Thursday, March 29, 2012

Catholic

¡Ah! let us breathe in this sweet city air. Bonnie "Prince" Billy + Matt Sweeney: "Superwolf". Falling asleep last night: a geometric crumbling; fat rectangles of brick loosening by degrading rectangle strings of mortar. A hand brushes silent chimes.

Suddenly, I remember: I spell only what I want me to see. Those that lurch along with my shadow on sidewalks are too finished to mention.

A good Catholic boy, I return home, light my candles, and open my bottle of wine. Memories: incense swung so graceful through auburn light, comfort in age, the scent in wood grain. Our Father, who art in Heaven, how be my name? Thy kingdom come, on Thy path I lope and sneer, Thy Will be done on Earth long before I Thy servant shall do it in Heaven. You give me today my bread, and You forgive my Trespasses as the wind brushes dust from a lichen, and I've yet to forgive those who've trespassed against us. Please, lead me to temptation, for what else is this blessed Life, but deliver us, always, from sin, for we are still Your violent fucking apes.

I need a phone, if only to call my momma and poppa. I miss them terribly. Tonight; I Will Puke.

Hydrogen Peroxide! Tiny walls of band-aids! Dead butterflies; this sounds so stupid, ¡but true, all true! Thumbtacks, sunglasses, six-sided nuts needing filthy grimace, needing a dam's relief.

[draw a dragon here]

"MISA CRIOLLJA"

when church meant something Else, when the fresh spice tasted behind our eyes meant more than the words lounging in our throats.

Everything else is stupid stupid meat. I'm going to consider various properties of water, stare at a cigarette while crouched on a porch that cellulose [word illegible] decrees as "mine".

no, fuck you
I'm going to bed.

I will take on planetary rage, I will take on christening the stage, just give me more red wine to sip on!

3-9, $12:52 am-ish

Hunched in the shower, staring at my crossed legs through the milky dew of water in my eyelashes, I wish the shower head a gun, to increase pressure and weight by powers of ten, to explode upon my sore sore back, sore from weeks of excess and unthinking chess moves, sore from days of flu fever and bed. My back would arch and recoil as if I were coming, maybe I would come, my ribs would splinter through the thin skin of my chest, a roar of violence trailing blood and flecks of gristle and semen to pirouette towards the drain. I would be all laugh, all joy, all tears, all dead and ripped apart, dying so satisfied, dying in the cataclysmic orgasm of relief. That's how bad I need a back rub right now.

Shall I tell which colors I see
dancing in the prism of dust
afraid to settle on her aquiline head?
No, not yet.
Shall I tell you how she tastes,
what lightning is, what red wine wishes it were?
No, not yet.
Shall I tell you how she smells,
shapeless herbs free of our fisted taxonomy?
No, not yet.
Seas of sun on wheat,
something sweet and melted in June.
No, not yet.

3-8

This sort of loving I can do alone,
perhaps better alone,
akin to a religion
and a personal grip of God,
a faith in my own limitations
and in the unending torrent
of that love
bashing me against winter's bricks
breaking bones
in a search for an amber spring.

No haste, no haste;
to rush the inevitable
is to laugh at this religion,
shake off the cloak of this face,
throw it upon the sidewalk
and march alone, totally alone,
so heavy, so unlearned,
so sure.

"Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud nor long."*

Wild as I am, wild as they come, I stretch and my back cracks like a cat. My eyes land on each breaking stick, maybe something to eat, to pounce upon, to bat against the wall until I lose interest.

There are secrets in every step, in every crevice of our alleys and stoops, and these lazy-lidded warriors know them all. No spark unworthy of investigation, no piece of shining meat unworthy of a roll on my tongue or a schism within my broken mouth. See how the world tastes, always new, see how it smells, always new. I am unbored, so unbored. My naps are lies, my dreams are lies. I feel coiled like a mean spring, wound and wounded by an unending and desperately mild winter.

"He pulls up his trousers, and buckles the belt. 'Why else do you like me?'
She looks at him. 'Shall I tell you?'
'Tell me.'
''Cause you haven't given up. 'Cause in your stupid way you're still fighting.'"**

Hafta wrap my fingers in masking tape on account of me breaking my hand. It's old hat now, I understand the consequence, know that after a few weeks the stabbing swelling pain accompanying my right hand balled into a pitiful fist will fade. Lesson; none. Last time this happened, perhaps four or so years ago, I set the bone by standing on it, flattening it under the heel of my cowboy boot, finished a quart of Budweiser, called my mother, and decided to see what marijuana was all about.

*Eliot
**Updike