Chloe & Other Poems | 1992 - 2000 by Jesse De Clercq

Chloe & Other Poems 1992 - 2000 Jesse De Clercq

analogpress.net | 2012

CHLOE & OTHER POEMS. Copyright ÂŠ 1992, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2009, 2012 by Jesse De Clercq. All rights reserved. Produced in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of Paris/Atlantic where some of the poems contained in this volume were published. The author would also like to acknowledge the input, encouragement and inspiration provided by Laurits Haaning and Jeremy Enoch Mayer. A note on the text: The poems contained herein are works of fiction, and the names of characters are merely representational and not to be construed as real figures. Any resemblance to any actual real person(s) is coincidental and not the intention of the author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Flashbulb Symposium .............................................................................. 5 A List of Things Judy Won’t Do .............................................................. 6 Chloe Goes on Vacation! ....................................................................... 10 Fragments: A Debate . ........................................................................... 13 Elegy for the New Radio ....................................................................... 16 The Sad Children ................................................................................... 22 Statues .................................................................................................... 23 A Miller’s Tale, (or, Voices in a Cistern) ............................................... 25 (The Events of the Lives) Erratica ......................................................... 32 A Filter for Chloe ................................................................................... 34 Chloe in the Shower ............................................................................... 37 Cassolette ............................................................................................... 38 The Memory Carnival ............................................................................ 42 Saturant Girl after the Evening .............................................................. 46 Lady Deign ............................................................................................ 50 Opus N.3 from Cedar Street .................................................................. 52 Overture of a Town You’ve Lived in for Many Years ........................... 54 The Last Time You Offered Me Quinine ............................................... 57 A Desperate Plea from the Rooftop ....................................................... 59 Two Sisters ............................................................................................. 64 The Feast of the Glass-eaters ................................................................. 68

Flashbulb Symposium

What if I were to wear bowling shoes? Act out a vignette? Eat a rosemary baguette, Slide on gilded wings you built, Paint my face blue, Walk from the Rolls Royce over red carpets? Lightbulbs pop, disturb the steaks Hanging from your chin, send my nerves racing, My face obviously pained: The contortions of a simple mime. Welcome to the conclusion, then. Somewhere Chloe prays to Columbine, Only her homework on Sociology. Okay, The dead seem of more comfort than those who count Amongst the living, buying groceries, perfumes: Small things of comfort for your weary brain.

Flashbulb Symposium | 6

A List of Things Judy Won’t Do

Can I make a suggestion to you? The microwave Would belong better over there. And the coffee maker here. We could take two girls, but then you might get into some trouble With Chloe, who invested her savings in ‘94, Being that it wouldn’t be as fishy as just inviting the one Since I am pregnant with an availability pause. She might Construe that you are not you. Nevermind. Keep tight Your thoughts, idle as they are, and wear that shirt for the occasion. If we brought two girls ..It should be all right by and by, But that never quite goes, does it? Then that is nobody’s business, Not Omar Shariffs, the Lizzy Borden of Grand Central, And it’s talk that isn’t where between you and I Is talk that squanders the quips and asides of what your life Is like being that you are taken. That I am with her, it would be inappropriate for us, from my side To flirt vacuously with you in any occasion Outside or inside the house where the realm is of my life And her life. I would never live it down were all the magazines, All the salads-to-go, all the cream cheeses in the world Came to my rescue. Then, however, it seems as though she Can pick that one harmless guy, the one whose jokes she always Laughs at, and wants to have to tag along. I know that guy. He seems decent enough, but I know deep down inside he Wants you as badly as I. But, despite this, she is able to walk along hand in hand With solidarity. I’ll be here no matter. A List of Things Judy Won’t Do | 7

All in the household all towards a common purpose. The soul lingers at the words “Stay with me awhile. “ But as one, we all came and went, our business growing more offensive Day by day. A line stretches from your hand out infinitely. ... And how the morning dew sleeps so fitfully, quivering With each step of the demonstrators having left the Capitol, Headed east. The uplift stabilized all through the afternoon smog, Banking gently through the clouds And the paddles had their fill of transporters zipping along The lines and surfacing here and there throughout The headways of the Metro. Aha Mia’s entourage, Which Judy included in her final demo, spat out injurious profiles Populated meritoriously with the likes and dislikes Of Catherine Deneuve, Aaron Spelling, kumquats, Tommy Hilfiger, Fistula fibrosis, Pat the Bunny, Bob Barker, Bobby Kennedy; And the days that took as many days to reach, days that extended Themselves in pastoral qualms so that each reenacted Itself as it once had been before and looked much the same to me But had a new face for all that they had heard, And I wonder, will the past begin to resemble the future? I set myself up as an unexpected kingdom: A dish of poster pins, the stereo and the albums correctly aligned, Subdivided; incense burning to please most sensitive nostrils Who might make it my way, candles arranged, television For the bed, birds outside the window even though they are bluejays, And autumn is the headlining act. We fall into those alien lanes, The room, the accoutrements, the everything, And it is a mad rush with each churn of the machine, And all to bring in, to usher in you. Would be my mainstay in this activity. If Lisa were a connoisseur, Wines and other such luxuries would fit the bill. If I were an avid sportsman, fishing lures and flies A List of Things Judy Won’t Do | 8

Spread it out sporadically, evenly if you’re lucky (“But how can we ever know if it is so?” Lisa can overhear them say) How all of it is so revealing, like excrement feeling you up. And the vagina and the iniquities of the previous generation, All of those things you have on your hands (intercourse, of course). So, that being said, if your hands Are full If your hands are full... If your hands are full... you are sure to get a hit. The birds of May don’t have problems landing a mate, Flowers of any variety never find that their hands syncopate. ....She only broke with you to address her insecurities, And watch the red painters dress in blue jean denim paint all white.

A List of Things Judy Won’t Do | 9

Chloe Goes on Vacation!

