They took their elastic hands and vibrating fingers
and curved them around
a lump of spinning ear wax
beginning at the base,
they worked up in smooth,
concentric, shaping motions -
base,
body,
neck,
lips,
lips,
neck,
body,
base,
base,
body,
neck,
lips,
shaping
shapely
body, base,
slender neck,
parted lips
I mean to say they did this with
20 some odd
voices
and when they Came, they also left
taking all their orange blossoms
with them.
It's a big to-do, you know.
First, I have to wash my hands,
then wash my face,
dig in the corners of my mouth
and scrub every last
gummy crumb.
Then I've got to dry my face
and walk around with cheeks
pink from the pat,
and the pinkness of my cheeks
might suggest that I have trouble
following orders
even the second time.
And then the burps that would follow
all afternoon. It's just
easier to say
I don't care
for tuna.
The coffee here is on the bitter side.
Or so I am told;
I don't drink coffee.
I give the salt shaker a pronounced jerk
and stir in my cream and
sugar.
I like this.
My dark eyes peering
over foggy lenses,
studying a newspaper
I only half read.
"Did you catch Game 7?"
"That Trump is nuts" "-but he's not Killary!" (har har har)
"It's supposed to rain tomorrow evening"
"Did you see that Robert Francis died?"
"Boy, this stuff is bitter"
The sound of sipping
and blowing
and sipping
and turning
and folding
page after crisp page.
And topics flung like
mashed potatoes off spoons.
It's a grown aesthetic
and I like it.
There is a shirt hanging On the Nob
inside the bathroom
door.
It is slinky, static-
silky-like, and
older.
No longer worn,
but still in good
use.
There is a white towel hanging beside the regular one,
"regular" meaning used
regularly.
That one is red, but there are blue and green, too.
The white towels are stiff from being stuffed in a rush
at checkout from
whatever hotel.
The white towel hung there is no different.
(Stiff, I mean)
(Maybe stiffer)
By these clues
I can safely assume
that, apart from the crib
my child does not sleep in,
I am the only soft thing in this apartment
not getting any
use.
I don't know where it comes from exactly,
but I'll describe this fellow for you
just the way I saw him.
A generic profile would put him at around 5'11".
230lbs. Grey hair with a full, white beard.
Maroon polo. Khaki shorts.
Worn out looking Nike sneaks.
In the neighborhood of his late 50's to mid 60's.
Had he committed some terrible crime,
this is the description I would have given.
But he didn't, so I'll give you this one instead.
He had cube-like fingers on his oven mitt hands.
The fuzzy motif no doubt carried throughout.
His belly was like
a Santa bag in reverse.
I can only assume he smelled like
cold mornings,
or warm milk,
or some mechanical thing that didn't work
before he got there.
He was beyond the point of consensual napping.
An eco-friendly engine
that shuts off at complete stops.
I'm telling you this because I've got a thing for these types.
Though I've never known why,
I know better than to ask.
The answer would only
ruin Christmas.
There is nothing poetic about this
unending queasiness.
White shirt. Blue blazer.
Navy pants. Fence climbin' shoes.
Sweats and ugly
underwear.
Radios and
a lack of sleep.
It is something like panic
without the weight loss or twitching.
More accurately, it is
like nothing at all.
I am out of love and down
to just 12 pairs of socks.
I am without joy, but aware
of my good fortune.
I'm told some arrive even sooner
than this.
A fuzzy grape person laments his lonesome
sour grapey-ness.
He slumps his fuzzy shoulders,
puts his hands in his grape skin pockets,
says, "Is there really anything better
than having someone to love?"
Well.
There's
brand new nickels clanking in old tin cans
the cheeto smell of dog feet
the space for M&Ms in cat feet
snow days announced before I get dressed
bank shots that happen just the way I call them
clean socks
underwear that makes my butt look younger
money left over after paying bills
greasy hamburgers that don't soak through the paper
sex that means little to nothing at all
the pleasing sensation of packing cigarettes
the first drag off that first cigarette
most Italian food
most Mexican food
most Food in general
songs that have no expiration dates
phones that take a licking and keep on ticking
dimples on golf balls
the smell of unfinished wood
he must have left around the sex thing, I guess.
