Real is the Word They Use to Contain Us Read online

and

  he just stood there, nameless as any beatnik,

  blood slapping the ground,

  taking it.

  dying with his mouth shut.

  no impervious last-minute jisei.

  nothing

  to placate the ages.

  he was only bewildered.

  that’s why you were always fucked

  up,

  Bukowski,

  you were lonely for someone good to kill;

  and anyway you’re dead,

  dad, i mean Bukowski,

  and i’m

  shouting at your

  vacant ghost

  and they used to call that one

  APOSTROPHE, i.e. the

  direct address of an

  absent or

  imaginary person

  or of a personified abstraction,

  but

  it’s impossible to find good apostrophism anymore.

  i’d riddle

  your grave with wadcutter rounds,

  Bukowski,

  son of Mogh, and fill

  the holes with pissed vodka,

  i’d scream with my boots wet i drank

  you to death. i’d lie

  to all comers

  i slew you, rusty soupcan’s lid

  delineating your

  underjaw,

  red ink, yawning and scrawled.

  red ink, you shit-midas,

  goldbricker,

  you who revised nothing,

  i’d lie how i drank

  your arterial veins

  and took your devil for mine.

  but we’re poets,

  poets.

  disputes are published, not

  resolved

  as we mewl into

  biennial quarterlies

  named for truly fucking esoteric lichen.

  what

  we need’s

  some

  ONCE AND FOR ALL—

  can’t tell me capitalize the first

  person singular while

  you’re clutching at exposed bowel

  tissue,

  sabers in the moonlit quad,

  it’s not too late.

  we could have still been

  pairs of jagged jaws

  rending across the wooly flanks of wildebeests,

  not just sip, sip, sipping

  havarti at the fondue fountain, ruminating

  on shortlists, on grants, on

  conspicuous absences from shortlists

  and shortlists for grants, on

  grants and grants and

  GRANTS

  for reedless microtonal oboe jazz (they’ve jumped

  the

  shark). over water crackers

  we sippingly

  ruminate,

  careful to pronounce feng shui,

  anthropopopopopoposophy,

  lamenting the suppression of franz derrida.

  we’re so open

  to the moment,

  so careful, and there,

  THERE,

  EYES ON THE MOMENT,

  we flabbily congratulate ourselves:

  our po-

  et-

  ics,

  our craft,

  how carefully we try;

  and we

  start

  not

  at

  unfamiliar noises;

  nor do we whirl when

  rivals

  take the stage—

  you’re too long dead, Bukowski—

  we punctuate nothing

  with the snap of bottleneck on table’s-edge,

  our fingers weak from

  holding these SNIFTERS,

  THESE DEMITASSES,

  we lack the strength to

  draw at measured paces—

  a poet’s gun

  used to be

  completely irresponsible, right,

  and black as

  the syphilis on lucifer’s cock,

  and arabesqued,

  you know, with the scratchings of a broken nail,

  with every bloodshot

  night when the gun faces in

  turn the ceiling,

  the door, and the cat, and

  the roof

  of the mouth, and the door;

  and the ghosts in the

  hallway,

  dead drunk, barn-

  broad, bleary,

  the bloated dreams

  that make

  for easy aim.

  ...and dove sweeping through the moonlight as clusters of rough-hewn bats, then chunks of stone with streaking leathery wings like wild brushwork. They trembled with a seriousness you might almost take for frantic play, careening again and again at the Rabbit’s head. Their speed would have dashed him apart if they were anything more than arrangements of contour and flitting shadow...

  PANEGYRIC OF A FLUORESCENT SAGUARO WHICH ROUSES “IGNATZ MOUSE” FROM TURPITUDINOUS SLUMBER

  The ziggurat Zabbuto boasts a brick of someteen thousand years—

  but kall that brick no special kase—for someday’s sun might melt it to a “jug.”

  And on the sun today a howdah, friend. And overneath three brickbats fly.

  And windy klockfaced mesas running redward back as rust.

  ‘Pon yon vermillion dais suns and stirs a “Kat” whose hardy noggin waits.

  “She” knows what love is—strokes “her” kornered basking-bed of brick.

  So old, the ruddy ventricles of every kiln-fresh brick!

  So ancient, all us players—all us pieces—dizzy in the blowing years—

  but kreases never kome a-krazing “kat” cheeks, kause “he” kannot learn to wait.

  To stir the sun “she” plinks a raga on a banjo-bodied “gourd,”

  and wizened tumbleweeds below “him” spin in puffing tufts of rust—

  You see them, “Mouse”—their jouncing tangoes—someday they will fly.

