————
————
she fell asleep
with her face
nestled against my neck
her breath
warm against my ear
listening
to the vision that she saw
in the midnight of the fantasy
from the bight of dreaming
I could not wade into
I realize now that you do not want to be saved, how trite, you rather want to be worshiped at a distance, left alone to die, like an object in a store that costs more than what’s in my pocket
————–
———–
———-
Watching a Musical
I tried for four years
and it hasn’t become anything
but a healing for the restless
and arthritis and anxiety for me
a headache, catalepsy
fragile nerves and chamber pots
a collection of coffee spoons
in mangled hands with shaking fingers
ossein surrounded by limestone crumbling instead of bone
under the pressure of forced repentance and compunction
an apartment where a musician took his life
for money maybe or
because he couldn’t come up with another melody to run along the train
the fingers steal another face like Christmas presents
trying to crush the grain of coffee against the paper
so as to leave a mark
to mark the spot
before the operatic bow
which we’re all too accustomed to
it becomes a dulling lament for homey Ignacio Sanchez Mejias
picked off in the same hood which will raise your enemies
and resurrect them, and resurrect them, and resurrect them
like a dulcet sting
and we’re all absent, based souls swaying through the olive trees
(the love of a poet sick somewhere in a pick-pocket’s wallet)
watching someone die because there are no refunds at the ticket booth
and we all need to save your money
for the kids’ boarding school
where they’ll make the friends you’ve never wanted them to have
to pay off the heavy mortgage
for the news coming every day
an assassination or two with a brunch menu
some pussy maybe
a lady in a glass
the temple full of debt
but the church still gets a tithe
until it is nothing but glass and sand under foot
in a frame
which you’ve brought back with you from Barbados
and it is then
that the criminal stirs
with poison like a free market in his blood
and he buys a song from the street
sounds something like “Pilate’s Dream” played on a ukulele
or Occupy Wall Street as a Broadway Musical
because these notes know
that this rash will become a riot
in a silent theater with lotion by the seats
where a constant encore plays
and we’re just waiting for the curtain call
because we might finally execute someone
———
————
———–
Smoking a Joint at a Funeral
This is going to be light.
We were all moderately upset
we expected it
but always a few days later.
Jules and I stayed to the side,
I lit it
listening to the eulogy –
the black preacher was good:
I thought about booking him for later
the week is long –
everyone could use a good speech to send them off to rust.
Even Martha came
she was always Jimmy’s favorite
she took a hit
paid her respects
didn’t look the mother in the eye.
Greenwood cemetery looks lovely in this insouciant light,
the oaks casting a rash of shadows
across the lawn and gravel
like an early plague of beauty.
Boils, flowers and the like.
No death, not here.
A blurred boundary,
not really, but pick your poison.
I took a hit and passed it back to Jules,
she followed suit
and we stayed quiet for the rest of the service
waiting to pass.
————
————
Writers Make Choices
Why don’t we both sleep on it tonight
almost make it to some sort of daylight
I was working on a book
editing the part when he met her
jealous when you woke up
you looked at me
at my typewriter
yawning, stretching your wonderful limbs
asking whether I wanted to join you in the shower
flawless through your efforts
but there was already too much daydream to go around
so I smoked and made toast for us
instead
while you walked out clean
and asked where I ended up
I told you
that he was in Greenwich Village
wearing dingy sunglasses
when he saw her
off the bus
stopped by his favorite bar
(Trostky’s Mexican Adventure with the happy hour promising half-priced drinks)
he leaned against a railing
and made his life
a glory for fiction stuck inside
fiction
an addiction to love and policy
a polylemma between breathing
him following her, skipping from verso to verso
and my taking you
where mistakes can’t always be corrected
where I can’t always be refined
undressed by red ink
but if you’ll ungently take me to some place ungentle
where it’s snug and warm
and a repetition isn’t needed because nothing ends
then I’ll find a way to cut the rhapsody off the tree
and finally let it sleep
for it’s been dangling like a shaman
for four years next month
growing hostile and vindictive
like a sad lover lost in a length of time
having nary to do with life
and barely anything to do with me
anymore
————
————
————
Saturday on the Bowery in 1982
Wearing his torn Joy Division shirt
he was stabbed in the gut with a golden shiv
his hair fell across his brow, tangled, amber
and then he slouched
grabbed his stomach
and tried to walk away
but they wouldn’t let him go
he was fumbling in the wrong direction
and they wanted to ensure that he got home
where he would find his vodka condensing in worried beads
shivering in the freezer
eager to welcome him with a searing gulp
and a hug across the open wound
so they grabbed his shoulders
ensnaring, each one took a side
and they led him to where he was wanted
where he was supposed to go
after last call
and they reminded him
that “generally, even Isadora Duncan is only known for breaking her neck”
it won’t hurt much
until the drink turns to an opalescent promise
and the colors begin to laugh
like synesthesia growing senescent
but it’s all alright
because it all becomes
as long as you have friends
who’ll stab you in the front
and then walk you home
whistling the guitar line of “She’s Lost Control”
humming along
as the stubborn night creaks with condonation
——
————-
————-
I Came Home
Fuck.
