zinc metaphor

the equation is simple:

you never existed.

i never

touched your lips.

and i never fit

against your side.

and i never breathed

in

the scent

of your hair.

crawl in, something else,

and strip off this sick zodiac

whiteness. sounds

choke in the mouth;

their zinc white

burns

in the throat.

i hardly can stand this thing

with its weak blue veins like a starved delta.

its thin, thin scalp and

the broken roots of its hair.

the way it flickers

in the mirror

and i see you

sumptuous

there.

zinc metaphor

i like to think

myself

present

and i confess

that this is why

i address myself

to you

veronica.

(deep in the caverns

of my heart

there is a coin.

it has two faces

unchanging

and the metal

in the center

writhes

between them,

turned liquid

under pressure.)

zinc metaphor

(deep in the caverns

of my heart

there is a coin.

it has two faces

unchanging

and the metal

in the center

writhes

between them,

turned liquid

under pressure.)

turn away,

turn away life

and re-trap me

in the cypress' bark

and come aground,

the stopped heart,

come aground

and bear me

in your crucible

of unbreathing blood.

deep between

the walls of two visions

unfolds

a plane beyond time

weaving itself

of motion and desire:

spill me there,

white heart,

away from the bone depth

of your helpless drought--

spill me out apocryphate,

beyond sight,

splitting

with wetted sound,

at the least,

self-enfolding.

zinc metaphor

the dream is of
a landscape littered
solely
with its own length
and its own breadth:

a space, crumpled
between substance and
concept like

a sheet gripped
in clutching hands.

turned this way and that
i am a snow globe of positions.


the things i do not allow myself
are only the things i need

if i cannot cajole this one
pathetic miracle--
the rough pleating
of substance
and concept--
into the length and breadth
of my hands.

zinc metaphor

charon says:

she was not
even
halfway there
monseigneur

she saw
the water-road
unfold
before

her dark eyes
heard
the spent ones'
cries

she jumped
into the waves
and said let me
swim for shore

she had paid in
full
monseigneur
so i did not

stop her
i do not know
if she is still
swimming

zinc metaphor

love

love is

love is tied

tied up

up in

tied up in pain

like

like fat

like fat ties

ties up

up the

ties up the vein.

zinc metaphor

open split
open
split
open like
a shell
like a shell
with its cream
center so
smooth

i will bury the lightless
inside-bone cavity but i will be told the truth

i will mouthe your image and spit it out like bone
i will crown your brow with brown hide
i will cowl your visage with a broken membrane in my mind
i will do such things
i know not yet what they are


zinc metaphor:
too heavy for plumbing

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.

zinc metaphor

some would call it relentless whining, but i choose to think of it as recycling, what i do here on restless mouth.  the topics i examine over and over with the staleness of fixation, reteaching myself to hold onto my first love, to rechronicle and rerechronicle pain black as a prepubescent's ballpoint ink, and in the simplest of all possible terms--colors, things that don't hang together, conceits resembling badly-jointed furniture.

and i read ginsberg's chronicles of his everyday, his autoerotic travels and his visions, and so much joy, so much incisive, every line scissor-cut with love, accepting himself as--hell, striving to be--outside the grid, and he writes with joy he doesn't understand.

but i'm passing, and it matters to me--matters that i don't make my difference a thing of uncomfort for anyone else, matters that i keep it as private as a sore in a lightless place.  and so i prowl around behind words, throwing the same ones at the same subjects.  i write with words i don't understand, though, and subjects i don't understand.  and i never understand them any better.

i just

throw farther.

zinc metaphor

masks:

if the sky that we look upon
should crumble and fall
and the mountains tumble to the sea

the image is of
the fact that
i once loved
you.

i won't be afraid, no, i won't shed a tear
just as long as you stand by me

that
just once
to have loved

to just once
have tumbled
into that ocean
of juice
from its cliff
of pearl

broken
swollen
on its
taut tide

to have
masked
desire
with your
name

darling, darling, darling
stand by me.

zinc metaphor

rhododendrons are bright pink flowers
they are the cups of the morning.

rhododendrons are salmon pink and white
against a deep green leaf.

an unpleasantly fuzzy stem complements
the rhododendron, the cup of the morning.

even the dead leaves don't lose color.
they turn a caramel brown.


the zinc metaphor
spreads
over everything

zinc metaphor

it was a layer of zinc i acquired
willfuly
caked deep
down into the skin
until
i was a different me.

as if in every cell
this my sick white fought
with your fairy coin.

so that when i creamed
sound
it glinted lamp-gold--
that is,
a glittering expulsion.

posessed:
your
fist.

reposessed:
my dirt
is
zinc caked nail-thick,
zinc in the vein,

poison, yes,
poison.
sweet poison.