  As sure as every brick you heft has panged and pined for flight—

  and sure as “mice” may trust all kactoid exegeses on the kwiddities of bricks—

  on high “she” dreams of hurled kisses, loving not to sit and rust—

  we pieces all—o flourpot and jadeplant, sodaflat, o thornsharp notes, o years—

  kraving all and one to shimmy—o to shimmer, o forever—soul to be—one “soul”

  thereby—one soul. O eld’rous “Mouse,” you’re young as “he”—don’t wait.

  For sometimes kats—like suns we meet—will rise for lack of wait.

  Observe “her” tilt a soda-straw toward that kobalt-blue and drowsy bottle-fly—

  “he” puffs the kracker-yellow mesa wind to tickle ‘kross its “wings”—

  not bored, our “Kat” pursues the now-viridian kalliphore down terraced brick.

  “She’d” never think to stay—but wandering, “she’d” yearn verbillion years.

  The secret bakes beneath the open-shuttered sun—there’s nothing rusts but rust.

  O snatch your geriatric love-projectile, “Mouse”—its silty billow isn’t rust—

  as teetering Zabbuto mutifies into a stand of pines without its keystone’s weight—

  now krouch behind my jangle-needled trunk, all windswept, tall with years,

  and fondle frantic fingerfuls ‘f firmly fired fill—for feline frolics forth—full fly!

  “Kat’s” kloudy kranial bone karessed by ever-most heartfelt of zipping bricks!

  O dented temples, “Mouse,” o soda pop and holy Swiss—o names of “lo
ve.”

  Alas! My newly-shooted kwaternary trunk konceals “Pupp”—that kop whose “love”

  for justice, rectitude and “Kat” kompels him pound you off to rust—

  o fuming “Mouse,” you’ll whip your tail, karving days upon your oubliette of brick.

  But sure as moons turn blue—or gorgonzolas gibbous—freedom’s no long wait.

  The kop’s got heartmeat newsprint-soft—he’ll blot a sentimental hanky as you fly.

  Someday I’ll sprout a hand—I’ll toss konfetti in the blowing years.

  A POEM CALLED WHAT DUTY MEANS TO MEAT

  for SkuMm-Ilk

  PORTLAND, 198X.

  The squatters on the corner

  killed themselves yesterday

  morning, before the virus

  hardly touched the coast.

  Only tourists after all—teenagers

  with a couple guns, running

  a gas generator in the kitchen.

  Fan in the window, sure, but

  I still think they just gave up.

  We watched their engine light

  die through binoculars. Shot

  an air rifle in the window so

  the exhaust blew out. Last

  night we stole all their shit.

  The cigarette burn’s bleeding

  again in my wrist, it’s months

  now since Darby left the world.

  I pray that wounds are signs.

  Inside, I say Lord Darby the way

  like he showed me, and he’s

  the one I pray to. In my head

  the Germs keep playing:

  GIMME

  GIMME YOUR HANDS

  GIMME GIMME YOUR MINDS

  Dead playing hands of cribbage,

  drinking coke and Four Roses,

  war-painted faces ruddy with carbon

  monoxide like they’d been out

  sledding. Veterinary speed on a plate,

  dull orange lines, they’d been

  chopping horse pills and we tried

  to decide if something was even

  funny with that. And some book

  by Molotov in the bathroom,

  like Molotov came up with shit.

  Dead kids in stupid commando

  headbands, tourists, every one,

  and some runaway wrote this

  poem on the wall:

  We’ve practiced

  on friendly cadavers. Filled

  spaghetti jars

  with handmade napalm.

  I’M GIVING

  YOU THE POWER TO REARRANGE

  Outside the copters drone, pitching

  freeze-dried rations into the road.

  Fuckers won’t even aim. Nobody’s

  down there but vectors, capillaries

  in their eyes broken red with fever.

  Nobody calls them people anymore,

  calling them dead’s just religion.

  Reservists in the windows with their

  thin flapping signs like prayerflags,

  Live Sniper, their rifles cracking

  each minute of light. Single pause

  could mean suicide, we take bets.

  Nobody’s going to make it now.

  We have dug tunnels that met tunnels.

  Gun stores circled in blue on

  their cheap gas station map and

  they’d sharped up pool cues,

  tried to get good at driving points

  through a mannequin’s eyes.

  One thing with practicing for

  the end of days, you can’t do it.

  Where would they get water?

  They had a flashlight taped to

  one blade of their ceiling fan.

  We are necessity, greater than hope.

  I met his image in the bathtub

  like a stencil jumping from a wall.

  No lie, they did mix napalm there,

  styrofoam and grated bar-soap

  dissolving through kerosene.

  I’ve seen his face in car windows,

  reflection ghosting into the distance.

  My soft palate seized and burned,

  I thought some monoxide was still

  hanging, and my flashlight haloed

  in the streaky diesel rainbows that

  marred the yellow tile. He’s shown

  me his sudden profile in puddles

  of rain and antifreeze. He’s passed

  his expressions between my friends’

  faces, grinned through the lips

  of teenaged roadkill. He’s on coins.

