Writings of Matt Horowitz
Matt Horowitz does not enjoy writing in a vacuum. Hence the existence of this website.
A prelude to the end.
What if we knew
tomorrow were to be
the end?
It is not one of the ends shown to us
by our masters of fantasy.
The end does not come with asteroids or horsemen.
The end is the usual end. Commonplace,
so numbingly similar
that it may appear to negate
all that you did before the end.
Fear not! For the end has never mattered,
when you are dead you are dead
and that is all.
The end itself.
Panic vacuums households into suitcases.
Battles of value rage. Diamonds or grapes?
What will the children wear in winter?
If home is where the heart is and the home - in the end - erases
with the tap of a wand and the sashay of a cape,
the magician makes nothing disappear,
just moves and hides in planted splinters,
but where, after the elongated display,
goes the heart?
The assistant runs room to room,
Save room for tools and duct tape.
Metal scales, chain linked, snake across highways
in every which direction.
Where to?
They run, they run, could anyone escape from the coming shadow?
Our lead foot propels us ever faster but our roads
congest when the world funnels west and we flood
into the scum bucket we have created,
it is and will be our human given right to swim and to drown.
Flee to the west, run from the end.
The shadow will come, it always comes
just around supper time.
Stop, stop asking if we are there yet.
Smoked alleys idling take scent of the garbage piling piling
and in these corners tried and true, red nosed, and proud
propped up Svejks soak in one more one more
till their pores exhume their true love's perfume.
If the devil wants me, he knows I'll be here.
Pour me another beer.
Who else will handle the end with grace and courage?
Remember when the Earth was flat?
An edge loomed just past where you could see
an ending, if you will, a gateway to a hell
where three headed giraffes lurked.
Ships set sail, dip over the horizon and
aiiiiiiyeeeeeeeee splat!
It was easier to believe in a god when the world was flat.
On the round earth one's beginning is another's end,
an ending is but a mere point of departure.
Travel far and wide and you will never reach a destination,
just another checkpoint, another place to fall asleep
We only seem to understand this during strange rituals.
A wise man of wealth videotaped his will.
Upon my death. Go to the undertaker, find the price
of the most expensive casket, find the price
of the most lavish funeral parlor, find the price
of the most exquisite tombstone.
Do not purchase any of those things. Rather
soak my corpse in glue and cover me with the dollar bills
it would have cost you. Toss me in a landfill.
How many will try to peel the bills off as I rot?
Would it be any better to be carried in a box
and placed in a hole?
If my wishes are not fulfilled all of your inheritance
will go to charity.
How do you think his death was handled?
The young man sidesteps stagnancy, in view:
Old men sit in the distance.
A man fertilizes the lawn
where his hair used to grow.
A simple parallax until death comes early.
Astronauts know death.
"Prophets coming out of the woodwork," said the first.
"Aye, and entering the woodwork," replied the second.
"Yes," said the third, "though the loud and shrill
are the ones least worthy of listening to, there always
exists that drop of ocean water worthy of drinking,
even if you will contend with a mouthful of salt."
"It is never the first to speak who has the speech most worthy of our ears," concluded the fourth.
"Nor is it smart for the fourth to offend the first in front of the first," piped in the fifth.
"And what makes the fifth worthy of commenting on this conversation?" questioned the second.
"Should we not allow a fifth voice? Or a thousand voices?" The third opined.
Rebel armies buzz heatedly against the shores,
Speeches shouted, sealing doubt from what's in store.
The tidal wave splurges,
Laughing at the silent dirges.
Fear holds steady, trigger fingers always
always ready.
A thousand bullets pierce the water,
Birds catch them,
You cannot stop water.
The water rises, rises high.
And just before the tidal fall.
A jester drops his gun and grimaces,
It's a shame I'm not thirsty.
In Hollywood, the end comes at just the right time.
The armies have finished their fight,
the lovers are together at last,
and that one thing, that thing one truly desires
is won with dramatic flourish.
But, as you could guess, that is not the end.
Romeo will seek,
Casanova will find,
Don Juan will shake hands.
And in that press of the palm to the wisp,
that conductor's ticket punch,
all aboard!
we will all join Don Juan in an instant of hell.
How quickly does an instant pass?
As quickly as the 21 grams of your soul cease,
Not in a spiritual journey upwards or down,
But as a balloon pops into negation
leaving a withered rubber corpse upon the floor.