Driving my head through windy spaces. Clouds in blue Shower down in radio traces. Finally there, inversion of savoir faire In a cold harbor, White schooners and dead fish smells in secluded lairs, Do you think we had many choices? Those choices which lead me to call you, And choices the same for you, Choices which roll out carpets: These questions are options for me and you. At the gates we talked of camaraderie. Your purse, black leather, catatonic, cataract with pattern and heavy; (Near--suggestive, a mad rapport among naiads Swimming naked, of course--a contrived necrology. Suggesting? A belabored nard, if this ...) Yellow sheen of evening glare, nebulous Where evenings are met under wet stairs; And stumble tired to sofas to conclude the other end, today. And faces of fishermen Twisting up like little curls of smoke ...Dialogue dismembered itself From its attendant note Exposing, contemptible ironies, and canned foods on winter shelves. ... A fisherman whistled his surly approval At the turn of the day. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d done this for the weather, Congenial, which had been what it was all along... ... The conversation (as follows) careened toward abandoned buildings. Chloe Goes on Vacation! | 10

Red brick and dark with aging. Smells of cod and perfume and hot leather. The array of masts against the night sky, lit eerily in phosphorescence And lightbulbs claimed the upper hand, diminuate a suggestion Kindling from the heave bowsprits (in water towards a motion). “Motivate?” the suggestion hangs heavily, some unruly Matisse print. Belaboring our escape from the salt air, Later curling her hair with one finger in a wicker chair. Virtue, along with tonic water, Was our principal aversion. “This city needs more trash,” she was later heard Saying. I know, yes, I know she’s said to me exactly What I have meant to say...unusual and, “Isn’t it strange?” I could tell, sipping black coffee, “No, please. It is I who exhibit Strains of confusion in a tour of pink elephants.” “You must be in quite a bit of pain!” She caricatures languor sitting in wicker chairs. As this is so, 1 watch the yellow evening Slip off into kitchen sink drains. She might be dying of modesty, Or, watching the light, (I think It is almost green Smoking Cuban cigars in burnt-out necropoli. Isnt it Well isnt it) Strains of music over car radios, And a callused hand emulating mail order gynecology. I am hard pressed to straighten my clothes. “Now, what do you think he meant by that, do you s’pose?” I nod into the rearview mirror and grin for Chloe. And they say the world Is driven. --And every man for himself Where Chloe’d been absent, wrapped up in fibrillating mists, And vaguely convoluted, (with her legs wrapped around mine, Embraced in a thin staccato light, warm enclosures in the absent lairs). Haunt the steps of my dreams. Where is she at the foot Chloe Goes on Vacation! | 11

Of my bed, in another light, another time. Newspaper pages With the yellow evening, conscript of fans beating the air; Cockeyed in a rout, she. Colorfast--this Cuban postcard. The sunset coital ne collodion behind parakeets in wicker cages, Dropped down three ledges and rose amongst the cicadas, Panthers and crumbs on the carpet. And, “If you bring up Hemingway, I’ll kick your ass.” I remark: vine-ripened tomatoes are finally in season. So, then, you can’t avoid her. Bow down And meet her smile; You are only here to construct algebra Cultivate cataracts From the curves in a white blouse. And we call these odd, unrepresented Ornaments possessions of the house.

- Originally published by ‘Paris/Atlantic - An International Journal of Creative Work’ Spring 1999 : Volume XXI, No.1

Chloe Goes on Vacation! | 12

Fragments: A Debate “Happiness? Elusive chimeraJ ...And here 1 am old.” --Ghelderode, Trois Acteurs. un Drame

This memory of being shaken from the rainsoaked roof Of a roof in Detroit, and thoughtlessness shaking Under a canvas under a city light. At night Gaugin changed the sheets Into faltering words and timid sufferings, “Largely unvanquishable” And burying us beneath a black soil heavy With tracks of carts and horses through some imagined Welsh forest. To finally motivate. Claim is a prime numeral. Science Guides us around vanities Which seek to annihilate us in sublime wreckage, Calling fact through sieves of clarity. This is not the hope we had hoped Was present in our little deaths. Left us cold, dry and pure of skin Through this situation or that. Holding her hand in the street. She has alabaster flesh Pink and distant by the light Of dawn. ... Hands move to embrace mine, And I know she has said to me Exactly what I have meant to say Fragments: A Debate | 13

Meaning of course That what I said... Ecliptical The plastic girlfaces who suggest A mote in the leaking boat. Sailing Into the cold Atlantic wind, its sails sown Together With the breath distilled From the brown sack Gift remunerated to Ariadne via Aeolus: Fiberoptic strands pulsating hues Strung out over coral reefs Where Marie Dausinge slashed her feet. ... ....After the objects that remind one Of precise feelings mirrored on ceilings Have blended into warm backgrounds (And there begin to melt) Should I begin to resent? Or lighting a cigarette With a convivial, calibrated air (Sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not there) ... Should I pain to notice an affable regret? That the injury saunters off to settle down Amidst other faces around Other tables il).the room and enjoy a fairer sentiment. Cigarette smoke coils. Loose change smiles up from a few feet. Elijah is on the cloud; Nurses nurse the nipplâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d cow. I have known the clock on the dresser Panning in my ears Reverb, bounce Technicians hiding in the closet gloating wickedly In the dead of night. Fragments: A Debate | 14

These things were never introduced to do these things. I am aware, however, Of being Aware of by lonely silhouette, Dark-haired imitations of Agamemnon’s misery, Who drift down aisles In districts haunted by children’s slumber Riding in shopping carts. Their mothers shop avidly, Lackadaisically, with casual notes tucked into their purses. I watch them unaware. The girls go on, exchange numbers. These things were never remembered to do these things. And so the song begins. These eyes cast and cursed Anger seeking tears. Where am I that I am not here without you? Remember, you, then the lights by the depository Have reminded us only to prevent these bloody years.

- The original version of this poem appeared in ‘Paris/Atlantic - An International Journal of Creative Work’ Spring 1999 : Volume XXI, No.2

Fragments: A Debate | 15

Elegy for the New Radio Here is no continuing city, here is no abiding stay.

