The waiting room was quiet
beside the faint click of the blinds
against an open window

A single dead fly on the table
on his back
with his legs pointing up

This death did not bother the models in the posters
As they smiled with bright white teeth from the wall
like they knew some great secret
that pale in comparison to the dead fly

I looked away from the poster and to the fly.
I began to wonder how the fly left this mortal coil.
peacefully or violently?

I theorized, cause I was in the mood,
that it was peaceful cause he had no obvious trauma to the body
But what do I know of a fly's anatomy?

Maybe his little heart just gave up
maybe he lost his way and then lost hope too

He tried to stay busy
buzzing away
but it was an act
trying to distract himself from the pain

He couldn't keep it up forever
his heart was too tired
and he deserved a rest
he had been through enough

So he stopped flying one day
and with one last sad beat
his heart just stopped

That what I theorized
My theory on the matter
I'll never know how the fly died
But that's what happens when the heart just stop
and it's not violent
it's peaceful

It was only important
to smile and hold still,
to lie down beside him
and to rest awhile,
to be folded up together
as if we were silk,
to sink from the eyes of mother
and not to talk.
The black room took us
like a cave or a mouth
or an indoor belly.
I held my breath
and daddy was there,
his thumbs, his fat skull,
his teeth, his hair growing
like a field or a shawl.
I lay by the moss
of his skin until
it grew strange. My sisters
will never know that I fall
out of myself and pretend
that Allah will not see
how I hold my daddy
like an old stone tree.

The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

She took you the way a women takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself --
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also.
They are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A grey wall now, clawed and ******.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There are no trees or birds in this world,
There is only sourness.

This red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two grey, papery bags --
This is what i am made of, this, and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and rain of pieties.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immorality amoun these!
Cold blanks approach us:
They move in a hurry.

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

i know i shouldnt touch your skin
or kiss you because
im not as clean as you expected (and here i mean
im musty and my smile is rotten)

and i knew i wouldnt last three days knowing
i am not enough for you
still, i am lasting a year and it
hasnt been that bad

(f)all
i like you so much, and if i
was ever confused about something
i swear i understood the gap between
attraction and affection
i swear
i swear

i hate what i look like and
what i am
and i hate my own scent
but you
            are
                 not
                      like
          me.


and we are terribly similar

tarnished child
who the zoo
is not new
to

time, present, past and
future
are all
redeemable

and I ought to
have told you
before

it's not a heart
beating
but a drumming
from before that
sounds like

a record of
its own accord

30 years,
bare and white
baring, daring, breathing