Jenny found Jeremy and Wrinkles upstairs, blindfolded, drunk and playing Russian roulette with an unloaded gun. Jeremy is her husband. Wrinkles is the stuffed dog with which he used to sleep as a kid.
Jenny removed Jeremy’s blindfold and kissed him on the cheek.
“I miss her too,” she said.
We are lying in a million ways
Between the clicks of our teeth
The
flicks of our tongue
Through the slants of our eyes
The crossing
of our thighs.
We are lying with smoke and mirrors
Under paint
and silk and lace
And past that we are honest
Flesh, exactly as
we are.
You are lying in a million ways
Between the flex of
your muscles
The acceleration of your car
Through the size of your
wallet
The brand of your drink.
You are lying with status and
suave
Under paper and plastic and brawn
And past that you are
honest
Flesh, exactly as you are.
But you and we, we want the
lies we web
Even as we tangle in what we weave.
she says
‘when you stop learning
you start dying . . .’
and i agree . . .
right up to the time
i see my mother with Alzheimer’s
is she dead?
it’s like a whole library being eroded
by water falling through a damaged roof
it’s like the world exploded
silently
and I can see the ever distant stars
through the holes in her
she says
‘when you stop learning
you start dying . . .’
maybe
the memory of the spirit is never about facts and details . . .
perchance that is why children are so open
When he wasn’t writing, he was talking about writing. Over
cheap wine with one of his ragged whores, a strange man he
met at a bar, a young girl who tripped over his prose, or the
invasive lens of a camera. He spoke in poetics, his voice rich
in liquid, flowing tones. Poetic without force, without beating
writers blind with form, function, or style. He spoke poetry, lived
poetry. It boiled in his blood
ejaculated from his pen
came on our faces
and pissed on us
like rain.
I make myself the natural
for you,
for me,
and kneeling in a field of poppies,
grip the nape with both my hands
undress my skin
along the seams.
And then you say,
that it’s not what you meant,
and then you say,
it was only a song.
But still I grasp and pull apart
my ribs with both hands
to separate
what is not me
from what
is not me.
And still you say, please.
You’re asking for
I don’t know what;
you call it an idea.
You call my breasts ideas,
and you call my eyes ideas
and you call the birthmark on my thighs
an idea.
I don’t get all that, but I get this:
I’m tearing apart my ideas,
here among the poppies,
where the sun is shining
and the sun is an idea,
and the clover is spilling over,
and that’s an idea too.
And here’s the idea of my heart,
or, if you prefer Shakespeare,
my spleen is down below.