Ordinary Beast
Page 2
come back to bed? Love—
How free we are; how bound. Put here in love’s name:
called John. A name so common as
a name sung quietly from somewhere.
Like a cry abandoned someplace
in a city about which I know.
Like black birds pushing against glass,
I didn’t hold myself back. I gave in completely and went
all the way to the vague influence of the distant stars.
I saw something like an angel
spread across the horizon like some dreadful prophecy
refusing to be contained, to accept limits.
She said, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
I love you, I say, desperate
to admit that
the flesh extends its vanity
to an unknown land
where all the wild swarm.
This is not death. It is something safer,
almost made of air—
I think they call it god.
Some say we’re lucky to be alive, to have
a sky that stays there. Above.
And I suppose I would have to agree . . .
but the hell with that.
It isn’t ordinary. The way the world unravels,
from a distance, can look like pain
eager as penned-in horses.
And it came to pass that meaning faltered, came detached.
I learned my name was not my name.
I was not myself. Myself
resembles something else
that had nothing to do with me, except
I am again the child with too many questions
as old as light. I am always learning the same thing:
one day all this will only be memory.
One day soon. For no good reason.
Dying is simple—
the body relaxes inside
hysterical light
as someone drafts an elegy
in a body too much alive.
Love is like this;
not a heartbeat, but a moan.
Can you see me
sinking out of sight
in the middle of our life?
Should I be ashamed of myself
for something I didn’t know I—
(He walks by. He walks by
laughing at me.)
“What else did you expect
from this day forward?” For better. (Or worse.)
One life is not enough
to remember all the things
marriage is. This town at dawn
can will away my lust
to suck honey from the sunlight,
so why am I out here trying
to make men tremble who never weep?
After all’s said and after all’s done
and all arrogance dismissed,
the distance rumbles in
sparing only stars.
The moon, like a flower,
survives as opinion
making it almost transparent.
The pieces of heavy sky
heavy as sleep.
I close my eyes
and this is my life now.
***
virginia is for lovers
At LaToya’s Pride picnic,
Leonard tells me he and his longtime
love, Pete, broke up.
He says Pete gave him the house
in Virginia. “Great,” I say,
“that’s the least his ass could do.”
I daydream my friend and me
into his new house, sit us in the kitchen
of his three-bedroom, two-bath
brick colonial outside Hungry Mother Park,
where, legend has it, the Shawnee raided
settlements with the wherewithal
of wild children catching pigeons.
A woman and her androgynous child
escaped, wandering the wilderness,
stuffing their mouths with the bark
of chokecherry root.
Such was the circumstance
under which the woman collapsed.
The child, who could say nothing
except hungry mother, led help
to the mountain where the woman lay,
swelling as wood swells in humid air.
Leonard’s mouth is moving.
Two boys hit a shuttlecock back and forth
across an invisible net.
A toddler struggles to pull her wagon
from a sandbox. “No,” Leonard says,
“it’s not a place where you live.
I got the H In V. H I—”
Before my friend could finish,
and as if he’d been newly ordained,
I took his hands and kissed them.
clue
i.
“Hands down, mustard
is the tastiest condiment,” coughed Professor Plum—
his full mouth feigning hunger for the greens-
only sandwiches Mrs. White
laid out for Mr. Boddy’s guests. Miss Scarlet
hadn’t time to peel off her peacoat
before the no-frills food, which she declined, and a pre-cocktail
cocktail, which she accepted. Colonel Mustard
refused all fare, citing the risk of sullying his scarlet
and gold Marine Corps suit, then ate the sugarplums
that happenchanced his pockets like lint. Mrs. White
funneled the motley crew into the green-
house, where Mr. Green
was rumoring—his hand bridging his mouth to Mrs. Peacock’s
ear in an effort to convince the white-
haired heiress that the sandwich-making maidservant must’ve
poisoned their plum
wine. Mr. Boddy’s award-winning scarlet
runners initially amused Miss Scarlet,
the way one is amused by another with the same name. Mr. Green
thought it odd Mr. Boddy didn’t show, told Professor Plum
as much. “Here we are, pretty as peacocks,
and our host is nowhere to be found,” twirling his mustache
like the villain in a silent black and white.
