She wrote in ink,
like blood on watery eyes.

I stepped from the doorway, found the moon
pressing her pale diseased flesh against the earth,
found the crickets screeching,
found you raking your nails against trees.

She wrote in ink,
like blood in my watery eyes.

I stepped from the doorway,
inside from beneath the sallow limpness of moon,
and I beckoned for morphine.
She handed me a syringe,
but when it hurried forth into my veins,
I found it filled with ink.

You draw blood.

No one told me that upon dying our souls transmute into vulnerable strains and hurtle bodilessly higher, burning through our hair and through heaven, and that when they reach the humble vault, they also die. Where is immortality? There is no such thing; there are only forgotten lips and half-pressed flesh. I took up the cup yesterday and forgot what I was drinking. I wrapped my body in a flag yesterday and forgot what I was dying for.

The ash of autumn became the fingers of blue lovers whose teacups became cold with altogether too much cream, not enough herb. And while stars hung down on the dripping strands of night's hair, pulling it down in thick black arteries, I heard sad crows giving haunt to her decadent hours, croaking devils in neon graveyards, a shoe-polish sweetness rubbing out soul beneath shine.

I let go of all.

I apologize to Emanuel for not being able to wish him a happy birthday.

It is hot, and begs for wandering this late at night, with the city a dimly jeweled beast snapping and curling about my feet.

I have not felt this in so long, that gnawing haunt that will not let you sleep, a vague restlessness that drags you, sags you. Tired, surly, angry, pulsing, waiting.

And what is there to do but sit, the dissonant Spartan hum breaking the air about my ears?

Nothing.

Nothing again nothing.

Why do you never speak.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

I apologize to Emanuel for not being able to wish him a happy birthday.

It is hot, and begs for wandering this late at night, with the city a dimly jeweled beast snapping and curling about my feet.

I have not felt this in so long, that gnawing haunt that will not let you sleep, a vague restlessness that drags you, sags you. Tired, surly, angry, pulsing, waiting.

And what is there to do but sit, the dissonant Spartan hum breaking the air about my ears?

Nothing.

Nothing again nothing.

Why do you never speak.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

I apologize to Emanuel for not being able to wish him a happy birthday.

It is hot, and begs for wandering this late at night, with the city a dimly jeweled beast snapping and curling about my feet.

I have not felt this in so long, that gnawing haunt that will not let you sleep, a vague restlessness that drags you, sags you. Tired, surly, angry, pulsing, waiting.

And what is there to do but sit, the dissonant Spartan hum breaking the air about my ears?

Nothing.

Nothing again nothing.

Why do you never speak.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

I apologize to Emanuel for not being able to wish him a happy birthday.

It is hot, and begs for wandering this late at night, with the city a dimly jeweled beast snapping and curling about my feet.

I have not felt this in so long, that gnawing haunt that will not let you sleep, a vague restlessness that drags you, sags you. Tired, surly, angry, pulsing, waiting.

And what is there to do but sit, the dissonant Spartan hum breaking the air about my ears?

Nothing.

Nothing again nothing.

Why do you never speak.

I had not thought death had undone so many.

DEATH IN AUGUST

A coffee man sweating through the steel nets
of the radio, swinging his throat about so rich that
he burning the shingles on my eyes,
he got my eyes swimming like
the frayed fish of Galilee.

Adonai, cryer of the naked cosmos,
the unfurled nudity of swirling universes,
oily and primordial with weeping;
Say, Adonai, my voice is yanked away,
the songs are razors burrowing
into my wailing throats, Adonai,
bawling banshee whisking the nylon veil’s dry fingers
up your milky thigh:
I cry unto thee, Adonai,
only because
no one else seem to got any answers.

A coffee man paints the streets
with a voice so rich.

This wasn’t supposed to be no prayer, Adonai,
but I sold my heart into a doubting thomas’s jewel box;
he sniggered and shut the ivory lid
and they felt so very sharp, those cold velvet innards.
I asked him
Ain’t you believe in Providence,
and he laughed and scampered off
into the granite fields of tombstones,
and when the sun too was slaughtered and fell darkly on the earth,
it felt so fearful
to hold nothing.