I. When the leaves have finally settled in amongst the rusty machines, The wind beats up against the bowsprit Off the shores of Illyria And the hooves sound in your ears In a sterile restaurant of concupiscent bodies Diverging, unloading their secrets and secretions, Thick ichors in dry dust beams. Over you by a stair In a soft white light filled with mote and dust. In age, in the latter part of your years Where you stand in actuality, The corridors of history Whisper promises from mossy cisterns Filled to the brim with decorative soundbytes ...these hands Caressed her breast in a loft. This is the memory that memory kept at the preemptive hour. Let us say the indictment decries Colored sheep crawling out of the inferno To recover their insecurities. Or, to have hung your face on a shelf. Tapping those red nails on the face of silver coin. Someone is bound to find it attractive at some point. ... Living out your days, as you lay naked Elegy for the New Radio | 16

In bed, you only have yet to reconcile The sordid apertures of a life in pictures. Only here admitted that individuation Is similar only to selflessness In a deep wide gully, smelling of wet vegetation. Slipping down steep sides In high heels, the dark accompanied by late night, To recall a train wreck in a deep forest. The world of motion, filled with objects and cigar boxes on barren floors Is abstracted from history by lunar visitations, And the youth and age (Which you are neither --only a short gale By the Poles, amongst constellations, Watching as Mercury beat up a roost of doves From the steps where red blood drips; only a collage of Drifting mannerisms and temporal affections Swirled around by inconstant bladders) Are but transitory Patterns of Beauty and insupportable by this illusion. The shrub is in the rock. The sand clots cracks. The mother holds her newborn in the hospital. And matter needs no proof, displayed in Beethoven’s bust. Three candles bum around, On the mantle, creating deep timorous shadows that is man’s breath while he lasts In the yawn ofa cat idling by the doorway. There is a shadow of a person brought to light by memory raking the edges oflast year’s insights. It revolves ...corporeal. ..a temporal trail of mean-wished tears, Counted out in paper stubs and cigarette butts The means and manners of your many indisposed years... Expose weaknesses, newly arrived ...discovered ...the likes of which no hand Has ever further bruised, “Though I am not sure of what I mean by this.”

Elegy for the New Radio | 17

Roughhandling this dead corpse of love, Her sigh drifts off into the corner. II. What was that slithering fog, crawling wraith-like, Undisturbed over the grass, and blue sneakers? At nightfall, small throats wet and phlegmy, Playing reeds. We come there, a dream, though yet we drove. A radio whines out its mettle of bombs and families. The lips of statues In shadows, in a fountain. The fog, white, went slithering over the dewed grass. Men and women in a vapid heat, Wind the piano machine, enhance the dial, to distress, Working in evolutionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cause, refuse politely to digress... Even so, we counted ourselves with the Heir and his mistress, At the foot of the stair. Another costume party. And you ! You wore red galoshes like a horsehair shirt. What was I to say? I wanted to talk to you and you to me. All these years and only tissue from which there is rebirth. Admitting favor, the usher, notes the despondency that was only death. III. I was self-mockery at the grey door, Aware that of myself as a potentiality of a lump in a dark corridor. The log drank hot cider at the hearth, Seeking only to entertain itself, Regain its composure, Aware that mockery of being and unbeing Had caught itself in its own corner, mocking on itself: What do you suppose this means? Mr. Crane continues to count his hill of beans. Dressed to suit our best roles. Just a moth, I am afraid! But captivated in the flame of a candleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dim halo.

Elegy for the New Radio | 18

... Or, yet, moved further in the country, and swing sets, and telephone poles, And smells of rotting fish in dumpsters pretty. But that is an outline for someone else, not mine. And confessions...none of those; when the street Vomits up its consortium of images, transformed these dreams, We’ll pass our hand over the candle flame, And make jest with the windows provincial, and so ... Or hide in the corner, wringing dry hands. Drinking kool-aid from the carton, slurping up plates of Jello. Courting the Seven Vanities in a downtown music scene, I nursed my own vacuity for you. A centaur shook itself, combed wet mane, wiggled its toes ... Somewhere in the nearby shadows. Paranoia slithered down the cistern wall, mossy, Wet and black...offering up...conclusions... Smoking behind a polished desk. That it should “seem,” and be as much While poplars tossed in a glow of sunshine, And ferns by treehouses made smart and retiring ... Cried out to reassert its place in humanity, This falling for a good tune (Suspicious, this, we presume). I was a sprite, an unusual clown haunted by you. I was a conniption fluttering red and sullen In the darkness. And the Ragdime Bum dons The tattered silk of Insight: Idiosyncrasy lit the green flare of it’s own resuscitating profanity That was a log he tattooed in pink on his back. These are things which eternally divide our spleen.

Elegy for the New Radio | 19

“Is that why you couldn’t live with me?” And, later that same day, admiring the boatswain, We discussed the terms of her servitude In relation to my eleemosynary libido. “Hurray!” That with wiring of moved music through flesh and bone, Thought Mr. Lowell thinking on his home, To prove matter remains in granite hikes up hills wearing shoes, Those habits which left Hanna black and blue. Fragilion supported her, “She was much abused.” Where tears take upon themselves unrequited years, And never fallen; where a crowd will pass Over a mown lawn and disturb the gentle dew. Mechanical patterns of the machine wheezed in shorn blades of grass. Thoughts chased home whores of thinking Of returning home to just play guitar to angels hiding in peonies. ... The dusty remains of an old frog. A hair trigger koan played out Of a car window For a kneeler versified in Haitian Creole. A Hallstatt from the beggardly Hall of Fame Of metalline dewdrenched freeways. That is, you, Decked out peregrine in a pressure suit. I am reminded here of poor beginnings And visitations that don’t mean anything, And the rattling of chains spent by money, The cocktail glasses, the smoothed skirts, And you by the curtains, With your back turned,

Elegy for the New Radio | 20

In a faint light: the keepers of the theatre will be our friends “Never you worry, dear Hand-over-fist,” and shorter in time: I must have made a mistake: these people are broken. “You don’t deserve anything” This mortal strife Which we like to call our life.

Elegy for the New Radio | 21

The Sad Children

The house stands ready to accept the brothfilled cauldron, Bright voices brewing a thing long lost. A red moon awaits the sad children. A rocky pathway forgotten leads to 38th Street; But the children ignore this, jumping like Jack Frost. Baubles and playthings bounce at their feet! Questions aplenty fall from tight mouths, discover sin; And on the old yawning hearth grow lichen and moss. A red moon awaits the sad children. Here memories are made stored savored complete With haunted gazes giving spice to the boiling broth Where baubles and playthings bounce at their feet... Careful words are measured and spoken and Off in the distance a bell rings. A red moon awaits the sad children. This is the house where the stories are told to next of kin: Their tired voices can no longer sing. A red moon awaits the sad children... Baubles and playthings bounce at their feet!

