and
he just stood there, nameless as any beatnik,
blood slapping the ground,
taking it.
dying with his mouth shut.
no impervious last-minute jisei.
nothing
to placate the ages.
he was only bewildered.
that’s why you were always fucked
up,
Bukowski,
you were lonely for someone good to kill;
and anyway you’re dead,
dad, i mean Bukowski,
and i’m
shouting at your
vacant ghost
and they used to call that one
APOSTROPHE, i.e. the
direct address of an
absent or
imaginary person
or of a personified abstraction,
but
it’s impossible to find good apostrophism anymore.
i’d riddle
your grave with wadcutter rounds,
Bukowski,
son of Mogh, and fill
the holes with pissed vodka,
i’d scream with my boots wet i drank
you to death. i’d lie
to all comers
i slew you, rusty soupcan’s lid
delineating your
underjaw,
red ink, yawning and scrawled.
red ink, you shit-midas,
goldbricker,
you who revised nothing,
i’d lie how i drank
your arterial veins
and took your devil for mine.
but we’re poets,
poets.
disputes are published, not
resolved
as we mewl into
biennial quarterlies
named for truly fucking esoteric lichen.
what
we need’s
some
ONCE AND FOR ALL—
can’t tell me capitalize the first
person singular while
you’re clutching at exposed bowel
tissue,
sabers in the moonlit quad,
it’s not too late.
we could have still been
pairs of jagged jaws
rending across the wooly flanks of wildebeests,
not just sip, sip, sipping
havarti at the fondue fountain, ruminating
on shortlists, on grants, on
conspicuous absences from shortlists
and shortlists for grants, on
grants and grants and
GRANTS
for reedless microtonal oboe jazz (they’ve jumped
the
shark). over water crackers
we sippingly
ruminate,
careful to pronounce feng shui,
anthropopopopopoposophy,
lamenting the suppression of franz derrida.
we’re so open
to the moment,
so careful, and there,
THERE,
EYES ON THE MOMENT,
we flabbily congratulate ourselves:
our po-
et-
ics,
our craft,
how carefully we try;
and we
start
not
at
unfamiliar noises;
nor do we whirl when
rivals
take the stage—
you’re too long dead, Bukowski—
we punctuate nothing
with the snap of bottleneck on table’s-edge,
our fingers weak from
holding these SNIFTERS,
THESE DEMITASSES,
we lack the strength to
draw at measured paces—
a poet’s gun
used to be
completely irresponsible, right,
and black as
the syphilis on lucifer’s cock,
and arabesqued,
you know, with the scratchings of a broken nail,
with every bloodshot
night when the gun faces in
turn the ceiling,
the door, and the cat, and
the roof
of the mouth, and the door;
and the ghosts in the
hallway,
dead drunk, barn-
broad, bleary,
the bloated dreams
that make
for easy aim.
...and dove sweeping through the moonlight as clusters of rough-hewn bats, then chunks of stone with streaking leathery wings like wild brushwork. They trembled with a seriousness you might almost take for frantic play, careening again and again at the Rabbit’s head. Their speed would have dashed him apart if they were anything more than arrangements of contour and flitting shadow...
PANEGYRIC OF A FLUORESCENT SAGUARO WHICH ROUSES “IGNATZ MOUSE” FROM TURPITUDINOUS SLUMBER
The ziggurat Zabbuto boasts a brick of someteen thousand years—
but kall that brick no special kase—for someday’s sun might melt it to a “jug.”
And on the sun today a howdah, friend. And overneath three brickbats fly.
And windy klockfaced mesas running redward back as rust.
‘Pon yon vermillion dais suns and stirs a “Kat” whose hardy noggin waits.
“She” knows what love is—strokes “her” kornered basking-bed of brick.
So old, the ruddy ventricles of every kiln-fresh brick!
So ancient, all us players—all us pieces—dizzy in the blowing years—
but kreases never kome a-krazing “kat” cheeks, kause “he” kannot learn to wait.
To stir the sun “she” plinks a raga on a banjo-bodied “gourd,”
and wizened tumbleweeds below “him” spin in puffing tufts of rust—
You see them, “Mouse”—their jouncing tangoes—someday they will fly.
As sure as every brick you heft has panged and pined for flight—
and sure as “mice” may trust all kactoid exegeses on the kwiddities of bricks—
on high “she” dreams of hurled kisses, loving not to sit and rust—
we pieces all—o flourpot and jadeplant, sodaflat, o thornsharp notes, o years—
kraving all and one to shimmy—o to shimmer, o forever—soul to be—one “soul”
thereby—one soul. O eld’rous “Mouse,” you’re young as “he”—don’t wait.
