Artificial Nectar
I remember it well — before I took my name in cement, before
one hand moved gently to open my buttocks, I was aware:
these people would be watching me encircle thoughts
in the strong blue light of the corner store. Everyone knew me
but this abbreviated version quit quickly, ready to sit
at the water’s edge, quaffing incantatory gasoline.
Now that we have perfected loneliness, let us look more closely
at the rabbit who, while I was lying down, shared destiny
in the violet dark penumbra of pine shadows — though I can’t say
enough news to push away news of — to bed without dessert
straight into dreaming, the one without scissors
the sky is cut into two sisters — you know the rest. Sky covers us
on all sides but one, the side of rabbits and the side of sisters
as they sit together in shaded moonlight. I didn’t have to
hold it, it held itself.
I say this to understand what one memory can teach itself
in revision, as so and so becomes more pleasurable each dream
and in each dream, such that meeting him, on a street —
one never knows how dusty the floor has become or will,
until searching for their pencil ‘neath the bed. It’s more difficult
they’ve said to live alone in happiness than together in misery
but you keep up with the whole thrill of I am leaving in each distance,
so with trending data, you fumigate this place alone.
When the ticket says ALLERGEN you know what to do. Twelve hours of
looking into metallic folding. That kind of sky. The screw merely a screw
sacred to itself to scare these gnats away. Feeling
certain means looking at him, moist in the eyes but also keeping quiet.
After all, you were the one ready to sit at the water’s edge drenched
in the material heat of fryer oil and awkward sex.
“I put down my notebook and wished across the river —
that on Essex Street, I was again mixing a Monkey Gland
for you to sip on.” That was smoking beneath the trees, really
taking it out, holding it together, taking it in. I missed the hell
out of him, or the idea of having him be there to pull out his teeth
to smile, while the air encoded itself with pipe tobacco, the cheap
kind of days you miss eating — munching sandwiches, playing mini-golf
just to torture the present with a knowable future that is impossible. Days
weigh down the salt of morning with vegetable meanings, considerably
more nutritious and filling, yet overlooked. I knew exactly
what to do with honey, if you’d give me the chance,
but one wonders what the chance might look like.
You want to give up, but you know stigma places its bleeding,
calloused hand on your head to anoint you with the sad
ways of “desire explained” or simple jokes to break down
the ice in this drink.
A single, vulgar tap… ’tis Monday again — hold it
right there! as if materializing in their fist: the knife —
the machete ready to slice off your nose. And like that:
mornings. Pancakes — from the box, eggs, butter. I think you know
I have been saving this jam to spread years upon
crumb years and still, a day here where moments desire
to be licked on like new fur.
I knew what I was doing taking care of myself, numero uno,
but in the way in which time in a movie understands
the momentum of two hands and their fingers plunging
into still water while a crane feverishly gulps down a toad.
The other night, was like two nights ago and that night was
the first time I saw you in the glow of sunset by your window
paired strangely with a deep, rank air that crept by. I turned
my head again to the window and like time — like time in a movie —
you were gone.
Endings played sans the sap of strings, like fragments of not-yet-built
impulses. The one where you end up in hospital clothes
under an electric blanket… not so much a part of this
dilemma which continues to haunt me as an overlay
of texture: the one where night funnels
success into the single needle of a cactus.
So many days turned, turning pudding skin into everything.
We hoped to believe in the smell of our own agency.
That year you spilled your drink and then you spilled it again, but
there, you alone were lucky enough to witness this as a single
encrypted bone of truth. I was too tired to move but did so
with alacrity as needed when the walls, floor, and ceiling
were steady in flames.
00000000000I needed to stop for a second to remember
what we’re talking about. The disappointment of knowing
mid-life through life–I’m assuming I’ll have
some inside knowledge of what the final score could be–
therefore, able to reorder and change bets. Lucky
to be here chugging on the neck of a Bud bottle in ripped jeans
listening to Billy Ocean. ’Tis good to feel everything
burning at the edges and crunching down. You don’t know
what you need but you know where to get it. And when
the appointment nervously arrives, you’ll forget to celebrate
the day your pupils softened and traced
the dark edges of every tree-defining hilltop. Gold
sun still wet on the surface of the lake and leaning into —
learning toward evening, the bitter smell of newsprint burning,
the grass tall bent on itself. Our wet signature.
This new restaurant overlooks the water, sweeps the water
away over distant water, pressing down the white caps of
good riddance to the logic of change built in a pilgrim’s love of bread —
lightning of thinking glowing lightning again, behind a cloud dark shag
like a wolf ’s wet fur coming out of still water,
a kind of doubling between one world of action and one
world of refraction, the theater of which we call
“a good time” knowing what we have paid for
will not set us free.
The sewer coughed up another body. That was rough
and though no one was prepared for it, life fizzled on
crackling like wet wood turned in fire. The whole town
burning with meaning, the sky burning at dusk and still
the stars purposely absent in the realization of eternity burning…
distance added to distance added to memory.
Catching a whiff of yesterday, I nearly fell over.
Acid girls in white sneakers and acid boys in white sneakers
drinking the pure energy of a merry-go-round
rust that is motion and rust that is autumn cracking above
the streetlights in the megastore at dusk. You can go with me
but alone trim the green crêpe paper into trees
pasting gold stars on them and so forth. Nostalgia wraps its warped
body of song in bells and snow. Sleet sends us reeling through Sunday’s
discarded leftovers.
One summer, I cloned the “I too am ordinary” feeling
just to wake up in Philadelphia some morning, dividing
meaning between Jimi and Jimmy — the two of them
leaning over sunset in a kind of greening sweetness.
There’s no one to hear you laugh like a flamethrower
out of juice. Purple tape over your nipples in the near dark of light, pink cloud night
and I’d never heard anything so clear or loud. I lived in the country
but was scared of hardcore country. I didn’t have very good manners
and no one would help me learn the ropes until you came
blowing hard into this pan flute, spirit echoing in the subway.
00000000000000000000000Is that what you meant? One wet finger leaving a wet trail
on the glass as one guy goes, “heyooooo!”
while another guy goes, “wahhahhhaa” — mostly down
into a nothingness of diminishing light and distance.
Now I have something else to do — talk about someone else’s problems.
I’m sorry, I forgot to thank you for your letter
.