You thought it was the beginning
but it was the end.
and then it was the end again.
And then again.

And then you thought it was the end
but it was the beginning.
And so it went on,
pummeling and muddling
and the less sense you made
the more sense you made of it all.

Here is a box of
cocktails. Enjoy each
one fluttering
and composed of
ORIGINAL
ingredients--
yes, REAL!
So real you can even
taste
it. Let me cry
for you that
you never tasted
anything
else.

And there we'll all be
crying, the chorus
oh God, not that again
and people paid
to tear their heart out
(or hair, whatever)
and rend garments
while cameras
click

That wasn't me,
because I'm nothing
you just got a lot of
bows around a box of
nothing--

Ha!

If I ever seemed pretty
it was a matter of dust
and shadows.
Sleep will
grab me with
its fingers of trains
and buses and
roads that
lead to
somewhere more
nowhere than
before.
And there we'll
be murdered exquisitely
because what could be better
than to become pointless
in the puddles and the horse muck
torn down by feeble minded
gardeners and an immense sadness
that hungers, hungers, fangs and
horrible jaws and
tearing and
long past feeling
you've been
destroyed and
destroyed again
and again
and
again
and
long
past
feeling
you

still


are




desac-­
ra-

-ted

Let us love,
hope,
hear me.
Let us drink
and forget
everything
besides you
numb
to the world
around us.
Let us love,
whatever that means,
surrounded by old men
and their pennies
of despair
worth about
what rumors are worth
in the journals of
cowards who lust
for our pleasure which we
don't have for we stand
over beds, seeping and
bleeding strange
substances each
expressing part of the
universe as we
are part of the
story to which no one
else has access but us
in our bedrooms so
violated and
alone,
alone
alone.

If you disinfect it they will come,
awash with hope
and stung with bees and swollen and lush and false.

Fat as love we lie prone on the soil,
ready to be ****** by the universe, grand sun and all
elements so revered

And then, oh, it fails us
that universe and all its myths
its stories turn out to be tissue,
so many spindly webs and we
scatter surprised like August spiders hungry and full and
all we wanted to do was weave and wait
but the winds of fate are passing through
and it doesn't like the clinging
touch of our well constructed
reality
no matter how well it caught
our next bellyful
and our continuing survival.

Eventually we'll mourn, drunk and tearless
scabs dried up and scars set.
That's it.

Whatever it was
it wasn't for me.

You're for me,
your invisible clothes
are the most important thing
in this whole universe
and if they cling and if fate doesn't like them and if I agree
well we know what I can do with myself
and this god-awful poetry.

There's a secret somewhere near.
It's to do with the cities of the heart,
the intricate jungle of tiny weeds,
the ocean of miniature water pools.
It has to do with everything you've dreamed
might appear in the new person in your life
and then learned to wait for--forever.
It has to do with all the pain
you distract yourself from
with each destructive habit.
It has to do with those hints
of what pure life is about.
It has to do with all the ripples
after ecstasy.

What you really love
grows dark and fearsome
as all things have two sides
and for this, both are powerful.
Don't run away, stay
and open your heart
ever so slowly.

We're so busy.
We're so busy being tired.
We're so busy with our IV lines
of dull amusements
and distant passions.

We're so normal.
We're so tired of being normal.
Nobody's had a grand love affair
or great invention
while caught up in
all-absorbing boredom.
Not while we're all normal and tired
and tied to our IV lines.

My genius is as shriveled as a leech
clambering step by hungry step
down into the dark cellar
to wait forever in hopes of
a white soft dinner.
I hope yours is better.

It seems like we've forgotten what
we should be doing together.