2001-05-04 - 3:43 p.m. - the first canto of a work in progress under the working title, he does the fishes in different lakes.
"A Challenge to God"Where there is sweat
mosquitoes breed, licking
the hair on our arms, anticipating
the sweet taste
of the syrup that ties
our insides together, red
like painted lips, and tasting
of pennies pressed beneath tongues
in an attempt to fool the mmercury
that calls us sick.
Yesterday was a snowstorm, coming
across the level terrain,
from which we hid
our tender skin with garments
of cotton and wool.
Is this the best that you can do,
spring? your greens are white
and your whites, grey. Colors
melt and mix together in an abstract
paint by numbers. Mother always made us
use the washable paints. I squint
in low light for much
of the night and sleep while the sun
burns your skin.
--
Wenday and Becky left
so many good intentions back
behind the particle
board storefronts. Wacth
your step, the slightest falter
could send this imaginary city
to the ground, flat;
"I heard Hollywood
fell from the sky and landed on the dying towns, founded in gold,
kicked up a cloud
of dust and saved
the windows from their futures --
covered by boards and under
the new ownership
of ghosts -- and from beneath the edge
of the city, toes roll
into feet and Bruce
soliloquizes of her as a vision
dancing across the porch
as the radio plays.
--
in the spring, all of my friends make love, and i just listen for rain.
--
Is this the best you can do, fate?
--
another sunrise
i had not thought the sun
undoes so many stars
each morning. Here is the proof:
our hearts become the stuff of burning
furnaces, fueld by the conversion
of hydrogen into helium; the haunting
of our hearts by imploded stars
that become invisible in the bronze
mo(u)rning sky. I form a fist
the hold the accumulation of all our
hearts and their histories;
and i shake my fist, scraping
knuckles bloody against the liminal
space between and beyond
the sun and the moon.
"Is this the best you can do,
God?"
Come down here and fuck me
to my face, eye to eye
so that you might freeze in the ice
of my stare, and we can deconstruct you
with chisels and piques,
God.
I double dog dare you.
xoxo
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