Minutes into the conservatory tour, Mrs. White
introduced Mr. Boddy, who lay facedown in a scarlet-
berried elder. “This man,” Colonel Mustard
said, “is dead. I know death, even when it’s camouflaged by greenery.”
The discovery proved too much for Mrs. Peacock’s
usual aplomb—
she fainted into the arms of Professor Plum.
When she came to, he appeared to her the way a white
knight would look to a distressed damsel. Semiconscious, Mrs. Peacock
pointed to the deceased’s pet Scarlet
Tanager perched on a lead pipe between the body and a briefcase gushing green-
backs. Right away, Colonel Mustard
mustered up an alibi about admiring Mr. Boddy’s plumerias.
Mr. Green followed suit with his own white-
washed version involving one Miss Scarlet and a misdemeanor plea copped . . .
ii.
“Dinner is served,” said Mrs. White,
inviting Mr. Boddy’s guests by their noms de plume
into the dining room for a precooked
reheated repast. Miss Scarlet
passed the pickings, which didn’t pass muster,
to a rather ravenous Mr. Green.
Nobody faked affability better than Mr. Green,
waving his napkin like a white
flag, acting out the conquered in Colonel Mustard’s
combat stories. Here was Professor Plum’s
chance to charm a certain lady, catching what he called scarlet
fever. “I’ve seen more convincing peacocking
from a tadpole,” quipped Mrs. Peacock,
retiring to the library, green<
br />
tea in hand and a tickled Miss Scarlet
in tow. Mr. Boddy’s absence was so brazen it bred white
noise not even tales of exemplum
heroism, narrated by and starring Colonel Mustard,
could quiet—his presence, by all accounts, as keen as mustard
and showy as a pride of peacocks.
Like a boy exiled to his room, Professor Plum
excused himself, giving the others the green
light to do the same. Mrs. White
was in the kitchen scouring skillets
when she heard who she thought was Miss Scarlet
scream. Mr. Boddy’s musty
old library was a crime scene, his final fall on this white-
knuckle ride towards death. “For the dead,” Mrs. Peacock
said, “the grass is greener
on the side of the living.” While plumbing
Mr. Boddy’s body for clues, Professor Plum
found no visible wound—the would-be host appeared scarless,
despite blood haloing his head on the shagreen
rug and a bloodstained candlestick Colonel Mustard
recognized from dinner. Mrs. Peacock
avoided the sight, turning white
as the sheet with which Mrs. White covered the corpse. Plum
sick of the “poppycock” accusations, she sped into the starlit
night in a ragtop Mustang belonging to Mr. Green.
c ue
as
the
only
guest
accept
th is
poison
same
as
m e
in duced
by
a
faint
distress
back away
admiring
for
the
ravenous
a
fever
starring
a boy
who
scream s
his final
sick
night
unfurnished
Something was said and she felt
a certain way about said something.
Certain only
that there was no mistaking the feeling
she felt—the sounds empty makes inside
a vacant house.
♦
imagine sisyphus happy
Give me tonight to be inconsolable,
so the death drive does not declare
itself, so the moonlight does not convince
sunrise. I was born before sunrise—
when morning masquerades as night,
the temperature of blood, quivering
like a mouth in mourning. How do we
author our gentle birth, the height
we were—were we gods rolling stars across
a sundog sky, the same as scarabs?
We fit somewhere between god
and mineral, angel and animal,
believing a thing as sacred as the sun rises
and falls like an ordinary beast.
Deer sniff lifeless fawns before leaving,
elephants encircle the skulls and tusks
of their dead—none wanting to leave
the bones behind, none knowing
their leave will lessen the loss. But birds
pluck their own feathers, dogs
lick themselves to wound. Allow me this
luxury. Give me tonight to cut
and salt the open. Give me a shovel
to uproot the mandrake and listen
for its scream. Give me a face that toils
so closely with stone, it is itself
stone. I promise to enter the flesh again.
I promise to circle to ascend.
