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At the Mind Museum, you can walk to the back, step on several large buttons on the ground, and watch parts of the brain light up: the frontal lobe for decision and memory, the temporal lobe for smell and sound, the occipital for sight. I try to make my toddler son laugh by hopping from one button to the next, watching each lobe light up along the way, but he will not leave the prison of his melancholy. My son: how he loves to revisit the most difficult point of conflict in a picture book, or the moment at which his favorite car heaves a difficult sigh at the pinnacle of a movie’s emotional arc, or the promise of injury if I take a fall. My son, so distant from other children in his sadness. Just the other day, at the pool, he gazed at the boys and girls splashing and shrieking and said,Look. The children are having fun, as if he were an anthropologist in a foreign land. If these are his musings at age two, one can only imagine the life that must follow. Through a dark channel he was born; to darkness he is most drawn. Easier to write than say the guilt I feel for giving him the sharp pain of melancholy. My son, always in the world without husk or shell, it is as if his heart throbs on the outside of his body, as if his brain has no skull to absorb the assaults that strike it. Today, I watch him writhe in the pain of a tantrum — a typical kid, this is what they do, everyone assures me — and usually I rush in, unwittingly increasing his sense of emergency. Instead, today, I stand back, relinquish the role of skull and skin, watch his mind unfurl like a medieval tapestry. In that moment of my feigned disinterest, his head is no longer head but battlefield where Wrath wages a fierce war against Patience. He is no longer a little boy screaming on the ground and throwing plastic trucks; instead he is a creature engaged in a struggle to free his enslaved heart from the monsters whose foaming mouths and hot fumes and clots of foul blood besiege him as he gathers his thoughts from the unraveling of his universe. Prudentius says that fiery Wrath in her frenzy slays herself and dies by her own weapons

To peer into the obverse into smoking cane field erratums as if haunted with the steamy colitis of whirling iridium cancellations as in the saliva of newts one sees the intestinal raging of deltas of blackened sea giraffes osmotically split into simultaneous alums above a judgemental sea glistening with Richters like a weakened neutron egg its fissioning petrol mirages like spirals of irregular hunting geese flying through flames of ulcerated smoke & gargantua hissing a blank imperial greenness rising above dense jetties of cobras the shocking demise of the sea the unlivingness of its winds scorched by irradiations of shaking brine incisions the burning gulfs of sun with a glint of explosive Mandean utopias* shocks against Old Testament linear prophetics of Jeremiah or Ezekiel or the bony frozen finger shaking stunted alchemical missives from a moon burned Judea no more than a mechanically burning moat focused on smoky spellbinder’s disruptives where the motion of the soul is delayed reduced to flattened agnostic secular smoke to a terrestrial rage which eliminates its sensuous heavenly fires its stunning unreplicated angers its sudden selenium spirals its fire which staggers across the pseudo-faultlines of pre-replicated judgement its flirtation with spirits of enriched Draconian plankton so that the soul with its amber of flashing microbe drachmas with its wounded tourmaline divisibilities flaming within a light of smeared tornado weathers within a shower of black fish scales & spleen is entombed within a blank thirstless psycho-motion falling from a furnace of stars which both flares up and freezes which inculcates a flawed microbial botany as in hypnotic grammatical emulsions within a hollowed elliptical opening where we witness old Egyptian surgeries where the dead magically rise up from mazes & stare in a language of scorching totemic anomaly spawned in heretical miniature their phantoms seeping from quadrilateral sutures from brief violent renunciatory squalls uprooted armed with the weaponry of ghouls & broken birch tree lizards seasoned by the light of psychotropic angles blazing in the middle of a green Venusian interior God singing as if in the fumaroles of anguish with an inclement bleeding with a littered corona of unstable altimeter reverses

Publication – is the Auction Of the Mind of Man – Poverty – be justifying For so foul a thing Possibly – but We – would rather From Our Garret go White – unto the White Creator – Than invest – Our Snow – Thought belong to Him who gave it – Then – to Him Who bear It's Corporeal illustration – sell The Royal Air – In the Parcel – Be the Merchant Of the Heavenly Grace – But reduce no Human Spirit To Disgrace of Price –

