intensity and height







I want to write, but only foam comes out,



I want to say so much but it’s all crap —



there aren’t any numbers left that can’t be added up,



nobody writes down pyramids without meaning it.







I want to write, but I’ve got a puma’s brains;



I want to crown myself with laurel, but it stinks of onions.



There’s no word spoken that doesn’t dissolve in mist,



there’s no god and no son of god, only progress.







So come on, to hell with it, let’s go eat weeds,



eat the flesh and fruit of our stupid



tears and moans, of our pickled melancholy souls.







Come on! Let’s go! So what if I’m wounded — let’s go



drink what’s already been drunk,



let’s go, crow, and find another crow to fuck.











hat, coat, gloves







Right in front of the Comédie-Française



is the Regency Cafe; and right inside it, there’s this room, hidden,



with a table and an easy chair. When I go in,



house dust, already on its feet, stands motionless.







Between my lips made of rubber, a cigarette butt



smolders, and in the smoke you can see two intensive



smokes, the cafe’s thorax, and in that



thorax an oxide of elemental grief.







It matters that autumn grafts itself into other autumns,



it matters that autumn merges into young shoots,



the cloud into half-years, cheekbones into a wrinkle.







It’s crucial to smell like a madman who spouts



theories about how hot snow is, how fugitive the turtle,



the “how” how easy, how deadly the “when.”











best case







Look, at the very best, I’m someone other —



some guy who walks around marble statues, who enters



his adult clay into indexes of blood, and feels



the rage and fear of the fox chased to its hole —







and if someone anoints my shoulders



with indigos of mercy, I’ll declare



to my absent soul that there’s no hellishly



paradisal elsewhere for me to go.







And if they try to choke me on the sea’s wafer,



telling me it tastes like His flesh, more acid



than sweet, like Kant’s notions of truth, I’ll cough







it all up: No, never! I’m other as a germ, a satanic



tubercle, a moral ache in a plesiosaur’s molar:



in my posthumous suspicions, all bets are off!











another day of life







I’ll die in my apartment on a cold bright day,



with nobody around, the apartment next door gone



dead still while wind whistles through the balcony,



though the branches somehow aren’t moving, just as the sun







doesn’t move, everything’s so quiet, so frozen.



Parked cars, plastic bags bleached in the bare trees,



a couple of those Mylar balloons tied to a chair on



the balcony next door, celebrating something, maybe?







... now sagging listless on the floor,



as if every last molecule had been pierced by a needle —



Tom Sleigh is dead, he stared up into the air,







the sky was pale blue as usual and he couldn’t feel



the cold coming through the window, and there wasn’t



much to say or not say — and nobody, anyway, to say or not say it.











my jailer won’t weep to be my liberator







My cell’s four walls, whitening in the sun,



keep counting one another — but their number



never changes, despite my jailer’s



innumerable keys to chains







wrenching the nerves to their extremities.



The two longer walls hurt me more — who knows why —



their salt-stained cracks like two mothers who die



after labor, but give birth to twin boys







whose hands they still hold. And here I am,



all alone, with just my right hand to make do



for both hands, raising it high into







the air to search for the third arm



that between my where and my when



will father this crippled coming-of-age of a man.











insomnia is the only prayer left







How childish is the spectacle of the stained



glass’s holiness: the night doesn’t give a shit what



goes on inside human beings, the night



has its own web of dendrites refuting the inane







prayers prayed for the dying, for the confessions



going on between earthworms and earth, between



the way a man argues with his own shoulder bones.



All the while, barracudas in a coral canyon,







a sea turtle flying, swim through fathoms



and fathoms of images that keep crashing



on the shore of the eye that never shuts —







and smarts in its sleeplessness staring



up into the dark shadowed by stingrays, gas stations,



the slow flapping wing of a lottery ticket.

