I:

Modern parlance,
It says disease; it says illness,
I’ve a darkness that swallows up the sugar birds and intercepts the light bouncing up from the epoxy,

and rocketing towards a god my mother knew.

II:

I've done so much,
To great and tractable youth,
That hammer created nothing vestigial and lionlike, no, it simply left depressions on waxen suburban doors,

That you once wildly rushed to open.

III:

When I remember,
You wrapped around the backstay in an empty field -
Trying to reach forward and knock the Camel light that I had lit to keep myself from speaking,

I light another.

Oh, cynic-

All those years of abridging the files left for you-
And whittling away at your own tusks-
To annex wild nerve and stove-top instinctivity-

Extemporising on an instrument that you actually did invent-
And then using it to pry open the kitchen window-
Asking the neighbor for a sword of keratin straight to the belt-

“It would show that I am, literally, made of (fitfully) lifeless halves.”

Anyway-

There’s that old-dresser where you stored plans of-
Delineating a white-white city for you to call home-
and then instructions to call it anesthetized due to it’s lack of horses-

Destroy it and all matter within a one-hundred mile radius of your current location.

I’m aware the end-product has cradled you since the first day you were alive-
but, it doesn’t anymore-

I do-
and I will not let my arms grow soar without affording them your recognition.

I was asked to write about a girl I’d never had at all-
It was an easy enough task.  
I haven’t written about anything else since I can remember.

I’ve imagined her as the source behind all of Whitman’s Eidolins
And every young boy’s first faustian plea-

I’ve imagined her as the reason I sold my soul to a wooden box and torch songs-
and forty thousand thimbles full of tequila.

I addressed her earlier today when I should’ve been relating my own moral codex-
To Mitchell’s ‘The Other Bird.’

I had, instead, stumbled across the Blue Tail Fly and thought of how could I slip that into-
A simple (humbly shouted) mantra about getting her to step outside with me.

What a beautiful day to try,
To destroy the things that have left you ary-
You’re just as marvelous as you are shy
We’ll brush away that blue-tail fly,
It’s alright-alright-alright.

How could I address her without the least bit of Americana?

Though, I highly doubt trading spit with me constitutes marvelous dissent.
It might- but only in the context that she’d be as weary of those estival fumes-
Those threadbare summers.
The divulsion from stick wars to stick wars that end with-
a coral flush and real bruises.

That business of cruelty as William Carlos Williams describes it.

It’d be easy to talk about her throughout every-day.
I could tell you that she’d have the incantations to make nature act,

She would have never seen a tornado outside of a television,
but she’d say they emit a wonderful cobalt blue when they’re intruding on peace and plain.

She might even chalk them up to table-legs prone to constant spiraling and amorphous shape-

And up there we’d be- exchanging comments on the land beneath
She’d drink her coffee without any sugar
But, I’d offer it every time
While I focused on keeping my nerves from making the table shake-

Avoiding upsetting anything,
that might get to make it to her lips.

I’d tell her I’ve seen those blocks
Emitted those midnight-shrieks
Pulled from those basement-band symposiums
Tailored those half-alpha ***** tongues

If it made her comfortable with my lack of attention,
My eyes and mind having been reserved for that night-
When she runs in with a copy of The Love Song of J.Alfred Pufrock
Yelling- ‘Hey, isn’t this the only poem you give a **** about?’

And I slap it out of her hands.

Old blue is snorting bath salt-
In the same bathroom where he nursed the only battle wound I’ve ever had-

I had swung on the prince of Hopkins county-
My knuckle caught the crystal of his watch-
Pop and howl, edge and line-
Thrown askew by force-
(my) good young blood ferried wolf flowers from one side of the sink-
to the other-

Time kept-
Bone acquiesced-
Verity-

Old blue would tell you that he only remembers contrition-
While humming the Gardenia Waltz.

the defense of your legacy manifested into strings of saccharin
and phrases like ‘Come on in from the rain.  We all need a torrent to own the storm, just- take off your clothes, don’t mind Kierkegaard.’

your sincerity is a cipher

you’re something of a conversation piece between good friends
who were artfully made of pre-engineered steel on a day Jove tremored in his bed
you’re something postured beneath a javelin
and likewise- something propelled for decorum

blackguard, black coffee and a birthmark turned into a running joke.
inevitable.

you searched the bottoms of summer pools
and found no discernible trace of your history
her sable crown whips back and forth in your head
and you maintain the chaos with aureate cries of preservation
it’s a halcyon boom, a lonely and sexless halcyon boom
it makes every yellow and red dress chimerical
it makes your neck unassailable
drugstore cowboy

they got close enough
to see you sweat
to note that heat and her magnificence could purge as quick as they reinstate

and you still beat
like they do

stubbornly.

it wasn't me that you spoke to
it was a poor copy-
i'm sorry I didn't hold your hand
but, diamonds burn my skin
especially the kinds of diamonds that soldiers can afford

I wanted to eat you alive,
don't get me wrong.

Immediately after you left
aussitot apres
I realized your language is not as beautiful as they say it is
and I discovered that the curvature of the earth is partial to those who can never stop running away.

it made me sick,
a lot sicker than the bourban and the patches of arbitrary fog liberating I-35.

faked botulism
and Beulah reds
Abyssinian horses
purportedly dead

all night blindness
that 'gravel' soothes
hovering indentions
southwestern barceuse

luminaries marked
tiny infantries swell
conically formed
so steady with shell

dihedral burns
for unlucky hands
swaying cognition
oh, little demands

sanctums ******
the sputum reigns
tenderness denied
a proper grave

you were ferried
holstered soul
lift your head
and let it go