Damn This Valley

Damn This Valley

He kept blinking

and he couldn't stop

sneezing like so full

of caged gods

It's this valley he said

I want out

but he had no wheres

so he tried to fall in

love with it

now when he closes

the eyes they speak to

him in hot colors

and whenever he finds himself

at one of those awkward

goddamn parties

he always has something

to say that softens every face

in the room

yes people like to be around

him the eternal sneeze aside

they say his presence gets

you high and not just because

he always has a joint

on him

Spare Change (In The American Colony)

When he sets the two tall cans of Olde English on the counter, he knows he can't pay for them. Stood in line ten minutes, talked with the lady behind him, waited patiently as a man with money. Now what would it mean to not have any? The cashier holding the scanning wand rolls his eyes as he pats his back pockets, digs the front, looks around as if someone just lifted both cash and spare change right off him, just passing an eye over him--quick, filching telepathy. Six deep behind him the other folks stare ahead like camels. He stalled as long as he could but then comes the moment of embarrassment: looking in the cashier's eyes and feeling them push him away. Instead he exercises what little face he has left and turns, like that, like a sleepwalker who's just woken up, abandons the counter in drowsy confusion, an improvised ruse that lets him live another day. Soon, and he's sure of it, if he keeps doing it, bringing those cans to the counter (double doors closing behind him) two tallboys of Olde English will pay for themselves. On that good day, he'll make sure to toast the sky in honor of the always spontaneous multiplication of small money. It knows no end, like rain.

An Occurrence In Dead City

One day morticians in the Morgue

     of Popes, off

                  Gramlin and Trayhurst,

in the swill-gray center of Dead City

began to notice--those lumps of meat in the shapes of 

ghosts coming off the street

began to look less different from each other. 

A few drawn from their frozen drawers

in storage looked even more identical. Each 

to each, 

one man one woman, a kind of

postmortem Adam and Eve. Black male, 

aged roughly early thirties,

high cheekbones;

the female a white brunette, thin lips

and a beauty mark just left off center of her chin. 

When they pulled the charts 

of all bodies on hand, they

were amazed. Age and race, height and weight

had been cannibalized almost overnight

into an archetype, in the 

flesh. As fresh bodies

rolled through the double doors, they tracked them. 

It took, according to their lights, no matter how dim

three days to a week for their native features to melt away

and reveal the Jane or John Doe lying beneath. 

One man and lady killed after the fact, repeatedly. 

In a day or two it took to the news 

as a leak,

so the police provided sketches

of the two in their original state, borne off the faces

of two dozen too many. The result? Some families

requested the exhumation of spouses and children;

     and when, like secret potatoes, the coffins 

were unburied, the air struck them

as a fact drawing all its strength from a rumor. There

their son or daughter, brother or mother 

lay, in various nudes of decomposition, 

changed beyond the resemblances that made them. 

Newly ruined, the bodies 

    turned 

face-up to the lights

by car wreck or heart attack or overdose, 

changed with the slow-motion wooziness of smoke:

a nose growing lean, lips 

    swelling fuller, eyes

migrating a half inch farther apart. When 

the bereaved came to the ward to identify them

it was even less than useless. The form

of the problem they loved 

had vanished completely. Had

migrated to the dumb calm of the generic,

one man and woman for everyone. It went

much that way for weeks

until, a month later, the news caught something

even more terrifying by the toe

and held on tightly enough to tag it. A man

in New Poland, on the Northwest Side

had been seen walking out of a Kroger's, 

followed by one or two 

witnesses of the eye, 

then tracked by half the neighborhood 

to a brownstone on Fuller. When the police

arrived, he was exactly what they'd found:

a living specimen. John

Doe, a flawless clone

    or maybe the original

psychopomp of all those copies. The 

look from his eyes was terror. It 

swam through his body like water. The cops

cut the crowd and took him into custody. 

