perpetuating the melodrama
I.
could you see
the look on my face
when you told me the
saddle was on the
back of a sand dune
that you could ride
anywhere,
as long as you wanted.
that it would never need
any water or sleep
and if its lips began
to bleed,
well,
it was a mirage that
simply had to be.
II.
you tumbled down the stairs
so slowly i was able
to shoot a roll of film
showing that
every step was
a new angle that
burned into you like a
wedge of acid.
i bit my lip sitting
on a chair you had broken
but never closed my eyes.
III.
you’d like to take a shower
and wash out the rorschach
ink from your memory
but you know damn well
that pills do a better job
and they can be your
mattress and diaper
and refrigerator
until the side effects,
or an emergency room doctor
slaps your face.
until the music is over.
until new earthquakes.
beaten up by the day
the wind goes through my heart like a screw on a day so obtuse it
couldn’t bend anymore. a summer day is a vase knocked over. a burial
for seeds that never rooted. a straw-yellow day is seldom as dry as
you think and i jump on it with heavy boots, even if it is as useless as an old
broom. i remember many years ago it killed a mouse. now it drips like
a faucet and i try to stomp the water into retreat. it is my day,
eventual and painful. i can chew it like cud. i can walk around it.
but it pulls like a fish hook and i never bleed enough to bleed for
the last time. the wind crumbles me like cork into a silly battalion
of pieces the spiders walk over. today is a large ripe day. a juicy
abdomen threatening to burst. it sweeps me down wooden steps like
dead pollen. i am immeasurable in time.
digits bigger than myself
cultures suffocate
as the zipper is
pulled up to the last
tooth by fingers
bigger than countries.
fertile land turned to fog;
the vengeance of worms
building up through the day
sucks the sun into the soil
at night.
horizons with red skies
are allegories.
earth’s rotations are illusions
unless you stand inside the
observatory.
orbits
slow as eons,
fossilize
before they complete.
i am a sugar cube in a feedbag
of oats and heavy syrup,
and while evolution offers ample
change
it ignores its tangents
until they decompose in blind alleys.
i am stuck on a pincushion
of unbelievable numbness
thrown into a drawer after
insects are mounted under glass
by fingers bigger than continents.
I.
could you see
the look on my face
when you told me the
saddle was on the
back of a sand dune
that you could ride
anywhere,
as long as you wanted.
that it would never need
any water or sleep
and if its lips began
to bleed,
well,
it was a mirage that
simply had to be.
II.
you tumbled down the stairs
so slowly i was able
to shoot a roll of film
showing that
every step was
a new angle that
burned into you like a
wedge of acid.
i bit my lip sitting
on a chair you had broken
but never closed my eyes.
III.
you’d like to take a shower
and wash out the rorschach
ink from your memory
but you know damn well
that pills do a better job
and they can be your
mattress and diaper
and refrigerator
until the side effects,
or an emergency room doctor
slaps your face.
until the music is over.
until new earthquakes.
beaten up by the day
the wind goes through my heart like a screw on a day so obtuse it
couldn’t bend anymore. a summer day is a vase knocked over. a burial
for seeds that never rooted. a straw-yellow day is seldom as dry as
you think and i jump on it with heavy boots, even if it is as useless as an old
broom. i remember many years ago it killed a mouse. now it drips like
a faucet and i try to stomp the water into retreat. it is my day,
eventual and painful. i can chew it like cud. i can walk around it.
but it pulls like a fish hook and i never bleed enough to bleed for
the last time. the wind crumbles me like cork into a silly battalion
of pieces the spiders walk over. today is a large ripe day. a juicy
abdomen threatening to burst. it sweeps me down wooden steps like
dead pollen. i am immeasurable in time.
digits bigger than myself
cultures suffocate
as the zipper is
pulled up to the last
tooth by fingers
bigger than countries.
fertile land turned to fog;
the vengeance of worms
building up through the day
sucks the sun into the soil
at night.
horizons with red skies
are allegories.
earth’s rotations are illusions
unless you stand inside the
observatory.
orbits
slow as eons,
fossilize
before they complete.
i am a sugar cube in a feedbag
of oats and heavy syrup,
and while evolution offers ample
change
it ignores its tangents
until they decompose in blind alleys.
i am stuck on a pincushion
of unbelievable numbness
thrown into a drawer after
insects are mounted under glass
by fingers bigger than continents.