I look over and see a firepossum trundling in from the storm – eight baby owls on her back, her crown of scarlet begonias. She heads to a stack of journals, feeds on the garbage I call poems. Spits and hacks out most, but a greedy smeck smeck smeck from time to time. I say "Firepossum, play dead!" and she filches around in her pouch – has a bootleg tape of the Red Rocks tour – Jerry and Co. jamming on Row Jimmy. Wikipedea says the firepossum is a mythic beast that rises in flames like Phoenix from ashes of suburban shopping malls in Arizona. The familiar of muses who blow into the mouths of the owls like feathered ocarinas tuned to the key of see? She climbs into the burning hearth, disappears, leaving an empty room and owl pellets – I hold in my hand inky bullets of hair, bones, claws, and teeth.
Toe Jam
Baudelaire sits in my living room trimming candle wicks and his toenails with a pen knife. A Nor' Easter blows into town like a circus running from debt. He asks for a lantern. I show him how to turn on the floor lamp and overhead lights, but no luck. He sits in the dark. The wind keens, the moans of dinosaurs wailing their extinction. I have to read him the Wiki article on Fleurs du Mal over and over, like reading Goodnight Moon to a child. He appears to understand English. Lightning from Dr. Frankenstein bringing his monster to life. He wears his flâneur costume with that floppy bow tie. He's back to picking his toes. Gusts of snow mad as hornets sting my face. Let's be honest, the opium and syphilis have not been kind to him. His skin is mottled and orange like a pumpkin. And then leaves town, vamoose, with the runaway girl.
TSM 197
There is no poem here, just my uncle in the first hours of August 6th, 1945 watching in darkness the Enola Gay gain speed on runway Able, North Field, Tinian Island. Mid-morning the sky – a blue and turquoise axe handle – swings down a flaming red blade on Hiroshima. He said they saw the light 1,500 miles away, a second dawn. No poem. Talked with the ground crews, went to mess, played poker with his tail gunner and the navigator. Will meaning come later, if ever? If he drew to a flush of hearts, he does not remember. Or if Tokyo Rose played Blue Skies on the radio.
Virgo Rising
Maybe the Zodiac killer of the ‘60s disappeared from earth or at least California and true to his name began stalking the night sky instead Killing off constellations he thought were rubbishy glitter, or taking a razor to the Gemini Twins for their sophistry and pretense Finally, someone stabbing new stories into the darkness, a stiletto cutting fresh scars with needles of light: The Goblin, The Madhouse Nebula, The Killer Toys Holding my hand, you point: "Look, there! next to the Pleiades Morgue – isn't that Ted Bundy?" I say, no, it is Ted Hughes, husband of Sylvia Plath, serial killer of poetesses, his words slashing lines in poems "Oh yes, I see that now, and there's The Oven! Yes, yes there she is, can you see Sylvia, her head, that cluster of stars filling the kitchen like vapor, gas?" Which makes the starlight fray and dim, the night now a bit dark even for me
Close Work With Print
A blackbird rose from the catastrophe of scrub, pomp and plump of snow clattering off branches. Its wings were flapping like a book flying off the shelf, feathers black and smudged from close work with print, wingtips of words and birdsong slipped with ice melt and berries. I say "Downward to darkness, on extended wings." and the bird grimaces, because I always say that, because it is always "Sunday Morning" for me, in my waking dream I wander through a poem of coffee and oranges in a sunny chair, words, the fragrance of lilacs. The bird whistles: "Call me Wallace." This old, odd chimera of my life made of papier mâché, an ill-matched pastiche – part lumbering walk, part postcards from Colorado, part the haunted mask I wear – laughable my pretense of the ancient sacrifice, to arrive at this place in the woods without gloom or suffering – a bird rising from the snow, its beak red with berries, testing my reality as if I were the poem, the fabrication, the dithered smudge flying across a white field.
TSM 195
I thought snuff poems were illegal since at least the 90's – No more candles in the wind, thank Jesus, no night stars blowing out one by one, all the tropes of hope and light gone up in smoke – arrested, up against a cop car, spread-eagle and cuffed with zip ties. A young poet I knew went to police academy to play cops and robbers – bad idea – our metaphors mug honest words at knifepoint, disturb the peace of stolid, taxpaying nouns, graffiti defacing the library wall of verbs. she forgot all art is theft and poetry is murder.
DSM-5
I don't want anesthesia for breakfast again,
no pouring naptha on my cheerios, or ether
in an oatmeal feed bag over my nose and mouth.
(However nasotracheal intubation of coffee
is indicated per DSM-5, 315.30 (F80.89) –
Pragmatic Communication Disorder, e.g. Poetry1)
Better your feral kissing stays stitched
across my skull, sutures of the cranial plates
fused into a flight of starlings, like radios
tuned to the shillelagh station – Swing, somewhere
between Cab Calloway and a blackthorn club
arcing towards my head.
Awareness.
Concussion.
Only you.
1Diagnostic Features:
“Social (pragmatic) communication disorder is characterized by a primary difficulty with pragmatics, or the social use of language and communication, as manifested by deficits in understanding and following social rules of verbal and nonverbal communication in naturalistic contexts, changing language according to the needs of the listener or situation, and following rules for conversations and storytelling. The deficits in social communication result in functional limitations in effective communication, social participation, development of social relationships, academic achievement, or occupational performance. The deficits are not better explained by low abilities in the domains of structural language or cognitive ability.” (From DSM-5, pg. 48)
TSM 194
Your glass eye(s) breaking my heart like a highway at night of endless black mirror crushed beneath tires at high speed the splintered light of oncoming cars unseeing but we are not blind in the onrushing darkness, no love is not blind in your arms the shivers and slivers clear and bright
First Light
The Q100 to Rikers
At the end of the line – Ditmars Boulevard in Queens – shake yourself awake, yawn, get off the N train. In the shitty weather walk three blocks north on 31st to the bus stop, about 50 feet from the corner. There you can wait in line with the nuns, wives, mothers and girlfriends for the Q100 to Rikers. You've never been to this jail – an island in the ocean sound built on bones and sorrow, landfill of ashes, ghosts, hauled by the inmates to make their own burial ground. If you are looking for prison poets – who shot their lovers like Verlaine shot Rimbaud – they are slumped in plastic chairs in front of the tv. They know a thief when they see one. You are here with your poetry workshop to steal what is furious, fierce, Eat and feast on what is glorious: "The heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.*" *Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"
qbit 