Not a day later a woman in Collin Heights

was pulled off the Blue Line, her dress 

and coat torn off her like wrapping paper,

naked and

begging, carried 

by a dozen hands

to the nearest station. Within a half hour

they had an exact match

for the woman who had been taking 

so many of their wives' and mothers'

faces. During 

interrogation both ur-corpses 

expressed nauseous bewilderment, paranoia

of their own skin. What had they

done to assume the forms of so many? What

were those vanishing likenesses 

telling them, that death could remodel

their features to resemble them? 

By decree of the state, they were

    thrown on trial, 

           put to beg for absolution by a jury. 

A verdict came back like an echo

from a resentment on borrowed ears:

to their own faces

we sentence them. Execution by 

lethal mirror. A month later their bodies

went limp on the gurney. And almost

immediately, a postmortem miracle. 

In the morgues and newfound graves 

of Dead City 

a hundred wayward corpses 

were born again. 

They Aren't Marie

Eaten by movies, 

they aren't Marie. A can of Tecate 

and they aren't Marie. Harmony 

sleepers, naked as knives

in the creative living room of the Great Native,

aren't Marie. Nasal lunch,

no Marie. Lookin good as parts

of other women, not Marie, but lickety split, not Marie,

they blow away like brains of dandelions

and who's to see? Marie's to see. Even

   rocking atop the horsey

of a great-great grandmother's knee.

Before amoebal chaos and atomic chum, 

matter stretched and 

torn apart like chewing gum horror,

the rise of villages from the sea, 

the rise of cabs 

from villages, Marie. 

Of the tribe Coma, her last name, a people, 

but whose, no one's. They are 

and because they are so, male or female, 

aren't Marie. Though they

may dress so. Though they 

wear hair so. With tequila riding 

yet another afternoon shotgun. Do you know? 

Do you touch the hem of 

what 

looks like sunlight when its snowing, and ask

the unmade beyond brainstorming the 

moment as it exceeds the meager, 

Who, and why, and when Marie? 

Where, and with whom, and from what 

    two, or four, or three? 

In the room alone but with cats 

playing a tune too high in the key of 

singing, on a harmonium, in 

boxers, light falling on the floor too soon,

always a bit foolish at the knees?

The brusqueness that results from

an overly self-protected vulnerability--

no Marie.

The habit, when stung by one's

own insecurity, of blinking

involuntarily, rapidly, as if

swatted hard on the nose--

no, and even less so, Marie. 

Put away slum gunning, put away

drugs of God. The gold standard 

and crotch rot and snide knocks. 

They will not find the door and clock. 

And nab both and chuck them. 

Make way for the new style, the fresh mile, 

Marie. Be nice without a name,

for some dissolve like 

snow in the gutter, clouds above

on a diet, but shining, Marie. 

At work right now.

Off at eleven. Home calling. Marie.

Though the richest quiet available is in Phoenix,

an airport, in the abandoned bathrooms of 

Concourse B, once again

in the empty reflection of those wilder mirrors, 

while no one is looking, Marie. 

While some go and others keep coming,

in bed the sheets make like a lake

and hide their fish from thunder. 

One, and two. Two that get up 

and groom the coffee. And present themselves

to thieves of employment--

gone in an hour, back in a day. 

But made carefully untouchable 

by the homeward privilege:

to think, and say, what I am

so many are, but where they aren't

just a little bit, much to spare, beyond reach

of headache, Silicon Sally, gunning for sun, pig plug, monsters of Old Vegas, no need, 

big tree, a single leaf between them, Marie. Which they aren't, and then some. Better

to just know, and be one. Of hers, which is to say: everyone's. Okay. Coma. Marie.

Given Religion

That's right, name's Cole

   Turner, but you can

call me as my people do,

Cold Turkey. You ask 

   and I'm going to

tell you. Boy, sex 

with her was better

   than Jesus! The 

Lord's boy and our 

own personal nail collector

  and savior. Couldn't

top the cross she 

raised me up on, night

  after noon and 

next morning! You're 

young, so let me just

   tell you how much

it's an indicator--if a

man can go thirty, forty

   years and still 

remember, that was a

woman who was something!

