mutating the signature

You’re not awake yet. Where you sleep
is wet and warm and impossible. I picture you
wearing a fantastic bird’s jewel tones, half again
as feathery, wearing a beak trimmed in gold. You’re
pecking at your mother — Wake up, wake up.
You will have a terrible father, a sometimes man,
a smoker. I can’t explain why I do it, the cigarette grabs me
by the shirt buttons, drags me to the alley. Just now
I watched the rain turn to sleet. A storm is when
the sky balls up its fists and knocks on all the windows.
If you want to picture me, start
with a clothespin, stretched into the sunlight
as a swimmer stretches at the buffet, opening the doors
to the store house. I’m twice as pale as that
drawn to a pinch, I have
the temper and airs of a salamander — fiery
and progressively less engaging — tongue
to crest to testes to the tail’s tip, a lizard
known for mumbling poems in the library. You’re not
awake yet, and from where you sleep my voice
comes in as thin as radio at the edges, twice as static,
pointed and dead maybe but defined in waves.
You need to know this world
is no soft crack in the riverbed, it is
not as warm as the imagination of you curled
like some rubber-banded wad of cash I’m earning, you
will never float as easily as you do
now in the last few hours of the life before your life.
You were picked like this — tall and giggly
with lots of hair and your name
drawn from the name of a favorite poet. And
that’s all. The sun is coming through
my blinds, I’ve finished my letter. It is time
to close the book and stare at the wall for a while.

There’s no poetry in me these days.
There’s no way around the fact that I can’t grow facial hair on my cheeks.
There’s no photo better than the first photo of a baby.
There’s no typo like the one at the end of this lime.
There’s no ante up the sleeve of the garden gnome.
There’s no chicken in the backyard — wait, there is a chicken.
There’s no postscript can explain away the prescript.
There’s no baby in the bucket, there’s an echo.
There’s no first time again.
There’s no Hollywood, just cutouts of gunslingers.
There’s no folding map on the dash, there’s a beer can.
There’s no beach cleaner than the one we dug our feet in.
There’s no angels in the architecture.
There’s no crossing guard on the road to the necessity of invention.
There’s no point crying when you cut yourself shaving.
There’s no soap in the dish smells like lemon and myrrh.
There’s no narrative.
There’s no reason we can’t sing this song together.
There’s no onion we forgot to get the onion.
There’s no donkey kicking me awake.
There’s no hoof prints on the lawn, there’s feathers.

postscript — There’s poetry in me these days.

“I don’t let Doomsday bother me / Do you let it bother you?”

Elvis Perkins, “Doomsday”

And when the pebbles lined up white to white

the game would buzz static, electric against

the whole world which by this time had of course

ceased all activity save to stare its hot face into

the face of the electric game the boy held

sweaty tight between his palms.

He was never that boy, he was running past with laces loose

as two elderly sister’s faces or the words they share,

He tumbled one-limbed from an Elm’s trunk

shouting as a young Will Blake might shout,

a boy clinging to the wettest of furs, wind in his face

no fluster in the furrows and backlash of jet planes

flying as he did in the commercial jet-ways

to and from the few precious Temples he kept sacred:

the ghost house, the voodoo house, and

the green clutch of trees around a gritty palm where

he’d first kissed a girl and even built the thing

faceup from other broken trees: staircase, rope,

swing and all, but had let go over the years until

even this place frowned at him just past

a set of orange constructor’s boots left to wrinkle.

1

He cannot possibly swallow them all.

The poet, his form in daguerreotype against

a window, kneeling to the fruit of medicine,

set to swallow anything the good doctor

suggests. Watch his silhouette crack –

some pill bottles fly through our screen

and rest as punctuation must rest, finally –

a semicolon, perhaps,  in front of his  face.

He will breathe it in and think Socratically

but quickly, where to lay his head and where

his  ankles. The poet sticks his face into the street,

paler than the piles of newspaper stacked

left and right of him.  His friends lose their grit,

kick laces off to some other shit,

let’s stay, shall we?, to watch him take deep gulps of air.

Look there — some gravediggers perching

legs over necks to see between the door and the latch.

He can hear

another couple crossing ankles all night,

they’re having much more fun than he, but

if you need a cigarette, by God if he won’t give it.

His boxers stick to his hips in spots

a half assed shower’d made wet, no towels

available and anyway he said

motel towels are full of whatever.

2

Dear priceless artist, you are setting the table with your eyes closed.

The tidy and familiar humming of a diner waitress runs

across your mouth, you can feel silk but cannot explain

what silk feels like. And you kiss the ground, precious pony,

you kiss the loam, the peat, the roots, the worms, the shoe

lonely by the side of the State Road. How the smell of something human

is suddenly strange enough to make you change your tie’s knot. Go ahead,

pretend you are looking for a coin. Hide your shaking hand. Stuff

a restaurant napkin into your wallet, do anything. What a surprise!

You can pretend to laugh, you can tell a joke about

your father’s pocket, everyone was happy about that. Now

look up at the stars tossed like thumb tacks, breathe in

petrochemicals and cotton candy, think like a freight train. Ahead,

ahead, ahead. Just for a second

believe with me everything you’ve heard about God — that He is everywhere,

that He can number the hairs on your head. Believe that, darling poet,

and place your belief in a little cardboard box

and stamp that shit Hello Friend, Open Me Later and just

believe with me — I have placed all faith in a coin that shines in just the right light

and if you can believe as long as your arm can reach well, friend, I need you like

prayers need beginnings. Here’s where it gets hard:

pride and loathing are like barbed seeds — the abuse of pride,

the self loathing in buckets, the wet umbrellas held aloft

kissing your shoulders like a blind puppy — these

are familiar as baths and showers. And then miraculously,

as though it made sense to you again, a penny has value,

a rough hand feels warm to a smooth hand, a nosedive is really just

an accident. Your suit is like purple lightning. You’ve never changed your suit,

valuable artist. Called me “your dapper boy”

and tapped me on the shoulder. Sent yourself flying down the hall.

3

Is the steam rising from his cup

or is the cup falling over and over?