I promise to be happy tomorrow.
underperforming sonnet overperforming
[FOR MARILYN]
This time, this poem, is the best idea
I’ve ever had—the best in history
even, the best any has had, I swear . . .
and I should know, I’ve kept inventory
of them all; this poem is the alpha,
omega, middle, and the laterals—
literally the conceit of a far
off blank stare or a volta with virile
tendencies to talk about it and be
about it, it being the best sonnet
to ever sonnet—formal guarantees
of a good time, ready rhymes, and, I bet,
this poem is, with enormous success,
the only poem entirely imageless.
legendary
I don’t want to end up an old drag queen.
OCTAVIA SAINT LAURENT
This is no primrose path, a life lived out
of boredom, a role played on occasion.
Category is fem-realness—devout
in the practice of pulling a fast one
on the eye. Octavia, eighth wonder . . .
I wonder, am I as legendary
as legend lets on? Only amateurs
are moved by monikers on a marquee.
Only amateurs imagine Harlem
leads to Hollywood. I can’t afford such
idle delusions. So close I see them
flickering, but not close enough to touch.
So beautiful I almost forget, were
it not for history, to know better.
an apology for trashing magazines
in which you appear
I was out of line, Brad Pitt.
You’re no Eliot Spitzer.
I’m no preacher. This apology no bully pulpit
where I sermonize our epitasis—
a Woody Allen tragicomedy in which I play “Serendipity,”
and am blinded by you, a star, Jupiter
(third brightest in the night, spitting
image of the sky god). Patience might be for pipits
and “forever” a spit
of land neighboring Atlantis, but I’ll wait my turn. Pity
your first marriage ended. I didn’t mind her as much as that Jolie-Pitt
situation, complete with pitter-
patter of 12 Benetton-inspired feet. But, I’m not bitter. My pit
bull bears your name, and I call my man—with whom I’m going to Pittsburgh
for a wedding—out his name. Into yours: Brad Pitt.
Daydreams of you and me rivaled only by Brandon and me on Peach Pit
counters, from the original 90210. Even so, I’d wish he were you. Adonis epitome.
Abandon Hollywood for Bed-Stuy, skip down spit-
paved sidewalks to my brownstone. My poetry pittance,
your movie money . . . I suspect we’d do fine with our combined capital.
We’d be the mixed-race Pitts
on Tompkins Park. I’d be hospitable,
hosting meet and greets so as not to appear uppity.
Casually introducing you, I’d say, “Oh, this is Brad. This is just Brad Pitt.”
You’d find macabre humor in my obsession with Poe’s Pit
and the Pendulum and the palpitating
Tell-Tale Heart. The heart is an odd organ, a maudlin muscle, a cesspit
of undeserved affection. I admit I’ve had trouble pitting
good sense against non, but who hasn’t? (Did you know the per capita
divorce rate is 50%? Pitiful.)
Like with Juliette and Jennifer, I pray Angelina was a pit
stop on your way to Brooklyn. When I first saw you, Brad Pitt,
I was 15 and became so ill I was rushed to the hospital.
My hands, feet and armpits
began to sweat as if I were riding horseback up a hill toward a love who made the pit
of my stomach ache; literally, Legends of the Fall was my pitfall.
Brad Pitt, I imagine a much older you—spitfire
and only sl
ightly decrepit—staring my epitaph
down as if your gaze were the capital and my headstone a ghetto to be pitied.
even the gods
Even the gods misuse the unfolding blue. Even the gods misread the windflower’s nod toward sunlight as consent to consume. Still, you envy the horse that draws their chariot. Bone of their bone. The wilting mash of air alone keeps you from scaling Olympus with gifts of dead or dying things dangling from your mouth—your breath, like the sea, inching away. It is rumored gods grow where the blood of a hanged man drips. You insist on being this man. The gods abuse your grace. Still, you’d rather live among the clear, cloudless white, enjoying what is left of their ambrosia. Who should be happy this time? Who brings cake to whom?
Pray the gods do not misquote your covetous pulse for chaos, the black from which they were conceived. Even the eyes of gods must adjust to light. Even gods have gods.