  Actually got my old

name from her, you can

choose to believe me 

   or not. Said one day

before she'd had enough

of me, boy, I'm going 

  Cold Turkey. Cause

this warm turkey, good 

as it is, it's getting old,

   and I don't want to

go moldy with it. Now 

that's not just a sweetheart

   but a lady, isn't it? 

To tell me right out

we had to part ways

   so one day I could

sit down, right here, and

tell a story about her. 

  Just telling it's enough 

to give a man religion!

Big Beer

"When you have no imagination, dying is small beer…" --Celine

     Written in 

a men's bathroom in Cherokee

Park, in permanent marker--

"sometimes the moon/ means nothing". 

Initials and title below it. 

T.R.C., "Poem For Hardship". 

Venture capitalist in a wet dream,

pulling bodies from Doomed Man Heaven. 

"only beauty/ can name/ its cages", 

   D.M.H.

"it takes/ the tiniest fingers/ to milk a 

   spider", D.M.H.

These new austerity measures

cutting back on the 

number of people in our diamonds.

Credit default swap, Doomed Man Heaven, 

for some folks

disappointment is an 

aphrodisiac, Doomed Man Heaven. 

   Sherlene Peng,

Ross Skarga--these people. 

   Vijay Nair,

Gabriel Nieto, 

Lloyd Strickland--these. Each 

in their fully appointed

bodies thrown upside-down

for dollars, Doomed Man Heaven. Where 

they land, houses. Homes 

where they have each other. Where

having has each other. As 

Mindy lifts Artem's hand

from bed to place across her 

face, to smooch a breath. 

"Lending out of past/ is future 

   taking" 
quotes the stall of bathroom in any park

where walking comes to bring people. It's

free to be there, not

to get there. For the

gatekeepers, the dietary thinkers

of D.M.H., a marker made 

permanent--to leave

some news about a knowledge of walls. 

Can't climb them? Write on them. 

Zach was here. Then he wasn't.  
And for that aren't you


partially responsible, 
when you wonder? 

The Pope of Morgues

The Pope of Morgues

according to legend, had 

three ears--on his 

forehead, between shoulder blades

and one well-hidden

betwixt his 
scrotum and anus. 

With one he 

eavesdropped 

on the thoughts of others, another

their desires

and the last, their dirty needs. 

So much increase, blizzard of pulses, unholy

and merely natural 

life--always an earful in triplicate. 

Listening 

to the radiant gears

of men and women

in every possible frightening florid combination,

he would shake to be dead again

and, overcome, try to plug them. Oh man 

to be silent again

and not have to receive them! But as

   none know, equally 

according to steep legend,

he only had one finger per hand

and straining to reach as he could

could only manage at 

any one time 

to plug two of them. And in 

that way, contorted, 

learned to 

believe on one wavelength 

like a genuine human. 

His excommunication into oneness, 

like the sex lives of rocks

or single digits,

was ludicrous. 

Moving from ear to ear to 

ear ear,

plugging it just for the love of it. 

But also to say, 

for the feel of it:

here. 

Feral To The Wiser

Yes man to the roses, 

that you must smell them,

Semper Fi, 

C'est La Vie

Carpe Diem. Or for 

ye who were not 

borne into this world

     as translated Latin--

Always Faithful, Such

Is Life, Seize It. The day

is a gun that always rises. 

Riding English, nosewise,

I know the sound. 

The old-style chambers filling

   with bullets,

not too far from kisses. 

On the cheek's lips

or lip's cheek. 

What did they say 

about the earth?

The meek will inherit. 

While the greedy

tend to it. Scorched,

salted, like meat. 

In the mouth

and for the stomach. 

Once an animal

   and now an animal. It

eats. 