Before the end, look.
Look at what is there.
Look at those unbearably unremarkable things
that compose our daily occurrences.
Abstract them into shapes,
distract their use,
until the liquid in your cup
is an angled circle.
Lie upon the full concrete.
The princess, perched upon a series of mattresses,
could not sleep but for a pea.
Nor can I sleep, for beneath my bed,
beneath the floor,
beneath the ground,
beneath the mantle,
boils a new sun.
That sun has risen to the surface
stretching its glow into halos
ringing my feet as I stomp on angel heads.
A jalopy riding cowboy halts before the saloon.
Stepping mightily between swinging doors,
he saddles up on a stool and demands to know,
"I demand to know, how you know, about the end."
He must be a prophet. For he knows I know. And I have
not spoken a word.
Or am I the prophet? For I know how the end will go.
"How arrogant and unsocratic," the jalopy cowboy scuffs.
I know the end because I have seen it.
The end is universal, the end is the future for some
and the past for many.
The end will not differ for you as it will for me or has for him.
You don't need to open a seal, to know
you're going to die.
A heavy bell may slowly ring,
a somber starlet may slowly sing
the tune of a song she used to know
whose melody made soft wind rhyme.
In the cities, between the cities, before the cities and above sit the signs,
selling whistles and jellies,
and the only matter of importance,
is finding something to fill one's belly.
I am not a real prophet, that is certain,
but I can pay thought to the hell
some believe lays behind the final curtain,
for every night, the theater doors shut our eyes
and a curtain raises before us,
allowing the actors of our dreams to play their parts.
They follow no script and their sense of structure is flawed.
But before Dawn, with her supposedly red rosed finger tips,
draws the final curtain, the actors have put on some sort of show.
And we were in attendance.
Some more than others, others less than some.
But the sum exists somewhat, and that isn't so bad.
trudging out of the sopping atlantic
we move:
westbound under the influence
of shortening horizons,
into the deepening darkness, unwinding
morning's abeyance with the softening kneel
of a dying ballerina's last pirouette.
we make:
fevered speeches
of giants who stood on cliff and shore
crying into the angelic vacancy
bemoaning the brewing fire.
(recounting the sky's sunken retreat homeward,
stamping out darkness upon the mat, and
returning its coat to the ancient trees'
before laying down for a drunken sleep upon the beach)
recounting since all the numbers have been counted
and yet we continue our ascent in infinity,
though our stagnant machineshop
has stripped our numbers of any a posteriori possibility.
can we allow this?
must 7 + 5 always = 12?
for if the equations have been set,
our lives are but myths,
wisps as permanent as a breeze.
we may not be giants.
we will not stamp the earth for eternity.
still the earth rotates.
though no different from the rotations or the rotations of before.
how new is the new day?
i am no sorcerer but i can predict how this day will go:
morning will be followed by an afternoon
afternoon will be followed by an evening
the horizon will be finite
towards the end, the darkness will deepen.
we all know how the curtain will close.
but we can, if we are so inclined, proselytize
our playwright's manicured decisions.
suggesting infinite suggestions till
our playwright simply dies.
or retires.
or realizes that he never existed at all.
and we move:
westbound without Influence
on my bare table's chair.
Heavy and hollow, she allowed me to follow
the path of her despair.
"It is not easy to be me,
so beautiful and fair."
"Pray tell me your trouble," scratching my stubble,
"your golden feathers sunbubble storm weather,
help me to understand."
But a touch of her hand was all I could handle.
My prejudice crumbled and argument humbled.
"Bubbles do pop, so easily pop.
For my beauty you'll no longer care."
With that a dear kiss and a lifetime to miss
all that had laid by my chair.
When you see golden pheasants,
do treat them pleasant.
Their moment of sun has a night.
Knowing
The light flooding across the room’s space draws itself into a tightened orb that radiates solely upon her face. Golden lines are etched into her cheek as her lips widen and I stagger blindly in the glint of her smile. Smile again. Raise your hand let the light of your fingertips spread upon my shoulder. Warm me from the chest down. I am orange.
I untie the strings covering her back and retie them to feel the elation of discovering her back once more. Running across her shoulder blade, my fingers tingle as though the circulation were cut from above. The reality of touch is nothing without the fantasy that has preceded in every glance. Steeped in coy wonder, we are small animals testing the boundaries of what we do not know. Prodding it, scurrying away, dancing back slowly. I do not know her. The more she knows me, the less she will love me.