They worked They were always on time They were never late They never spoke back when they were insulted They worked They never took days off that were not on the calendar They never went on strike without permission They worked ten days a week and were only paid for five They worked They worked They worked and they died They died broke They died owing They died never knowing what the front entrance of the first national city bank looks like Juan Miguel Milagros Olga Manuel All died yesterday today and will die again tomorrow passing their bill collectors on to the next of kin All died waiting for the garden of eden to open up again under a new management All died dreaming about america waking them up in the middle of the night screaming: Mira Mira your name is on the winning lottery ticket for one hundred thousand dollars All died hating the grocery stores that sold them make-believe steak and bullet-proof rice and beans All died waiting dreaming and hating Dead Puerto Ricans Who never knew they were Puerto Ricans Who never took a coffee break from the ten commandments to KILL KILL KILL the landlords of their cracked skulls and communicate with their latino souls Juan Miguel Milagros Olga Manuel From the nervous breakdown streets where the mice live like millionaires and the people do not live at all are dead and were never alive Juan died waiting for his number to hit Miguel died waiting for the welfare check to come and go and come again Milagros died waiting for her ten children to grow up and work so she could quit working Olga died waiting for a five dollar raise Manuel died waiting for his supervisor to drop dead so he could get a promotion Is a long ride from Spanish Harlem to long island cemetery where they were buried First the train and then the bus and the cold cuts for lunch and the flowers that will be stolen when visiting hours are over Is very expensive Is very expensive But they understand Their parents understood Is a long non-profit ride from Spanish Harlem to long island cemetery Juan Miguel Milagros Olga Manuel All died yesterday today and will die again tomorrow Dreaming Dreaming about queens Clean-cut lily-white neighborhood Puerto Ricanless scene Thirty-thousand-dollar home The first spics on the block Proud to belong to a community of gringos who want them lynched Proud to be a long distance away from the sacred phrase: Que Pasa These dreams These empty dreams from the make-believe bedrooms their parents left them are the after-effects of television programs about the ideal white american family with black maids and latino janitors who are well train— to make everyone and their bill collectors laugh at them and the people they represent Juan died dreaming about a new car Miguel died dreaming about new anti-poverty programs Milagros died dreaming about a trip to Puerto Rico Olga died dreaming about real jewelry Manuel died dreaming about the irish sweepstakes They all died like a hero sandwich dies in the garment district at twelve o’clock in the afternoon social security number to ashes union dues to dust They knew they were born to weep and keep the morticians employed as long as they pledge allegiance to the flag that wants them destroyed They saw their names listed in the telephone directory of destruction They were train to turn the other cheek by newspapers that mispelled mispronounced and misunderstood their names and celebrated when death came and stole their final laundry ticket They were born dead and they died dead Is time to visit sister lopez again the number one healer and fortune card dealer in Spanish Harlem She can communicate with your late relatives for a reasonable fee Good news is guaranteed Rise Table Rise Table death is not dumb and disable— Those who love you want to know the correct number to play Let them know this right away Rise Table Rise Table death is not dumb and disable Now that your problems are over and the world is off your shoulders help those who you left behind find financial peace of mind Rise Table Rise Table death is not dumb and disable If the right number we hit all our problems will split and we will visit your grave on every legal holiday Those who love you want to know the correct number to play let them know this right away We know your spirit is able Death is not dumb and disable RISE TABLE RISE TABLE Juan Miguel Milagros Olga Manuel All died yesterday today and will die again tomorrow Hating fighting and stealing broken windows from each other Practicing a religion without a roof The old testament The new testament according to me gospel of the internal revenue the judge and jury and executioner protector and eternal bill collector Secondhand shit for sale learn how to say Como Esta Usted and you will make a fortune They are dead They are dead and will not return from the dead until they stop neglecting the art of their dialogue— for broken english lessons to impress the mister goldsteins— who keep them employed as lavaplatos porters messenger boys factory workers maids stock clerks shipping clerks assistant mailroom assistant, assistant assistant to the assistant’s assistant assistant lavaplatos and automatic artificial smiling doormen for the lowest wages of the ages and rages when you demand a raise because is against the company policy to promote SPICS SPICS SPICS Juan died hating Miguel because Miguel’s used car was in better running condition than his used car Miguel died hating Milagros because Milagros had a color television set and he could not afford one yet Milagros died hating Olga because Olga made five dollars more on the same job Olga died hating Manuel because Manuel had hit the numbers more times than she had hit the numbers Manuel died hating all of them Juan Miguel Milagros and Olga because they all spoke broken english more fluently than he did And now they are together in the main lobby of the void Addicted to silence Off limits to the wind Confine to worm supremacy in long island cemetery This is the groovy hereafter the protestant collection box was talking so loud and proud about Here lies Juan Here lies Miguel Here lies Milagros Here lies Olga Here lies Manuel who died yesterday today and will die again tomorrow Always broke Always owing Never knowing that they are beautiful people Never knowing the geography of their complexion PUERTO RICO IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE PUERTORRIQUENOS ARE A BEAUTIFUL RACE If only they had turned off the television and tune into their own imaginations If only they had used the white supremacy bibles for toilet paper purpose and make their latino souls the only religion of their race If only they had return to the definition of the sun after the first mental snowstorm on the summer of their senses If only they had kept their eyes open at the funeral of their fellow employees who came to this country to make a fortune and were buried without underwears Juan Miguel Milagros Olga Manuel will right now be doing their own thing where beautiful people sing and dance and work together where the wind is a stranger to miserable weather conditions where you do not need a dictionary to communicate with your people Aqui Se Habla Espanol all the time Aqui you salute your flag first Aqui there are no dial soap commercials Aqui everybody smells good Aqui tv dinners do not have a future Aqui the men and women admire desire and never get tired of each other Aqui Que Pasa Power is what’s happening Aqui to be called negrito means to be called LOVE