Little Factor

How old were you then, when the days went all one way, like little hairs? When your brother carried you on his shoulders so you could feel what it would be like to move through the world a grown man? Even with your hands atop his head, he seemed taller. The trees, the overgrown buildings, the monstrous abstractions already in your mind and soon to grow from your neck—because it was from your neck that you spoke them—like goiters. Your brother, longshanks, broad as life in the shoulders, so large of frame even the bricklayers and barfighters called him Big Factor. The earth beneath his feet, so far below you would spit off to the side to watch it fall, counting off the minutes and hours and days it would take for even one of those white specks to land. And by then, it would be long behind you. Everything: you could see it all. Sparrows and chimney swifts, the smaller, keener birds, more honed to those secret knives sharpening in the wind, circled around you. Up there, you watched the people come and go, small and then smaller; everyone, mother and drunk stumbler and delivery man alike, disappeared down the drain of their own vanishing point. As they went, you and your brother waved at them. Up there everything aged slower. You touched the underbellies of leaves on the lower branches. Wherever you pointed, your brother took off walking. It was a mobile kind of life, that you could believe in. But all movement is an illusion, as a wise head once said, exercising the lower case magic of noble rhetoric, and your brother, older as he was, and taller, real as a stump after its tree has fallen, knew enough about walking to appreciate the subtlety of standing still. Okay, he said, time to crawl down, little brother. You knew it would only make him taller if you said no; taller and harder to climb down from. So down you went. From neck to shoulder to back to hip and downwards—his right leg taking days to lower yourself from. Leaping off his boot, striking ground, you looked around. No more looking up. You asked him, your great big, older taller stronger brother, what now? Now, he asked? Now it’s my turn. Ready those shoulders, little brother.

Mutiny In Heaven

"He also gave a final dance concert, before an invited audience, at a nearby hotel, the

Suvretta House. As Romola describes the performance, Nijinsky began by taking a 

chair, sitting down in front of the audience, and staring at them for what seemed like

half an hour. Eventually he unrolled two lengths of velvet, one white, one black, to 

form a cross on the floor. Standing at the head of the cross, he addressed the audience:

'Now I will dance you the war,…the war which you will not prevent.'"

*

Father, Son & Holy Ferret, I want rest, I want rest, I want rest. From up the zero rectum of this great green void, at last I've come out as sane as my mother before she made me. Was it the voice of the Authority still on me like sleek afterbirth, that I heard, shaking my head a bit to knock loose the amniotic fluid still trapped in my ears? "Are you willing to be a nobody? Yes?" Yes. "Then you are free. I condemn you." 

*

So, condemned as such, besmirched like a louse fresh from the crush of a thumb, I was spat out like human realism, cast out. The churches would not have me. The halfway houses would not have me. The myriad jackbag jobs would not have me. And yet, was I not a spy as I was--a devout Christian, homeless, diseased with criminal drugs? To the nearest low wage I took myself and from the incredible hours passing through me made something measly. Under the awning above the grocery loading dock, I stood half in sunlight and submitted myself to a coworker's lessons on smoking. Hold the cigarette like so. Suck. Hold the smoke, then let it flow out, or blow. Out both nostrils if you are a true animal. And if you are so skilled, out of one only. Best to be elegant with your cancer.

*

The somebodies, what of them? The somebodies, they say, are deeply weak for their identities, which, of course, we give them. We kill them to be one thing and one thing only. Here one comes walking along, snipping people's ears off with scissors. In their presence everyone learns to listen.The end of God is a mouth. Blah blah. The end of the mouth is God. Now that sounds more like it. A sweet day for the nobodies, who have had to stand by for so long, moving through the vanishing circuits like so much Zen money. For today, like us, they drag God from his inborn lair, face-down through the streets of his literature.

*

Because he was one of the first, wasn't he? For I am full of increase now, moving through the bowels of Authority's communal ego--I can, and will say it! Celebrities are feces of the disowned, the anonymous, blandly downtrodden, lives too dumb to rise. Here is Monica Belluci, here is Beyonce, here is Jack Nicholson and Andy Warhol and, yes, barely last and mostly least, yours only--Nijinksi!  Then we are, here we go, on our mobile thrones, carried across wasteland relevance atop a velvet pillow. As our pallbearers crumble, their children step to take up pillow. The burden, as they hate themselves praising us so, is more than they could ever know!