  Darby Crash. He’s on fucking coins.

  His tattered mohawk trailing into

  the bathtub drain. Every circle’s

  yours, Lord.

  GIVE THIS ESTABLISHED

  JOKE A SHOVE

  We’ve measured the

  precise thickness of all our skulls.

  My burn’s healing inside out, only

  the rim keeps bleeding. He said

  scars hold us steady, keep us

  from turning into what’d own

  us. Come what came, he said,

  the truly faithful could keep

  riding. We’d see heat vibrations.

  Every shade of black in the dark.

  Something had exploded on the

  counter.

  We’ve cached scalpels,

  shards of mirror: not weapons, means

  of escape.

  They’d been chopping

  onions there in the peeling char.

  Lucey wasted herself on amytal

  before Darby even left this world.

  She’d have loved it here. Dropping

  bricks off fire escapes, the dark

  skies downtown. Headshot games.

  She gave me this burn.

  We dream

  campfires on rooftops, signal

  fires.

  Murdered skies, big wheels,

  tripwires

  and barricades.

  She got it from him.

  Some nights I can feel it breathing.

  And greater than hope

  is the hope it’ll come.

  They thought anybody could turn

  into a warrior. Like they’d put on

  true names, equip the perfect gear.

  They were dum-dumming bullet

  tips with bread knives.

  They had a photocopied landmine.

  Every alley for blocks they’d carved

  the brick: sideways ankhs, overlapping

  teardrops, snakes like broken rope.

  Who knows if they had friends

  to read their code.

  We are paladins.

  We are meat, breathing on. Our destiny

  the destiny of meat,

  our flag a sawn-down pole.

  No one’s known me long enough

  anymore. This new crew only laughs

  when I say the burns could save us.

  Imagine coming to them infected,

  my eyes like blown-out sores. And

  raise my palm and ask to bum a light.

  A vector that talks. If they’d listen then.

  If they’d hear me out or open fire.

  From this world’s games the next one’s

  muscle knowledge. Lord Darby, your flesh.

  Grant us rebirth.

  In the tawny lashing of

  metropolis’ pyre, your face. Grant us

  rebirth, Lord Darby.

  In the smoke of

  all karmas’ burni
ng, Lord Darby,

  your sign. Grant us rebirth.

  Heaven’s

  wheel stopped from grinding, toppled

  on its side. Every circle’s yours, Lord.

  I put off checking their wrists.

  I know, though. We’re tourists too.

  Polaris, like a ribbon of old onionskin, twisted away across the Rabbit’s lidless eye. “We could speak our case. It might take no more than that.”

  The Rifle stood in the moonlit parlour, her shadow tipping across the floor like a black yardstick. “It would be horrible if a human saw something that wasn’t Re—” It stopped. “Heard things like us speaking.” And stopped again. “It’s a sacred trust that we don’t speak before them. They would go mad if we did; and we would, too, with guilt.”

  “Every toy told me our words would unweave the humans’ thoughts. No toy had ever seen it done. I always felt sorry for their language, how it wasn’t alive.” The house settled, and the Rabbit’s walnut mount shifted on the panels of the wall. “When the Boy caught fever, all his things were heaped in the garden for burning. The only time the adults ever noticed me was to call me a mass of germs. I never spoke to save myself and nor did the books or blankets and I don’t believe much of it was sympathy. It’s that we never thought ourselves Real enough.”

  “At least the Boy called you Real,” said the Rifle. “I would have been glad just at that. Almost none of us are so—”

  “Lucky?” said the stuffed Rabbit whose fur smelled of mineral-oil over glass. “I spoke to the Boy many times while he slept.” He watched the moonlight tremble over the Rifle’s narrow veneered stock as the lace curtain kicked in the breeze. “I told him I loved him. I told him I wished my love could change him as his changed me. And he would wake and see my words clear.”

  The Rifle tried to speak and instead slid part-way down the arm of the settee, making a ticking noise from her spring.

  “In the nursery, I had no idea of fear,” said the Rabbit. “I learned it from his face. My words would cling to his bedclothes or climb across his hair, even as the world burned them thin. Something about him made them curious, and the ones with hands went to pet him. He would tell me about them in the morning; he thought they had grown from the night like toadstools. Out of the angles of the night, he said. Just before the fever he had taken to looking right at them, curious as they. He had even given them the name of night-gaunts. Or for all I know they taught him the name themselves.”

  “They have no words of their own,” said the Rifle, sputtering. Her own words flared and tickled around the rim of her barrel, drifting through the shadows like the arms of sea anemones.

  “As the humans think we have no words. As they call our words monsters.” The Rabbit’s teeth seemed soft against the moonlight, like the pages of an old book. “What if we did speak to them?”