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lycanthrope
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breakfast in two movements
dreams:
i was having runny berries for breakfast-
the blueberries maintained their integrity,
but the rasberries bled with little provocation.
It all seemed aswim to me still in bed.
I did twenty handstand pushups
after eating,
and the same blood rushed
to my head that rushed to my arms
and gave me a headache
for the morning.
I realize i'm dreaming,
it's leaking, like a game of chess
with an impatient child,
who sees the game's limits,
and in my moment of
the non lucid dream that is awakeness,
i think how i'd like to not be the type
who dreams of breakfast anymore.
And then a blood red pool against
the porcelain white
streaks of a bowl's bottom -
crumbling rasberries
and blueberries strong like a disease.
The smell of ridiculous potpourri,
at odds with the morning,
floats to me,
it can't be in my room.
Suddenly a peyote moon,
rising over golden hills,
i was on a road trip,
an object eclipse
lost in the music of an ignored
radio
churning out the inexhaustible
frequencies tapped
into by the desert -
i missed it all for a moment,
missed my own dream,
blinked like waking,
because my passenger,
my friend,
she seemed for a moment,
to be reaching for my leg,
for the one hand hanging idle
by my side.
A friendly languid movement-
did it seem familiar to her?
it was not so to me-
it was exhilarating, enough to dampen and extinguish
a boiling moon.
Enough to change the landscape.
Lulling in bed now, and i have an erection.
i'm cuddly now, i believe it because i know others need to.
My sheets and pillows are warm
and snuggled like a child does to a child's own teddy bear.
It's not merely idle,
it's being a part of something
totally devoted like i'm young again,
at grade school, never doubting
that this is anything that shouldn't be
engorged with enthusiasm,
a larger context unimaginable,
rain and shine, only backdrops,
an erection is a purpose.
I'll accept its offering,
it has stood where school,
where breakfast
have left me yearning to turn my bed
to a womb.
So long as i'm so aroused,
I am young, i am esteemed, I am not ashamed.
untill my next dream, and it falls
like a tranquilized giraffe unto my leg,
a temporary tomb,
a doubtful lazarus.
Her face, the desert, are gone,
I am being led into an arena,
or is it a church?
People are seated like diehard fans
like the senate does,
like they've bought tickets,
a cheerful self righteous indignation.
like let's see it then since we've payed.
I'm backstage it would appear,
i'm getting made up,
there are curtain calls,
and mic checks,
and then i'm led out.
People are so reverent of me...
totally reverant.
Heads are bowed, people kiss
my hands
as i'm led up the aisle,
a bewildered bride.
and what has been arranged?
I need only a mirror.
and indeed i am bleeding,
dripping down my face.
As i arrive, there are guards,
and a lyrical speaker,
a podium beneath him,
and my approaching gait.
Suddenly descending
into the bowels of actuality
is the cross...before me
against the wall
lowering slowly,
a flourescent electrically lit cross
like a christmas tree of death.
Even in a dream i don't hide that much from myself,
and so i am terrified.
i scream and thrash about
and the guards become aggressive;
they do not stop.
Of course not, they've probably been instructed not to.
Perhaps i told them not to myself.
It's hard to remember now.
One leans to me and whispers,
"you're really goin with that fear,
i've always longed to work with you,
you're a true professional.
The minutia between that and the first nail, i'm not at liberty to discuss,
but when i felt it, when i knew,
when i looked out and saw so many faces, and knew them somehow,
i just woke up.
It was time for old guilts and coffee.
. . .
waking:
my bed smelt nicer when i was sleeping than when i was awake,
it was musty, i imagined
for a moment she and i,
losing ourselves, covers
and angles locating and twisting,
leaving warmth and sounds
and aroma.
But my enthusiasm was slighted
by my last dream.
The bathroom door was open,
the light of the flourescent
variety
which startles and blinds
unaccustomed eyes, by eliminating the distinction between discrete
and continous.
There was an odor here too,
and why not?
pungent, i cannot hold myself alone
completely responsible.
someone forgot to flush.
so i do what everyone else does there,
and i flush.
Good deed for the day accomplished,
i can now shrug off orphans
and homeless dogs.
