Poemunity — your poem community

My observation are as follows: still dirty “in the wisdom” that is constructivist red theatre pieces, bike gloves all like a mashed crop of dyed hair, a bad crop this year. We started the play at once: An Enemy of the People. A Buddha of lapidary contrition enters, hospice, tears,La Clemenza di Tito interlude rolled in tulips of decisive consequence. Sprezzatura. Our row throws that cosmic scratch, apotropaic, scalene back to the corner pocket angle on the hustle— “Live at the Paradox.”

Time declines all, they say. Progression inevitable, they say. Hills that rise slant down. You have the floor, they say. How far down, 
I say. They say how low can you go. How steep a slope, I say. Slight drop, they say. Plateau. Slump, not flatline, they say.You understand, these were words before: up, down, I say, words I do not own but feel I should. Downward, they say, is normal, but plateau is where we’ll put you. Stay flexible. Incline toward this wind. Go ahead and zanaflex, they say. Progress, the way of the future, they say. We are 
inclined to say it’s relatively stable. Mesa, not mountain, they say.The fall-off hills rise in masses, flat on top. White clouds bite down on them like teeth, I recall, chomping. What’s the grade of incline, I say. They say mild decline. They say they feel inclined to know. Come down here, I say. Take a tumble. Slide. Incline your ear. They decline my invitation. Making progress, they say. An upgrade. Very busy.Your health has reached its quota and is no longer available, they say. Have I been downgraded, essentially going downhill, I say. A positive result yields a negative outcome, they say. They decline to know for sure. Testing negative, they say, has a positive outcome. A decline in contrast sensitivity, I say. They say slow descent, the good kind. A little tip. Lucky dip. I assent and say all’s downhill from here. I say downhill into the flood. Dive, I say, not cannonball. Controlled fall. I am inclined to take a dip, I say, from time to time, but always rise to the surface. Dip down, they say. Tip forward. Don’t let us (drop now) push you, they say, a nudge. I say it is our policy to decline tips, a pleasure to — Arching off the incline, I incline to a different wind.

Retired from other trades, they wore Work clothes again to mop the johns And feed the furnace loads of coal. Their roughened faces matched the bronze Of the school bell the nun would swing To start the day. They limped but smiled, Explored the secret, oldest nooks: The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled With inkwell desks, the caves beneath The stage on Bingo night. The pastor Bowed to the powers in their hands: Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys To countless locks. They fixed the lights In the crawl space above the nave And tolled the bells for funeral rites. Maintain what dead men made. Time blurs Their scripted names and well-waxed floors, Those keepers winking through the years And whistling down the corridors.

There is a difference it used to make, seeing three swans in this versus four in that quadrant of sky. I am not imagining. It was very large, as its effects were. Declarations of war, the timing fixed upon for a sea- departure; or, about love, a sudden decision not to, to pretend instead to a kind of choice. It was dramatic, as it should be. Without drama, what is ritual? I look for omens everywhere, because they are everywhere to be found. They come to me like strays, like the damaged, something that could know better, and should, therefore—but does not: a form of faith, you've said. I call it sacrifice—an instinct for it, or a habit at first, that becomes required, the way art can become, eventually, all we have of what was true. You shouldn't look at me like that. Like one of those saints on whom the birds once settled freely.

More than a hundred dollars of them. It was pure folly. I had to find more glass things to stuff them in. Now a white and purple cloud is breathing in each corner of the room I love. Now a mass of flowers spills down my dining table— each fresh-faced, extending delicate leaves into the crush. Didn't I watch children shuffle strictly in line, cradle candles that dribbled hot white on their fingers, chanting Latin—just to fashion Sevilla's Easter? Wasn't I sad? Didn't I use to go mucking through streambeds with the skunk cabbage raising bursting violet spears?—Look, the afternoon dies as night begins in the heart of the lilies and smokes up their fluted throats until it fills the room and my lights have to be not switched on. And in close darkness the aroma grows so sweet, so strong, that it could slice me open. It does. I know I'm not the only one whose life is a conditional clause hanging from something to do with spring and one tall room and the tremble of my phone. I'm not the only one that love makes feel like a dozen flapping bedsheets being ripped to prayer flags by the wind. When I stand in full sun I feel I have been falling headfirst for decades. God, I am so transparent. So light.

Cut out as a horse is cut from the pack. Peeled off, but a long time back. Now such a feeling for the way they touch and shift as one, the beauty when they run.

WELL, what's the matter ? there's a face What ! has it cut a vein ? And is it quite a shocking place ? Come, let us look again. I see it bleeds, but never mind That tiny little drop ; I don't believe you'll ever find That crying makes it stop. 'Tis sad indeed to cry at pain, For any but a baby ; If that should chance to cut a vein, We should not wonder, may be. But such a man as you should try To bear a little sorrow : So run along, and wipe your eye, 'Twill all be well to-morrow.

curling them around i hold their bodies in obscene embrace thinking of everything but kinship. collards and kale strain against each strange other away from my kissmaking hand and the iron bedpot. the pot is black, the cutting board is black, my hand, and just for a minute the greens roll black under the knife, and the kitchen twists dark on its spine and I taste in my natural appetite the bond of live things everywhere.

She pays attention to the hair, not her fingers, and cuts herself once or twice a day.   Doesn’t notice anymore, just if the blood starts flowing.   Says, Excuse me, to the customer and walks away for a band-aid.   Same spot on the middle finger over and over, raised like a callus.   Also the nicks where she snips between her fingers, the torn webbing.   Also spider veins on her legs now, so ugly, though she sits in a chair for half of each cut, rolls around from side to side.   At night in the winter she sleeps in white cotton gloves, Neosporin on the cuts, vitamin E, then heavy lotion.   All night, for weeks, her white hands lie clothed like those of a young girl going to her first party.   Sleeping alone, she opens and closes her long scissors and the hair falls under her hands.   It’s a good living, kind of like an undertaker, the people keep coming, and the hair, shoulder length, French twist, braids.   Someone has to cut it.   At the end she whisks and talcums my neck.   Only then can I bend and see my hair, how it covers the floor, curls and clippings of brown and silver, how it shines like a field of scythed hay beneath my feet.

I met a man in South Street, tall— a nervous shark tooth swung on his chain. His eyes pressed through green glass —green glasses, or bar lights made them so— shine— GREEN— eyes— stepped out—forgot to look at you or left you several blocks away— in the nickel-in-the-slot piano jogged “Stamboul Nights”—weaving somebody’s nickel—sang— O Stamboul Rose—dreams weave the rose! Murmurs of Leviathan he spoke, and rum was Plato in our heads . . . “It’s S.S. Ala—Antwerp—now remember kid to put me out at three she sails on time. I’m not much good at time any more keep weakeyed watches sometimes snooze—” his bony hands got to beating time . . . “A whaler once— I ought to keep time and get over it—I’m a Democrat—I know what time it is—No I don’t want to know what time it is—that damned white Arctic killed my time . . . ” O Stamboul Rose—drums weave— “I ran a donkey engine down there on the Canal in Panama—got tired of that— then Yucatan selling kitchenware—beads— have you seen Popocatepetl—birdless mouth with ashes sifting down—? and then the coast again . . . ” Rose of Stamboul O coral Queen— teased remnants of the skeletons of cities— and galleries, galleries of watergutted lava snarling stone—green—drums—drown—