We only ever question what is good for us,
but never what is bad...
Have you noticed:
the luckiest people never once blame luck,
and the beautiful
call beauty
a curse,
again and again...
It's not the high that kills you,
it is the next morning...
Loneliness of mirrors
is the detail that kills...
Sometimes the longing for a body,
any body,
known,
unknown,
friend, enemy, lover,
is too much,
too much to bear,
beneath the frailty
of skin...
When the child is happy,
everything she does,
she wishes she could do twice...
Me?
I admit,
I never had the same
imagination
with others,
even as a child...
Once you’ve both decided,
spoken or unspoken,
you’ll never agree on the past,
you’ve already made your maps of
the future...
Always last to go to bed.
Always last to fall asleep,
Not until the house is quiet,
and the boys are tucked in.
First love, first lust:
Not until it's too late
do you finally realize
that the only way
to discover your body
is with
the hands
of another...
“And life loves on…”
Francis Bacon: "...realism needs to be reinvented..."
So you hope they don’t ask who you are today.
Thirty two year old searching for quarters to do his laundry...
How many times have you drowned in your sleep?
Is this why you’re the last to fall,
always,
even as that child
with no
imagination?
Truth skin disintegrates between my fingers
quite often…
And when the bull and the butterfly mated
the butterfly ate the bull
leaving nothing but bones
in the grass...
All of this future?
There’s no instrument
invented yet to measure
desire or memory...
Creaking tables excite me...
Sometimes the longing for another body,
someone’s you know
or
someone’s you don’t,
is too much to bear…
Flashes of her enjoyment
somewhere in time
often feel like a knife slash
to the throat...
Who is the one who told you
you could leave in joy?
I spend my time reading books
on strategy,
on war,
by men
with names
like Clausowitz.
I'm preparing
for some catastrophe
that already happened...
Uncork the bottle of our youth again?
And I seek an imagination
with no reason, point or morality.
A frivolous imagination
with no meaning
but the desires of the dreamer:
To see the lions in the streets again,
and not fear them…
Street washers at 3 a.m.
I watch them.
They watch the sidewalk,
miraculously deflecting
streams of water
with bent trashcan lids
as I walk by
after leaving
far too late...
Why must we wear uniforms?
My stillness is movement,
my movement is still.
Her stillness was movement,
her movement so still,
not even we could tell the difference...
And when I was between
child and man,
son and father,
brother and enemy…
God ran though my veins.
I never forgot this,
and
it never once
happened again...
(Between brushing my teeth
and
drowning in Concrete
I never once
flew in my sleep...)
Past inhales
not enough...
I licked my uncle’s head when his child died.
I licked my uncle’s wound when his child died.
He didn’t cringe.
He wouldn’t cry.
His child died.
My uncle I barely knew,
whose child died.
In my dream I cleaned
the gash on his head
with my tongue
when his child died.
I took the hate venom
in my teeth
when his child died.
It was only a dream,
and then he too died
without saying
goodbye.
Too many reasons,
we all stay too long
given
the
opportunity...
Once
she wore two watches,
one on either hand.
The left one was so big.
The right one was so small.
The left one told the past here.
The right one told the future there.
But where was there?
There was where here was not.
There was where she was going,
Away from all the books where she met me.
She was not taking the bus.
She never did once.
She was waiting for a car
driven by a man in uniform,
just as she always was
and would be.
A car,
A helicopter,
A plane.
No matter how she went,
or where,
there was a city
away from here
only she alone knew.
Only she knew,
and then
she slipped
her body
out of
both watches,
and handed them to me,
before she got in
closed
the door,
and escaped
again...
When still
now
I often find myself thinking
of the law of inertia,
Of hurtling through time
and space with no purpose,
but gaining momentum
against my will
with each passing second
to nowhere in particular.
One day you’re just okay with it.
One day you understand
that whether it is
sleep or dream
or
somewhere in between,
one day,
it’s suddenly okay
to be moving
in any way
you can...
All that you remember
The no measure of what’s been lost...
One day
There will be this: (...),
and this will be you.
It is okay...
I spend my time
arguing with
insurance companies
over definitions
for insanity
to cut costs.
The shame
of it
all is
a mind
can’t be
outsourced
to India...
Only time whispers
anything
worth
anything,
The trick is being around
to hear it...
And the skin
at my elbows
is wasting
away
no matter
what I rub
on them...
Playing with edges
like they aren’t sharp
until they cut
through the between
of your lover’s
toes...
The weight of memory is the burden of the details…
I love women in skirts
and beautiful shoes
with heels too;
so much so
sometimes
I think
I just made
them all
up...
It’s not that I had no fear,
It’s that I went the distance
with my fear...
They can take it all from me
Everything.
They can not hire me
They can not talk to me
They can not pay me.
They can not feed me
They can not love me
They can not hate me.
They can not hear me.
They can not listen to me.
They can not know me.
They can not breathe me.
They can not acknowledge me.
They can not me.
They can not take me on vacation...
Until time is no time,
until universe is no universe
and the dream of dreams dies,
Not until then.
Not until then.
My voice goes on
like
the glass bell ringing at dawn.
Let me breathe my transgression.
Los Angeles - 5/15/07