We are speaking. Coyly. Flirtatiously. Seriously. My words mean nothing. I doubt hers do either. I am a braggart. Expounding upon topics that impress. Modestly deflecting before hinting at the treasure of personality that lies inside my mind’s cove. If she could read me she’d see visions painted upon me.
Upon the slanting slope of my shoulder lays a cool swagger, untruthful but a worthwhile attempt.
In the creasing of my cheeks is an unconscious persistence to laugh at all her stories. Funny or not they are enjoyable for I enjoy her.
Upon the curl of my left lip twists two bodies between crisp sheets.
I have laid out my life plan:
I haven’t yet but I am getting there. Will you settle for tonight’s plan? We will steal away from the humdrum hanging stagnantly in the air. Venture off to the Hudson where I will recite Rimbaud. Here we are on the Breton shore, let the town sparkle in the evening. For tonight, the second best thing of all would be a drunken sleep upon the beach. No no we agree. Tonight is not meant for sleep. We have mornings, and afternoons to lay lazily while the sun’s light sneaks between cracks draining away drinks and puncturing a hole in the night’s memory – allowing the words, smiles, and touches to drip slowly but endlessly from the expanse of the present into mere memory as though our lives were hourglasses with an endless bottom collecting the grains of our lives and an equally sized top to contain the expanse encompassing our vision, thought, sound, smell, and how the world feels against our skin within that single moment in time, before it is funneled below into the depths of memory where we may remember vividly. We may remember parts while forgetting others. We may remember wrongly, envisioning oranges when in truth there were purples. We may not remember at all.
The sun rises not with a bang. It seeps across the mountaintops. The sun drips into our city until it floods our sleep. Our dreams struggle, drowning in the sun’s light begging for darkness, thrashing for darkness until our dream dies and a new day begins. And in mornings, ecstasy lingers upon our balcony though soon it will redress and leave. Ecstasy returns again and again but it is not Ecstasy! It is something more like ecstasy, slumping and sighing for the sake of itself. Where did that love go? It was immediate, she was, she is beautiful, I was orange. I am nothing more than a numbered hue.
“You are maddening! One page ago you loved her. What is it?”
Now I know her. Is it not what we know that we love the least?
“You cannot love what you don’t know. The unknown is nothing but imagination.”
But what do I love more than my imagination.
“You are an idiot.”
Maybe. Months ago I loved the Russia of Chekhov and Tolstoy. I desired nothing more than to see the Motherland with my own eyes. In Russia we became exasperated. It was a horrible place. And after searching for a place to eat something that looked edible we found a small supermarket. An apple and a water each. Then we sat on a stoop and ate. The apple was tasteless and mushy. My brother began to laugh and asked, “What are we doing here?
“How could you enjoy Russia if you don’t speak Russian? It’s not Russia’s fault, you’re just a fool.”
Maybe. But now I hate Russia.
“Why do you keep answering with maybe?”
Because I can’t say definitively. Maybe I am an idiot. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m a fool. Maybe I’m not. Plus, I’d rather not validate your insults.
“Fine, but how does your newfound hatred of Russia relate to your inability to retain a loving sentiment for more than a few hours?”
I romanticize the unknown and once the unknown becomes known, it is not nearly as romantic as I had envisioned it because it becomes part of reality.
“Both she and Russia were always part of reality.”
They were not part of my reality.
“Have you learned about Russia? Did you know it existed?”
Yes.
“Did you see the girl before you knew her?”
Yes.
“Are you so vain as to believe that you made Russia and the girl real?”
Within my universe, yes.
“What universe do you reside in?”
Mine.
“Who else is there?”
It’s really just us.
“Are you claiming to be godlike? You are the master of the universe?”
Not at all. Do you remember Men In Black?
“Please don’t bring up Hollywood movies. That will severely lower the chances that this work will be considered highbrow. Besides the fact that it’s a ridiculous question because if you remember Men In Black then of course I remember Men in Black.”
If that is so then how come you cannot comprehend what I’ve been trying to say?
“I’m just a device, I understand only what you want me to understand.”
You’re blowing my cover.
