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————–

She says “I loved how much he loved me”

 

My scared little boy holds her hand

and Death becomes aroused

She holds her breath like a veil

lets his perspired palm survive its grasp

the adrenaline functions as it should

around the temples

along to the loins

He wonders whether she will be kissed

allow herself to be adored

Death lights a cigar

And there’s asking who is the killer in the room?

the movie lasts so long

Captivating like Hugo’s excursions into equine genealogy

Interaction like a forced stigmata

reminding you to send a postcard when you next visit Babylon

And Death gets his vicarious taste of the living in their lovely fumbling

nervous to live

 

She: poetry is not a cup of coffee – it doesn’t happen in the morning

A splinter in your dick from fucking a Trojan horse

 

I am not a dreamer

            not an idealist

            not a fatalist

            not a junkie

            not a poet

            not a liar

            not a writer at all, worst of all

I am just a man with a birthmark in the middle of his chest

Bouncing upon a cloying, taunting beating

that I don’t recognize

A heart?!

What heart?

She took it for her own

when I brought the bottle, like an orphan, home

when I inflated a vein with a cheap leather belt

that I got from a bad short story by Irving Welsh

and a shaved farce that ends in sabotage  

 

I am not a miserable asshole

            not a futurist

            not a sprite or a spirit or a sparkle in the dark

            not a jester

            not a profit or a prophet

            not a miracle, to be sure

I am just a man with a birthmark in the middle of his chest

Where within the blood dances like a constant ritual birth

pointlessly spiraling, instead of sleeping undry and unblessed

like the refugee it claims to be

 

I want to tame my aspiration

the creation of meaning in the words has become a damning onus

a dread

a bath too hot to ease into

a heretofore glorified profligacy worked in lieu of getting a real job

as superfluous as a designated palindrome

 

instead

I want to wake dying in Paris

with her capturing my last breaths like captive butterflies in a jar

The graceless lady

that Jagger sang about

 

She: poetry is not a life, but barely an excursion

“I loved how much he loved me”

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Also, there was an extra stanza in the middle of the previous poetic rant that I decided to edit out. I’m posting it here, because it isn’t all that terrible, though it isn’t terribly pertinent – I think its disclosure is an honest maneuver on the part of the poet to reveal the piece’s natural progression:

———–

I am not the mighty Jupiter

            not Norman Mailer

            not Bellows or Bukowski

            not Hank fucking Moody

            not a sitcom dad

            not a caricature of the past

            not an engine for the future

            not an overdue transition

I am just a man with a birthmark in the middle of his chest

A cavity hiding a puny, palpitating organ the size of a hallowed rat hole

screaming about the injustice of mortality

smoldering for a patient ending

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