but at supercritical depths

  a wine has the potential to bestow

  near-preternatural consciousness to the

  recipient (Ziggy Rankin 2004)

  I wish it thought me

  worthy to linger in

  the light of the gates

  I wish the seraph in

  the purple skirt or

  the archangel-boy in the tight jeans

  found nobility enough in me

  for the night to never cease

  because in that night

  God’s name in her native language

  was on my hips

  tempting my echo of its swaying syllabisms

  never illegible

  but forever unpronounceable

  critical-level performance of the rite

  has apocalyptic properties—

  that is, both provably destructive

  and with great potential to induce

  prophecy

  the music did hit me

  and your body did catch me

  and somewhere in the centre

  of those competing gravities

  was the cosmos in its own waistline motion

  lover, your bumper bring meh back

  to the first time meh mudda

  call meh name . . .

  at a terminal velocity, surviving

  subjects have documented a shared

  awakening, with potential to span miles

  of air or sea2, lingering within the senses

  as stored rhapsodic biodata, an open-circuit

  physical ecstasy and a redundant

  rotational climax

  under closed eyes

  the shadow of the world does turn bright

  hot on the faces of the next world war

  and warm on the hands that halt it

  I done sail across the black in this wine

  take large swallows from the swirling nebula of it

  lust as its nucleus

  opens my eyes to star-birth, star-death,

  the warmth of your hot celestial body3

  this euphoric quality is known to be

  intensely addictive at even average

  potentials, especially for men. It should however be

  noted that excessive wining

  can be destructive to the recipient (Machel

  Montano 2012), even inducing animalistic

  transformations in male recipients

  (Anslem Douglas 1998). Also, coercion or other

  non-consensual gyratory communions

  are discouraged, not only for their

  lack of energy potential, but their

  ability to harm performers,

  severing their connection to the

  enthusiasmos; the power of the

  ritual is placed firmly in the waist

  of the oracle (Patrice Roberts 2014, Alison Hinds 2005)

  if I could stay drowning in the syrup-sugary-smooth

  sway of your silhouette ‘til sunrise

  God knows I would die against your body

  but the Holy Spirit does only give you

  the Pentecost that you could handle

  so you step away with a wink

  to join your crew for drinks

  gates to abounding knowledge closed again

  until some soca

  draws them golden open

  for someone luckier than

  me

  1see every single American teen or new adult drama film since the 1980s

  2evidence of distance-resistant wining effects have been well documented in Japan; see ‘Japanese Wine’ (mini 2008), ‘Kanpai Wine’ (Barbie Japan 2009), ‘Wine For Me’ (Rudebwoy Face 2009)

  3a peculiar star rich in copper with an orbit too fast and fierce for a rock like me to not erode in its power

  time, and time again

  long before our time:

  we were forbidden gentlemen,

  sneaking held hands under coats

  and hiding love’s passwords

  in simple sentences.

  my heart is a hummingbird

  and your lips

  are sweet as a hibiscus—

  * * *

  tuesday:

  I wear the only suit I have,

  you bought it for me because

  my own was loose and moth-bit.

  the morning’s speckled with sorry-for-your-losses

  and your sister mutters at the wake

  that God would’ve kept you

  if you didn’t love me

  and I don’t know if I disagree

  and I can’t forget the sight

  of you, restful, in your last bed.

  I want to be wrapped up in you

  and hear you whisper

  ‘don’t forget you owe me

  a kiss in the morning’ one

  more—

  * * *

  wednesday:

  in another universe

  I get up

  and pay my debt

  you get up

  and collect

  in another universe

  I take that other me’s place

  and you are still sweet,

  as sweet as the crash never happened,

  hands living-warm against my cheeks

  when you ask,

  ‘come on, baby boy,

  why you cryin’?’—

  * * *

  friday:

  I have tried to find

  the space and time

  when you still are.

  the curtains have been drawn

  in the living room since the funeral.

  your mother brought brown rum

  and lasagna

  and tears to my eyes,

  said no lover has never been in your corner

  as long as I have.

  I let slip that I’m still hoping

  that you get up before death counts ten

  and give life a wicked left hook.

  you still owe me a

  blasted kiss—

  * * *

  monday:

  for a gasp of afternoon

  I am when you are.

  I don’t stop crying,

  crying ‘I miss you, man’,

  and I stop trying to hide it

  and you stop asking

  because I kiss you like a

  glutton. time won’t even

  let me have you for

  six minutes, but the air

  next to the dining table

  still smells like my sweet hibiscus boy—

  * * *

  sunday:

  by now, it’s become

  a given. I step between />
  two worlds, and just

  one knows you. on the

  other’s anniversary of burial,

  you run your hands through

  my hair, and I pay

  dozens of arrears you don’t know about

  with interest

  like it will buy your body back

  from the earth—

  * * *

  long after our time:

  soon time will grow

  bored and cast us in

  some other dollhouse drama.

  you ever wonder which?

  star-crossed spies? partners-in-crime?

  or are our roles so honed

  that I can stay the eager clumsy hummingbird

  at some stiff house party

  bouncing from wallflower to wallflower

  ‘til I rest my lips on you?

  * * *

  tuesday:

  you owe me

  my blasted kiss.

  do you hear me say it?

 

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