In a different town.

The baked streets have thinner air.
The fata seem to belong less to Morgana than to the mountains.
The tall mountains that freeze
The water of the eyes to
The water of the roads a mile away.
The terrific air.

I can now only barely recall.
No sound, the film skipped,
Slightly off the projector track.

The dark insides of a native heritage.
The store with an open door.
The stern woman behind the white smoke counter.
Turquoise is expensive,
But no one buys enough for it to be in vogue.
A vogue might swallow all the sulfur
Sand.

The sharp nose,
Cheekbones that squint the little black eyes deeper inside.
I can see why they must have been afraid,
Though I’m not quite sure what I mean by “they.”
This town is different from any other one.

And you can feel it when the mountains
Pin their tongue into the sun.

I’m taller than her now.
I joke and say I’m growing
Up and away from her but
She doesn’t laugh. Because
I am: horizontally.
Plants grow toward the
Light and my movement
Is matricidal as the womb,
The matrix. That’s what really
Makes me sick.

I’m taller than her now.
And smarter, and stronger.
And saner, if that, colder.
But still I’m smaller, or
When I say good night
And watch her
Watch me shut the door.
I feel my angles, rounded
Corners. But I really don’t
Know who I am.

I’m not a boy and yet I
Must be. Not a man though
I should be. What she sees,
Or what I think she sees,
Might take my breath away.
That’s why I thank god for
Making humans irreflective.
If I could see (She sees herself
In me, her father too.) I’d
Oedipus my eyes out.

This not quite the underground, but still a strange corridor-
Scurrying in skirts and argyle and
Two-piece research paper suits.
They get together in the new Underground, they
Smoke old memories and sit in a stoner semicircle
To listen to old attendance records.

Humming the anecdotal lark, a man with a  prim tie
Rises and steps into the middle to slam. Over the deafening
Hookah comes David Copperfield.
Hello Voltaire, have you brought your
Reading glasses? The secret anatomies
Held in the inked atomies

Are all we come for. Let us in on this electric
Canvas. Let us paint out plots of plots that
All of us have known,
Around and underneath, and speak out our
Crayon set opinions, to tell the dim-eyed boys and girls
About in detail later. Ooh, say eight o’clock?

You cold?

I am.

My jacket.

Thanks.

Yepp.

Mother Edge
You walk with me
To Petri dishes
And light my silver lungs
With a screaming match
Drink the earth with
Me until dawn.

Father Red
I’ve run to your thunderous
Carpet in these shoes that
Can’t breathe through
The narcissi on which
You asked me to balance:
The electric taste.

Sister Shard
Sit like we did on the
Ship’s stomach
Memory has a hole in his lip
And my key broke
Smoke accidental
While you were gone.

Brother Trail
I grew in your shadow
Simple sentence cell
And dreamed, oh, dreamed
Of my black fingers green fingers
Sharpening
Coins for your eyes.

A million years ago, there was a man
Who maunched an English breakfast while his wife
Was sitting simply, contemplating life.
With spider-sitting ease, with pad and pen.
“I think” thought he, “that I would be quite dim
If I should not your beauty recognize
And in a sonnet seek immortalize.”
His wife, just then, a note displayed to him.

What Elizabeth for Robert did
I lack the expertise to do for thee
But for the simple sonnet that was slid,
I know I match her hot sincerity.
My fast from human touch has made its bid:
Though I have words, my thought will ne'er be free.

The suit in question
Is grey. Pin-striped white.
Double-breasted. Three piece.
Blue tie, grey hatching.
An absolute nightmare to change into.

I drop my jeans
In the monastery stall,
Shed my shoes.
Old friends.
The trousers, slacks,
Rise morning fog
And sleep in the stratus
Of my waist.

I really wonder how
The men of the then
Could have worn them.
So much taller.
So much grander.
So much straighter.

White shirt with
The butterfly tracks,
Make-up stains
From a billion ancestors.
Dead relatives that don’t
Respond to the call.
I take their places
Without a single
Crumb of guilt,
O feel the guilt.
The vest. Easy enough.
Yeast but grey and it
Rises horizontally.
I’ve just noticed pockets
Sewn into maddening teases.
The barest suggestion
Of an opening.
It holds like the bowl of the moon.

The coat. The great monarch.
Organizer with a clipboard
Ensuring the quality
Of a burlesque of silk.
So strange.
So other.
So queer.

In a minute or two, the
Hyperhydrosis.
It really is my only hope
Of describing my true temperature.
I will ignite in a biological
Soliloquy that can
Pronounce all those tricky
Thoughts I’ve given up
For the stage.
Gentle gravity,
Cruel crushing backhand.
Burst my complexion,
Steal my aqueous words.

Again, this suit.
How many Lomans,
Bankers, adjudicators,
Businessmen and Babbits
Have lived out their deaths
In you?
Brave rain cloud,
Where is your lining?
I feel the quip swelling
And project it to the back wall:

Only the costume knows true reincarnation.