-- Rocklin, California 1992

The Sad Children | 22

Statues

I. Salutations The white haze of a winter fog Sets in motion the alabaster hours Who climb when the seas have all drank their fill When catherine submits, we shall have laughter and love And an endless array of finalities And shrug with a heavy sigh And question us with letters from tearful sycophants... Undress your paupers! laugh in the open seas --Die harmoniously (venom) I will bring in and around singing admiration The voices of this city Who lie by quilts And struggle in threes. II. Seagulls I ordered the meal that sought you out I called the day in ordinary invasions I like you to enjoy a quiet meal I carried the final word evasion I supplied the eradicable symmetry! I carried on like a worn out dog I found you in supplicant fashion III. The Quarry I sit And try to still my thoughts Statues | 23

But the elusive slip Of knowledge and memory Knowledge mixing with memory Like water mixed with wine Is bound to another I carry on And find my feet in shallow sand. IV. Roulade Key of no key, past of no past, In selection of what is And what hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t and has... Yet come to pass. The age demands of us The ever-present jubilation The New England c1ocktower Haunts of habilitation White sanitary wards and starch nurses Ever -present, hallucinations Bring in the May revellers And sojourns from Moroccan coastlines All this and more Bought for mere pennies At your local urban five and dime stores. Once upon a time.

Statues | 24

A Miller’s Tale, (or, Voices in a Cistern) Sir, I know not what these machines will be used for, but I am sure that one day you will tax them .. --Michael Faraday

What these words that drift on arctic winds (And a witch in black on a broomstick cackling)? What are they? Are they, in fact, unwavering voices lingering behind The drapes, voices next to the checkstand Discussing motives behind raincoats, late revealed? Words in search of themselves while the Ragdime bum In his brown frayed smoking jacket Passes by a lamppost clearing snot from his throat. They were at the party, I know. And the black cloud trips over its shoes And lies next to autumn in the crouched gloom. Soft and responsive. Empty? Are they, in fact, mine? But I only sit here by this light, This all too human light, crafted by hands only In warehouses next to shipyards at night. Should I, raising an espresso, just beyond a beaded curtain, To my cracked lips assume this to be right, to be so? Well, I’d thought the lights were on much too low... Huge gaps in the soundboard, While the night malingers in dense fog and sulks bitterly To the movement of a deluge and dirge, its own death throe. Fine, I thought, by candlelight A Miller’s Tale (or, Voices in a Cistern) | 25

In the cottage. Outside, I knew that she waited On the porch smoking, listening To the sound of the waterwheel turn; turning, Then, the sound of the brook amongst the reeds And the rustle of oak leaves. The sail snapping tight And a biting, bitter cold Stinking even through the fog with its crowd of attendant will-o-wisps, The lines flaying, out of control, And withered stumps beating “useless” As though in a dream and silky. A seamstress clutching needles to her breasts While the fog panned out over the Metro And hid behind the picket fences lit eerily and white. What these words? But, no, not mine .... I tell so, as a compass point spins and dips gently. And I should live to see this all denied. No, these words seeking As it were a singing voice--theirs? Yours? “But let me implore you, I am your confidant,” the man on the porch said to her, “Let me tell you plainly ...” While yet the light has not failed me, this momentary confluence by moonlit stairs: They stock not enough grain in silos lain in dense forests, Lines in St. Petersburg waiting patient-like for bread Hardly fit to go around. Larders strike out dull tongues dry and shadowy, no jars Where useless stumps beat against empty Formica cupboards. And this face strikes out --But, no! not mine. We’d looked on for our kingdoms Far past the eighth stair (even in failing light); A sandlot and rusting cars; Not ours--nowhere to go A Miller’s Tale (or, Voices in a Cistern) | 26

--But a destination. That attracted us. But ask where it is not. ... And from the open window, the impatient linen shade Jittering and crooning, and he, “Will the lady please” And she, still smoking, leaning against the post answers, “No,” to the night hovering with dark and alien; Glittering soda pop demons cunningly hidden out there. ... And the gentle movements, and blushes, And deferred touches ...they move in closed rooms. But, no. “The clouds can’t decide .... “ And he, emphatically, frantically it seems (And, noting the soda pop demons forcing stars into their eyes, I with a yellow legal pad next to the window just listening, An afghan on my knees) “Will the lady please .... “ And she turns to him, hand in one pocket, Ignoring for the moment the waterwheel turning Against the night laid out flat and unconscious And very much aware that it is so, says “But they’ll hardly understand. “ I expect sharing this moment, in lifted eyes That took flight over the wooded hills and moved to Reno (Bags and all), shared with a friend in the room, That the demons are scampering in the thickets Looking for fallen pears while she crushes the matter, A mere burning butt, under her boot. I imagined Penelope at her loom and situations of people involved in protests, Holding pickets under hot August skies in downtown boulevards. Amongst men who sweat in small rooms With lit cigars and their shirtsleeves rolled up.

A Miller’s Tale (or, Voices in a Cistern) | 28

... Where is the rain, though? But, no. There we were Our faces sunburnt. I remember her Walking in the sand barefoot, of all things, Wearing black jeans And a white blouse which had not been tucked in (Strangling impressions by hot springs) Talking of this and that, and then, suddenly, Of Margaret Sanger and Anne Boleyn. Bernadette of Lourdes, also, I think. I tried to listen unsuccessfully, remembering tennis players running after I tried to listen unsuccessfully, remembering tennis players running after their balls in spring. Obviously some picture I had seen laid out flat, tan lines and livid, in magazines. ... Let us say that, while there eschewed talk, (Raising only lonely these standard enchantments!) My soul sought to assert itself Championing, as it were, the virtue of a rose, Crawling on the carpet and curling acidic around painted toes. “I fell, and fell, and fell, and fell, And then I fell some more.” “One month stretched into two, and by that point I didn’t know what to say.” The top seemed to contain more than the rest. I have seen my arms Dangling in the dead cold of space. I managed to retrieve them. “And happy to, so, sighed.”

