Délire de Négation

“couldn’t quite seem to escape myself, far enough
far enough, far from Florida”
- Isaac Brock

These are the hardships of being dead
according to Jules Cotard especially
when one is still alive.
For instance, it’s frustrating to continue to have to go to work.
And shaving seems utterly pointless,
even more pointless than it did when you were alive.
And why does everyone keep reminding you to eat something?

That face in the mirror, does nothing for you,
because after all, you are dead.
Or if you aren’t dead, then you already lost your face,
so there is nothing to worry about.

Because that can happen too.
You can loose whole parts of you.
Organs left behind on bus stop benches,
blood leaked out like so much shower water
down the drain.

You are a negation.

The men with the coats call it extremely nihilistic,
but I’m sure for people like you,
and mind you, I’m not of your ilk,
but for you people, there must be a relief,
what with the warm weather down in Florida,
where your mother has taken you to help you recover,
the warm weather down in Florida being caused by the fires of hell.

You had already been so clear about being dead.

And you think to yourself, it is so nice of your mother to come down here
and show you around Hell,
what with it being your first day and all.

Wordless

Somewhere outside New Orleans I lost my voice
about there the pages in my journal are blank.
This country was too big for me,
and my small noises.

When the car started bucking
just outside the hundred miles
of Mojave
I couldn’t help but smile.
Even as an adult, these things you fear can really come true.

But by the time we got to Salinas,
we were used to the revving and
I was back to driving without shoes.
I still didn’t have my voice
and had to keep shouting things twice
to you
over the roar of the wind
through the open windows.

After we bickered outside the John Steinbeck library
and sometime before we drove up Polk Street
in San Francisco
you said,
that you didn’t think we would really do this.

I told you of course we would,
what else could two lost people do?
Where else do you go when the frustration
of being dispossessed
for years turns your vision black?
What else is there when all your belongings
fit into the corner of the garage
of your childhood home,
and your father is upstairs waiting
to tell you they took him off the chemo?

But you didn’t hear anything past
of course we would,
because my voice was snuffed out.
You just heard my resilience, saw my smile,
and believed that I believed it was this easy.

Spotted Cat

The waitress at the Spotted Cat in
Faubourg Marigny, leans against the bar
as she tells us about Froggie’s upcoming shows.
We had spent all day
going from bar to bar trying to track down
St. Louis Slim.
He’s playing here on Saturday, she drawls
letting the sounds plunk down on the sticky bar
top like water drops.

But by Saturday we’ll be in Dallas
already thinking about Albuquerque.

She has greasy brown hair, that hangs around her face,
small breasts and a pot belly pushing against her brown
t-shirt. Her skin and eyes are baked the same color brown.
She’s the color of the muddy Mississippi
and the clay southern highways.
She has blended into her background
to become part of place that is part of her.

I stare down at my one burnt driving arm.
The other still New York pale.
She makes me a drink with a cucumber in it
and I thank her softly
trying to stop myself from imitating
her dripping vowels,
her gentle Southern cadence.

Thursday Night Fight

These words are little tiny
balled-up fists that I’m tossing at you
from across the room
trying to figure out
when you are going to get around
to choosing me and us
Over them.

Which is, I know, Unfair, with a capital U
but darling, I promised a lot of things,
loyalty
love
listening
laughing
but I never promised fair. Not all the time.

And this is one of those moments
where you look right through me
like a ghost in the moonlight
and it takes away my voice.

So when you leave,
I wait till your head goes by the window
so I know you are really gone,
and then,
I lock the extra top bolt on the door
the one we paid the super for
but never use.
Cause I know that you won’t be able to
get it open. We never could, two hundred dollars later.

Eventually in the silence of the apartment,
the silence that I worked all night to get,
I put down my book and my glass,
the ice clinking gently and a bit
like a zombie
I walk back to the door
and with a struggle, undo the bolt.

And that was the forgiveness you got from me
without asking, the forgiveness
that you didn’t even know about
before you came in,
pulled off your hat,
steadied yourself in the doorway
and started to speak.

Resisting Gravity

This is an older poem, but I recently got it accepted by Zygote In My Coffee which is a fantastic mag you should all be reading at http://www.zygoteinmycoffee.com/


The cycle is starting and
again I’m feeling like writing was never the right thing for me.
That I would be better off hapless, like I was that day,
that the weather shuddered and turned over
and I frowned at the handsome black man
sitting on the curb, his bag in his lap,
his friend at his side.
We were at waiting at the light and
for a change, I wasn’t driving.
He held my eye for what seemed like forever
through the window of our car
and then like he remembered a raunchy joke
he smiled
all those white teeth and shining eyes
still holding my gaze
and I couldn’t not smile. I was so lonesome.
It would be like resisting gravity
even though moments ago you had been stung by a bee
and the sky was so metallic
I would have to punch holes in it
just to see a dash of light.

It wasn’t till later that I realized
I’ve been searching through this city
for something like that strange moment
since the day we got here.
Waiting for someone to hold down my stare
and then turn it all over on me.

I’ve been missing everything I left behind so badly
that we taped the photos up on the walls
just so I can remember,
that yes,
so far
it’s been a good life
better than I remember
or at least better than I let myself remember.
and you tell me it will keep getting better
as long as we don’t have kids
or become stagnant
or stop writing
and I know you are right.
There were other great writing couples
Ted and Sylvia,
Stan and Anne,
hell, Ginsberg and Orlovsky had decades in
those tiny apartments, their life collected in sweat, smeared fingerprints
and a comfortable mattress on the floor,
so why not us?
We got the bag full of tricks right here.
We’ll be the hitchhikers.
We’ll remember the raunchy joke next time.
It’ll be us sitting on that stoop someday
smiling at the red-headed girls that drive by
making them remember
if even for a second,
what the whole goddamn point is.

Yowling in the Next Life

In the next life,
I’m going to come back as a cat.
No more of this pink hairless life.
Instead I will sit on the dock in San Francisco
and laugh,
that white bright laugh
that used to torture the prisoners on Alcatraz.
The sounds they could hear over that quiet bay,
all that gentle conversation, the awkward
dinner dates, the shuffling starts and sputters
of men and women getting to know each other.
The symphony of clinking silverware, coughs, chatter
nervous accents, embarrassed pauses, spaces of silence louder
than laughter.
All of it floated over all that black water
over the honking of seals,
and came through those
rusty, sea-stained windows and
my god, it must have driven them crazy.
The cacophony of want.

Yes in the next life,
I’ll be on the dock, too.
A fat black cat, yowling at your moon.

Seagulls

This will soon be available online thanks to the lovely people at www.jackmagazine.com

The sea gulls freeze in the air
floating, cut from silk and hung on a thread
just below the clouds that are strapped to the sky
milky white and liquid
the sharp bird beaks cutting a line
as they float like words above me

I can see my breath crystallize in the morning air
and still smell the ocean,
and feel the salt stick to my palms
even all the way up here
over the car exhaust,
and dog shit.

I can still hear the waves, and the roll of broken shells
cracking into each other
over the sharp staccato of Chinese
and the screaming brakes of the subway.

Spring is coming,
tunneling through the ground
upsetting the graves,
overturning the rotten wood and bones of the dead
like a giant nimble worm
blind and intuitive
stretching and contracting in the determination of yearly renewal.
I can hear her rumble,
I can hear her coming.

And so can the gulls,
and that is why they are floating.