“Are you not blowing your own cover by making me say what I said in order to say that I’m blowing your cover as some kind of self aware joke?”
Maybe. Anyway, in Men In Black the denouement shows our entire Universe: Earth, Stars, Planets, and beyond them to be an orb placed into a sack with other like orbs by an Alien like being. What I was trying to make clear earlier, is that every being has its own personal universe.
“That is not an original idea.”
Everything can’t be original, I’m simply trying to build off of a previous idea here. So outside the realm of my universe lies the unknown. Russia before I went. Her, before I met her. By going to Russia, by meeting her, they become part of my universe. But my universe lacks the imaginative quality.
My cup is three-quarters,
Tea flows through to my fingertips.
I take a sip.
I think.
I take another sip.
Flavorful.
I sip again and decide that this is a good cup of tea.
I sip again and nothing comes out.
I tilt the cup higher.
Time for another cup of tea.
Wastebins
“I fear you are making too much sense. A poem about a cup of tea? The imagery was nothing but a cup and you. Not that exciting. If you want to pretend to be a poet, you must muddle your meaning with sweeping images, varied structures, and indecipherable phrases.”Too true! I would not want to reveal my lack of talent. How could I muddle myself?
Patience, I’m trying to think.
Aha! Love! Love makes no sense whatsoever. Love is everything and nothing.
“Already you are being poetic!”
Really?
“Yes, of course, you are not making any sense at all. Everything and nothing? That certainly doesn’t make sense.”
No? But when you have love, it truly is everything. And when you don’t, you have nothing at all.
“Stop! Stop! Just stop it! You are too simple, you’re running yourself.”
Allow me another chance. I can do this. Just let me jot something down.
The wide-bodied glass twists to the tune of her forearm, swimming amongst evening’s airs - in evenings especially irregular. Elixir induced hopefulness unbuttons capillaries to the worship of the soul shimmering, shimmying its roaming vines all about its other. With the vacant hollow of relational contemplation discarded, Tomorrow and Tomorrow need not exist as Tonight and Tonight lay in wait upon the doorstep. Wastebins compile names amongst the gathering dust because this is not who I am.
Allow me this opportunity for I am without a place to rest my head. Well, I have my pillows. The one for my head and the one that I place in between my legs because I find it uncomfortable for my legs to rub against each other. It is not that either of my legs are opposed to the other’s company, it is just that sometimes they need a buffer, some time alone from the other. Honestly must my legs be with each other at all times? They spend their days in my pants and their evenings in my shorts. Who are you to demand they lay upon each other through the long hours of the night? Clasped together uncomfortably, knees knocking together.
“Matthew, can I spend a night on the chair? Just one night, just a night to inhale the morning’s air? You haven’t washed your sheets in months. If I had a nose I would, in all likelihood, find your sheets to be smelly.”
“How limited your vocabulary is, had you a mouth you would blaspheme indignantly the malodorous, redolent bed sheets.”
Please, I’m trying to get some sleep. How ungrateful legs can be sometimes!
“Ungrateful? Dear Sir, you trod upon us endlessly. We bear the weight of your body. Could you not hail a cab? We are not given the proper respect that gentlemen deserve.”
“Really, I am not unrefined. I’ve read books but the pompousness of right leg gets to me sometimes.”
“Shall I lower myself? I find being in your presence repulsive, yet I am bound to your company.”
“You’re not even all that smart you just throw together big words.”
Would it kill them to simply act like legs and less like people? I doubt I could handle any more voices and here I am, drifting into a dream where the voices will take hold and lead me through formless scenes.
Je serai, je serai, je serai, je serai.
I know not another way. And if I did I’d likely discard it. For plans often fail and reason alienates the assurance of my sentence until my thoughts scatter and I slink backwards, tilting my chin low. Finding my existence in time is such that my lazy eye wanders aimlessly towards the future though my feet are planted firmly in the gelatin of the present. Step step step forward. Je serai not, I wish to but je serai not, not when I stand as Atlas, with my past, all of those failures all of the shudders that swept cold air through my veins, resting upon my shoulders.
There was her, and her, and that one I believed I loved. I will not mention the rest…oh who am I to pretend that I don’t champion myself?
There was the werewolf. When the sun disappeared beneath the buildings, she preyed upon my desires. But the morning always returned and she’d run away in fear with one arm clasped across her naked breasts.
