8. the tic begins

new monster

you left me
like something flown
the cage

my ribs like
an empty cove

i was your altar
now i am
any shelf

you were my owner
but

now that you are gone
the hand on the leash
is fear's.

my tongue out
to catch

any wayward
gust of you
left

in this
white
emptiness.

raucous freshness

time draws the line.  addiction through time--i never knew, but time draws it, the line.

i thought i was addicted to drink.  i was not addicted to drink.  i find that now, when i go for weeks without a drop of drink.  nothing in me wants it with white-hot wanting.

and i thought i was addicted to smoking.  i am not addicted to smoking.  it is sometimes a wistful longing, a pang, the desire for smoking, but nothing like heart-deep, nothing like.

i was addicted to the cut. 
and i am still addicted to the cut. 
everything in me
unfurled down
that line 
made in my skin, everything
pooled
in the shade of that upwelling. 

even now i turn to stone
thinking of it, thinking
of loosing
feeling
in its
diasporate freshness,
its rapt white strength
of endurance in creation

and its blind red
result.

dearest

you realize that you're just going to have to do it all over again:
it began with a thought.

there was a cloudburst; there were sieves; there was a screaming thing.

there was the ever-present smell of eucalyptus.

and i thought, i dig my hands into the dirt and i dig up an explosion and

for what?  and for what? 

and for what did i give
you up?

roses

o magnum mysterium:
trapped by the literality
of a dumbass metaphor, i
ride
the backroads
of lafayette.

the world is velvet and blue
and the road is as if a feeling--
the road is as if a feeling--
and the curve of the wheel is a thought mirrored
in the action of the car.

the moon is a slice of white glass
counterdistinct to the point it might draw blood
the stars are white and the sky is black

the time is autumn
the flavor of the air is autumnal
autumn days have lovely thick light
and blue shadows, and autumn nights
are shadow piled upon shadow.

o rose in your pale mystery
your lustrous freshness leeched from you perhaps
yet not not ever the pale twilight colors of your drying
and the smell like raisins

o rose in your pale state
you wait for your lover to take you yet

resonance

you await yet
one drop of sanity to salvage itself
from this thing--the smoking wreck
of your sense of safety
and you await it alone because you have learned
to be your own hero
from a disney movie
and you are not good with words
and you are afraid.

but there is no connective thread
in your hand.  because flesh
was supposed to be your guard
but it betrayed you.

the connection isn't in your reach--
you watch it writhe somewhere down deep
like a live wire, sending out
such sparks
and you just
hurt yourself.

ich grolle nicht

because
i don't know
what goes here:

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0...

veronica

masquerade / paper faces on parade / masquerade / hide your face so the world will never find you

there is a sweater on the floor that my mom knitted of expensive yarn
i will have to take it apart and reknit it because i cannot wear white anymore.

just smile for me and let the day begin /
you are the sunshine that lights my heart within

my love, i bury my face
in your empty shirt.
i drench the cuffs of my shirt
in the spray from my heart.


why is it secret? / what have we to hide?

fingers like icicles
on the inner thigh.

zinc metaphor

i watched you slip by as if a river i looked into
had taken hold of my reflection
and run off with it.
the nitingale bled her note above me
and below were those pomegranates
staining the water.

i was a white thing, hurt's own.
stretched out across the sky like nuit,
light pricked from me.


the real secret of it was
that all my loves became one.
force,
and the vine-covered wall with
the mounded rosemary above it,
wreathed in fog, lit by
the orange street lamp.
force,
and the smoke of the cigarette,
its burn stubbing at my finger-ends,
over-sharp in the throat.
force, and you too
vanesa.

your dark hair i wished
to twine about my wrists--i must have wished
to feel your hair against my throat.

but my arms were lined
only with dry dull wine color
and the zinc-whiteness
of the scar.
everything
conflated
to the point
of nothing
like white teeth
running through a fruit
until nothing is left
no, not even the seed.

even you--
i imagined even you
devoured
by that seared dead whiteness.
which is why i never wanted.
which is why i only loved.

i wept in a dream

i wept in a dream, beloved.
i wept that you were not there or that you were
i wept into the stones your steps had touched
i wept into the hearts of the flowers your eyes had touched.

i wept in a dream, beloved.
teeth like stones, a broken line of jaw and throat
swallowing monumental words and
words' heat, the friction of
the tongue, lips, and teeth.

i wept in a dream that i was not near you.
when i was near you, i wept that i was near you.
i wept at the taste of your shadow in my mouth.
when i awoke, i was still weeping red tears inside the vein.

milton

and so my blood is powered by you.
it churns against itself for you, running miles and miles
in a taut circle, a claustrophobic dream of red--
you were there, though what i felt was a dream
you were a dream, but what i felt was real.

and so turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, my everything-maker;
up and down run run run run
the stairs to the tower are taut and cold
and the sky is gray as gray velvet

and inside something is striking at the wall
love or force
force in love
up and down the blood runs like
a rodent in a mill

a river cutting across a green landscape
there is a deer stopping to drink in the purple shade
of a poplar, its lines as clean as the running water

my pulse is just your drum
lover
my pulse is just your drum

quietus

love is the great good use
one person makes of another

indiscriminate
writing
ripping
things from out
the skin
and merchandising
them
i am
the tool
of sadness
the tool
of labor
i am
a lead weight
i am
colored like
an oyster
with the same
impassable lips

until
any fool rips
me open and
makes me his whore

(little polly
little polly
of the strawberry letter)

meditations of the beast

pouring out everything into a dust-rich air
as if i poured out liquor onto a grave,
in memory of a face.

i spend my life in mourning,
pouring out everything in mourning,
because no other path is forming.
i feel, therefore must feel something.
but love having destroyed me
initially
somehow nullifies
its saving capacity.

and so i am nothing,
nothing that love will give me. 
i am the queen of hell.
i am a blank smile.
souls scamper by
in misery and i am still
smiling.