NICE REPRISAL
The first position is despair;

then savagery;

time stops, chariots pass on,

you find out where the pain points are

in a one-sided conversation,

            You have to live in the world, baby one,

Mouldy strawberries pasta dinner, Loveheart big love …
            Anything can last if it’s also boring

even an eschaton …

be as sentimental as the world is not, hearing codes in a presser:

            Just the right amount of chefs in the chicks uh the chickenhouse

They tell us, we are downwind of time, don’t look,

perception is predatory, only real beasts of burden know …
            Pigs have nine words, dogs have six, we have none,

kissing is banned,

            blow flies and black birds sun themselves, we find dogs in the landscape again…

Throw in our lot with the sick romantics,

purveying moods… for the year I prescribe: retrogrades,

mortal needs, toy trumpets, hellmaxxing, like Scoop me into your prada bag mommy,

tell me how smoke curls at the corner of your vision, that the debts of travesties

are roosting, that the unrequited love of right affords us

three minutes of revolution,

            tell me how justice is only a fetish, like drinking beer with gum in your mouth,

tell it to me straight, while I chew at the lining …
            Slink out of the public sphere, waste my one precious life

memeing the great poets,

            dismantle high ideals, buy a reader’s guide,

take it from marx to machine learning, turn it to foam, stuck on the individual question:

how am I to love

in so much history?

all of necessity

gathered up to a pointed knuckle,

Exactly useless,

a marble circling a drain,

which way, stupid bitch? ask yourself, from the vantage of god;

if grace is never earned you can’t go wrong …

so much is cryptic, decomposed,

but narrative makes its own demands,

nightmares arrive as riddles,

wake to the sound of construction mobs …
            Grapple with life courageously,

bees gathering in the heart…

nothing is clear. it all redoubles. more of nothing is still nothing.

shouting urbanities into the flames, I say — if I can’t kiss you then I don’t want

to be here for the revelation!! — bite me on the back

you birthday card factory!! you star like night-foxes, a channel of bats,

            singing the song of myself too loud,

hoarse throat, beady smile,

the look of you beautiful red in the eye

red in the face I ask

as the sun comes up six am

tuning my thoughts to the whistle tone frequency

            — let this be my last sight on the last day

hand-in-hand, walking slow into a tall, white wave — I wish for us

cool rain, every colour, the light of my look, holy doves,

a clear morning, a glass stopper,

one clean moment of pain —

            so the last day is some consolation —

but it does not come