I don't know where anyone gets the idea
that sex has anything to do with love.
I will describe for you now
the appearance of a certain tree.
It is much too skinny to be a neighborhood tree.
It fits in well here on this
cake eater lawn.
Skeeny.
I could probably tie my husband to it
and still get my arms around both.
The bark peels away every summer.
Or fall. I guess I've never noticed.
It is bare now. It appears raw and exposed.
White meat surrounded by grey, itchy skin.
It'll scab up again before too long, though.
It does that - this particular tree.
The dollop of leaves on top are wonderfully disproportionate.
It reminds me of a young girl's feathered pen,
you know,
normal, normal, then a giant fucking feather.
The shape is very pleasing. It offsets its otherwise
skeeny-weenie-ness.
It isn't very tall, either.
If I stood on my own shoulders,
I could probably stack about 6 or 7 of me.
Assuming I didn't collapse under my own weight, of course.
I'd belong in a neighborhood if I were a tree, for sure.
When the wind blows, this tree sways kinda sexy-like.
I don't think it could hold the weight of more than one adult.
2 or 3 kids at most.
About a half of me (did I mention I'd be
a neighborhood tree?)
This tree will likely see the last of me,
but here, I've made this particular tree famous.
I've made its skinny arms and fat head famous.
Now who gets the last laugh?
I think I wanted to write about music tonight.
I'm about 2 hours removed
from the worst of it,
so telling you now will lack some
enthusiasm
but
it sounded a bit like Trix cereal tastes,
you know?
Full of different colors and shapes,
but everything had
the exact
same
flavor
the sentiment felt familiar
like a train underwater
but the words were too cutesy for me
to care
mustache this
Mexican food that
Music usually makes me feel kinda romantic,
you know?
And these hipsters didn't pump my blood
once.
She is young and not hard to look at.
Her walk is reluctant.
She rolls her eyes at my 'hello'.
Her bag is large and bright blue
with stitched on clouds her mother made,
and a bright orange sun
grinning it up in the middle.
I put a tag on it,
stick it inside the cubby,
and tell her to come back whenever she's ready.
She doesn't say a word.
Starts to walk away
before I even finish my stupid
well-wish.
As I stare at the bag, I realize her problem -
she is terribly uninteresting
without it.
I can't say much for the physical.
Hair. Fingers. Torso. Feet.
They are unimportant details
in a dying configuration
(albeit, a rather nice one).
Eyes. Smile. Chin. Chest.
There is no use in telling you
of the gold in them hills.
Neck. Earlobes.
Knees and toes (knees and toes).
The passing of these things will be swift and sad,
so to dwell on it would be
a disservice to you.
I will say, however, that
when he says there's a book I should read,
I usually
believe him.
"Well, what I like to do is replace negative words
with positive ones.
Or replace ugly feelings with feelings that have
no associations at all!"
She spoke like older ladies speak.
With a smile in one hand,
and a heavy dose of
I'm-Not-Your-Mother-But in the other.
"Like, if I'm feeling sad, I'll say,
'I'm feeling oranges'
and it'll make me feel better. See?"
She was probably unaware of this,
and I wasn't about to bring it to her attention,
but she did this knitting pantomime thing when she talked.
Her hands would meet in the middle
and do cute little curtsies to each other.
Twisting this way and turning that.
Weaving beautiful and sage ribbons of advice
just for me.
It sounded dumb,
but I hadn't had any other bright ideas.
I took a deep breath,
"Okay. I'm going to replace 'I'm' with 'Jimmy'"
"Good!"
"Okay. Now I'll replace 'overwhelmingly' with 'cracked'"
"..Okay, that's good I gues-"
"And now 'depressed' with 'corn'".
She walked away before I could come to the conclusion
that it had worked brilliantly
and I no longer cared.
My husband is a conservationist.