A Miller’s Tale (or, Voices in a Cistern) | 29

An old women hides Her feeble waning last graces beneath a blanket; We are comforted--at least Our existence is visibly tragic. Hymen joined Chloe shivering in the doorway Hung up with cobwebs like holiday ornaments. My blood runs heavily--lead. Nerves sang in adroit hymns to the head. She is unclothed by the bay window, naked, While smells in a room follw with virginal precision. I would curl these images up, for you, Up to my beating breast, And anoint the vestibules therein Of these worlds all over my face. Then I would match laugh for laugh, as though, As though ...well, an eyeball would grow From my ear and show you that, indeed, “You are wasting our time. “ How could I know I’d have lived to see all this denied? ... In a cold wet street. Where the soft rain is, I know, The green rain we sang to, a well-versed Shangri-la, Some time ago at the window. Rain filled with unholy promises. But, no... Where is the rain, though? Our faces sunburnt, the bowls Blackened and nearly dry. The correspondence from Arlington reports, “I do miss it so...” (Where do they go? Where’re you going? “Stay.”) Where might you and I pass from love’s fire Of the fruitless day, or abandoned desires. A Miller’s Tale (or, Voices in a Cistern) | 30

This heat plays waves on paved roads long and far, ... Never tampered by our hands nor Dog Star So that we complain of comfort gained Which sought tears for you in vain A fumbling request And a mute passionless protest... Therein seen resting my head upon your rising breasts, In a garden, eponymous, this park known as Hyde: All this will come to pass...denied.

- Originally published by ‘Paris/Atlantic - An International Journal of Creative Work’ Spring 2000 : Volume XXII, No.1

A Miller’s Tale (or, Voices in a Cistern) | 31

(The Events of the Lives) Erratica

When in a dream, seas confound, Count Zero turns a dram eye heavenward, Talks of time and Fort Leavenworth. I shall not fear Chloe’s regime. I’ll wear her arms on my breast, Kissed in the rain; painted, of course, And consummated with a dexter of pears and sword. Again, this action shall be reigned and scored a test. Alan of Lille will not find me diplomatic. I’ll speak wickedly in riddles with Greil Marcus muddied around my feet. Then shall Chloe be my bridesmaid be, Her wedding gown yesterday’s stained boxers unkempt and kitsch. We’ll drive big black Cadillacs and jest with Mars. Outside Chartres, birds of dawn’s arrest will sing. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, in whiskey sours Chloe and I dream In fancies of manikins and sushi, instructed by Bernard. Rather than crying, we’ll knock on death’s door—and die. And turn a fair eye on possible Surrender’s bait. St. Jean d’Arc will be her bridesmaid, And Finnegans Wake in Dorothy’s bosom—mine. Chloe, then turning, pistol in her hem Will hum whilst turning a fallen hair mixed in tears from my eye. I’ll not disappoint my Tree of Mercy —I’ll distill the Zodiac to give her the lie; (The Events of the Lives) Erratica | 32

Call attention to the Labours of the Month; Go swimming in Eerie Lake to buy her lunch; Light a cigarette as the day outside bombasts--mutiny; Rememb’ring, finally, she has to be at work soon--and dodge that punch. ... But where is the nest I’d built for Chloe? I really thought I’d remember to bring it with me... Posterity, then, will see us all in chains: Rattling battle hymns to usher out belabored Fame.

(The Events of the Lives) Erratica | 33

A Filter for Chloe (Dialectics of the Common Sort for Poetical Affinities)

Confessions, passions, and other (m)oddities The mind seeks quid self (a)new passeasons In the tundra bewake Too many eyes on the latticed horizongoingfar Feel stretched and thinsin These are hut thoughts in their Entyranny. Sneakers blackamac On the tossing seas of cracklead pavement I have Priam’d time’s dirty secrets From the stacks ofnumeri sofas. Turbanized, no shout! Er, no shat? Ah, but come on, a shine quarters. Where weary you To greet’n me, hug’n me from skin, to say preemptly: “Hellow.” Hello, goddamn gotteramdung, hellow goddamn you’t Hello hi hello Let me make this (s)explicit to you is it (?) My convictions propel me past iniquity. Plural sand divinyl’d: Divine recombine align the record turntable plays well In the cornershop girl’s tit-for-tat. I thought it was nice, too. Should I stop and, having turned, Checkbreath my watch dial banded wrist wrap round, regret Anyding dust? That I wear a hat? You bestroke me thus, Varmint. That the coat I thought to wear I left it on the stairs in my place hanging off the rail A Filter for Chloe (Dialectics of the Common Sort for Poetical Affinities) | 34

And the carpets none too nice neither but it’s just the same As the kitchen is full of unpleasantries with crusty dishes pans pots need cleaning they’d like not (I did not and should’ve thus?)! O Gods, Do I consecrate too much? Perhaps if I only sit so, I should win, after all, her favor --I will appeal a better flavor. I read the news: political affiliations And their abuses in the star-starry-stars. That is, the Pleiades And, of course, Orion’s tuna melt. That mulch is is, now, enough... Shall I growshow you my face? To attrite assaugery you to truth ... Shall I pontificate the pointless? And will you please tell us? What a pretty picturefixture we paint! And, though a dreamdreamydram, we stay ... Late at night, that I know!-The wind blows. (Shh!) On me, and myself, and all the ladies Upong whom you my attentions shall never hope (Yes, of lore, I mean you and who else?) To visit. In heaven’s variagate prisons. Sangfroid, sanguinuity, sincere. ... And what tears will stretch out these Eclipses and constellates born of the time of year? Flowering Judas, Indian paintbrushes, mosswood, Children in the grass atop barren hills, Scarlett O’Hara, dear, A bundle of thistle for your adulterated tears.

A Filter for Chloe (Dialectics of the Common Sort for Poetical Affinities) | 35

Will the bonsai develop habits, hobbies peculiar To itself, engage in morbid caresses, Dull talk and cribbage during winter evenings Lit by profuse fires in the hearth? Plastered against the wall, time takes its course Where square dancers plot the course Accordingly, partners to gravity and force. Swaying on your legs, Getting off...slowing down To the speed of life The last fix. (Cover the spittle on your lips when saying this.)

