Not satisfied with it yet. We shall see what comes of it.


RETINUE

I have come here
for you,
to this the ugliest city.

I tell you that
I dredge the lingering streets
with gluttonous fingernails red
from scraping the gloam
of taillights off
my cheeks.

night vaults the slum
and gloats atop the sexy billboard—
that brown bramble of legs, you
know the one—
I would clamber now
and ascend the blue scaffold
of your flesh
for which my
fingernails have so longed.

Two, to make up for the lack of original material of late. These particulars are fresh out the literary oven.


RED POPPIES IN THE WHEAT

I cried out.
your hands like moist folds
of wind then
you said
I am with you here.

and when you turned
away on your side
I saw
the flushed pits
my fingers had made.

DISENCHANTMENT

the artists I admire
always turn out to be
slouched men in misarrayed suits.

You, sculptor of my intimate linens,
Once were the grandest of these.

As I skimmed through some old poetry the other day, I discovered a piece from before the Revolution. The original was terrible, but I saw a salvageable core at its heart. As an exercise in contrast, I present to you the original draft, followed by the revision. *Note: the revision is still a work in progress.


WINTER WANTON

I know you are
like paper and that your skin shivers
under blue sweating lidless moons, dry sheaves.
Salty bite hissing up against the leeward side of the wind,
the bareboned white of your shiny lips,
the cedar in your dollhouse hair.

The breath of yours
that slithers between my teeth
and expires in a frail shudder on the cusp of my throat
does not remember its bellows, no patience
with the slow weep of the sun’s bleeding fire
across the uncurled fields languishing smoky and green,
their ruts hushed and expectant for the
silent-jawed movement of cloud driving cold
between them.

I know you are
like paper and your skin shivers
and is soaked in blind ditches sluiced open
with rain. I don’t want to disappoint baby but
your ink has run about under your eyes
and made you appear
so wanton.

WINTER WANTON (REVISION)

I know you are
like uncurled fields,
panting
from the clouds’
silent-jawed rush
through your furrows.

and baby I can tell
when the rain
has
sluiced you open.

Some thoughts that seized me this morning:

I cannot imagine life without struggle. From the time that I began to be cognizant of myself as a being composed of actions, thoughts, choices, and principles, I have fought against those things I regarded as antithetical to my constitution, and when I could not find such antitheses, I fought myself.

I cannot live here. If I become a part of this system which is responsible for so much that I abhor, I will lose that warlike part of my soul from which stems my fire and my birth.

This does not change my mission. The slugging match with this art must continue—it is the only thing that hurts and beckons me so relentlessly.

Hold on to your breeches. I feel night shoving its fingers through my hair, and it's going to be prolific.


WAIL

wouldn’t have given
a nickel to see that
skinny white boy,
but

hand
that skinny boy
a guitar.

Damn.