Intimate Stranger

OF PENISES AND PENINSULAS

the cento as dirge

Nonetheless,

it was too late.

By that time,

we had all been royally fucked.

(Clary Stopes)

I spent all night dreaming about god

as though some blank bird called

(There were) scuff marks where I

have been running from the shadows

the barbed wire

the bloody bodies the naked women

crawling in the hope of

staying alive

Alone at dawn, alone watching

the rotting face of the grinning thing

The open window means little

to the disheartened dreamer –

the world is empty as a song

and we lose the place where we belong

Alone at dawn, alone watching

the shadow dunes washing their black

back into a green sea of grass

the vertebrae of gulls aglow

and now as how blood

clots to black its platelets

of newspaper ink

splashing the banks of the river

so some other ass could drink it all up

Alone at dawn alone watching

the rotting face of the grinning thing

the hint of lips

held flush with papier-mâché and masking tape

walking on top of words so soft

(the memory of these passing breasts)

who fiercely guard the empty spaces between us

A gray horse looks into empty windows

The world is empty as a song –

the open window means little

to the disheartened dreamer

but we lose the place where we belong

Time is slow and moves at

a slackening rate as the fog floods

your valley with a frail sea

Don’t be afraid to open your eyes

though the rolling-calf

draws its chain in the wet grass

Why should our bodies

not steal from dreams?

I’ll deliver all the lands for the chosen in a single night

and what will I do with shoes, clothes, underwear?

Those kinds of things fell to men

who had the barbed wire

the bloody bodies, the naked women

clawing in the hope of

staying alive,

girls who were fourteen but looked legal enough

to the Dakotas’ drinking eyes

If death were a field of sugarcane

I am the mongoose’s tail burning a trail

through its snake ridden heart her

tan crust of skin roasting

in our smoke turning black

The open window means little

but we lost the place where we belong

to the disheartened dreamer

and the world is empty as a song –

you feel this most in our eye, the love

the torturous going their own way, sparks

in dying embers:

they all left

except the wineskin whore

People pull out their dead graves singing

these bedazzled beings dressed like foreigners

and in the street

a piano and the winter evening smells

of wine and roasted garlic

carbolic skin

and that silent slow smoke

from a cold coal stove

Not our abused gods but old wifeless

men in a procession that

precedes us immemorially with their dying

walking on tops of words so soft thought

that everything is burning everything

I spend all night dreaming about god

as though some blank bird calls:

Painted sparrows carry

my body to Elysium one

glittering bit at a time:

how slowly I say goodbye

How slowly I say goodbye

Don’t go without ringing

The boy’s ossified heart

And dance even when

You the only music

Putting on the cold shoes

Of a man leaving with certainty

Listen late, and you might hear the bark:

some things aren’t needed

some things aren’t said

and guide us to a calm in spite of ourselves

I can’t listen anymore

I’d like to die

in my poem a little while –

show me where

and go away

or face the rot of the grinning thing

looking into empty windows

That’s what you meant. Right, Bro?

New York, Sept. — Dec. 2006

With thanks. And dedicated to: Scott Bear Don’t Walk, Mercer Bufter, Brian Chung, Ishion Hutchinson, Brian Kalkbrenner, Dante Micheaux, James Miller, Mrigaa Sethi, Adam Wiedewitsch, Ron Villanueva, Ronnie Yates, and John Murillo.