A Filter for Chloe (Dialectics of the Common Sort for Poetical Affinities) | 36

Chloe in the Shower

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. A pale hand retrieves the hem. The light outside shudders; so, shuttered, She slips on a brogan. The cause is April showers. “Thank you for leaving us this day.” A nail tweaks the aureole, a diminutive peak. The Johnsons next door are gone, vacationing. The pip, the tweak leaves a passing mark, a white streak. “Thank you for our daily bread.” White furls of Marlene Dietrich come to rear. Thus Betrayed for us the clipped hedgerows. Leprechauns at the window commit themselves to blush. Sweeney, rabid over the row for margarine perks, Drops his pants, invoking Te Deum, and goes totally berserk. Dog Star hung low. Mr. Alger, dog-tired with effort, held a dog’s chance slogan Around his purple neck, “C’mon, baby, it’s either us or them!” ... Absence and presence of notes needed to make music Were duly called to witness, noted. The cheerleaders Were thanked and thankful. They were all girls. It was remembered as pleasant, worth doing it. And that they wore curlers at night, their hair was curled. A fiddle of passion, over a private line, a telephone, Described escapades, and thus drank those dry bones. Romeo dismissed this, though. They’ll never relate. But for Chloe here displayed, holding a bar of soap, Two curtains are parted, a Red Sea, And within a white wren flutters in the tree. Chloe in the Shower | 37

Cassolette A mesmerizer is not the same thing as a hypnotist, my dear. He makes the sun rise. Hypnotists plunge you into darkness. --BELLE DU JOUR

I. I am Cassolette and just today on the street the stars Of the firmament supported my heel. Where have they gone now? But do not ask me as I am unresolved to answer. I am a lonely whore in this empty loft. Empty, devoid of life--and furniture. Though I am not poor, How I wish I could meet you, You that are everything to me. Winter strikes the pate of the glass And we wince where the blow falls. There are no tears in these my hollow eyes. Where is that proverbial Avalon? my kingdom by evening lamps? My body’s song? I have seen you everywhere, Loved you as much in an evening glare, Streetwise and quiet, shuffling groceries home. In the headlights of an oncoming car, startled, scared. I have sat in the doorway, wet from rain or dry Pursued by lingering action hearing in the hallway the hooves, The lusty laughter and sweet pipes night after night Asking why? why? why? Time after time And watching it all roll away, came to realize “There just aren’t enough hours.” Perhaps I approached you too hastily, At some inopportune hour

Cassolette | 38

When the moment had not yet come to flower... But then we never quite rightly Mastered that subtle sanguine art ...the silence Has set in, the whiteness of this room Has further embraced the ambience of gloom Spread out from the city in the window from the fever of the winter hours Retracting and elongating its insufferable embrace Spawned in basement rooms In the steam and heat of midwifes doing laundries. The moment ends. And the city is behind you and I, geometric and grey in solemn procession. Then it begins (now that the silence has set in): Limp arms crawl up the walls; it’s been a bloody stupid day! And the clap...the walls, thus provoked, undulate, Chime radiant, throb, sweat, reverberate. You have many faces, all different. All different, myriad voiced, all loved by me. How then by one shall I ever be loved? (And--which one might you be?) I must choose, choose as spring brought Hero Into the perverse arms of Claudio. ... Pace back and center. There are hands that caress Hips, flanks, massage feet and breasts: My circle of perception Builds imaginary walls which prove tests. The sun sets! and I find myself alone, dark copse, in a bath, Surrounded by well laid tile. The sun sets. By a window, in an empty loft, A lonely whore in corset, That’s me, no one else. The dead breath With the conscripted evening of silvered smog In this empty loft. My name is Cassolette. You shall know my own by this muttered care: I am the one, by a window, who likes to brush my hair. “Where are my tears?” she wants to know. Cassolette | 39

II. Headstones were erected in the sockets, Gazing out over the troughs the horses drank out of, grey skies filled with rain. This is my home--home away from home. I live here. I set the glass on the sill, where I curl my limp body in the recessed window, Halfnaked, meet the evening winter, smiled thinking on you, and, thus, there died. I am Cassolette and today the stars of the Pleiades nipped my painted toes. I meet you everywhere. In the King’s Garden, The beaches of Normandy, upon Douro River in a dilapidated dingy, Even the department store counting change for a few odd moments, Behind a counter where only a few ever admit they too wonder what The other person is thinking employed as they are. As though doll versions When do they get to sing? When do they cry? As it is, none Of our business carry us a bit further, sherpa’s of the worlds accoutrements. Something like spring is on its way and we are wandering into it. Startled then watching love birds nest by the sound of a Peugeot passing Where we played as children in the hedgerows that made no sounds. Yes, I suppose they are, and at that only In the city painted a mute brown Employing themselves with the American Mercury and the Baltimore Sun as rodeo clowns. I am the one who absent as of now from the main of the gypsy caravan [“It’s mewling carriages, it’s men in coarse clothing, it’s clinking cups, children hid...scrawny dogs...”] Cassolette | 40

Panting with the dust and the legs and the men in suits, Jaws riddled with spittle snap and bark. I am like one trying to catch up with them after loving you in meadow woodland, After the departure of the caravan. Run frantically and try not to be left behind, with the spores of ergot Teasing the men who like corn And do not yet know whether the season will bring fruition. It’s been a bad, bad, bad season. I already know it. ... This life of borrowed feelings flashing against the lit ceiling, saucerlike. I drift asleep that way, and lend myself then to dream. A worn out pencil stub. How should I use this knowledge to design my own end in profit? I am Cassolette and just today the lights of the fourth circle Found me cursing with smeared mascara. The failing sun has already set on the empty loft, unfurnished. I look Gemini amongst the framework (for all that there is), “for my rest, the night’s rest, that broken festival of sets.” I am Cassolette with the runny eyes.

