he goes under and the sky goes with him
the decibels of life left on the surface
he hovers motionless and slows his heart beat
the world now only a muted cubic pressure on his ears
the woman stands at the railing
of the external stair case
she smokes and watches him drown
inhales another stream of magic blue
and keeps her eyes on the dark spot
three feet under water
considering a strategy somewhere between
finishing her cigarette
and an immediate run to the rescue
she exhales pounding techno beats
her feet caught
in the massed hall thumping
along the lines of neon colored swim suits
to blinding strobes of evening gowns
flash dances and stampeded songs
the howl of popular lyrics
her daughter crashing against
the lime lights of the stage
thrown back and forth
by waves of glittering sequins
the bizarre pageant biz
needs another drag
to decide a drowning
he sounds silence
a plumbing line of being
sunk deep into the stilling of his mind
submerged in the great emptiness
of a hotel swimming pool
he can stay under water for up to three minutes
a feat of mental and emotional discipline
and superior lung capacity
due to the good habit
of abstinence from drink and drugs
the cultivation of a meditative metabolism
and minimal romance
three minutes is a long time for peace
and a long time for pain
the woman sees him go under
the sun throws sparkles of false diamonds
on a pool green dress
a lovely face rocks tentatively
in the hush prior to a name
and is then swept away
by the whine of microphone feedback
she smokes and waits
for signs of life
she listens
to the hum of nicotine
riding the surf of her blood
man in himself
daughter in thundering applause
both drowned
By her bow I know her
or so I think
but memory has not prepared me
for a double barreled shot gun
held on a cocked post modern knee
her stance is on the trigger
and if I should allow myself
her line of vision
I'm dead already
Maybe I'll ask her gas mask
what filth it filters out
or if on the contrary
it keeps her insights to herself
and invites kisses to its pleated snout
I'll cover those insect eyelets
with the vapor of my breath
to make her blind just long enough
to duck the shot
Some gorgeous gory story lies
in the pictorial memoir of her skin
a barely breasted Penthesilea
flexes tales of native Achilles
she slew him hereabouts
his upturned belly open to the snarl
of her coyote hound
when she removes her visor
he dies of love
A heart of art and craft
has Artemisia L.
such beautiful dark thoughts
rise from the letters of all her names
wrought in the blood of women
which knows no envy except mine
the audacity
of that double barreled shot gun
is the killing point
"But here we are. Alone."
He took this book away from me and said I would not like it
listen to the sound:
he said I would not like it
hiding the book within his own shelves
or on his side of the bed
I would be hurt if I knew
I read the book in snatches as I retrieved it
from the unobtrusive rows of other literature
somewhere in a fabled darkness
he said it was a book about scientific ideas
that would shatter my conventions
or else not interest me at all
Too true
I much ignored a science
plotting phenomenal disturbances
and alien beings and galactic beams and read instead
a panorama of poetic speculations that fascinated me
because the language was delicious
something about the universe
curving into lust and desire
Time and again I took the book
from the obscuring camouflage of spines
and other accidental leavings
if you want to read about sex and love he said
read another book
he said my handling of the book
my opening and spreading and creasing
and letting it rest open and face down
was damaging an already much maligned and out of print copy
I got my own
I went on the internet and bought a used copy in good condition
it was neither hard to find nor very expensive
and delivery was quick
immediately I dog-eared it and cracked the spine
to my heart's content
I'm nearly at the conclusion of the story
moving fast in violent and increasingly esoteric language
---
We quarreled about ideas
he said I told you this would happen
Ideas have a way of finding us
who originated this
the one who daydreamed or the one who manufactured a reality?
what is more real
the direction of the curve or its gravitational collapse
into lust and desire?
