Are you of or not of brain, matter’s boss



or its crevasse, are you the body itself,



or more than that, immortal you, crouched



in flesh, like a vampire packed into a bat?







Are you housed in me or not? The tenant



or the landlord of my skin? Am I your



avatar? Are you my East Berlin? Are we an I



or each other’s synonym? Last night,







the train I was on dimmed then re-electrified,



and I thought again that we are conscious



a lot less often than we suppose, that half the time



in us you’re half reposed. I was in







South Orange again, city of my former self’s last



stand. Do you remember him, your swallowed



twin, the child king whom you deposed? Oh,



I know: you think you’re the buried light,







the jeweled glow, the sunlight falling through



the falling snow. But I’ve seen the uranium



laced through your walls: you’re an equation only



destruction solves. Who else but you







starts each day with masturbation and ends



each night with gin? And so how



should I begin? Four years ago, you rose



in me like a fin. It started as an overflow,







a drop of go, some royal beast in me, all gasoline



and yeast, unhinging its own jaw



to accelerate the feast, the rails of thought so greased



that the outer world began to skew,







as in that moment on a train when the view



becomes a wash of hues. There were clues.



Phantom music in the air. At times, I’d look down



at my body and think, “How’d you get there?”







One day, I de-napped to find myself entrapped



within the tangled logic of a subway



map. All day, I’d refrain, I’d double-track.



I’d talk to myself and myself talked back.







Was it you? That tick I felt within the trick



of thought? That wick that curled itself



around me, not exploding, just making a constant



tick-tick-tick that finally convinced me







that I was sick, that there was a cascade of toxins



in the air, that there



was something queer about the neighbor’s



stare, that charade of signals everywhere,







an air raid in the brain, something in me



left unpaid, a cosmic debt in arrears.



Some nights, I’d hear the voices of my parents coming



near, like waves that overlapped—







she’d slap him, he’d slap her back—their rage



a single note that climbed its staff for years,



my siblings and I in the closet with our fingers



in our ears, though still I heard one night







the knife drawer heaved back, as if they really



might slice each other or the house in half,



and then my thoughts unweaved and I began



to laugh. And it is funny, isn’t it,







the way that which starts as confession ends



in blame, this constant search



for the marionettist of your brain, the ghost



who stole the controls to your soul.







The truth is: we embrace the past that keeps



us whole. Again, I feel that treble in the skin,



something at the edge of sight but closing in,



the world a picture that won’t hang on the wall







quite right. Again, the double agent of the heart



tries to take the past apart, but now I sense



that the investigation is the crime, that it may be time



to give up on this which-is-which,







this who-is-who, this endless voodoo in which the self



I am keeps evading the curses of the self



I mean to be, or to admit at least that the lyric cracks



its voice trying to sing what’s ugly into praise,







and this language is the jeweler’s bluff, a diamond



that scuffs between the teeth, a perfume misting



foul air. Admit, admit, that what you craved



was sex those days, and after a one-night tryst,







you became convinced you’d contracted aids .



Say it plain: you thought you’d passed the disease



on to your wife. In longhand, you wrote statistics



across the page, Googled infection rates,







a one-in-a-million chance the battalion of hotline



workers liked to say, but they couldn’t smudge



that chance away. And did you let this madness in



to build a drama around your sin,







to become valedictorian of the damned, to turn



from lion into lamb, as the murderer longs



to be the murdered one, and the king to swap



places with the fool, the self you thought







you were so undone that you could only blame it



on a coup, on a malignant growth, or on you,



my patsy, my herring, my phantom non grata, my ghoul,



you who I insist must exist, because, if not,







who else was it that could have been so cruel?





