Wives

He filled his wife-shaped hole with

more wife, another wife, a younger wife.

It was one country-sized ego against another.

Roger Silver, you are a handsome iceberg, said

the old wife years before the new wife. The world

said nothing.

The new wife grew out of a woman

into his king concept. The representation

of his life's potential. A shiny voucher of re-

newal. The old wife grew old, but as a woman.

She learns that it's not easy for anybody. There

is relief in this.

We have a chance to be something alive, he said

on his death bed, the new wife lost to him

much sooner than expected. None of this

is very hard to believe. It's not
an exceptional life,

which doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Hippies

I don't like to make a big stink, but

I've been having a pretty tough time

these days, so Jamie suggests

I meet his friend named Black

Cat, and I'm getting kind of desperate

so I do. Black Cat tells me the sex that comes

out of a man is good

for the skin. It has babies in it,

she says. Black Cat also says

that everything is copacetic, but

you have to suffer for this to be so. I tell

her that I suffer, and nothing is fine.
I also tell her that I think she is nuts. Just nuts.

Black Cat's real name

is Betty. I tell Betty that Black

Cat is a pretty stupid

name, too. Then, I leave.

Later that night, I wonder

if Jamie is angry that I didn't hit

it off with B.C. I don't bother calling

him to find out. I guess I don't care.

I step outside and stare

at the stars, the ones I can see,

which is zero, actually,

and I stare at the gray nothing

of cloud-sky

trying, straining to make

something out,

an end-point, at least.

I cannot. I close my eyes,

and it gets a little clearer.

I open them.

I don't call anybody.

I begin to walk for some time,

and I think about a guy I once knew,

a Sagittarius, who always insisted on

picking up the check. I didn't mind that.

I'd let him, and I'd drink a lot.  I don't
know why I think

about this guy now. He used to talk

about how

police create hippies, and hippies create

police. How we're creating a lot of opposites.

I always thought this was a lot

of nonsense.  Really, I didn't

think too much about it
at all.

But now, no, I don't think

I'd contest.

The Afterdeath

I have
a bride and a necklace
of heads.  I have no
personal artifacts.
I want to see
how long I can go
without memory.

We have to take a train to the other.
As ready as we are trepidatious,
we are all
the people.

We get so low the
ghosts come.  We get
to know the fog.
No longer worried
about the people who talk to graves,
we help carry the messages.

It lasts much longer
than any of us.  Also,
over in a flash.  The only thing anyone
says is God, but God is not a word.
We don't know what we're hearing.
We speak with many strangers.
We speak with ourselves.
We forget everything.

Let's be honest:  The apocalypse is exciting.
Let's be honest:  We are relieved.
Let's be honest and sing.

What Gerard Says

  This is Gerard. A brown man in a brown

shirt that says Brown on it

in large, brown letters

reads brown words about green

things in his dark voice.

More to say with his eyes, heavy-

lidded deep brown pools of himself.

Less to say with his mouth (brown)

now reading green words about white

things.

           Who says

God can't be fun? His

daughter has quieted

his mind, he says. Like whores,

he says, only permanent.

And what is this bog?

We know this great bog.

Once in, we don't

try to get out of it.

Don't want to.

So why wane,

he says.

There are green walls in

a black-brown world. There

are ways inside, he says.

We can forget things.

Are you far out

enough for me? Are there

enough of us?

I am, he says. We

burn green

things into brown

things. And up like

white things. Like

stories, a pea

in the brain. The days

stay on, he says.

Until we aren't

even listening. Until

we stop.

A Guy Like That

A guy like that must

know how

to make a charming

apology or 

he'd be dead.

Indicative of this

great charm, his people

went on loving him. For years he drank

a couple hundred drinks a month

and kept pouring

on the insults (I mean, he'd really insult you.

He'd say the things that keep you up

all night chewing a dark hole in your guts).

but then,

once sober, he'd show up at your door brandishing

one of those magnificent apologies,

full of duende and meaningful silence

and more sweetness than

any of us had seen all year. Yes,

there was something to it. I must have

gotten at least four or five of them myself alone.

Then one year, this guy sobered up.

We didn't see him for a while, but when we did

he was nice all the time. Really a great guy. Very,

very sweet. Nobody wanted

to say he was boring.

There was this other guy

we knew for a while. Very rich.

I don't know what kind of a guy he was. Only

that one day, he shed the skin

of his life as a businessman. Up and

went to Mexico to “ride the snake.”

He wrote a three-part new agey

novel about what

happened inside him,

some mystical realism

stuff, and the truth is that

none of us cared much

for this book. See, it was a little

much, didn't make a

whole lot of sense. We just couldn't

follow it.

The one thing

I remember though is that

his son liked it. He had this

twenty-something year old son

who thought he

was the shit. Talked

all the time about his dad

and that damn book

on first dates, at bars and

dinner parties, at

his job.

Like I said, I don't know

what kind of a guy this guy

was. Only that

his son wouldn't

shut up

about him.

The Full Length Heart

My view is an early valley.

Prairie land much greater than

everything else. Chicago in

the eye, but Kentucky in

the chest. This body is a country

and maps a life

marked by animal eyes

and many, many

revolutions. We can

win this one. Like all

the others. We have lost

nothing. This body is a brand

chance at land promised

to be more than a bed.

All land is

once we stop

all this sleeping,

once we win.

Here I Was, Down

His life like one wrong turn

after another until where are we

and what is this town. What is

this town and how to get out

of it. How to get out of it

these dark halls. Halls with sky

halls with clouds halls with layers

and layers of town

His life like all the footage of

the aftermath until the film

that never ends. What is this

film and how to get out of it.

How to get out of it how to file

in and out of it. So many nights

to contemplate the loss the

sun the light the sun gives

this town is bitter and ending

even as it gets brighter

It gets brighter

like a life that won't stop

giving like a life that won't

stop chiming and

skittering

skittering like he built it

from the town up

from the town up from the man

up from the wrong turn

up up up