*

To dance the war, then! A pornography of realism. I lay no preexisting claims on what will happen next. Ballet is life lunging out of death. It says much--that no one now would dare believe it. As I have established, I am of these beings, vibrating among them along the nimble continual string of consciousness. Each time I seize one and become them, I tell them: every day I meet my maker,  because I am him. They only believe in their condition, as if it were selected for them, like a body.  A body is there to leap out of time, to shame space and gravity, and just as vigilantly, sculpt it! These weaklings, these inborn wraiths, who have never allowed themselves to be brushed so by the unreal greatness of their bodies!

*

A good hard living look. A good look at them. And there they go, one by one: staring back. What do they think I think they are? They should know, I am full gone obliterated back  through the insane navel of my animal. Whilst they sit and stare, reduced, like just that: an audience.  Cast out at breakneck speed into helplessness. Though to them it feels like waiting for no one else. 

  *

As I am! No one! One with a body, a Nobody! A Nobody flooding space like a ghost! Hold me close, Holy Ghost! Drowning in the now, new as a death-throe, as full tight with birth as roe. 

*

Look up, and there you are. A leap suspends us--you, me, every one of me as you--above and  below, unknown!

*

The meaning of life is power. The meaning of life is self-interest in flower. Those who can't climb it, hallucinate it. Ranting, doctors would later say, is the sympathetic magic of madness. Imagine how dangerous I would be if I were useful! High on the view from up here, where I leapt with a lonely body, and then, from that simple height, one by one, dropped them.

*

"He plans to invent a new kind of fountain pen; he will call it 'God.' He has a cure for cancer."

*

That bit, up above there, can you believe it? So wrote the woman in her introduction to the notebooks they snatched from me, then debased by calling My Diaries. The influx of holy light in the naked brain of a mystic--would they call that, too, a diary? Men and women destroy their holiness at first blink like eating their fellow beasts, so how can they expect to leap, and be light and free, as  me, an animal? A-n-i-m-a-l. All Man I. The very letters against the breast of their language rearrange and command so. And you murders, you louts, shitty with your sanity, dipping yet another chicken tender in a diarrheal daub of barbecue sauce!

* 

It's no wonder I had to sit so long and watch you!

*

The pen is out of ink. The pen is shit out of thinking and ink. I shake it, I suck the tip. Nary a little more. If only a little, I'd write it: to lose our minds like trees! And like an oak or elm of incredible normalcy, flourish were we are, no fruit to bear that looks social. Every day more bodies dumbed from  the blissful scapes at war: into life, into babies that wear, for their fear's own benefit, their mothers' and fathers' arms. The great Mutiny! Every soul tearing it apart and jumping ship. It's for the way they are  thrown out, every which way an atheist, that they later acquire the skill to say it: the meaning of life is power. 

*

All the finest opinions lead back to oneself. Can you believe it? My fame is without direct  proof. Except for a few photos and second hand accounts and testimonials, all hearsay. Worth every  pound of the pun I'd put on it: heresy, like love driven to prove itself, the test of a religions greatness is  the variety and force of its heresy. For example, did you believe me--I am Nijinsky? Who except a few pampered dilettantes and fools lost in the discipline of their bodies would look up from where they are, at any moment, and sigh, "Ah, Nijinsky"?

* 

Truth is, I am just someone else, alive in the leap. In fact, I haven't even read my own diaries! The introduction made me think I was him, or Nobody, or brilliantly undermined for a moment as a dancer at war, never mind his insulting opinions of ballet. Don't you see, you idiots? He wanted to be Nijinksy, just like you did--so you'd pay attention and be willing. To trick you into being me by way of him, and listen to the kinetic slop of his own beheading. 

*

One bow is enough, and the head rolls off. Down the length of the cross, my Beloveds, where you are sitting!