THEN I SAID

A series of shouts
morning night
just after before sleep
must wake the neighbors wondering
the clapping sound and thumps

the rashes I felt from lack of a mineral
on your ass
some element like Selenium
why in this day and age carry a rash around
that doesn’t need scratching or even seeing to?

Hell Fire sometimes they call it
or Shingles
such a base and pedestrian name for
such a hard-fought condition
Listen, I let my immune system down for you

I don’t give up eating for strangers

He’s called Bells after the prostitute’s whisky
he comes as the world falls and he sees it fall
but he does not care
all his seamen shot into Fruit of the Loom
to dry and be washed away with biodegradable detergent
in this room he says, the dust heaps up faster
than ever before in his life
sometimes he thinks he could vacuum it up
when his bed shakes from the washer next door
smoke sometimes seeps under the door and the girl
who smokes is smoking again
it is annoying he thinks. Smoke in rooms
it piles on top of dust as sure as damn dawn.

Who are his heroes?
He asks me: was I wasting my serious youth, laughing when
I should have been crying?
My bank account my shoes my piles of paper, are his
as real as ice, my life is a simple song, like his
Hum it! (goddamit)
That’s his hope I think
A strong simile like mirrors spat on with toothpaste
A lifetime of work to represent
thoughts
A futile endeavor if there ever was one
A man sucked into seconds
Like a man sucked into seconds

Another tea-candle gave in
the silent way favored by their like and tallowy smoke
rose up from the table. I suppose these things go mostly unnoticed
and without much struggle. It’s just over
in a very mundane and
matter of factly way. No more matter to burn, end of burning
Like this poem, no more to say, no more saying

there is whisky in the beauty full
of condensate liquid sugar coloring
there’s nothing left of my love for you
It went this way:
I saw you come into the yard with a backpack
I was smoking and drinking together with Paul
No notice made then, suck suck the cigarette
Clink clink the ice cubes around and around in Gin
My shirtsleeves rolled up like a man from 1950
Oh, and the hair flowing, tanned, drunk, soon going to America
I made my table laugh and went for some more wine
On my way back, hey I saw you
Oh dear
So the sun took farewell with sun soaked warm leaves
The neighborhood dogs let in
Certainly moisture was coming from the ground
Coal sizzling away
My plate was full of Waldorf salad
Gaby got married had a child and Tom was fat
Oh the time it had flown
“I’ll write this dissertation on Habermas”. No you won’t
It’s Ken from the army, he wants to talk to you
The dark
Wine the cigarettes and the lust not wanting sleep never
Your arm came to the chair next to
“you have no concept of the public sphere”
And piercing eyes you had, that’s clear
“No censorship necessary do you hear me, not necessary”
Let’s go to the other side oh
Of the house where they’re eating Marshmallows
Promise made and promise promise
You’re so thin
In the gravel do you want to lay me down
yes goodbye
heavy burden of mine that I never carried

I go down and try to think, I go down and
from there I look out onto the street and wait. Then I go to the park
and look at the city and I see and believe that the city is as good as a painting.
The hum of busses and leaves rustling accompany that
and when it’s over I, who was standing and watching
go back into the grid below
that’s where I belong
and so it be, chemists, florists and me were never acquainted
but drugs and flowers are everywhere. How can it be the broad day and still feel
like the predawn?

it started at the time my grandmother and I
went on holiday. I met a nice young girl
11 like me and we walked to the mall in the little
tourist-trap and got food poisoned by some
ice cubes in a glass of coke or seven-up
and was left to eat soup and boiled chicken for
a few days. A car stopped next to us and pretended they
wanted to take us away that night
coming back from the mall
I was afraid to my bones then
maybe that’s what gave me the fever and the vomiting
not the ice cubes in the glass of coke or seven-up
That little shit of a white car!