I was walking to the Union Square Trader Joe’s winery to pick up three bottles of the not-cheap-but-cheapest pinot grigio for consumption cold during this last twitter (yes, this word existed and was used prior to the advent of 140-character mandates) of hot summer days. You could already feel autumn blowing in the wind like a belletristic ballerina in a forming, spitting daydream.
I had been sober for a week or so and was struggling to write, so I figured I must have been doing something wrong. I decided that I would run my errands, then drink my wine, and only then would I be capable of concluding my grand opus.
As soon as I got to my neighborhood I breathed in the scent of near-accomplishment and felt relieved that soon I would have cigarettes, be broke, and prove myself capable of annexing some time for my editorial commitments.
With $1.27 jangling in my back pocket, I walked past the projects to a deli a few blocks away from my apartment to meet Pico the facilitator. I used 85 cents on a small coffee, counting out all the dimes and nickels with mock solemnity on the counter. Walked over to back to get the milk for the coffee. No sugar. Never sweet. Not anymore, at least. When we cease to be children, we switch up powders: from ones that used to immiserate our teeth and the wallets of our parents who had to pay for the dentistry casualties, to ones that now immiserate our hearts and figurative souls.
As I sat down in the little seating area and sipped my coffee, wishing it was a beer at noon, I saw Pico – one of Brooklyn’s numbest – walking through the bodega door, and after looking around, taking his nearly-steady path towards me.
“What up, chico?”
“Nothin’ much, man – how’s you?”
“Ahhhhhh… it is how it is… you know – been shitting blood all day, it’s these goddamn hemorrhoids! And then I saw Lady licking the toilet bowl this morning – there ain’t no way I’m letting her lick my face again.”
I shook my head. Too much viscera for me – but Pico was always that polemical sort of artist with no money for an easel. He knew that words were free. That’s what makes them beautiful and a great investment.
He handed me a black plastic bag.
“So, it’s $50 for the monthly Metrocard, $60 for the carton of Malboros, and another $45 for the eighth of purp – give me a $150 for it all.” Then he though for a second and looked me over, “now, I know you said that you’re surgically broke right now, so hit me off in a week when you see me again. I know you’re good for it.” I was. We were friendly, but we both knew that good business is good business – I needed something and he facilitated that shit on the cheap in an expensive city, and we both knew that we needed one another in respect: he needed my money to turn his profit, I needed his product to function in my day to day.
We shook hands in our colloquial manner and stood up to leave. He walked up while I walked down. As always. But, walking back I looked around at it all, at all of my neighborhood stretched out before me, the black plastic bag dangling from my arm like some unexpected irony, and I though that this must be my Eden. Imperfect and perfect as such.
A forlorn simplicity in fading paint. An abjection to nothing much. A brief ache that strangles death. A continuation that begs you to believe in something better which might never come.
When I got home, I woke Serena up and we made love – because that’s what she called it when it went slow. She was malleable as aging surrealism in absinthe, soft on me and I was grateful. When it was all over and we lay momentarily inanimate in the wet of ephemeral regret that climax brings about, her breathing quickened and then grew dull. She gyrated her form over to mine and nuzzled her chin into my chest and then everything became complete.
We lay there for some time. And as soon as she went to take a shower, I took out a cigarette and sat down to write.
I started with four letters and a bit of punctuation:
Fuck.
———-
——————
A few notes before we read my new “masterpiece”.
Paul Ryan seems awfully willing to suck the cock of a defense contractor – so how are the religious right going to get behind him? Eventually, under the Romney/Ryan administration, we might be spending 98% of our annual budget on defense and the military-industrial complex (see how many roads get paved that way). Homey, is that how you’re gonna protect us from China?! I can’t even get a few nerdy Chinese spammers from commenting 40 times a day on the same goddamn post.
Global Pussy Riot day on Friday. The Pussy Riot vs. Putin’s “Free-Democratic” Russia (quotes a satirical necessity) would be amusing in a surrealist fashion if it was fiction, but the fact that this is real should send a shudder through anyone opposed to large (and growing) totalitarian states.
