When may I?

Not now under the
lampscope in my
G.I. gear—little doughboy
to hashtagged Iraqi vet.

Not now with my
hand tentatively against
your sickly body.

                               "Two weeks.
We're sorry."

Not now as the pallbearer,
my clutch like vacuum-sealed
lips parted for
you.

Held back by what is left of your
afterlife pride.

Not now as I watch a hurricane
gradually run aground,
wondering if the waves will crash and
if the sea will come inland,
flood your grave
in wet kisses.

If only it could stop howling for five seconds,
just to hear me.

I wish to put
this tantrum into submission;
if it is only to let the
opportunity of
touching false love,
and caressing away
false seconds,
seep out.

Finger nails, grown
and ready,
rip at the maché decor
that conceals so much.
Tear and tear,
until another appears.
A dimension so deplorable,
and so painted with enigma,
only to have a sole young girl stand
akimbo.

And if she is of false kin,
then I yearn to embrace her form and
share a frigid veil covered
with some exotic coat of arms.
And if she is hindered inquiry,
I desire to provide her
with imperfect answers.
And if she is mine,
then let her be mine; and
let her plump palms cling to my shoulders.
Let her guide me to a trench
for us to inhabit
and play hide-and-seek
and watch dominoes cascade.

And if she is false cleansing,
then let her not be defiled
by the remnants of a decadent home
that I shed.
Let her hold me tight,
and don’t let her disappear
and prove me mad—
neither north by northwest
nor south by southeast.
I love her so,
my precious Dear.
Don’t prove me mad,
for I do fear,
that I’ll never want to
abandon her here
and return
to that place.

That place: a blend of ailment and spite.
They’ll send me somewhere
full of unwavering light.
I swear by the pacing of her little, fast heart,
she’ll put me right—
even in her stage
of stagnant night.

She’ll kindle my truth
and harden my sync.
Before very long,
I’ll be very well.
My circuits will suffice.
I’ll accept it, then, without
much fight.
Just patch up my hole
and let me alone.
So this little girl,
and her puerile nature, can hone
in and dethrone
my unsound thought
of singing irises.

And we’ll canter and laugh
until her voice goes raspy
and her legs grow weary.
Then I’ll finally cradle
her charming form
if only to let slumber take hold.
Then I’ll say a hapless goodbye
and fulfill the tasks given by
a busy man.
Who hopes that I will, for once, comply.  

I have tried to conjure warmth
for learning’s sake.
But she told me that
I didn’t have to, for it is a burden
she is willing to take.
  
I'll abide by design
and be perfectly polite.

At least,
until tight strands
become a snarl,
and she is left tangled
in fright.

An abstract gait
Surrounded by coils of binary and luminescence.
Suave, purple suits clasping to morphed skin.
Electrical vibes, transistors atomically sized.
Brain dives, the concept of thought diluted.

She can only wish it was palpable.

In a mirror mirage,
Static fumbles,
Repos the limelight.

Cyberpunk gen, neo-noir,
A relevant memento.
Deciphering the metaphysical is
Unattainable.
***** it all,
Maneuver the landscape.
Might as well enjoy the sights
In the nick of a quivering snap.

Clean
          your
                  sooty
                 grime
stratified like a chopped tree.
Knitted into clothes for me.
Follow the wicked edge of
the yellow road,
    Inclined to doze in the junction of my
doorway, carry with you dragonfly-brooch
wings to flutter.
           Naked newborn to an age of
          
                                                     social settings
on max— to touch
me, to you.

Take the chomps,
lend me your spine,
joints,
match me.

Eat what I have to bear,
like a child of my purple-blushed
foulness.

A bucking *****, like a war-torn, skeletal femme,
used.

Here,
open up.

I'll lose a tiny hand.

A chest of boardwalk
and nails unscrewed,
an arsenal of rusty
marching faceless
graffiti, musty
multi-eyed designs and grinning
tiny men right beside,

with lips rose-pearl, sharp-end.

Right beside small carriages to lend.

Wall art wiping off like a fresh tan
once winter comes, scrubbed
with air-carried sea salt,
reabsorbed into brickish mortar and tin-ringing
structures that overlook sweezshing shoals;
dough-rolled hats kneaded on shake-grain shores.


This is where the wolf pup goes
after it snatches the children of my wide-eyed games,
figments of nativity babies
and their red-cheeked discord.
Wailing betrayal
in a swaddling maw,

Vanishing into these walls,
and like that, more pinched-lipped mini-men
lull this predicament into a then-ling
ceased, ignored as the child-pile
rises in the wolf's den.


The umpteenth hour:

i flip through old calendars and
fill in the boxes of dates and
reassemble daily fates
in my head with pink marker
tracing my palmsandpickingupsomethingwhatisthat—

oh.

just child #62
all plump and fat

growing in my throat,
rapidly birthed
with a nasty cough.

spit in my lungs.
and she cries
and then it's novoctuary (or just june)
and the paws claw kindly, schlep-ripping
my featureless form like knocking at a door,

and this is the departure
of my never-was newborn.

The night kindles
The moon’s brumal breath,
As the stars flicker.
The planets are rigid.

