Hung
(Des Esseintes)
Perpetual harm. That’s the state I liken it to. Like all of life’s a condition–not just the words I say, not just affects. Like there is no past I can remember, without the broken leg. Or a past where the leg is allowed to heal properly, where I don’t go around stumbling, screaming for painkillers.
Because, I think I used too many. I think they might have been real bones sticking out. And now my umbrella has turned inside-out in a gale. Unfolded. It can open doors in this house and scratch names in the dirt and drive rats from the cellar. But it’s useless against the rain; the rain continues to pour in sideways and climb to the ceiling, wetting the plants. And I’m screaming for painkillers.
Today I find them with the map. Inside the map, there’s a man, and the man is writing a book. It’s the story of his life. There’s the time, one night, he felt the patterns crisscross under him; here’s the T where the vehicle slammed into a field. He left the vehicle. The body tumbled over and over and sensed itself flying as the only solution.
NaPoWriNo
Poem Eclipsed by a Dark Mood
Q: Why were the poems turtles?
A: They were chasing the bleak mountains.
*
Now now
Not so harrowing
But how do you get polite out
Imagination in
And still make it work?
(A dent)
In the cheap societies
In the cheap seats
With Palsy, and ms abstract
She has a private eye
He has a letter opener, a leer
And scuffed shoes on the cement step
She says
Draw my portrait
Make it nice ok
And he has to
in the library there are the
Bookclubs meeting
In the Polite small rooms
Addictions and self-help
How should it be
Recovering from
She stiffens
the small formal maze
continues
Outside Sweeping
ladders against the book shelves
With silver and gold books
That are not much help
And not much read
but it all seems OK well it is OK
There are some people
There is Champagne
And they are celebrating
She looks over the balcony
There is the future coming
*
But what about this?
What about terror in the backyard
The house with the chickens
In between beauty and
Madness
The tall oversized shed
With the garden rake
The Shovel covered with a layer of dust
the blade everything worn to a fine dullness
Or could it be more obvious
Despite the oversize brain good breeding
Good territory
There is a boy
(There is Ice)
Marking every last fucking fence
This is mine
This is nobody’s
(Nobody that you’ve read about in a book, anyway)
No it’s not polite
You couldn’t say this
Do this
Take every last fucking drug
Put the pantyhose in her mouth
And listen to the jawbone
Crack in the night
*
Or Walk with her in this dream
you and you
Take you to the car
And you oh
Wait for the police
and they are there and she is and you are
Sharing the hard ground
And you listen
Shh you listen
Or do you not plan for this?
Does it not seem bright enough, to you?