BEFORE YOU I WAS SOMETHING ELSE

but now with the wind intruding through our cab’s lowered windows
I see the

sunburnt

shoulderblades

of

mountains.

A poem was completed today, but it is far too long to post here. Furthermore, it is in need of editing. There are poems I write that are in agreement with their own souls, and hardly need to be touched to communicate my intent--and then there are those that are so consumed with their own emotion that they require heavy inking once I have removed myself from their subject material for a time. The Brotherhood is one of the latter.

On the other hand, dear reader(s?), I feel guilty for teasing you--you have whittled your nails to nubs, poor creatures, crouching anxiously in darkness for the light of my words to reach you (insert ironic smile for clarification of online misinterpretations). Therefore, in the post prior to this you shall find one of my poems from some time ago, freshly re-edited (I'm not sure if the original was posted here), now devoid of all references to "slopping...red brains..."; it exists now as an ode to women who know how to be graceful. I do not say beautiful, for that is easy and not at all a question of carriage or skill or self-possession or intelligence or character, and grace takes all of these.

Also below you will discover a quote from Scandinavian playwright August Strindberg, whose Miss Julie I have just read. Before the play, he includes a preface that reveals many of his thoughts on theatre and the play itself. While I found him a tad arrogant, and Miss Julie to be slightly heavy-handed, he made some wonderful points that reflect some of my own opinions on storytelling as an art form.



"Recently, my tragedy The Father was criticized for being too sad, as if one should expect cheerful tragedies. People clamor pretentiously for "the joy of life," and theatre managers call for farces, as if the joy of life lay in being silly and depicting people as if they were all afflicted with St. Vitus's dance or imbecility. I find the joy of life in its cruel and powerful struggles, and my enjoyment comes from being able to know something, being able to learn something."

Amen.

SHE KNOWS HOW TO CARRY HERSELF

I love it when she
dons the slim black one—

METAMORPHOSES into that

tall jet cylinder
of sumptuous class;
ramrod of gumption;
powder keg of sass.

ALTAR BOY

strewn
jags like nickels
white as whispers.
the pale dust of
broken things
palpitates in the candlelight.

in my haste
I have torn my cassock;
here I have
no broom
to purge the sanctuary
of

all my worship
poured upon that slim
and aching moon.

THE LOVE ARSON

I want to
drag you
from the burning house
and
shoot you through the mouth.

FLASH FRAME

I.

these
pictures show me
more what I’m hoping for
and not what I’m getting.

the picture show
that cost a dime
robs me of sixseventyfive now. I’d complain
but that happens a lot nowadays.

II.

sundays we’d sit, youandI,
cackling at fat girls in formal dresses
and the slim stilettos they’d stab in chunky boyhearts,
arm in arm
swanking through theatre doors
with flat blinking blue eyes.
your eyes were like that,
I didn’t notice
then.

sundays they were the movies,
who needed a ticket sure as hell not me.
one day I show up hot dog hungry for youandI,
and you were in the square
of the theatre door
and blue light blinking on your shouldersandbreasts,
your face to the screen.

Oh, but to write is a sweetly succulent thing.


TAILORS ARE NOT ALL WEALTHY MEN

you wear evening like a red scarf
and autumn feels good that way.

the cusp of your throat
fluttering like purple silk,
this is what
I have made love to.

and shall I make love
to the wool of silence
now
that you are
the red lip of evening light
beneath the door, fading.

(I have left things
in the sun for days,
and they are faded now).

and I
had had plans
to fashion the most stylish of garments.

The first full draft of a piece I have been tinkering with for the last few weeks--a tad on the experimental side, but we'll see what the critics say.


PEOPLE MY AGE

the radio is a smithandwesson.
I slump in the seat and feel
my torn gut and hurt,
what’ll I tell the missus.
the radio’s black spume
has obscured the real shape of things.

what’ll I tell the missus—
baby the payphone is like
your mouth in the dark, and I
don’t want to touch it
anymore. darling why darling?
I’m on and off baby, shove
me a nickel and I’ve got a few minutes,
but my jaw gets tired of
telling
things.

doc allen said people my age
shouldn’t have ulcers.

doc I been shot on and off
december through august,
a black receiver like
a hot black smithandwesson mouth
detonating
thisandthat and whatIdidtoday.

relax.

night dogs night;
hours squeeze the long muzzle
against my teeth—
I lean against cold graffiti
triggering
detonations
with my tongue.
and the powder lugs down
my throat in wet clods.

doc allen say
where you get these ulcers,
you got stress?

I say
blanks, blanks,
blanks.