I’m rooted firmly in reality, by which
I mean the G train on 12/21/11. A guy reads
carefully in dove-colored Converse. A small
girl wears a fake amethyst ring, and even the bald
Dravidian man looks ashen in New York
winter subway light. I’m thinking
of the curtain of jerky in Ariana’s poem,
the god of meat, the poem’s peregrinations.
Me I am busy, sometimes I go places I don’t
want to go, the sky’s head is heavy. I can tell
already this will be a “lyric” poem, and
I’m making you think I’m writing it
right now, or all at once. Ha! Fooled
you! Now a homeless man with a huge
protruding lower lip and two teeth on the
bottom is singing a détournement of
God Bless America: “land that I own.”
Ah well. Even those who own things
die. Trump looks like he is going to
explode. He looks like someone I once
knew. Anyway I put a wild cowrie into
the golden expectations of my physical
nervousness – there a cloudy bank roils
around the hipper convergences – monsters
storm by my side in the form of tiny
husbands – a train caught in seaweed
belches babydolls singing, “that is a
arrow, yes it is, it’s a triangle, it’s a
arrow.” Babydoll’s purple mylar wings
wither with a kind of half-baked disgust;
maroon swooshes attack the populace
as coded glom, misread signs of Greek
woes. The mayor hits a nerve. I don’t know
what to think. A crowded poem is no excuse
for an improper touch. What did you say
your name was? Harry? Jerry? Larry?
I want to play with my rotten head.
Sex is a sport. She’s the illustration.
There’s nothing like me in the culture.
Sexy hellcat shows her claws as hubby
looks on. Everyone is a type. Even
Douglas Rothschild is a type. Flexible
dollars dot my aging hair. There’s a spider
in the next world. Depraved hillbillies
nurse their mighty peccadilloes, but I am not
a drug addict, I love with a fatal
hormone and a brighter agency! Out!
Out, vile lilt – it’s love for every one
of you, those I know and those I don’t
know, those I have not forgotten,
those I object to strenuously, and those
I hanker for in the inevitable diaspora
of molecules.
Bounced and jostled by society’s
clank, we build up job skills. The
security guard leans against the pole
with his hand in his security guard
pockets. I moan a little inside, but from
anxiety, not from lust. Lust itself
is like a free app that when you tap it
turns IMHO into a rubber unicorn,
and I appreciate that because I am
basically a sympathetic person,
left-leaning but cynical, with a
decent-sized collection of mouse
hats – and what did you say your
name was? Perry? Barry? Mary?
Anyway, I forget, and wax my
moustachios higher in preparation
for the end of the song, its indefinite
searing warble, its cloyingly intimate
swerves. The memory of you is lodged
in my labial folds – like a deer tick.
Not really, but I wanted to write that.
Really, all I need is time. All anyone
needs… is time. This drastically
oversimplified theory of survival
leaves out several essential factors,
like tea roses, vegan boyfriends, cool
French theory books, and instant
streaming. Yeah, I guess you could say
this is a kind of instant streaming.
Or instant dreaming.
Oh, the crowded city makes me tense
like a snake. The police eat our pizza
as I lip the frilly edge of anxious
solitude. I don’t say that to sound
sexy – I walk into the sun, my sheets
turn over in dismay – I’ve got a vulva
full of rage and fear and I’m not afraid
to use it in the flustered nite, all
ferklempt like a tangerine section
that is really an orphan sunchild’s
disconnected ear found somewhere
on another planet’s slushy frigid moon.
Earth balance. Beans. Well, the mangle is
the message, and the eagles (and the
eagle-faced people) have some
other – angular – planet, and wind…
will become light. He who rolled
in as internal clench, she who filed her
toenails and told me I needed to “get away
from exotica” – they will become light,
too. This peregrination. The zipper folders
full of DVDs – their sinister prismatic glint.
I need to build more repetition into this poem.
I want to play with my rotten head.
Play, play, play.
Babydoll belches lavender,
belches lavender
belches lavender
belches lavender
belches lavender
belches lavender.
Out, vile lilt.
Out, out, out.