My piss was stagnant and painful,
i was not very hydrated
and i am not prepared for anything,
this moment will have to be dealt
with,
i have no legacy of anasthetic purity.
My stomach aches from being empty.
one of my joints is sore at me
from being armlocked
by a brown belt only one year older
than me.
Breakfast should alleviate some
pressure.
. . .
mother's hasty note:
I see a note from my mother on the kitchen floor,
telling me not to leave the house,
there has been a terrorist attack.
I'll be having tragedy for breakfast.
An act of terrorism has interupted
breakfast,
a poem i was planning to write.
She didn't bother to mention what
happened.
but there was urgency
in her exclamation points.
I already picture tomorrow,
without the benefit of news.
I joke with her paranoia
in our usual vein:
irreverent and loving,
silently understanding
what we feel other families
don't after my father died so.
Joking, being irritated,
interacting over laundry
and scavenged dinners,
the slight crossing
of lines not parallel in the real world,
and the rare theatric performance.
I wrote her two letters,
one in which i laughed at her
and myself,
told her on sad days to imagine
the accomplishments of other
people's children,
and the other i wrote as a tribute
free of self consciousness
for a moment.
that voice called god sometimes,
i let speak freely, of my basest
fears and desires, and i admitted
the power of this voice, and i denied
civil revisions.
I knew still she'd come home,
i'd tell her i was going out
to drive across the golden gate bridge for a couple of hours.
"it's not like it's going anywhere"
but i'd really be seeing a girl,
and pretending that this moment was different, and slowly realizing,
all of our moments together,
are this desparate. And our bodies,
constantly planning for tomorrow,
while soothing our minds with now, counting on us for the taboos.
And after i did turn on the TV,
saw the replays over and over again,
(can football ever in good conscience be cancelled?)
i saw myself saying what makes one
month safer than one year
safer than one day,
i sure hope its not the same
device which keeps one minute
safer than another.
and our bodies plan for the likely,
and they break in the unlikely,
every time they break.
. . .
rubble:
The building cascaded, and i thought
of a construction sight
i saw near my home.
The building was in some stage
of incompletion,
scaffolds led to a side without walls,
like a one sided hive,
a display, a panorama -
a motorcycle could drive
right off,
a human could walk off,
fall outwards,
in varying stages of drama,
but it must be completed eventually,
to the secret dismay of all -
we have to give in to the rationale,
give up the ritual of risk and danger.
We reluctantly destroy, a portal
always opened, closed,
more classes, businesses,
lifes lived slowly,
but no longer the chance of an instant
shattering right?
no smattering of all that seemed
important in what was after all,
only a moment.
inversely proportional to its building.
Closed off is the chance to be elated,
heart stricken,
and we accept blandly, accordingly,
not knowing it wasn't what we meant at all, untill one day,
under our suits we are pallid,
and responsibility is someone else's word.
And this before me, is a skyline rendered numb.
What kind of person could view this
as a victory?
Certainly not the type who accepts
the day blandly,
certainly not one who dreams
of berries,
and is horrified by crucifixion.
To be willing to offer your life,
and others, where have you been?
It is not so moderate as a suit
and a tie, or a late work night.
Suddenly nothing is airtight.
the president comes on,
after ascertaining that he looks
more solemn in blue.
after finishing reading to the children,
because he'd never read that one,
and he wanted to see what'd happen, if good would triumph.
lives are transfigured to metaphors,
and he's winning elections by default. lives organically recycled
to a mythic symbolic struggle,
handfuls and handfuls of rubble,
not allowed to heal,
like a child, in disbelief,
pouring the same disparate sand
back on top of where the sand castle had been, not seeing the difference.
lives, not allowed to be rubble,
not allowing us to see the difference.
ignoring that this isn't already speech yet, not what FDR or Kennedy or King or Ghandi were talking about, not exactly that.
And the thousands mistaken for icarus in this myth? They are never
to know the perverse
paradise that was ultimately
their demise.
but it could be done, it was done,
from what perspective was this a victory?
What was forgotten untill it returned in a minute's obliteration?