Also, I will be on the West Coast, doing a reading and supporting the publication of my friend Zarina Zabrisky’s book sometime in November. More details forthcoming.
[Pre-Order at the link provided]
————–
—————
Mr. Quaalude
(for Anim)
Mr. Quaalude
say something to the audience
something new
you already paid for the new suit
got paid for the gig
talk about me
about my conjugal visit with my old bitch, Depression
talk to me like a gabby shirk
talk to me about her
my chemical cartoon
my busy, dizzy moon
my funeral festoon
tell them all the details
about the way that I ripped her clothes apart with my teeth and claws
about how she had to walk out naked from our little room
shivering and wet
celestial and concupiscent
tell them about the dead libertines that were the rock stars of their days
that wrote verses about orgies and plays about boisterous erections
my friends don’t believe that they ever existed
don’t believe that Papa showed off his chest hair to reporters
was commissioned to look for SS subs by the US government in Cuban waters
that Mailer used to punch party guests in the face after too much whiskey
that Kerouac used to publish three criticisms for one bad book
mostly in anonymous pseudonyms
that Fedya looked prison death in the face
that Ames dated Apple
that our clothes are all smoky and rough
and that the unification of intellectual thought
like barbarism
isn’t elitist
but a sensual logic meant to breathe and grow outside of the constraints
of underfunded education.
Mr. Quaalude
to be honest
I don’t know how to end this poem
because it’s not really a poem
but a diet
I’ve been skipping meals to hasten my metabolism with caffeinated bourbon
and now I’m writing out of lack of exercise
my punctuation has gone to shit
and my guts feel golden
and rusted
and rusted
and rusted
and immensely lyrical
like yesterday morning
————
———-
———-
My birthday spent in a half-fortnight of celebration can be summarized by:
a bad acid trip, a lot of empty whiskey bottles, running into an Orthodox Jewish couple in Central Park that doubled as a jam-band with a fondness for Phish and arguing U.S. Drug Policy, forgetting to shave, waking up with less money but more love for the world, feeling the decay, feeling finite, feeling good in a bittersweet hue…
So I wasn’t able to write anything all too worthwhile, so I can provide only with a quickie of second-tier verse.
———-
Untitled (Sensualism)
The sun tonight
with you
looks like a haiku
5 – 7 – 5
the clouds spreading around like apricots in heat
a clement place for the star to sink
your legs wrap around my torso
and your gown rises soft against my skin
your knees clench my naked ribs
and I feel your warm tenderness
and I know that nothing will last this long
this memory will be mine
hoarded
an accreted aphorism of each lash, and your brows, your dark smile
your moans, your sweat, your carnal declarations
becoming the renewed inauguration of my romantic philosophy
you are my little secret knowledge
my orphaned blessing
no, darling, you are not divinity, don’t fear
but you are close enough
for me to know that truth exists
and to follow blindly in your path
like a lecherous pilgrim
———-
————
So I started writing this poem…
Come to me sacred and lost
like a rebirth in archaic belief
a cathartic reprise
because I still miss you like I miss heroin at night
and on those mornings that are hued gray by a drying desperation
and you just want some penetration to know that you’re still capable of feeling
… and then I said “fuck it”, like I didn’t need the pride or the self-containment, because I realized that the piece sounded like everything else that I’ve been writing lately. Even a stoic antihero with a bad liver has to watch that he doesn’t waste his time in awkward repetition. Thus I decided to take some time typing up a few new pieces that have been bathing in ink for a while. They’ll be published here in a few days: but, FAIR WARNING they are quite NC-17 thematically. So if you are easily offended I would skip the next few pieces that you’ll see from me.
————
————
Coming Work:
The long awaited Gravity Pt. II will be here
and
The One Regarding the Tenacity it Takes to Bring Philosophy and Anal Sex Together
———–
————-
————-
A friend of mine has been going through a rough time with his girl, so I wrote this to cheer him up a bit. It came out similar to some older pieces, but still good enough to warrant sharing.
————-
Another Honest Imitation of Paradise
He said it like he was the first to say it honestly
I no longer love
I drink
and the audience applauded
and they bought him more drinks after the show, both brown and clear ones
and a few girls came home with him for a disappointing story
and they woke up next to a pallid heap of flesh that smelled of stale tobacco
and other poetry
and he gallantly made them cheap coffee that was undercover as an import
and then he hid another drink underneath his breath
and then he walked them to the door like a general surrendering
and then he sat in front of his typewriter as though a praying casualty, like death in neon
and he thought about his words
I no longer love
I drink
He wrote like a man too used to hiding behind the shadows of his women
———-
Morose Pontifications and Other Poetic Ramblings
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