the words come in the bath
the paper is wet
and ink running
like blood
like me
She has killed a father
but never a husband (yet)
He sitting in the tub
as if he is waiting
shot in the head from behind
each man wants to love Jezebel
on a morphine landscape
caring not then to be damned
I have no words for this
she climbs higher
she falls lower
he falls lower still
he is the only junkie in Heaven
there is a revolution in our souls
we do not want to be human
we do not want to speak
we want to understand
the magic in those books
we want to pray and die
we want to eat and live
and never die
she is of scarlet
and ebony hangs from her head
naked at the desk she writes
and asks me if I'm all right
she walks and her hair fans just so
she touches me and fades
is she dead or I?
1. nutrition landscapes, the junkie and his needle
2. words and books, reading just so
3. dead in a bath tub - bullet to the back of the head
4. waiting - waiting - waiting for loss or answers
5. the warden wanders Watanabe
then.. as mysteriously as it had... it was....
my job here
eat
is to listen
drink
keep quiet
sleep
keep the pencils sharp
pray
white slave in Taiwan
luck
pull the muscles sharp
run
drag down
walk
explore corner mirrors
learn
shifty eyes bulging arms
talk
rip it up
study
tear it across
travel
beat is pounding
grow
heart is pulsing hammering
breed
shatter yourself
foster
try to live
bleed
beat eat sleep
vanquish
di(vorc)e
die
India the sun setting (I. the sun setting)
A girl praying at my feet for money
Never discouraged - who will buy her
Take her home as a souvenir
I feel so empty this Christmas
We travelers are all urchins
Drinkin' our whiskey on the sand
imagining:
A place where saying "I want sex on the beach"
doesn't mean ordering a stupid drink
Strolling along, hearing couples
Start to yell out in excruciating pain
As sand starts gumming up the moving parts
Alone all the time
Thinking all the time,
'bout language and perception
truth and reality
Poetry and words forming and dissolving
The day the words, the urchins
Watching me write something strange
A millionth of reality, what we see smell hear taste feel
Even light might have substance
I only believe in what I can see and hear
The most thoughtless words ever uttered
And the sun is going down.
You may guess
Correct.
Why is the sky blue?
Is it because "the atmosphere of an orb our size
refracts the rays of a yellow sun to blue
instead of the other six colors of the visible spectrum?"
Or is it "magic?"
One in ten speculations may be correct
Or even if it's a hundred
One may still be correct
but one is certainly one
Knowledge from nothing
What are your hundred guesses?
Stupid people say
Hate is not the opposite of love
The opposite of love is no love
The opposite of light is no light
No light is dark
No love is hate
Love is no hate
My thinking may come too late
But my food is early.
Route One
Maine
Northbound
neon lack
halogen lack
coastal black
night water
is darker
than sky
and we
are knocking
down these
pine miles
in a rented
forest green
Mustang with New York
plates
like we were
back on I-45
back on I-10
thorugh San Antonio
but not quite
son of a bitch
some bitch
the cork in this bottle
of blueberry wine
has broken on
the Swiss Army knife
corkscrew
so we'll sieve the stuff
through our teeth
like sea-water
haleen
soon seen
with a money-back guarantee
on the hump-back experience
(can't put anyhting over on a couple of Trinity gals)
and this wine...
a Goulsboro vintage
this year... hell, this week
should be blueberry sweet
blueberry pie liquefied
and we get
vinegar
we get
sour
we get
surprised
by no sulfides
rolling through Wiscasset
we get
pissed
I'll keep you posted
on the mystery of
Maine blueberry wine
and why
it just flat-out sucks
I'll sort that out
this winter
some local phenomena
take sub-zero temperatures
to understand
and here
and here
eventually
every January
can explain
every Summer
mystery
New England
winters
unravel
bright yarn
This state
can sort it's own
I've seen
order
place
arrangements
underneath snow
in patterns
that don't
make sense
until Spring
there is time where there
are fireplaces
and truth where there
are small fires
And now you're going back to Houston
with all the random artist men
and they are failing you
bruising you
and one might fail me yet
but now that you've seen this
here
been in this
here
been centered by this
here
you'll know that they fail
simply because they have not seen
here
alone in their splattered studios
they know they are missing
the visions that might break them
through to beauty
a few of the better ones might hear it in another sea
and know that the edges of their souls
have been singed by the wind from Cadillac Mountain
and these ashen curls are moving into their hearts
but it stops
here
it is North
and they are not
here
where you have just been
But you can start telling them
from the curb otuside the Houston
Intercontinental
baggage claim
that Marsden Hartley's
hills are purple
because
simple, they are
and Winslow Homer's light is patient
because
the sea has taught it to be
and the Wyeth's
fine inked wire lined
solitude
is real
is terrible
is sharp
is soft
is needed
is joyful
because yo have walked right through it
stood in the center of it
here
Blueberry wine
is a sour mystery to me
but the men here
another matter to explain
they are
at deepest core
most impressed
by past impression
they project against
superior background
Maine has worked
on them well
has carried the past
through in their veins
men born smelling snow
in late Summer
swaddled to squint
in facing cold
January wind
as Texas narrows a man's eyes
with sharp sun and mirages
on concrete
these men here
still see what lies
beneath the turnpike
know exactly
what they are
driving on
to know them
go
in the early dawn
to the wooden house
where that man
was living
the first time he
had a woman
stand on that landing
that porch
pause
at the doorknob
of his mother's house
turn full around
to see the view
he saw then
here it would be sea
here it would be wood
look up to see the very same piece of sky
at same time of day
in same season
that framed the outline
of the first girl he loved
at the first mment he knew htis
at the door of his mother's house
remember that view
know that benchmark
make that backgrond
your canvas forever
wear the colors
that can carry his memories
through
until they collide
centrally
brilliant
in you alone
weave
that sea
that wood
into
the lines
of your face
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