Maybe ideas are conspiracies
there is no source only a movement
listen to the sound:
there is no source only a movement
picked up on the breeze of the internet
and blown into house and room like a whirlwind
so I am stunned
What is it?
scientific innovation
superiority of mechanical interaction
the consequence of failure
made a fashionable virtue
if compounded by a group of the like-minded
now we belong
I read in snatches of his absence
before and after he takes his ideas
back to his shelves – special section –
where I sneak them out again and try
to sort out poetry from plot
he says my understanding will only hurt me
and hides the darkling sparkling paragraphs
on his side of the bed
A dime a dozen are ideas
they ride the universal curve of endless invention
to become pick-pocket gain on a lucky steal
and materialize into wealth when someone catches one
and carries on like so
Don't you know
I signaled to him
that an idea framed on a wall like a work of art
will look back at me with my own eyes
and pursue me with stealth and ominous misgivings
with anger and rebellion
with secret curiosity and blatant vulgar spying
until my search leads me from thought into myself
and forms a picture I recognize?
he doesn't know what I mean
neither do I
I just listen to the sound
Ideas are inspirations of continuity
it's said if an idea reaches five percent of a given population
it will root in the collective consciousness
I am fifty percent of our home's population
how far is that and where is the surprise?
maybe the distance between man and woman is a universal curve
he warned me that the book
ends in pain and disappointment
---
I've spilled the contents of my life so many times
that now I have no knowledge of my origins
I stole away in tears of loneliness but found I had a ticket on that train
listen to the sound:
I had a ticket on that train
I also found that I had lost my luggage
and here I am
alone
I started to read a book he thought was not quite suitable for me
he tried to hide it lest it would cause me suffering
a galactic beam hits earth and scrambles genes
everyone is new
structure without history
you won't find a love story
in the adventures of esoteric god minds and questing heroes
I've never made anyone happy he says
and beckons from the shaded corner of his ideas
I read into the poetry of the book
a great vista of metaphysical theories that never fully formulate
except in the erotic lurch of landscapes and voluptuous light
and panoramas of hallucinogenic visions
and sometimes the laughter of the transitionally enlightened
that turns into the choking fear of death
no love in this book he says
and hardly any sex
Few women marginalize the thread of the narrative
lump sums of disfigured maternal control mechanisms
manipulative prostitutes
breeding material who leak their musk like sewer spill
a sole semi-goddess of eternal youth and beauty
created through the mystic intervention of agape
bathed in the ultra violet light of unconditional love
stream-lined virginity free of disturbances from sexual intricacy
a female powered in service
rescues the self-dreaming god
The true saint of the story is a mutant ungendered telepath
an utterly endearing creature
perfect for animation and to be marketed after the movie
as a stuffed toy to children and spiritual escapists
---
The real danger of the book
is not in scientific ideas that pass me by as mildly entertaining
the speculations on macrocosmic events
the brilliant catastrophies
the unfathomable alien beings who drive themselves
into existence by planet hopping on the energy line
and that's a good one mind you
or yet another artificial intelligence that wants to rule the world
nor in the lack of a conventional love story
and romantic interludes
but in the understanding of a fundamental absence
a radical omission in the thread of life
Sex is on the fringes
as a blind function of physiology
a gross excretion of mindless urges
without a lick of fantasy
not even pornographic
my mother said sex –
by which she referred to men of course –
sex was like pissing
when the bladder is full they look for a place to let go
they don't love a urinal
love has a small niche
in the exception
of selfless spiritual compassion
and in between there is no real body
I warned you he said
I warned you
no matter
that you bought your own copy of the book
you should not have read it
you have not followed
the fragmentation of the world
it's all about ideas
it's all about survival
and it's cold
The real danger of the book
lies in my understanding
that he identifies
and I'm not in the book
---
I sleep beside him outmoded
murmuring to myself a faint idea
of sex as the connective tissue in the human psyche
a local expression of the universal curve into lust and desire
the creative tension between endless direction
and final collapse into gravity
Sex is an act of the imagination
and lust the future of creation
listen to the sound:
sexisanactoftheimaginationandlustthefutureofcreation
We pretend to fuck for pleasure
but we know we fuck for the whole of life
in a race against the fragmentation
of stupefying events that condition mere survival
what else is life but the idea of continuity
crusted like gems of so many different colors
on the curve of the universe
pluck one!
How strange he said
that I have read so much in a book
I shouldn't have read at all
may be I say
I'm always reading a book
that has not been written
Violetta says, "I was born... and here I am. It's been quite a trip."