What pall do people sit at tea with,
forsake comedy clubs for,
that had been so thoroughly
unexpected that we constructed
them anyways?
In the desire of anguish to become rubble,
we sit and see our families and friends whether
they've called us or not,
finally jump and fly and scream,
our most confused suspicions
confirmed-
would we? yes
we most assuredly would.
The crusaders let them call
on their cell phones
their loved ones,
an act of compassionate insanity.
technology magnifies our humanity.
I comfort myself,
"well if i had known... it would've been, i love all of you,
i'm going to go get stabbed in the face now, won't the real world regret not casting me now"
This world we live in now has no
room for anything as moderate
as carthage or paris burning,
all myths share the fire,
all words enter the general.
And yet they cannot stop.
. . .
surviving:
It is always about the survivors. They are the ones who see masses of heart torn asunder amount only to a pile of gravel glittering in the sunshine,
surrounding three or four crates,
stacked behind gates
of rows and rows of stone and grass.
The unforseen visceral wide deadening, the dust cloud smothers
all broad and distant skylines.
The value of knowing the world,
and the endlessness of knowing it,
have shifted apart, a fault line.
they mistook the purposes of their own ears and eyes and noses,
it was for scenes like this too.
at odds with themselves,
and it won't stop.
and shouldn't a moment like this feel more real, when those parts of my mind that names shifts, sees a chasm, and all my eyes do is adapt like one does in the morning when flooded with bright light, and shuffled from a dream?
My friends call me on the phone,
we discuss what should be
done. I don't stray from my humanist
perspective where i actually matter,
am more than a handful
of smoke and failed vanities.
one of them does frequently.
We discuss that what must be done,
is not to treat terrorism
as an open forum,
but of course look at the context
surrounding this madness.
To see where our government
is involved by choice
and by circumstance,
to see that being isolated,
or isolating one from the other
is not possible.
We want poor countries though right?
that means we're rich.
And yet we don't want to know about their struggle.
Our casualties now dwarf most
of these recent struggles.
What's so recent about hundreds of years?
in some countries they have their midlife crises at 16.
But our casualities....
It's sometimes not about numbers,
psychic tiredness is an imbedded count, it plays out in the world those suffering left behind gladly, in disarray.
Something must be said about
the willingness to destroy
yourself rather than go on.
In a newsbeat where the deaths
are no longer the front page,
but behind the sporting green.
I denounce the media's
coverage of celebrations in palenstine
as incendiary, unexplained,
irresponsible.
Uncomfort is rising.
I don't feel particularly useful,
i have nothing meaningful to say.
How could my words bridge distances those images couldn't gap. if someone indeed is cheering them.
One death is a ritual we understand. we try to turn this into one death.
10,000 deaths we are not equipped for, must add singularly one on top of the other,
something we cannot afford to do.
My friend corrects me.
"only three thousand died."
"i don't know, i stopped counting after one."
I think about getting breakfast now.
but we keep talking, the TV keeps talking,
there is nothing to be worked on but this.
The hierarchy has been violated.
anarchy is easily given to the individual by society.
alarms ring in my head.
i have not eaten.
Finally my friend, I, NPR exhaust themselves. BBC airs an unrelated story.
about Russia in its letting go
of its glory and darkness.
Russia so far away from the middle
anywhere.
A piece about new understanding,
slow survival, borrowing, farming,
the government leaves them
shaking,
in their dependency.
A woman is asked by a journalist
with a sensitive voice
"does it make a difference whether you are a communist or a democratic state?"
"Niet - it makes no difference, we are left to nourish our children on our tired bodies"
Everything is screened yet it's amazing the things high ranked officials will say in a moment,
"when we find this man, this one man, purpretrator of this one act,
we will rip his throat out through his ass and piss on it"
and rescinding later
"well, we can't be sure if anyone did it, we don't know if pissing on it is still an option we can still seriously consider as on the table, but i promise the american people, i will do everything within my power to ensure pissing on it." and of course more power would be needed, and accuracy is a lie for the slow lazy world before there was suffering.
Cleaned out of the rubble, identification slowly begins,
and much is not self evident
due to severe burning.