At first I thought he was a philandering rat bastard,
but once I realized his Bonnie Blue was endangered,
I took all measures
to ensure
copulation.
Midday calls and
nighttime water.
I vacuumed the carpet
so they could dance till it rained.
My husband is a very great man, you see.
To fuck her and our marriage
at the very same time.
Life is much simpler this way, let me tell you,
without the abject foolishness of
think-you-might's and
say-it's-so's.
Without the feel-good/taste-great rituals of mating gumming up the space between
Lifetimes of work.
Useless as tits on a boar hog, I say!
Masturbatory as a book about thieves.
I wake up feeling nothing at all.
I waste nothing of mine wondering who they are.
They, the nostalgic few
who might pick up the slack when this
cow finds the courage
to pick a new spot'n
run away with her spoon.
You see?
This is exactly the sort of thinking that I've
mostly
done away with.
Life is just simpler when you don't need attention.
Time slides right on by
when occupied by
the harmless.
That's me, you know.
Simple and harmless.
But sure as I am
smooth-brained and clear-visioned,
some bonehead will argue
I'm hiding my teeth.
He'll say something fatal that rhymes with
Rye Glove Jew
and oh,
what a mess that will make.
"You know I do", he'll say.
And in his stupid heart
he'll be telling the truth,
But his love will be that
of an unmanned aircraft -
not at all something we cows
can use.
I know, I know.
I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.
But there aren’t exactly lines out the door, you know.
Men aren’t fighting for a chance to be hard
On me.
Oh.
There I go again.
Let me paint you a picture.
Have you ever seen what happens to kibble
when it falls in a bowl full of water?
It soaks and it bloats and it lightens in color.
It gets pale and loose feeling,
the dog won’t even touch it.
In fact, it’s where he draws the line
(he doesn’t judge things born disgusting,
just things on the road to become it)
I’m not saying I’m anything like the kibble, but
you assumed that I was,
and doesn’t that make you
the critical one?
The trees stand fully realized.
The lawn sits bright and inviting.
The coolness in the air
kisses the young as they run by,
and a certain young man
making his rounds
seems to be glowing like a watermark
held against the sun.
I take comfort in days like today
when I am far and away
the least attractive thing here.
A spider has taken residence on my balcony.
His web is small and reminds me a bit
of the smile of a certain girl.
A delightful series of overlapping curves
with a random diagonal thrown in
just for show.
He's sitting in the center of creation now.
A brown bulb certain
of the flatness of earth.
How terrible, I think
as I reach for the long broom,
to somehow be able to weave tiny planets,
yet be totally unable to take a fucking hint.
There is a good amount of staring that goes on here.
Each balcony faces another's, faces another's (faces another's)
and even without the patio bulb burning bright,
the spaces are bathed in very visible
movie popcorn
butter.
I spent most of the afternoon yesterday
sitting on that public platform.
That Everything-Off-Yellow stage.
I wanted to feel romantic,
so I tuned my son's $30 guitar
and sang a few songs to myself.
It even rained a while.
The moisture made things feel sticky
and smell like wet dogs.
For all the usual staring, though,
Nobody was around to listen.
Nobody sat out and noted
the stickiness and stink of everything.
Nobody appreciated how many times I had to retune that
plinky guitar. (A dozen. A dozen sticky times.)
And the songs?
Well, hell.
Those would have stunk without the rain.
I stuck on it a while after he said it.
Hogan's goat.
Who'd ever heard of such a thing.
I pondered all possible meanings of the phrase - did it mean fucked up as in fucked?
As in Hogan's the fucker fucking the goat?
Did it mean fucked up as in screwy?
How fucking screwy could one goat be?
In the time it took me to stop thinking about it, another 13 birds had slammed into the glass.
Each explosion and subsequent flurry of feathers seemed to punctuate each incorrect guess.
And it's not that it was so important that I'd never heard of this thing. Hogan's goat.
The part that bothered me most of all was that there were now something like 28 dead birds littering the courtyard.
