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.