Cell phones call from under the rubble,
perhaps some with no service,
a ridiculous commercial. and i know some ad execs felt ashamed for thinking it.
Called to say i love you,
i'm still alive,
i cannot ascertain where i am,
or why i'm here.
No cell phones were intercepted
bearing the song,
"Oh beautiful for patriot dream,
Who sees beyond the years
Her alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears"
. . .
time and channels:
An elderly man in Japan,
thinks about when he heard
of Nagasaki and Hiroshima
a flash and it was all gone,
a technology the world knew
nothing of, communication was
nothing, there was no one
to know to get to setting up
candlelight vigils,
there was only a slow
rolling radiation,
and horror.
A meeting with advisors and the suit
switches from blue to red,
time for business.
more officials say things in a moment
they must later shrug down,
stifle a rage with shame.
he seeks to turn it already into a monument, without knowing what it is to. why must we remember when we can't forget?
29 naval stations light up
like flickering lamps,
turning a strobe light on terror-
electrify a humming-
a tight frequency, that
cannot be understood
at the present.
A woman wondering through
a hellish chasm between
her melting internal world
and the melting rubble of another.
She is sobbing, wet with tears,
but i notice her foot has a lovely
arch, a small entrance, a foothold.
Dum Spiro Spero i mutter
and think of returning to bed,
doing what i can to help by
maybe masturbating, maybe sleeping.
I call my friend and we decide
to give blood, not today,
way too crowded, but later,
after a while of this.
The TV diminishes to the background and the foreground
flares and sputters.
The return to myths is inevitable.
Icarus was never unloved,
never unsung.
But for all his bewilderment
he was still burning and broken
in what was once a landscape,
an untouched, unknown,
and unfelt sea.
No sacrifice no matter how great,
can stop the breaking of the sea,
its instant admission of fledgling
victims. No sacrifice,
not even if i remembered
a thousand dreams.
I do get back in bed,
I'm not sure what time it is now,
there is morning on the fringe
of other hills maybe.
A shifting body from side to side,
this is fever, not watchfulness,
the horror of continuing to be,
the guilt of wakefulness
when others are sleeping.
The weight of carrying each ocean
each state, some now names,
some newly named,
ancient burning cities
illuminating the dark ages -
the weight of implications
which never serve us as we
we imagine they will
at breakfast, our naeive meal-
the heaviness is the world,
at the fringes of our turning.
It is being bound to features known
and strange alike,
that i loathe, loathe others love of,
that i'd love, find comfort in even,
if i could just not hear each breath
if the world's tendrils did not grab
at me,
demand i awaken and conspire.
It will not stop writhing
and seducing,
as long as i wake to it,
ask it to feed me,
hold my place, maintain my integrity.
No it will instead,
contortedly offer
my dreams to others,
as the price and means
of my satiation
as breakfast.
And yet there is no It.
nothing asks of me,
to enjoy and suffer as i carry
on its fragile expanses,
i am the fragile expanses,
it is i who diminish and multiply,
something which
is much harder to swallow
in the mourning.
So what is it that wants me
to conspire,
create them - demand a god
to create in a fashion beyond
all esteem -
what is it that demands
the tiredness?
Is it easier this way, do you trust me?
mankind is a shadowy adversary.
we rebel against two plus two
equalling four, we call it arbitrary.
and we're shocked when we see,
what is really arbitrary.
is it this tiredness?
mankind is a shadowy adversary,
but i'm sure we can destroy
it in our quest for protection.
we're the us and the objects.
Breakfast is suddenly is a large meal,
a destroying need -
the hierarchy of needs has been violated inversibly. i will not be
forgiven for this day,
according alarms ring.
and all of the stars we put into flags,
suddenly aren't as bright,
we see the hunger of fire,
we see how calm and contained
candlelight is to it,
no longer obscured by our assumptious architecture,
we are shocked by a sky
that is marked by the death
of a star at almost every turn.
but that banner still waves,
static and flapping at some even increments dumb to us,
with stars we've shaped
so they're easy,
so they last and matter.
The day develops and i have
still not eaten breakfast,
and my stomach brings me
to a point,
as the world watches on.
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020912
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