a stopped clock
at my parents’ house reads:
10 hours, 6 minutes, 30 seconds
& I wonder:
What day or night,
of what month,
of what year
did it just stop?
Where were my parents?
Where was I?
Where were you?
Did I know you yet?
Did I yet know?
Do you now know?
Will you ever know?
Will I?
Who knows?
I’d like to.
a fallen paper swan
wrapped in gold wire
dies quietly alone
on a rug filled with years of stains
while its mate looks down from above
suspended near a glowing orb of clean white light.
as far as birds go, (& i’m no expert),
i can’t tell the sex apart
unless one is acting in a motherly nature -
but, then -
perhaps that’s just me being presumptuous & sexist -
against the swans, &, i suppose, humans too.
you see, i’m not sure which swan took the plunge that day -
the male or the female -
& hell,
it’s quite probable they both did -
& maybe i’m just looking too far
into what my tiny brain
is examining as metaphor…
but after i set my ego aside,
& i let the one who fell lay untouched for awhile,
it really makes me wonder.
so, to be sure,
or rather,
in a lame duck attempt to assert my honking strength and goodness,
i pour myself a cup of tea,
turn off the light,
& leave the thing alone in the dark.
it’s been over a week now
& i still can’t bring myself to move it.
i found a hole in the crotch of my underwear this morning.
& i stared at the flesh of my penis
through the window of worn out cloth for a few moments -
considering a multitude of things, really -
including, but not limited to:
how a woman might feel undressing me for the first time
only to find Miss Raggedy Ol’ Panties underneath these well fitting jeans,
or how the hole got there to begin with,
leading up to-
“When was the last time I bought underwear, anyways?”,
and, finally,
trying to remember the first moment i acknowledged my penis as sexual…
& then, for no reason at all, I reached down
& digging my fingers into this hole
in an act not dissimilar
to some primitive man finding himself clothed for the first time -
i tore the crotch of my undergarments clean out by the seam.
& i sat there pleased for a few moments
with my dick hanging out, finishing my ginseng tea,
& resolved to buy myself new underwear in the near future.
If the red light’s on
and the rest of the house is dark
it means I’m here
smoking on the porch.
an animal - I’m not sure what -
(a bird? racoon maybe?)
screeches through the trees across the street
then goes silent.
it’s odd to renotice and remember simple things
that connect you to who you were 10 years ago
like the sound of a gate creaking shut
in the middle of a quiet night
or the smell of juniper
or even just feeling a certain moisture & quality of air entering your lungs.
it makes me wonder if i’ve been doing it all wrong…
i mean- there are crickets violining away
& armadillos blindly waddling past them to go dig up some grub
& deer unblinking confoundedly at me here in my red glow
& i think:
i could do this forever…
i’m compelled to notice more
& drink less
& try to be more thankful for what i have.
but then.
where would you be?
a dog barks.
then all is silent again.
i want a home like this with someone like you.
i may not share this with you for some time -
or then again - i may.
i do have a tendency towards rash impulse…
but for now
i’ll turn off the red light,
put out my cigarette,
& hope that i can at least dream of it.
never have I seen
more beautiful irises
in such a lovely patch of a lady-
& a real lady she is.
we speak softly
hearing every word.
my, what a breath of fresh air it is
not to yell & lose my voice
(as I am oft to do; more on par with the tendencies of bag ladies…)
gentle color of something,
you make me want to pull my ass up,
& become again.
& maybe love is a piece of paper torn to bits
but i feel like suddenly someone handed me a fresh roll of scotch tape
or a fresh piece of paper all together.
the kale would never hang in my teeth like a corpse,
because you’d let me know-
& I’d never let you hang, because I’d hang first.
I welcome the sun & it’s nice to be living
instead of dragging around
all affected, swollen Mr. Moon-
all full up on passion & MSG…
I can finally listen to trumpet again.
& I thank you.
Victor
i taste smoke in my glass
like a man trapped in an elevator
laid out like someone’s grandfather.
time is all wasted and nymphs with yellow teeth
chew at a memory full of holes
like a light loving night time insect
at the same grandfather’s sweaters.
the fright of stagnant cardboard
the neglect of age and stench of circumstance
my God-
an earwig whispers secrets that, quite frankly,
I’d rather not hear at this time of night.
for the cornpullers all burning gas together
talking about the Japs they had back in the day
arcing their frames in the doorway like an apparition
from a dream a fucked nightmare you leap from
clawing at the syphilis you contracted in another world
the penis you should’ve rid yourself of
that sprouting perennial anxiety annual piety.
shards of tobacco fill your coat pockets
and you wonder
how many smokes could be made
how many smokes have you lost
how many smokes have you given away
how many smokes have you smoked
how many smokes are smoking in heaven’s ashtray
worse-than-horror summer twilight
saws at your testicles and holds your hand
twirling your pubes with a painted nail.
he acted like a mosquito
but he was really just a gnat
lacking the true blood sucking devices.
a camera, six canvasses hiding thirty four paintings
under a compost heap of incompletions and
half-retarded maxims and
secret soup made by god himself, he said,
which only tasted alright at best -
thinking he’d inherited the forest
already chopped down for subpoenas and
bad poetry and long winded emails
meant to be printed out and hand
delivered all highly ridiculous neobaroque.
our sheets on the line undulating, roaring,
like a masked corpse tits aframe -
shining precious junk ships chockfull o tiresome merchandise
masticating ludicrous bones - a baby’s a relative’s -
where can a woman go on a night like this?
the perverts with the dicks almost out already
the foreign girls vibrating anxiously already
the King of Douchebag Mountain claims the ugliest
for nobility’s sake, for sport, for hideous glory.
subjects screaming in the balcony
holding their bellies all sick on scum and leashes
his answers make no sense:
the astroturf, the famed
Brit, the dope smoking faggotry, the name
dropping idolatry, the self preserving
tragedy, the jackoff bathtub malady.
a charred chapel holding an antifreeze linseed oil crown
and death rolls from his mouth.
“you can’t polish a turd” i told him.
I’m afraid he didn’t get it or listen.