For sometimes kats—like suns we meet—will rise for lack of wait.
Observe “her” tilt a soda-straw toward that kobalt-blue and drowsy bottle-fly—
“he” puffs the kracker-yellow mesa wind to tickle ‘kross its “wings”—
not bored, our “Kat” pursues the now-viridian kalliphore down terraced brick.
“She’d” never think to stay—but wandering, “she’d” yearn verbillion years.
The secret bakes beneath the open-shuttered sun—there’s nothing rusts but rust.
O snatch your geriatric love-projectile, “Mouse”—its silty billow isn’t rust—
as teetering Zabbuto mutifies into a stand of pines without its keystone’s weight—
now krouch behind my jangle-needled trunk, all windswept, tall with years,
and fondle frantic fingerfuls ‘f firmly fired fill—for feline frolics forth—full fly!
“Kat’s” kloudy kranial bone karessed by ever-most heartfelt of zipping bricks!
O dented temples, “Mouse,” o soda pop and holy Swiss—o names of “lo
ve.”
Alas! My newly-shooted kwaternary trunk konceals “Pupp”—that kop whose “love”
for justice, rectitude and “Kat” kompels him pound you off to rust—
o fuming “Mouse,” you’ll whip your tail, karving days upon your oubliette of brick.
But sure as moons turn blue—or gorgonzolas gibbous—freedom’s no long wait.
The kop’s got heartmeat newsprint-soft—he’ll blot a sentimental hanky as you fly.
Someday I’ll sprout a hand—I’ll toss konfetti in the blowing years.
A POEM CALLED WHAT DUTY MEANS TO MEAT
for SkuMm-Ilk
PORTLAND, 198X.
The squatters on the corner
killed themselves yesterday
morning, before the virus
hardly touched the coast.
Only tourists after all—teenagers
with a couple guns, running
a gas generator in the kitchen.
Fan in the window, sure, but
I still think they just gave up.
We watched their engine light
die through binoculars. Shot
an air rifle in the window so
the exhaust blew out. Last
night we stole all their shit.
The cigarette burn’s bleeding
again in my wrist, it’s months
now since Darby left the world.
I pray that wounds are signs.
Inside, I say Lord Darby the way
like he showed me, and he’s
the one I pray to. In my head
the Germs keep playing:
GIMME
GIMME YOUR HANDS
GIMME GIMME YOUR MINDS
Dead playing hands of cribbage,
drinking coke and Four Roses,
war-painted faces ruddy with carbon
monoxide like they’d been out
sledding. Veterinary speed on a plate,
dull orange lines, they’d been
chopping horse pills and we tried
to decide if something was even
funny with that. And some book
by Molotov in the bathroom,
like Molotov came up with shit.
Dead kids in stupid commando
headbands, tourists, every one,
and some runaway wrote this
poem on the wall:
We’ve practiced
on friendly cadavers. Filled
spaghetti jars
with handmade napalm.
I’M GIVING
YOU THE POWER TO REARRANGE
Outside the copters drone, pitching
freeze-dried rations into the road.
Fuckers won’t even aim. Nobody’s
down there but vectors, capillaries
in their eyes broken red with fever.
Nobody calls them people anymore,
calling them dead’s just religion.
Reservists in the windows with their
thin flapping signs like prayerflags,
Live Sniper, their rifles cracking
each minute of light. Single pause
could mean suicide, we take bets.
Nobody’s going to make it now.
We have dug tunnels that met tunnels.
Gun stores circled in blue on
their cheap gas station map and
they’d sharped up pool cues,
tried to get good at driving points
through a mannequin’s eyes.
One thing with practicing for
the end of days, you can’t do it.
Where would they get water?
They had a flashlight taped to
one blade of their ceiling fan.
We are necessity, greater than hope.
I met his image in the bathtub
like a stencil jumping from a wall.
No lie, they did mix napalm there,
styrofoam and grated bar-soap
dissolving through kerosene.
I’ve seen his face in car windows,
reflection ghosting into the distance.
My soft palate seized and burned,
I thought some monoxide was still
hanging, and my flashlight haloed
in the streaky diesel rainbows that
marred the yellow tile. He’s shown
me his sudden profile in puddles
of rain and antifreeze. He’s passed
his expressions between my friends’
faces, grinned through the lips
of teenaged roadkill. He’s on coins.