Necks bent like mishandled milk jugs.
Blood mimicking and mixing with fermented berry splats.
How could Hogan's goat be as fucked up as this?
It is a softer means of communicating my homelessness
to say that I am heart-whole.
Where for many years, I was forcefully divided –
spread apart like a book whose beginning
promised nudes;
I am now quite certain of its place in my body.
Its shape is like candle wax pooled at the base of something greater,
though where that greater thing has gone, I swear,
I’ll never know.
It suits my worrying nature, though
to have it within arm’s reach.
It suits my pale, prone to fight-fuck-flight nature
to behold every last bloody inch.
I have decided that I love a certain dog
belonging to a man I don't know.
He brings his dog to the museum
and I watch him run and roll and fetch,
and I see he has lost a good bit of weight
since first he came (the dog, that is).
It isn't to say that he's lean by any means,
but in good shape for his breed, I think.
I have decided that I love this dog
in the way that I love my own.
I don't think either dog will mind.
Dogs are pleasant this way.
and I want to drain the blood from their tongues
squeeze
until their wickedness fades white
and the lumps that gave footing to such bitter articulations
are textured like the reptiles they so long to call "Sir"
I want to feel the birth of panic
and nurse it until it cries out
mature and fully realized
swollen and bursting at its Windsor seams
sincere
as only sorrow can be
I want to neuter their fucking tongues
until they can taste the hardships
of their mothers
Your father's dead
and that's the truth.
His lies bore holes between his teeth
until he bore a single tooth.
He said he'd changed and he had proof!
That single tooth...
swissed and dangling in his mouth...
you're too young now, but understand
that it, like every hope and prayer,
was doomed to fail
and fell right out.
Your father's dead, but try to see
that while I'm not as "fun" as he,
I am what he refused to be -
There, my son.
There.
And so long as my arms will reach,
I'll hold you, son,
from noise to speech,
and far beyond and further still,
you'll have me, son.
You'll have me.
My old friend asks me how things are going.
He used to ask for the sake of asking because
cutting to the chase
made him feel uncomfortable.
But now, when he asks,
he stares at my eyes -
my fat, tired, ugly eyes.
It's probably easier than my likewise body,
but there's no chase to cut to;
what does it matter.
I tell him in great detail
how depressed I have been.
That I have felt like an elephant
in a movie about storks.
He seems pleased with my honesty,
but unused to the contrast
of still-sitting bareness,
hands in our own laps.
It is his turn to speak
and he spreads his arms wide,
he is healthy and happy
and fit and unclipped!
I am happy to hear it
but I cannot say so,
in all his excitement,
he sat on my trunk
and I'm too embarrassed now
to ask him to get up.
your Nothing Darlings root my insides
they steal nighttime and nectar
from the combs in my breasts
the curb shines like morning
while the boot buys your coffee
sweetness curdles
stomachs weaken
home is hard to digest
this strange blood that blushes
beneath your touch
is
a lovehungry cocktail
mixed just how you please
your heart is an ostrich
and I share with your Darlings
the thrill of discarding
the many things it won’t eat
I am cultivating a numbered day
like a toxic concoction swished around in my mouth,
the cheek of my loins, publicly stuffed with a tongue
is making way for inadequacy
and a forever pain
it is ignorant hope that brings sunlight
it is a book full of names
that bring life-giving rain
it will feed until fed
and then push toward the surface
where its cries will break my coward heart
and announce itself
as death
you are an alien now
you are not my child
you are something like a sheep stealing thief
stealing sleep from my sheets,
sucking Z’s from the folds of my
rolled up sleeves
oh alien, can’t you see?
or haven’t you developed those yet…
I can’t explain why tonight feels like dirt
caked beneath fingernails, sharing space with strange skin
I have already seen what I’ll compare all else to
so what is tonight but a secondhand story?
The cycles of love sound like dead dial tones
A
conversation that won’t ever happen
A
few lousy verses
about how much it h(u/e)rt(s/z)
I am closer now than I have ever been
to my one and my only
being one and the same.