The coffee man’s rich throat is sucked away
into the skillfully fading horns,
toombah toombah toombah, rah dee rah,
Adonai, abandoning my moldy eyes
like the bloated blind pale thighs of
you, Adonai.
But you, too, are the rich throat of the coffee man;

don’t leave me weeping.

I would post a poem, but that has been a trend of late, and I would hate for those of you (I do not know who you are, or if there are any) who are regulars to arrive, taste buds cocked for something startlingly new, and say:

"Snaps. Another poem. God forgive the repetitive bastard."

Instead, I give you a juicy nectarine to comfort you in the hard times. "Year of the Spider" has hit Gold status, with sales numbering five hundred thousand, one hundred copies. This brings righteous tears to my weary eyes.

Have I told you that I fully intend to name my son Langston, no matter how pale or Caucasian he is when he is spat forth from my beloved's womb? Thus it shall be. I'll write it into the damned marriage contract. No wedding without the pudding.

A MEMOIR OF BEGINNINGS

I sucked in air between the ripeness of figs--
I felt, darling, like a pale wanderer,
and when I found soul, it was soiled by sweetness.
Soul ain’t sweet, think I;
it is the rusty taste of bitter wrecks smothered
in the redfire-fringed clouds like mad peaches, baby. This here is
too touched by liquor and contentment,
thick reek of juice and the limp angles of tired light
heaving like autumn in the corners of greasy doorways.
These days close their eyes and find the insides of their lids
Tattooed with stars.

Soul ain’t sweet like that.

Black as fire,
as hard and fluid as desperation,
when you get crazy enough to dance like greeks,
like gritty men sparring with persians,
slicking their black hair back with blood
over ghastly skulls, their wrists getting white and white;
spirit like passion,
passion like mad,
mad as beggars,
beggar-poor as me.

Don’t matter what I say,
ain’t no soul good enough, no plea like fear.

I ain’t got enough, says I,
And who should know better than me, ‘cept God
and the devil, who screech each other’s names
and scratch at my bones.

This is dry, concrete distance howling
with morning reminders draped over
those smudged, pregnant hills,
A booming throat of accordion stairways
unfolding in bleached, rattling syllables.

I got to go.







Doesn't life sometimes make you weary? A thousand deaths do not make the one easier. Yet a death suspended, hanging by a tensed and airless vein, this is the lowest of agonies, the rolling eyes and hoarse gasps of that which is waiting to die.

There is no summer, only the cold rage of music in stone ears.

I hear the muddy tread of tears, and I feel like murder all over again--
--under a ceiling of dull broken stars, their filaments gray and dead,
suspended from slack rafters of frayed strings--
--I feel like murder all over again,
like flaking blood in my eyelashes, like I have slept
in a red rain and washed myself with Shaol's sweat,
sweeping out dripping arms and opening my mouth
To spout blood with choruses of Oh Israel,
Oh God, have you borne me in your throbbing womb--
dissolving clay--to grind my bony face
Into the feeling of murder all over again,
to make me a murderer all over again.

The war drums do not beat,
they are the stretched skins of man shrieking
with ululations of terror and woe;
A wild-haired, starve-ribbed God throws out red limbs
and thunders There is no mercy only Red for you,
Red is the stain of your breath, Red is the blush of your shame.
I have no water only blood for you to drink,
I have no wine only blood for your drunken hours
between your dusken collapse and your dawn sorrow.

You have no exorcism, says the wild God.
You have only the barbs in your tongue and the poison in your ears.

sorry, says me. sorry I had only sorrow
and murder all over again. only chains
of jagged broken stars that once burned like the wild eyes
of a wild God, these are my light and my salvation,
my mossy, damp tomb. I'd lay you there with me,
but I haven't the courage for murder, only the feeling;
I've got the wet swimming of blood in the cradle of my jaw,
beneath my tongue,
and I feel like murder all over again.

We are not alive,
we are dead,
and that taste of salt and tears
is the blood sighing from dry veins.