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Mysteries

I have no idea what it is

but you are not alone

I am only alone

and I eat alone into my stomach

I love alone

It gives me a smile

and I know it

I’ve seen it somewhere

Maybe a dream

while I was an infant

Sometimes it made itself known

and I instantly liked it

Right then I made friends

But I know it cares nothing for friends

Nor do I

We know your look

All those people and their looks

It is all the same

My friend lonely smiles at it

and spits and taps his shoe

His dog runs wild

We hear it barking and it comforts us

And when it leaves we cry

back to where we’ve come

We are not liars at this

though we lie

But we’re good mostly

But to cry is natural for us

It comes when the cardinals sing

It comes when the wind comes

It comes there in the tree

and over against that old pail

No, it is not a pail

It is a bucket

It is knocked over

Naturally it is knocked over

I sob

I try to hold it back in the barber’s chair

It comes and blows against my eyes like

a chime

Irritatingly

I hold it, I hold it

But it comes now and I let it

I cry, I let the death shoot from the eyes

I’m no longer lying

Look, I tell truths

I cannot look up

Never up

So God must hide somewhere in the pavement

But I don’t tell anyone

They all see it as they pass

None want to confront it

so they look me strangely

They go and keep going

to here and there

all these places

But never to stop and see

He’s crazy—they whisper

What the hell is wrong with that guy—they think

And they go off to places

This guy this girl

This place, this other place

where they sit and think how

stupid that other place

But it is coming out now

the truth

And it is a goddamn thing, isn’t it

I try to hold it back

but i get tired of trying sometimes

and let the world see it come from my eyes

What the hell is wrong with him—I hear

What kind of thing am i nature?

Will you ever figure me out?

Mysteries—

You shake your head at me

and I do not care

I really do not

I really don’t and I shake my head back at you

and you do not care

really do not

I don’t think

The Devil in Me

Is ashamed to look you in the eye

It is abashed by the color

and settles like a tongue

craving the salt from the palm of your hands

It, the devil, takes complete possession

causing me to wander all night long

through a sleeping town

It provokes me to do this wandering

full awake, wide and full

as the night and the dead

were visions of wide green fields

to the ends of my sight

knee-high grassed places,

waving in wind and sopped

in dizzied light

Those sights that filled my mind

when I was young

And I was stuck inside

a dark art classroom in the basement

with one dreary but hopeful window

It, the demon, wishes the church bells would

bang together

Banging the time out

on the hour

Tuning my ear to the

pitch of my blood

which I hear as it creeks into the fingers and back again

to the flood of my heart

I remember my heart on film

moving like a fat, thriving parasite inside me

I lay there watching it thrive

and I hated the goddamn thing

I thought of suicides

suicides and hillsides

hills and ides

I looked at it

and thought of what people say

“Follow your heart,”

a feeling I get

on Valentine’s Day

when I read the messages on the candy hearts

One says,

“BE MINE”

I thought again of

suicides and hillsides

hills and ides

and played with my bare feet

scratching at the

dry ground

like some banty cock

The Sun Was There

And it burnt on him early in the morning.

He had not shaved. He had not brushed his teeth.

A bird chirped up in a tree and he hoped to

stone it before he’d pull out the root that was

strung within him. He had to pull the

barbed thing attached to his bones.

He had to take it in hand and by teeth and by heels.

Then sit and rest, wait it out, cut his

toenails, curl his toes afterward—so tight

that two would go out of joint. A root colored

black and red bothering him each day he lived.

Every thought and step would bring it to him

and he had to get it out, squeeze the puss from

it so to see that pure healthy red of the

blood again. To be free to make that walk to the

bridge, bust out its lamps with rocks, and

sit on the damned black ironed bench to cut

everything away. Everything until there was only

quiet, the dark, and the quiet again. To only sit

and smile a smile that was not a smile at all. It was

nothing but there as he picked up his fingers

and drew the black trees to the tips with

his finger. Jut jut. That was what could be heard

as he drew them out, cutting limb by limb. A bat

flew by JUT! And the finger returned

to the tree. Always the tree. The limbs. Jut jut.

Glahn is a queer modernist two-spirit who writes quality romantic swashbucklers. He has been featured in your fucking dreams.

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