The birdless place the Greeks named it. Insufflation of you know what. Followed quickly by some drone, some doctor, now that you mention it, bearing the proverbial cup on a silver filigree stem. I'll try a drop of that. The hoarse divinities would parade before the inventor of butterfly wings. No subtext here, people are naked. Bartering with the guileless do I even want to know? Three little ghostesses Sitting on postesses Eating buttered toastesses Greasing their fistesses Up to their wristesses.

It’s the shivering. When rage grows hot as an army of red ants and forces the mind to quiet the body, the quakes emerge, sometimes just the knees, but, at worst, through the hips, chest, neck until, like a virus, slipping inside the lungs and pulse, every ounce of strength tapped to squeeze words from my taut lips, his eyes scanning my car’s insides, my eyes, my license, and as I answer the questions 3, 4, 5 times, my jaw tight as a vice, his hand massaging the gun butt, I imagine things I don’t want to and inside beg this to end before the shiver catches my hands, and he sees, and something happens.

When God at first made man, Having a glass of blessings standing by, “Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can. Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie, Contract into a span.” So strength first made a way; Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure. When almost all was out, God made a stay, Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure, Rest in the bottom lay. “For if I should,” said he, “Bestow this jewel also on my creature, He would adore my gifts instead of me, And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature; So both should losers be. “Yet let him keep the rest, But keep them with repining restlessness; Let him be rich and weary, that at least, If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to my breast.”

It lists beneath a sycamore swashing in high summer leaf, and takes a hit from underneath: a root knuckle bulges along the floor. Its eight loopholes have fissures, sprouting thistles; through each the wheat is fattening. “What’s this thing for?” A starling sings its wind-up song. The sun slides out. And this taste of piss, that Fetherlite slumped in the corner, those Holsten cans, the markered slogan do not try to answer. Might.

The porter in the Pullman car Was charming, as they sometimes are. He scanned my baggage tags: “Are you The man who wrote of Lady Lou?” When I said “yes” he made a fuss — Oh, he was most assiduous; And I was pleased to think that he Enjoyed my brand of poetry. He was forever at my call, So when we got to Montreal And he had brushed me off, I said: “I’m glad my poems you have read, I feel quite flattered, I confess, And if you give me your address I’ll send you (autographed, of course) One of my little books of verse.” He smiled — his teeth were white as milk; He spoke — his voice was soft as silk. I recognized, despite his skin, The perfect gentleman within. Then courteously he made reply: “I thank you kindly, Sir, but I With many other cherished tome Have all your books of verse at home. “When I was quite a little boy I used to savour them with joy; And now my daughter, aged three, Can tell the tale of Sam McGee; While Tom, my son, that’s only two, Has heard the yarn of Dan McGrew .... Don’t think your stuff I’m not applaudin’ — My taste is Eliot and Auden.” So as we gravely bade adieu I felt quite snubbed — and so would you. And yet I shook him by the hand, Impressed that he could understand The works of those two tops I mention, So far beyond my comprehension — A humble bard of boys and barmen, Disdained, alas! by Pullman carmen.

You want more? You want some more of this shit? so he puts his weight to his elbow jammed under the jaw of the other one pinned there, panicked, panting, his back to the bricks. The others are loud and jeering and stand in a jackal circle a spitting-length away. The cold air is full of bird song. The sex—sheer sugar—of the flowering trees turns to powder against the skin, and cakes the sidewalks pale green, and packs the curbs. Far away a powerful siren cries. Someone is about to get his ass kicked. But now the cruel gang spots someone—okay, it’s me—who is writing this whole scene down. It’s so easy to surpass the limits of the powers of description.What are you looking at?