“Wonderful! Poetry needs breasts, its so erotic and exotic, it thrives off of them! Oh and use erotic and exotic, they rhyme!”
Won’t you please let me be? I will never become a poet if my poetry is constantly interrupted by you. How could one even remember where I was?
“You were listing women. Go on.”
There was the escapist. The socialite’s overbearing bouts of conversation weighed heavily upon our evening. We stole away to the edge of the city where the Hudson’s water brushed against the island in small strokes. I recited Rimbaud as usual. Here we are on the city’s shore. Let the town sparkle in the evening. Our day is done, let us leave America. Her muscles soothed within the clutch of my arms as though wine coursed through her veins. She was smitten. I am terrible.
There was…I cannot do this. For the other women are inconsequential. They can’t make me fill this. We dig and dig into each other until we leave, and leave a hole where we left. A hole recognizes that something used to be there. I cannot make sense of this. Let me stop writing.
“You can’t stop now.”
Please, I beg you.
“No, continue. Talk about Her.”
Who?
“Don’t play stupid.”
I don’t want to.
“Consider the reader’s perspective. Your refusal to continue writing perpetuates these meaningless dialogues. Stop crying and poeticize”
Aren’t poets supposed to cry?
“Clowns cry, poets dance.”
I can’t dance this tune. I’d rather sit down, I’m tired.
“Slow dance with her memory. Now even I am getting in on the game of poetics!”
I will write, if only to drown you.
Perched upon the fountain’s rim, allowing our evening to stretch long into the sun’s awakening. Stretched until the smoke smoke clears and our city is filled with naught but us and the late revelers stumbling into chariots – for the dealers have all gone to sleep. This is almost like something that just may be what I would assume to be similar to what probably is love. I say this is love for no one has any points and the game began long ago.
I wish she had not left. She once sat on the edge of the bed, arms draped in her lap. The chill of the room made her shiver. I admired her back, running my finger along the curves diagramming her muscles and bones. And as I reached the small of her back, I couldn’t help but kiss it softly. There exists a patchwork montage of our lives, the threads must be loose for the scenes scarcely hold together.
The beauty fastens my chin to my chest. Tightening the clamp crank crank twist devolving speech into empty mutterings. Oh look how her foot smoothly transitions into an ankle and then a calf. Round, modern, and twitching quickly. Contracting thought and exploding into sprints to the cone and then back. Remember those things that you say? The ones that are truly precious and witty? Yes, yes don’t say any of those things. Say them and you will be considered. Instantly! Maybe not instantly, but an immediate calculation, equating the remark, the clothes, the beauty or lack there of will
Good evening, I am memory’s elephant paddling in the sea. Measuring the weight of each stroke closer and further. Foreseeing fortunes, prophesying at will. Wrong on all accounts. Measured and practical each exploit a carefully concocted stage play. I am director and actor – unprepared due to the director’s negligence and moaning in the actor’s vacant ability. Don’t they know they’re lines? So as to be nothing hasty on occasion at all, that is not what I meant to avoid at all. Remembrance of things that form as marquetry within my mind, words ring alongside the dawdling visions painted vividly – bordered by blank canvas. I have drowned years away in remembering memories that serve none but the blank stare that creeps over eyelids and buttons them up. Until eyelids flicker and I present myself to the present. Dressed up in abstract importance, the present cannot exist. Bombarded with what we know, what we foresee, and what we want. Even a moment of learned exclamation is doused by the relation of learning to what is learned. I know what I know. I will know more. It is inevitable. There is no act. Life can never be more than a series of reactions to the present, based upon the present, embroiled in the past, entangled in cravings for the future. Our future. No, you misunderstand. Not our as in you, me, and Daniel or anyone else but not excluding Daniel for that matter. Our as in what I or you or Daniel want our future to be. Our future belongs solely to the individual. The future is a relentless attack upon our present state of being. Attacking serenity, fear, discomfort, ecstasy, itches. Time never settles to allow a moment to linger. React! Shape the future before you!
