Sunday, February 12, 2006

angst

At night I dream of poetry
and people I’ve not met.
By morning I forget
the words and the eyes;
etched charcoal in
parchment faces.

I kissed verse into your powdery lips
where you keep the secrets
of all kisses, all reckoning.

You are the curve of a horizon and a Pillar of Parthenon;
you are chipped teeth and barbed wire,
baby’s breath cackling at Birkenau.

We are the sinners.
I, delirious, noxious I,
with my hands on your back
prod for a spine. Wire nerves
bring your theatre, reaking to life
It is a ballet. A crusty burlesque.
I strum a rhythm on your pelvis.
Your clavicle I breathe
broken oaths across:
broken condoms behind bowling
alleys and brains
overflowing with dopamine.
Wring your hands.

My brother saw God
in a pastry. The LSD never
wore off. Wag your tongue.

I keep no secrets. I clamor through streets
a jangle of bones, the roar of my heavy engine heart
the trace of railroad skin and rusty nails; I am
your naked bitch
warmed by bottles and strange men
without remorse or last names.

I kissed bleach into your filthy mouth
where you keep all the filth
of all the mouths you meet.

In me there was no spark
and no fire blazing endlessly.
Not a single branch smoldered. In me
there was no tree, and in me
there was no bearded man,
dumbfounded, ignorant to chemistry and lost
among the subtle hum of Jethro’s sheep.
I dream

of all the somewheres
cummings never travelled.
I bring Yeats my marrow-bones
and stitch the tumult of word with love.
Bees swarm me in Plath’s kingdom;
I drown each tulip
in venom and fury.

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