- ‘Chloe in the Shower’ & ‘Cassolette’ were originally published by ‘Paris/Atlantic - An International Journal of Creative Work’ Fall 2000 : Volume XXII, No.2

Cassolette | 41

The Memory Carnival

After the shells on the beach (Black smoke slithering off out of cropped holes) And the men doing pushups In open courtyards on a Venire street, And the men digging sand Out from the toes of sunburnt feet, There is some coffee in this plastic cup. And there is dust on windows, In orchards in temperate zones Where cherry trees line up trim and neat. But that’s elsewhere, a different place, Beyond the stoplights in yellow, green, And red. “It’s very nice in the breeze.” A smile is volatile, swinging on its own conclusion. There could be no sleep. And I say, there could be no sleep. Nor bowls of plain pastas to eat In stucco and pastel diners by the Venire sea, “The night before and the night before” ...Except a dormouse fluttered in the grass With the centaur’s theme song sings, “And women in service pants Who wiggle, wiggle, wiggle their ass!” ... Watches wrap round their owner’s wrists. “They know because they put it there,” Screaming from a second story

The Memory Carnival | 42

Window .... Song emanates, infracting briefly This scene from passing cars. Night betrays her own special gift, And nocturnal gropings reveal sordid Delusions with shifting faces in bathrooms, Drunk and quite livid. He sat on his haunches, Digging elusively changing clumps of brown hair from bathtub drains. Bleary eyed, she spat, and handled the broom. The four of us stumbled down streets, Inviting along the hint of confusion (Commingling rain and carpet velocity) And all together found in the gutter A very shiny American dime. The converging mass of dimwits Strike up perambulating choruses and compare Ditties that could barely contain themselves in rhyme. A cat slinkered off into that same rain. And she points at my face, My mouth, the jaw loose, foolishly agape. From thence to now, too low in the cistern, By discarded fences in subway trains ...Eyebrows, gold chains, and Alexandria’s lost treasure. We call the city our very own courtyard And the yellow fog hunkering down in the hedges An erstwhile friend. Behind white fences. And, “Did I mention it was raining?” We were waiting to exit the scene Over empty beer glasses... Constellated and constipated battalions Groan from the heat and stenches, Exasperate their personal engagements In vain lines which alarm my brain:

The Memory Carnival | 43

Blustery pins threaten the cold wind Picking absently at a sandwich. Staccato sheets of rain usher in despondent gaffers Who whisper airs tragic And retrieve the evening’s errant magic. She detects my inattention as included in her derision. “It’s a really bad habit.” ... For even I have been reduced to a cold Wind and had talk with nobody. “We were into metabolic acids, chain reactions And quoting obscure biblical passages.” To our fathers, let the epistles commiserate, The world was tangibly upset with me today... ... You and I, it seems, know so well this lackluster moment. Absent of our hands under the moon and sun Digging in wet grey clay, far from Virginia And the Cliffs of Dover. Given to impropriety, this moment. And this ...this ...but I don’t know what it is. They will say, and they will say, they will say...!could see Myself over sand dunes (these deserts we built) Watched over by palm fronds and lo-fi systems, and such, If! wanted to. And they say this is you, The spring march of dew on orchid leaves, Tangos and archetypes thereof, And stirs the dull spirit to action. Hanging fitfully To a myriad of incomprehensible actions, Tried, tested, and true--reproved, throb Inside what reminds me of you ...and, again, it seems,

The Memory Carnival | 44

Hanging heavily, these haunted memories, let’s see: In the flow sheets, flapping haughtily over macramé, Dancing vagrantly through a meadow in the Black Forest Full of sunbursts and love-in-a-mist. Buzzing with no mind at all, but I, I love all these things carried on night’s crayon eye Random walk rambunctious, this harem kiss Pistulant and daintily, that is, Paintings of Tiffany lamps, a stalk of rhubarb, And the threnody evoked in torque converters Surrounded by twisting curls of cigarette smoke.

- Originally published by ‘Paris/Atlantic - An International Journal of Creative Work’ Fall 2000 : Volume XXII, No.2

The Memory Carnival | 45

Saturant Girl after the Evening

Laboring under three suns, hot sands, With the radio silent, intake Of further ranging celestial spheres Fit the small spaces of the brown cluttered cornershop Into the places that don’t go. Leaping across The airy breezes of a contraction, Refracted in a frying pan for our special consideration --The Council of Parolle from a bedlam yard Singing in underhanded and wet moans: “My muttering Was well intended But hence the Foundation, upon shards The lacquered faun over balloon jars... In the pale sordid room, teeming, Breathing, seething, a pale sordid cough. O! this like nowhere (take care, take care!) The man in the blue powdered suit stands there, Blanched and yellow in the face by the hearthstone Agitating over places that don’t go. Dots Upon a dress. Dots upon the adolescent face. A sex machine, I see by the industrial complex. She is a sex machine. She’s interpreted thus. I fear for her life, but I can tell her this: Days: Where the bygone days of Beauty’s refrain? Waiting, I was told by the hands of the clock, At a place wellknown by the local authorities To be a bus stop. Officer Sherbert and Constable Ladyluckless. Saturant Girl after the Evening | 46

Wanting only to rip off your wool pants. And this mysterious vibration Surges, while stubbing your toes On the footmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coat tails. Trailed And menaced by an empty breeze, Blown Sliding down unfinished walls, she sinks To her buttocks and knees, Apprehending within her conglomeration All the tights, tight Constellations. This is my name you guessed it right Mr. Take-it-apart into return slipslide bits and motes, Notes and skinny throats, ... Wandering on the bog late at night. The wrinkled lady grunts, her feet in sod, wet And soiled. We saw her from the bouncing roadside! Yeah! (pause) Yeah! Later, we observed leaves In the grass, blades and swashbucklers, en miniateur (En masse) in a fabulous route. Thought tired. We tired. And retired to the Hallway of Shatterproof Glass. Spirite was there, though not less dead than twenty-four hours, well attired. (We had gotten through to each other, surprised No doubt that night is no longer longer Than motes in a sunbeam linger). Again, the lines, And, again we etched our names On the insult of dirty yellow windowpanes. ... Thus, the bridge in the countryside, Carpets do not sway, nor do birds dream, And water has an earmark And the pores of the skin shimmer not Saturant Girl after the Evening | 47

That summer dress she wore completely forgot... Her kinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kin were made of skin. Such is the fragility of the human rabble. Dance went the horses, Prance went the nine lives, The dying have shot their mouths Into a cavernous ride. The blind season tops the crag And gently throws back his cap... So is it any surprise That she should minister the irony After all, what should I regret? ... A silent moment, your head begins to grow, A part for one, whom Time has rendered blind, To take the lead, breath, head turned askance. I meant to write you a short letter. But all the notebooks I searched through Searched through all the notebooks Pounding my head, ran out of time as I suspected Thought in the circumstance of the situation Trying to make it all make perfect sense All the same, And after the while all the while Afterwards and only after applause And a thousand begetting smiles, Listening to tobacco chants court technical files Stinking of something Particularly and poignantly vaginal. Wrinkled fingers chime the bell, Yellow hands run across the harpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strings Momentarily, caught within the moment Saturant Girl after the Evening | 48