And the flowers seal,
And the ocean ebbs,
And the eyes of a feline
Close for rest.

And the ka-bunk
Of a dying road
Stops.
And the whimsical
Laughter of an aging boy
Ceases.

And a kiss goodnight
Is long lost to dreams.
And a little girl’s fears
Linger then leave.

And it is a time
Of tranquil musing.
A time to believe
Outlandish ideas
That are most amusing.
A time to think,
And think some more,
About the logic
Of bustling decor.

And there is never a need
For your mind to be contrite.

For this is midnight.

I will write about pain.
I will write about love.
I will write about joy.
I will write about dread.
I will write about the night, the past, the dead.
All in vague terms from my small, small head.

Green hill mulched damp brown,
to brooding dry blades, replete—
Gone for metal feet.

To another day
passing like the parched foliage
dangling from the roofs in
the ***** Bronx

left of the ferry,
right is the skyline
doubled three times,
cloaked in solar panel
glass and shimmering
against the smoggy array of light
that
will
quit—
in due time.

Daddy, sweet
East River father,
where is the little
meatball you had grounded
up for eyes.
For a Roman nose
and Mafian stubble
when your Sicilian tongue
was clipped at age five.

For English-Only stamped on the roof
of your waste factory
of a mouth.

For the neo-tongue that
was bred liked
strong As
and
young ****;
And copious liquor upon
the grounds of your hiking
trips.

Mutation
       of
vile majesty.
Cannibalism of the **—

Buttons budding
for *******.

I saw your phantasm
figure, soiled in
dark tan, curve in
my lens.
Swallow the hazel
like a viscous sauce,
sweet, fresh.
A fuckable baby—
of five. You clipped
my tongue with now
cloying giggles and in the bunk bed,
red and ***,
like a locket, limbs

dangling out the sides, fleeing in
a fountainhead of
DO NOT.
Effaced by an amnesia.

The old man in my skull speaks,
— I was thirty two days ago.

Now the IVs DRIPDRIP,
Chorus with the TICKTICKTICK.
You are the hour,
I am the minute
Hand.
You are slow, I must
go-go-go in compulsive haste.
Run for sixty,
start anew,
encore, solo, imbrued
with the days that twine the middle, framed in
white.
Forget.

The doctor parses the old man like an
obsolete phrase with theatric hands,
-touch-touch-
push,  press.
Then comes the Shakespearean
soliloquy:
—He hasn’t the coverage.

The trigger as a glove of flesh
hits its target, quiets the machine,
puts me to sleep.

What is it that
I must do?
-become the platoon,
an infantry of sun-empired men.
Fight the shrapnel,
the blitzing of
scar tissue.
Become the fireman
with an axe wielded—
Scale the towers like cracks in a mountain.
Die from the smoke or
the spherical flames of the
planes that rode like the hooves
of a horse with bubonic pallor.
Fall like a worker
for stories down until
God, or some sadistic keeper
of this earth, slacks a noose
and reels me in like
a bluefin tuna, prized,

as you
salute. You ‘Nam
prevailer heralding
the lacy harlequins of corporeal
God’s pardon
on
you.

I am in
eternity from
the waist down,
object of the tight, frictiony
satisfaction you
almost indulged in.

To be a daughter, so sonly,
revoked of all features.
Stripped of the places
you liked to touch.

Twelve ten-sided dice,
I cast with wan, trickster hands.

Two nines, all losses.

Come closer, beckoning
witch finger,
curling, crunching
                    in shade.
                                   Summon the night
gallery, hanging Homer and Waterhouse as distorted oil
oozing into a
disappearing act.
My feet are a detached movement
upon semi-real
floor of tar-black
tile.

Scraaaaaaaaaping———

Where is the lapel suit
of my Rod Serling dulled
by bad agents of
                 thrills.
Have him string me
up, a hoisted body settled into daVinci
wings of plain wood and
curvature like a waxy bird's.

The pig's blood waiting
above my head,
                        Serling signaled
for drama.

I see the false teeth of the planetarium
twinkle, an engulfing omnitheater's
air that I am crucified.

Serling behind the casque of gauze
to young Shatner and wandering
starships of lean men and
the end of this star system into
               galactic
                   odyssey.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Was Mister Spock ever tossed from
Olympus and forced lame in
the heart, a shell that is far
from hollow—what only
a mother could hold.
The bow figurehead, awaiting
corrosion.

I come to a bulwark
of quiet flesh, beating
to a hum of worldly
duress.  And cling, bare-handed,
to stiff ledges, bone tablets as steps.
And look upon irradiated, insular eyes,
bathing blue-bleached  irises
in wasteful drowned drops,
and find light-toothed ducts
emitting serrated levitations
of a tender sort of might.

There are women who stride
along on spherical streets,
and men who talk
to a range of idle watchers
and lonely listeners in a
dreamlike commotion
beyond.

Spurred whistles flow through
lunar clipped doors, and curtains are
drawn closely to naked blades
and are grafted as reborn skin
and contort into a breathless maze.

And the blaze blows wispy ash plumes
that tremble down my legs.
And scald the rest, my bare, bare form, pressed
inward, into another,

into fast entwining, shaking hips.

To tongue-bound kisses from red tile lips.