Some Other Things
There are times when I walk around and I feel so special that I can’t believe you aren’t loving me. I can’t believe you haven’t seen me for the wonderful person that I am. Haven’t called me up to say, “Wow, you are wonderful, how could I have overlooked this for so long?” Or why you haven’t painted a surreal picture of me in crayons and magic marker, for your fridge. Do that and I might jump off the page; I might hop up and down on your face. Oh believe me, I can hop!
But other times I might be singing the blues. I might be singing to the traffic cop, Hey did you see the light change it went Blue green red yellow orange indigo, and violet. Or maybe blue yellow red. Or maybe not blue at all, maybe just green yellow red. Or maybe glassy… tears…? some color that is just, just real because no one has seen it before. And he says, My sister called and your color and my color, etc.
But what I and he both mean is, our wives. Verde que te quiero verde… Or how to make them understand the new rules, which are not so much like rules, but more like ideas. How what it means to be like, how it might be like something. Like a bloated jacket album cover. i.e. Blood on the Tracks, Blood on the (Exile on Main Street). Blood on the (temple–and I’m singing a song here and it goes temple temple rags). And he goes too.
There is blood on the outside of the body
*
which has gotten away from the inside of the body and that means it can’t be cleaned off–not like spaghetti sauce or ketchup–but war, real war. And he says that since there’s nothing that seems to be quite itself here, it is true, we might as well be arrested. But that’s also true of your house (where you take off your clothes: your clothes: like an inside-out sock). And since you might as well eat me or take care of me it must be a little better in your belly (in a windsock) for at least it’s clean there. Oh how it feels to be
in the wind and how since there is no light there no air here but a jar: a fridge: the refrigerator. Where I am hopping and you say weapons: how you are next to one but you don’t like it (but you do like it) because I tell you the truth and you smell good (and the truth goes a long way, like butter–or if you like, if you are in a relationship, like a life jacket) since
for me and your mouth, especially, there is some truth, still, to everything (everything, a little, how it feels in your mouth) so I think I can still go (still go, inside the mouth too, if quietly) inside of your mouth and I like it there I have known it and that is a nice place for beginning everything which I’ve said there really welcomes me. This has no beginning
Afterward
Picture: Story.
Like many, we had fallen from that disease
and this was our conversation. The client: a stare
which like the stone rolled under its own weight
as we pressed forward. It was possessed–
a construction site some would call it.
But that was just the dialogue telling us
someone was sick inside. We had to cross
further away. (We did cross.)
But what was confiscated? Was it our hearts
which had been like the childs’ hearts,
had simply dived in?
Or was it the mind,
that we could see vanishing as we swam–
or couldn’t see, depending.
Or was it the body,
that we definitely couldn’t see,
if it wasn’t a buoy?
We needed some directions
to the glass castle sleepy with fish.
When would we reach it?
(Would we reach it soon enough?)
For my kidnapper, the Samaritan
I live in a town where water becomes abstract
and the grass that you’ve sown into two piles
(from seed: one bluegrass one greengrass)
is growing and covering everything with a fine fuzz
so fine the blades become semi-identical; and all things
are hidden which might have helped me distinguish
neighbor from neighbor, know which neighbor to pull from the fire
that spreads like Easter grass over the red fences
(fences, that you say reinforce a sense of loneliness in this place
which is a nest which is the worst sort of a place
which is wherever you are) and yes they are calling me yes
they are roiling overhead (I hear them–thunderclouds)
but when I ask them for some answers they just say no
that doesn’t belong to you that doesn’t help you escape this time