A miasma of death envelops January
I could be in old Mexico, Morocco
But I have a family
On snow days, slow motion
You glimpse a flicker of time’s backside
The God of Israel, as it were
Sternly mocking
That you may know everything’s gonna be alright, even when it isn’t
And won’t be
When you reach a place of resignation without indifference
The drip, drip, drip of pain on a window, on a soft surface
I couldn’t have known I would be here but now it all seems so predictable
What if the only person who could be Christ was an addict? A deadbeat?
What if redemption germinates in slime, shit and piss?
It’s worse out there than we think
It’s always worse
It’s always deeper
and yet also somehow less
So that we’d rather not look,
not know
not slow our roll
But what if this brand of glory is some pathetic, anonymous moment?
Not martyrdom but nameless, faceless dissolution
Not ignominy but private shame
What if the crucifix is self loathing?
What if the aggregate of all our microscopic dread are the forces acting upon us
The stripes, the stigmata
What if the garbage in the street were relics for some busybody’s collection
and holiness is something far, far away?
You put the intransigence in transit
I rode north one autumn through high country, blind
Once upon a time
The burden of fate held up a staircase
and the buoyancy of youth left a gap between who you are
and what you signify for me
Dawn always breaks in the distance
Life defies us, is defiance
because the world is won by wickedness
but only seemingly so who needs Jerusalem
if it can never be forgotten?
I saw you in a dream, I knew it was really you
but when I woke up it seemed as if you were no longer there
We left these past lives in other places
that are scarcely more real than the ones we can’t recall
and if I lose you I won’t be me
if I could lose you I wouldn’t be myself
We may never set foot in the same city twice
But we live in each other
So let us take nothing for granted
Got my beverage past the turnstile equals white privilege
Just smile
Don’t maintain eye contact
Don’t say gesundheit
Mankind are pederasts, malingerers, rats on an ash heap communicating diseases
Horrible, ambling, eczemic, eggplant-shaped creatures
They suffer waking sleep apnea and never wonder how the meat gets to the plate
Should some grave misfortune befall them they must be maintained alive
Freedom isn’t free, they want a raincheck, they want a discount
They want to see caged animals
and teach the blind how to covet
Shame was the last vestige of propriety
In the distance
I thought I saw a crucifix
It was the logo on a ballcap, of a hotel casino
Sharing is caring
Appreciation for Thanksgiving turkeys
Ulterior horizons, perfunctory well-wishes
They’d watch you be gutted like it was on TV
and wonder about the giblets
There’re no limits to what’s impersonal
Quid pro quo, exsanguinated
The serpent points the way to knowledge
that people are coin operated
Big, open, sensationless pudding-vaginas
contriving stratagems for service opportunities
Need a light there, pal? Lemme get that for ya
Thin-surfaced canned food-drive communities
Oh, alright…..
The onset of a darkening time
Of shadows as forms
Of eyes that guard no souls
Of the recession of green meadows into the bulldozer’s maw
Of menacing clouds amassed before the precincts of eternity
to download and be uploaded, or whatever
The metastasis of sickening flesh
Of bloodless jowls sagging beneath little green visors
Of numbers who aspire to be ants
Of the licensure of volition
Of callow dogs as commanders
who’ve refined to eyeless guile the art of getting what to eat and never stopping once they’re sated
Because there’s only so much to go around
I am their father
How to get the DNA out of this algorithm?
A cubicle for Montezuma’s ransom
Your lucky rabbit’s foot is a handler’s gland
and second prize is a set of steak knives
What do you feel like eating?
You’ve got a family don’t you?
Because I’ve got this insatiable taste for flesh
You know, character is the barcode of transmutability
and you set the ceiling
I may not’ve determined the number of inches from fly to forehead
but I can decide how vicious I jizz tendons and marrow and keep you in suspense
Whobody? Anybody
Are you what it takes?
This might burn a bit
When a stranger’s blithe gesture outweighs your plodding devotion
and you’re granted the serenity to accept the things you cannot change
When you carry around in you a shattered Jerusalem
and find yourself a stranger, but people aren’t strange
The millstone, the cross, the imperative to forgive
the impulse to murder, the necessity to live
the dread that stalks awake-nights, the antiseptic light
dementia and goosebumps and envy and blight
When lies gain the weight of stentorian tomes
and vigor and vim, and known unknown knowns
Then we ordinary folk can cross bridges in space
secure, validated with spit in our face
and decide when to chase and to now flee our tails
and determine the contours of our own comfy jails
When Might may lie down with the left and right hands
and erode all embankments and count up the sands
Then old Lot and his daughters can go fuck themselves
and grannies and housepets and Santa Claus’ elves
and beat the meatcleavers to swordshares and plows
and secure our slick winnings with purrs and meows
and confide our blanch longings despite no true friends
and incline our ears, trifling, to the way the world ends
Don’t stop believing
What becomes of a Russian girl?
We shall have to learn how to smile
Through strip malls and leasing offices
and uncomprehending inquests of a new colossus
Through syphalitic massage parlors and purgatory’s own vinyl siding
Through weekly coupons’ deadly barrios and indifferent correspondence courses
She longs for an abandoned pensioner and dies by a thousand cuts of anonymity and disdain
arranging clearance racks and perfume samples with the red shameless handmark upon her throat of a fat, impotent generation’s inchoate hatred of mother
Who flitted, frolicked, recited simplicity and diligence
Whose defiant gaze passed recorded history’s last glimmer of innocence
and the future’s city swarmed blind and tumult
Never knowing what grave depravities await
to make the overeager dashing of brains against the gears of heaven’s ever-turning barricade appear quaint
…but we have the technology
If that child could speak, it would ask
Why did you murder me?
If that child could speak
groping, blind, breath taken cold frenziedly
It would laugh at you not knowing you’re already dead
It would ask why you keep turning your back, keep moving away
Don’t you know I’m right here?
Enveloping the void that was you with this persistent innocent question
If that child could speak
It wouldn’t ask what’s more important than love
Because you already answered
Utter Contempt 