Darby Crash. He’s on fucking coins.
His tattered mohawk trailing into
the bathtub drain. Every circle’s
yours, Lord.
GIVE THIS ESTABLISHED
JOKE A SHOVE
We’ve measured the
precise thickness of all our skulls.
My burn’s healing inside out, only
the rim keeps bleeding. He said
scars hold us steady, keep us
from turning into what’d own
us. Come what came, he said,
the truly faithful could keep
riding. We’d see heat vibrations.
Every shade of black in the dark.
Something had exploded on the
counter.
We’ve cached scalpels,
shards of mirror: not weapons, means
of escape.
They’d been chopping
onions there in the peeling char.
Lucey wasted herself on amytal
before Darby even left this world.
She’d have loved it here. Dropping
bricks off fire escapes, the dark
skies downtown. Headshot games.
She gave me this burn.
We dream
campfires on rooftops, signal
fires.
Murdered skies, big wheels,
tripwires
and barricades.
She got it from him.
Some nights I can feel it breathing.
And greater than hope
is the hope it’ll come.
They thought anybody could turn
into a warrior. Like they’d put on
true names, equip the perfect gear.
They were dum-dumming bullet
tips with bread knives.
They had a photocopied landmine.
Every alley for blocks they’d carved
the brick: sideways ankhs, overlapping
teardrops, snakes like broken rope.
Who knows if they had friends
to read their code.
We are paladins.
We are meat, breathing on. Our destiny
the destiny of meat,
our flag a sawn-down pole.
No one’s known me long enough
anymore. This new crew only laughs
when I say the burns could save us.
Imagine coming to them infected,
my eyes like blown-out sores. And
raise my palm and ask to bum a light.
A vector that talks. If they’d listen then.
If they’d hear me out or open fire.
From this world’s games the next one’s
muscle knowledge. Lord Darby, your flesh.
Grant us rebirth.
In the tawny lashing of
metropolis’ pyre, your face. Grant us
rebirth, Lord Darby.
In the smoke of
all karmas’ burni
ng, Lord Darby,
your sign. Grant us rebirth.
Heaven’s
wheel stopped from grinding, toppled
on its side. Every circle’s yours, Lord.
I put off checking their wrists.
I know, though. We’re tourists too.
Polaris, like a ribbon of old onionskin, twisted away across the Rabbit’s lidless eye. “We could speak our case. It might take no more than that.”
The Rifle stood in the moonlit parlour, her shadow tipping across the floor like a black yardstick. “It would be horrible if a human saw something that wasn’t Re—” It stopped. “Heard things like us speaking.” And stopped again. “It’s a sacred trust that we don’t speak before them. They would go mad if we did; and we would, too, with guilt.”
“Every toy told me our words would unweave the humans’ thoughts. No toy had ever seen it done. I always felt sorry for their language, how it wasn’t alive.” The house settled, and the Rabbit’s walnut mount shifted on the panels of the wall. “When the Boy caught fever, all his things were heaped in the garden for burning. The only time the adults ever noticed me was to call me a mass of germs. I never spoke to save myself and nor did the books or blankets and I don’t believe much of it was sympathy. It’s that we never thought ourselves Real enough.”
“At least the Boy called you Real,” said the Rifle. “I would have been glad just at that. Almost none of us are so—”
“Lucky?” said the stuffed Rabbit whose fur smelled of mineral-oil over glass. “I spoke to the Boy many times while he slept.” He watched the moonlight tremble over the Rifle’s narrow veneered stock as the lace curtain kicked in the breeze. “I told him I loved him. I told him I wished my love could change him as his changed me. And he would wake and see my words clear.”
The Rifle tried to speak and instead slid part-way down the arm of the settee, making a ticking noise from her spring.
“In the nursery, I had no idea of fear,” said the Rabbit. “I learned it from his face. My words would cling to his bedclothes or climb across his hair, even as the world burned them thin. Something about him made them curious, and the ones with hands went to pet him. He would tell me about them in the morning; he thought they had grown from the night like toadstools. Out of the angles of the night, he said. Just before the fever he had taken to looking right at them, curious as they. He had even given them the name of night-gaunts. Or for all I know they taught him the name themselves.”
“They have no words of their own,” said the Rifle, sputtering. Her own words flared and tickled around the rim of her barrel, drifting through the shadows like the arms of sea anemones.
“As the humans think we have no words. As they call our words monsters.” The Rabbit’s teeth seemed soft against the moonlight, like the pages of an old book. “What if we did speak to them?”
Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us Page 5
