dummy

I want to see you
burn body burn / body
burn dark / dark
burn far / bright / miserable /
burn on the wretched failing
scumbling as you go
toward the door.

For you would never tell me
if it felt sexual
if you were annealed by it

and whether
if I had the majesty
you had the right
to die.

If there is a house, I don’t know how to get you to draw it.
Do you want me to be inside it?
Do you want yourself to be the plan of it?
Do you need to sleep outside, on the patio–will that do it?
Will that make the dream come to you,
the blueprint all fixed and starry and purposeful, as you need it?

Because I don’t know if I do.
Some words are not nearly as useful as they could be.
For instance, some of these swaths that we have to send back–
I wouldn’t mind.

Not really saying as much.
But, I really hate some words.
I hate them with something like ardor.
The ardor of your interiority.

The way certain sounds…

you turn up the flame on the sugar, for instance, to melt it–

or villa,
underscoring the word village, where the world becomes street.

That world is too busy–too black.

For I hate hustle, I hate hegemony, I hate hate.
Also that swayback, I hate it.
I hate plurality.
I hate the fact that just to exist means, being partial.
I hate the row, (just now, the one we just had).
And I hate the salesman who insists on going to his car,
who keeps on rising up to go to his car, who keeps everything in his car–
his damn car–with not a goddamn thing back here,
where we could use it.

Or I hate you–I hate you, sometimes. When you’re asleep–
you’re not so tender.
You fall asleep and your eyelids rove about.
Your limbs thrash.

Are you thinking about me, is this the house you wanted,
is that why you hate it?

Sometimes, as we’re dreaming, as the mall
around us ceases to exist, is emptied of its kids,
adults, kites, radical bookstores, philosophies,
food courts, chocolate chip cookie stands, glass huts,
watch repair shops, gourmet coffee sellers–
anything that might impede discovery–
we push the cloth back and make the man behind it
work for us. He pulls a lever and down comes a crane.

Meanwhile, the fountain behind us continues to spume:
we sit with our backs to the water and eye the plants:
and the plants eye us.

Love is an ideal, isn’t it?
Like Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony,
like John Cage’s four minutes and thirty three seconds
of pure silence.

It doesn’t seem to have much to do with how we linger
or don’t linger over our famous nights.

And I would agree with you, that we aren’t
elastic enough for this. Our suspenders/garters–no good.
Too loud. Yours are black/white/black–intellectual.
Mine are grey and slap the footboard–
anyway I don’t wear them.

But if it’s not written, is it really like
standing in a fire–or not really–
more like burning, a species of self-immolation?

I expect a good death. If I get it,
love will hold the door for me
and I will go in.
It will be my house, my place
of possession, all the space
that I waited on.
I won’t be afraid.

I’ll walk through my
house and try each door,
grasping it and slamming it,
the fit and the jamb
designed. And where the rooms go
as if for the last time.

That’s when your heart will break–
little basket, little stopped-up
barrel of wheat. You who without a door
1000 different locks will click
shut forever.