Projections

People need a few things: air, water, food, shelter
and someone/something to blame.

Rabbi Abraham Twerski, M.D.

again we talk/: the typical routine of our complexes/
the pantomime of dissonant autobiographies exposing
the low burn of loss and shame/ what we now blame and paint
the mirrors of our delusions/
to reflect only the perfect ghosts of what we think we are/
our poor diamonds of expectations and perceptions of being complete over
this expanse of time/ safe in the illuminations of our amnesia/  
the comfort of our disdain/ our fever of difference/
blind in the expected labyrinths of self/:
refusing to enter these nights of the soul and now find in our rage
we are screaming/ the looping satryicon of our lies/ stepping through
these mirrors to become what we’ve always despised/:
our diseased projections/
our paralysis in these necessary arcs of becoming
something/somehow

 

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Orizaba

Et le printemps m’a apporté l’affreux rire de l’idiot.

                                                              Rimbaud

To Hart Crane

Your red hand on the rail,
the fullness of the grey-capped waves
lifts you to those old parapets
and the white doves you captured

and snapped through the cables:
the cinema of dawns, of Brooklyn;
the stone strings of your diapason
that fashioned you from the genesis

argument with the sea.
This passage that came in a blaze of tides,
the modern operas that forced your cry
to find the final blackened heart in this hiss

of your dark water’s liberty.

 

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Monkey

please say hello to my monkey/: my smiling monkey, brutal monkey, my funny monkey, holy
monkey. i am monkey and monkey is me/in me/with me/ always/: my monkey eyes, my monkey teeth, my monkey brain. we are the jungle blood and find impossible places to hide and dance
and seek/ during the day we eat bananas and bushes/: at night we tear flesh and toast it with
lemons and tongues/: at night we tell stories, rehearse all the myths/discuss the elements of the psyche without speaking/
we are the place where secrets are kept/ we are the language not known but felt/ the place where the opposites
disappear: the moonless jungle within of all things forbidden and desired/:
we are the shadow monkey,
we are the lovely monkey,
kind,
cruel,
perfect/:
my complete monkey me/ our dance about to begin/
so please say hello/ we have already eaten
and we’re just lying here on our monkey bones –
waiting.

 

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Absolution

i was birthed in the red clay of alabama and georgia/ men in green suits handed me
weapons/: mosquitoes and snakes
taught me the predator’s compass
to breathe
to find the opening
to draw blood/
the sway of pines and flight of crows/: the trajectory of the kill/
the swamps my altar/
i crowned myself with razor wire and walked into
the black waters to drain my blood/ shed my skin while  
they whispered one shot/ one shot one kill/: one shot one shot/ from over 800 yards i was perfect and they screamed/ they
handed me medals trophies and a beret with the assassin’s pin/
i made unspeakable sacrifices and covenants to darkness/:
i shaved my head and painted my face the colors of my altar/
filled my veins with the holy pagan waters and slithered
into dog day/ all souls day/: the days of the dead/: from the hague to chantrea to the highlands they didn’t know how the air would explode from
their lungs – the force of the ground coming up/ they didn’t know how their world would collapse – the speed at which
blood flows/ they didn’t know how their bodies would twist into cruel
angles – the immediacy of nothing/:
they will never know how their bones and blood would shake me from sleep/
they will never know how i now carry them like stones/ my black waters heart
that continues to break and moves me to this rebirth/
this absolution
i still seek