I broke my arm some weeks after that, skating in front of our house
It must have been a kick-flip, or a varial

it felt good when the plaster came on
it felt much better when the plaster came off
I nearly fainted and felt sick
as hell
as if I’d eaten something bad or was ill
but it felt real good as well

I don’t know why I’m telling you this
at all, it’s water under some bridge with moss on it
and my grandmother’s dead

But I remember her soft skin
from applying all that lotion
we two could just sit and say something
and feel really good just
A few years later we were having dinner at a
Chinese restaurant
We liked that food us two
but when I left and walked to the train, and she
walked back
her way
I stopped and looked back
and looked back
at my grandmother
and I thought I’d never see her again

this lady who liked me so much

I was talking to someone on the phone
today of all days
and we decided, or rather she said
it might be good
for the soul to get out a little
you know
She hung up and the mailman dropped
something through the door
while the water boiled and some toast
was burning
like a candle in both ends the way someone
refers to the act of giving it all you got
but that doesn’t matter much
in the greater scheme of things
I mean the way certain “souls” talk about the world

It’s Monday and it was cold through the night
of little more than 5 hours sleep
and a friend calls and says: the extension of people into
what is known as culture is little more than
everyone having their reasons and reasons butting against
meaninglessness
I think he’s right, I don’t tell him. I don’t want him to think
he’s clever, it might make him cocky
I put on the old sweater and pass the razor across my
face once more revealing the lost youth-like features
and the dry skin from hard water

pretty little ditty grins back from the mirror
I take out the coins in my pocket and look at them
then I go out the door
for the hundredth time this week just to buy coffee
I bet it looks insignificant from a plane
it sure does from here
A teacher once told me: I find lying more civil and forgiving than being honest
I think I know what he meant
but then again you never know
with all the agendas
that keep replacing themselves
I had a long and hard look at the wall
some hours passed
thinking about the only car I ever owned and the rays of light
I caught last September
What is this thing that’s calling? he acts as if he runs on a motor
for all you know

Some forms of rain come invited
the light drizzle on Highgate cemetery
from a quilt of clouds

She said sorry
so honest
all she did was brush my plastic bag with her hand

and it killed me, it really did
I wanted to grab her arm and talk to her
like my sister

I wanted to know her just as people know each other well
and feel tender and responsible and glad for
strings of incredible strength

there in the tunnel at Goodge Street station
oh brother
fine wet moss on Karl Marx’s grave

and the day
was well under way
and had started with serious error

When I was told that I should be suspicious
of ‘we’, I became more anxious about me and I
and it became difficult to say:

when can we please not be interrupted

or forced upon by and easy idea
It kept on swirling and I kept on being
embarrassed because we were gone

It was no longer a question of we, or us

and the whole meaningful thought of saying
something for us, that would stand, and represent any
little piece of memory

coming back many years from now

it was gone and I stopped looking immediately
and the anger was going out like a rip current
leaving books and stories to be conceived

but no we, no we, and absolutely no us and I

And I do, I do, I do much like a weeping convict, regret
the focus is wrong and the friends are wrong but the light is strong
like an afternoon apocalypse in the slow movie inside the carriage without
a captain inside the bloodstream diluted with the starch of oblivion

promising nothing to the hum of the cabbie’s wheels in the Ska of the moment
my thoughts are not of Michael Jackson but Ginsberg, Larkin, Koch and Bukowski
to believe in the most absurd of hopes likely to shiver away the minute
the page is turned and the coffee is swallowed with the yolk of ambition

showering shaving and crying laughing angry and ecstatic Toledo
Tobago, Tijuana tamales tomorrow today howl to the nothingness
of lifetime, entities of bribe, the seconds convincing each other to keep on appearing
listen to the pigeon and listen to its nothingness, a heart in a bottle cap ticking and

keeping time, holding score sheets, ignoring beautiful pedestrians, because keeping
time and its like happy, is no concern of mine, they can remove all the lamp posts
with the signs of speedy modernity, underground maps, hours and hours
ordering kebabs, asking what kind of sauce you would like

and frankly tossing it away, in the time, in the time it takes to reset
the stopwatch, the scream has died out in the lonely passage on
a little day, on my flat chest, off my slanted shoulder into the gutter
where the bottles and the hob caps lie waiting for later

Her recovering her steps
and him not taking notice, smiling (stupidly)
and me slouched, beat out
taking it in through bypassing norms
and caring not like Orwell
but, like, well
if I time the detail
the A train and the Skytrain
pushing shivering, scared air
in blocks invisible (inaudible too)
to the lint on my coat
losing my attention
now that the horizon
was burning (yearning more, like the last greedy temptation of the night)
and my glasses were broken
and my heart was left
behind
and the cold was striking (the snow coming)
and the planes were
taking
and the girl was (laughing beautifully)
excusing
and telling simple lies like directions
way out to get home and
hopefully forget, but of course
never
that (it) is the state of things