That will not do. For the future may turn out wrong. I will probably say this, when certainly I should have said that. Does not matter. Its only one opinion, but what if they tell eight others? That would be nine opinions on something I cannot take back. Wind will propel my canoe and we will glide along as if the canoe were on water. Where is a canoe when you need one? And for that matter, a good friend who plays the trumpet. Would not a ride in a canoe, with a trumpet playing friend be what this moment needs? Of course the present will end and we will need to bring sandwiches. Nothing fancy and no peanut butter. In times of need one must consider the hunger of our friend who plays trumpet and were this friend to desire a fancy sandwich with peanut butter we would be happy to oblige. But these are times that call for peanut butter to be put out of mind to leave room for important things such as interior decorating. Were it not for interior decorating we’d be trapped in inspireless rooms. Maybe we could do without furnishings to leave time to emphasize colors and shapes. I’m not a radical, I would not propose to dispose of all furnishings since they include desks and chairs and beds within the great umbrella of furnishings. Wait, I find myself mistaken. There is nothing wrong with any of the furnishings. And I find the words already written down. This cannot be erased but I must apologize. Please accept this apology, the last few judgments were rash and I am wholly for furnishings. And what is your opinion? Were you with me initially, nodding and agreeing that furnishings should be considered less often then shocked by my about face and betrayal of your trust? For I drew a line in the dirt and stood on your side against furnishings. And here I stand now, well in the past now but I’m still here so it continues in the now, against furnishings. Or did you disagree and wish to explain to me how I was wrong from the outset and furnishings truly are wonderful but are relieved that I have come to my senses and we can now all agree? After much thought, I believe I have a solution. There is a line in the dirt and as it stands many of us find ourselves on opposite sides. Clashing with the others while bonding with our brethren. What if we were to stand upon the line and forget the issue? Would that solve it? For you don’t have to live in the opposing views home, matching their principles of furnishing. Would it be nice to celebrate our dismantling of the furnishing dispute dividing us with a song? A simple melody that we all know the words to? Yes, yes that would be nice.
Sweet biscuits and crumbs. What is a crumb? Is it taste never realized? A mistake that can be undone only by lowering ourselves to the floor of humanity? Or a simple memory of the sweet biscuit it fell from? Could it be that a crumb falls to the floor as a metaphor for life? Yes, you in the back of the room! Could not everything be considered a metaphor for life? I suppose so, must you interrupt me though? I was trying to be profound. My sincerest apologies, please go ahead. Could not the crumb signify that life, or our chance at living is a sweet biscuit and as we bite, crumbs fall to the floor as taste never to be realized just as one cannot experience all there is in life? Yes, you again in the back of the room. What if I were to eat the entire sweet biscuit in one mouthful, no crumbs would escape my mouth and all would be realized. I don’t mean to be rude and counter your idea but one must consider it. I shall pace for a moment of suspense. Until I say this: one can eat the entire sweet biscuit in one mouthful but are you then truly enjoying your sweet biscuit? The taste is all at once and too much, the roof of your mouth sticks, you quickly chew it up to avoid choking. That is not the way to live ones life. A crumb is not a failure. It is an oversight. Be not afraid of life’s crumbs – I say, with an exclamation point.
It’s her. This is not a time for words. It is a time for vivid dreams and this is not a time for words.
My ears wearing muffs tearing searing sounds from out my brain. At times it is not enough to keep sounds out, what apparatus can I wear to extract the rattle that invaded my empty spaces long ago and has been shifting, purring ever since. Dank storage spaces where memory waits. Filed neatly. Accessible at times yet when we stand in the middle of an infinite stretch of warehouse, waiting to retrieve that thought...it is...where? I knew that, I knew. The depressing part of a broken heart is not the shattering. When we break into pieces, and strewn about the ground we drag our leaking vessel: we are quite lively - no matter how pitiful. It is the act of puttering around this stage, trying to pick up each piece and return it to our puzzle, when we realize, our soon to be restored heart has not another heart to love. We can find the cure, we just need time. How much time do we have? A curse to live unaware of how much time remains though I cannot help but shudder at an expiration date.
Of what import do the decisions of our past retain on us right now, right at this very second. Every past has a smell. Strawberry milkshake, fresh fig, sweat. May we stand on our tippy toes as those scents waft wavily, spread our nostrils wide to absorb all that we had forgotten or pretended to forget. For she is sentenced to eternity in my nostril, there is room for all, where she will smell like a coffin of burning leaves. And all that venom, all that wonderful venom thrown in celebration, all that venom,
I often found when she had left my bed, gone off to work, the slim cone was too bright. Too bright for me and my beckoning reflections. Ditie advised me. Attain the serenity necessary to secure against the desire to escape solitude. But the townspeople had done more than assassinate my shepherd. My Eloise. My Eloise was a slave to their reach. Reaching further and further.
