The solitary molar of a *****
who had died without a name
wore a gold filling.
The other teeth, as if by silent agreement,
had already left.
The mortician smacked the filling loose,
removed it, and left to go dancing.
‘Only earth,’ he said,
‘should return to earth.’

The mouth of a girl, whose corpse lay long in the rushes,
looked so gnawed away.
As the breast was broken open, there was the gullet, full of holes.
Finally, in a recess below the diaphragm,
a nest of young rats was found.
One little sister lay dead.
The others lived off of liver and kidney,
drank the cold blood and
lived a lovely childhood here.
And sweet and swift they met their death:
They were all tossed into the water;
Oh, how the little snouts squealed!

A drowned beer-hauler was hoisted on the table.
Someone had taken a dark-bright-purple aster
and clamped it in his teeth.
As I cut outward from his breast
under the skin
with a long blade
and removed the tongue and palate,
I must have touched the flower—
she slid into the brain which lay nearby.
I packed her in the cavity in his chest
amid the straw stuffings
as he was sewn up.
Drink yourself full in your vase!
Rest softly,
little aster!

Joseph sits on skinny chairs, reads the funnies
she would be tall, pretty hair, she don’t see
see he won’t be reading one bit, he looks dumb
just staring, looking fat, broken, glum
she cleans up all the plates

—Put those dishes down, now is a time for love-making
I’ll take you now, and wonder if I’ve taken
steps enough to excuse my idleness; in time
you’ll leave, and supine, I’ll take a coat of lyme
and let the lines loose

We will communicate through touch and kiss
and enjoy the full of it, pull in the harvest;
light and movies romance the **** out of me
at last, we are at the end of all things irony
Christ that **** impersonal.

—This music don’t be coming from them
that is right, that is absolutely the end of them
they just end, I don’t care, I let it be
how come you so foolish, Joseph? I don’t see
why are you so foolish?

—You play the guitar by ear and plucking
at this moment they are dinosaur hunting
time is absurd and disgusting
I don’t understand it, I’m simply saying
you played some songs I knew at the time

But how different are your songs from mine
attach your seatbelts to your right hand buckles, fine
away with it, away with them all, please
I am telling, telling, understand, please
different in a few ways, love

—Joseph, you play the drums too loud
you are a big, dumb, idiot head
they end, it certainly has to be
it’s apocalyptic, something like this, said she
such a dummy you Joseph

the movie drums its so vicious loud
the end a dumb idiot head
that’s a thing she might have said at the time
and you are given a full witness to the violence of our time
Joseph plays bad harmonica.

This is the third evening I have lived in a hush.
A thousand others like me know the feel of warm hush.

The student in the library, snug in her work;
She’s caught up in her work and the scribbling hush.

A sporting man, dressed in white, at the courts of Central Park—
Tennis courts, one next to the other, he knocks echoes into the hush.

The woman singing jazz at some bar, swaying, drunk.
Her audience of three blinks like a dumb hush.

A man at a deli sits, hunched behind the counter;
Morning light slips through his cigarette smoke: white hush.

At 4 am, two train lights appear down the track—
Tungsten lights add a brightening hush.

And I sit by the wall in the hospital’s small waiting room.
There is no one in the hall, no one in the chairs, only me and the hush.

Orange peel Thursdays and the Velcro shoes
Of children hordes
Who spider up Alice on toadstools in Central Park
Dusted psilocybin shoots my eyes through
With the clarity of ice and sliced mushroom
Steeping in stomach acid before finding blood
The kids are tripping like madmen or halloween candy
Like its time to release and give up to the nonsense
And let your young self congeal to a saccharine sludge

I don’t stroll in the park to keep my mind sharp
I’m here because it’s a riot
My head can throb to the jittery birds
And the blasts of carsong
It’s the right kind of rhythm to walk to

* *

Ketamine days and the lolling slums
To make sure the insane stay insane
And the hobos are washed with spit from the clouds
And the subway exhaust always hangs in our hair
And the old Coney Island burns again and twice more

We don’t pretend to understand what we see
In subway grates thirty feet wide
Like the earth punching out of work for a bit
Opening to you her *** belly
So you can check out the strips of metal inside
Before she slurps you down and with an esophageal squeeze
Shoots you through the turnstiles

The train squeals and grinds down our eyes
With thoughts as slow as ketamine
Makes room for schizophrenia in a conversation
We’re listening to ‘til sundown

* *

Years full of Brooklyn and the assorted pills
Makes offal fit for punks in name brand shoes
Squared off with police in the park
Being beaten for the fun of being beaten
Peacoat locals pass the days in supermarkets
And you grow up to the loony mumble
Of the woman who knows the boat
Moored at the end of the street
Mansion of the stray cat colony
You help her with her daily chore to feed them
Tabbies popping the pills of the homeless
And puking in tandem all over their house
Living off generous dying folk

I have grown used to
or at least numb to this way of living.
The rain drips through the ivy above,
hitting against the grey planks.
No water lands on my skin;
I am sprawled across the parallel lines of planks in the wooden floor.

I call this the ‘sun grotto’
because of the sundial,
now dark with rainwater,
standing in the circular clearing in the hedges
in front of the entrance to my gazebo.

Today might be a day in October.  And,
since the first drop fell,
I’ve been waiting under the grotto
for what feels like hours—
I haven’t been into the maze at all today;
the darkness on the hedges mirrors
the shadows that line the clouds.

I see no point in moving
from the grotto today, and while I wait for the rain
to pass, I remember
my first day here, a few summers ago—

The humidity at noon under
a liquid sun,
a girl in a rose-colored dress,
our August trip to the hedge maze in the neighboring county,
the laugh she gave as she trotted away:
“let’s get lost in the maze—
come and get me!”
the last I heard of her,
and a glimpse of red cloth rounding the edge
of a wall in the maze,
the last I saw.

We had felt so much excitement
and fear
pressing further through the winding paths
decorated here and there with
fountains, gardens,
idyllic cherub statues,
and the grottoes
which I now use as sleeping places
and—like today—
as cover from the rain
which pours here so often.

The downpour recedes
allowing me at least the chance to walk
through the maze to one of
the tulip gardens.

Not today of course,
but there are days when I hear
the soft laughter of children, friends, and lovers
echo somewhere in the maze—only
a few lanes of manicured green separating me
from them.  Days like those
are difficult to bear.

One day, not too many weeks ago,
I heard those sounds and I smiled;
but it came as a shock to hear
the patter of a pair of running feet, so clearly just around
the clean-cut corner of the hedge I was using for shade.
It was the first—the only—time I had heard a sound in the maze
this close, close enough to see and touch—
through the pinhole gaps in the foliage-wall
I saw a burst of color, like clothing.
I shot around the corner, I glimpsed the flicker
of pale red cloth flagging
behind the form that had slid
into another path through the maze.

The chase had failed
well before I had taken my first wild steps,
hitting the well-tread path hard
with desperate feet.  I yelled like a drunkard.
Later, I noticed the cuts on my fingers and neck,
sliced into the skin as I flung myself through
one wall of green and skid against the next.

Today’s shower is completely over.
I walk myself through the maze, and
avoid the shallow lakes that have formed
in the dips
in the paths, beaten firm by thousands of trampling feet.
Under the sparse autumn light
I collect flowers from one of the many small squares of garden
which I have come to know so well.
With a clump of black
and white tulips in my hands,
I look for a place to ****.
Life here is difficult in the winters.