When Jasper lay the lighbulb upon its deathbed, we lost sight of those beauties that drew us out of the swamp into our square – the cube if we’re being practical. But we were too practical. There is no room for practical thought in matters of love. There is no room for love in matters of practical thought.
We had no friends in Denver. We preferred it that way. She threw me surprise birthday parties. My birthday was chained to her whims. Any of the 365 days could have been that one when I was born. All we knew for certain was that February 29th was not my birthday.
September 9th
January 20th
October 14th
November 7th etc.
Though we did celebrate the 29th in honor of those poor birthdayless souls.
Before Jasper laid the lightbulb upon its deathbed, her teeth radiated white light. She seldom showed her teeth to the rest of the world. She believed that saving her teeth for me made up for allowing Denver to ogle her.
Nevertheless, Jasper laid our light bulb upon its deathbed. She decided. At least, I like to think she did. I left Denver.
Bordering the morning blows a stuttering trumpet
And the stiff breeze
Inhales the jangling sound
Lulling to sleep all of our strumpets
Curled under sheets
After the night’s go round
At 5:46 AM on 16th Street
A push-cart peddler waits inside his coffin
Not dead
But believes he might as well be
Imagining a kiss as he does often
Full lipped and red
Beautiful Eloise
At 5:46 AM on 16th Street
Busboy toddles lifelessly across the pavement
Glass clinking shrill
Churning in his mind
Wants to quit and make a statement
Dollar bills
Tighten the ropes that bind
At 5:46 AM on 16th Street
Curled asleep lays a homeless gentleman
He knows not hunger
Simply content to be
And in his mind he travels on a dolphin
His friends wonder
How he became king of the sea
At 5:46 AM on 16th Street
A yellow booted girl dances in puddles
In an impercussive stanza the water disperses
Splashing the sidewalk in darkening swirls
Till the collection spreads upon the pavement
And the girl wraps her arms around the whole world
At 5:46 AM on 16th Street
But Upon Further Inspection May Not Be
Stab me with public compliments; force my responses lame.
I’ll retreat into the background, sheepishly, once they all know my name.
But these background set-pieces, shift, leaving me astray.
And I can’t stay in character I don’t know what I serai
For the audience, critical, cannot judge what I don’t say.
Behind the velvet curtains I’ll vaporize and float away.
There’s a tall girl in the alley waiting without a coat.
My teeth are cold, she said, really I would not misquote.
Keep smiling, I asked her, but limit the vibrato in that note.
I suggested tea in order to warm her mouth.
Once inside it seemed to all go south.
Inside the café, I could sense a change like a Chekhov play.
Say, I like the fruity flavors, plum or apple, es tu?
No, no, no I said a rooibos or oolong will do.
Your taste is too highbrow. Stand in my shadow with a flower or two.
That is not the way I see it, rooibos and oolong taste so good.
I don’t need you she said; I need only my sweatshirt hood,
Pulled a kiwi out her pocket and strode out the café.
The last detail is hazy but I’ve said it anyway.
My coat flaps were a flapping due to these stacottic gusts.
Freezing on the boulders that harbor the pebbled crust.
Head down, dare not gaze at this body that only a literate man could understand.
Will I ever find what love means if all I know are one night stands?
Wishing this morning was love and not just lust.
There’s something about skin that makes me want to trust.
Detached intimacy, we’re as connected as these sands
Does that make sense? No, I don’t know, where is our literate man?
We could all use a metaphor to signify truth
None of us exist but we’ll forget that in tonight’s vermouth.
Abandoning the hollowed halls
And a skipping to the meadow,
She spilt as she swigged
And collapsed upon my knee
Buck-a-ling over, I fell slow-ly
Drifting to the grass that called to me
We danced in the meadow
Lit by my lady’s halo
A song wafted round, in varied harmonies
Violinists sound-ed
In naked tuxedoes
Chirp chirp chirping chirp chirpity
Day disappeared, overcast in night
Wisping lumination buzzed our skin
Don’t let go, Don’t let out of sight
Music shall not cease if we dance chin to chin
Oh Pretty please, pretty pretty please
Pretty please, Let me in