A silent moment. The pages, then, snow to the ground, This is action within the action Gently suffer to print out Back fetter and black letters To the face which peered out In the middle of wanting of to be wanting A tired fashion in middle spring Newsprint articles and other events. Those lips! those pearly hips! Cultivate and radiate such warmth! And she wears denim trousers. Sip, Sip, sip carefully. She wears them well. So you see: many things Remain to be seen. Set before the remains of the day, How to Properly Breath ubiquitous movements Mysteriously drawn out (and drown, out) Concentrated, connoted, a myriad of eyes On the latticed horizon (lit the pipe by blue lights) Fell through the cutting boards of thick And thin. Her ballroom dress And under the lamplight With her giggling at my side The silent throwdown Of a windchimeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chilling accolade. Gloves at the base of the axletree In midwinter midstrides myoptic shade.

Saturant Girl after the Evening | 49

Lady Deign

She has come up to me, and she wants to know Upon what photo album is crying to sounds Of interlopers in nightmarish dream, the heretic To whom she twists and turns stereophonic. Her smile and legs, much less the whole of her body Like a capricious strangle, nearly swallows me. So, when me head feels tight, and the seas Have all passed under the grimpen, Tell me, what is she that she is about? That I should speak to her, in just such a manner, As to convey my complete and utter sincerity. In Manhattan, we arrived, and life is such a wine That compromising is filled of such vines As to be regurgitating. I think this is something She has repeated to me any number of times And in so many different voices and lies. Tell me, then, when she passes through my station, What is she about and by what economy? In what platitudes is her name known by That, being able to, I might Make of her my leave. The river runs deep, The river runs deep through her to me. And sometime it is rather funny. She is one Whom Time has blessed with clothes Made of strange fabrics of simplicityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dreams. I find myself in a tight mood, much later, Surrounded by objects of Verba City. But my head Feels tight, my teeth they grind and pop,--all her blood Tantalizes me in the grip of rocky enchainment. Perhaps I should do as the wind does

Lady Deign | 50

In her brittle opulence? But, yet, the underhanded sighing Of how she would please and by what manner She likes to watch Saturday morning TV. “I had a bit of the Saint George last night, And it’s left me sore in all the right spots; Furthermore, my ass completed my head: It’s brought me closer to being nearly dead. But I try. Well, what is she about? After all, I too have known the committee of inquisition, And understood the meaning of death, after all, Compounded on the remnants of some song, Bygone and occupational. Recurrent of tales Twicetold, finishing this or that momentary wrong. My throat it trembles, it completely sings In the wrong key due to certain variations Of ungracious, unpropitious, unhonoured harmonies. Apathetic: upon what dime of her song May I make my heavenly departure, backward Not forward: forward never straight. Oh, but what a crazy way to make light Of someone who when they joke makes a sound As though, as though ...they were about to cry. But that it should amuse me. After all, My question lingers: What is she about? Is it her drinking? I have felt my head roll over Off my head and down to sea, singing chanties With the marsh and the swamp. Daughter Of a father. ..some I have known. By my side They stood, helped me to an obstinate patricide. Tell me, then, what is she that she is? And is it something which should make me lie? Or want to do so? Especially in her company? Tantalized within her sight, not in her eyes. Wisdom through water, wisdom through fire. I shall live to be seventy and then brilliantly expire.

Lady Deign | 51

Opus N.3 from Cedar Street

The stimulation of masses and the copulating dreams of a few Find ecstasy in the trading of bonds In the backstreets, down by the shipdocks, trading dirty sweat stained t-shirts And rusty bowie knives for cracked eggshells from passive aggressive Breeding tactics hardly ever used. And sacks of grave diggerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dust. (Interns gathered scattered papers held down by the uttered breath). Extravagant minority applicants Co-convergence concorde signaling This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s model and the dispossessed In popular motifs and shades of pink A citylife half-forgotten caressed And lingering under dirty kitchen sinks --Watched from rooftops the withered grass Dancing on the wings of spent hope To the garden of drifting dreams You and I have quietly eloped In the motes fallen by the kitchen window With creeping vine and nasturtium, Drifting mirage-like--this is how you begin to feel As though in an easy dream of nothing While at present in or engaged to contact The closer proximity of the page, or mobile sage, Or rage strained in context and verbally voluptuous Sinfully contained and maimed, but not so ... Words can still be deciduous. Violin strings A calm tide removed from any season Opus N.3 from Cedar Street | 52

Though summer is best and warm night easy moon This feel feeling you feel you as you And no one but else comes to remind you Of the days and ways and enigmatically dated Headpieces in some field outside the shrine. The directors of impeachments, Of Spanish Inquisition (9) in tearstained cities. At the other end of your violated life. This not reminds you. And me, by numbers In successive binary but that deliberates Much of another lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mind. Have I said this clearly? O! darkly! a fear, a sweet disorder We ripen in the corn, sway in the sun, Another disrobing at the bath, the prologue and the prolonged in a game of chess.

Opus N.3 from Cedar Street | 53

Overture of a Town You’ve Lived in for Many Years

Here is the day, the day of red swings And dream houses scared, falling heavily In the passenger seat staring at the dust On the dashboard. Crushed, the face contorts, Your face consorts at the recycling center With golfers and bottled water In moonlit scenes imported vigorously From Venetian blinds and partial screens Lit at the waist by candles oddly placed, An image imparted by Iago’s triumph With borrowed and twice-used scaffolding. Memory throws up wide a spew of mottos All over the damned street and places containing Obliquely rendered relations in the sculptor’s studio. Sitting with a muttering of pink Calloused hands, stained yellow thumb and middle finger From nicotine, brown in the palms Strewn carelessly in your lap--remain calm, remain calm—dammit!!! -- above all! Preparing to enter up onto the scene. Thoughts of that person, green and livid, Shambling up to your stretched smile, And remark the beauty of that lively particular tree: The faces with the look of faces Expressing the exact dimensions of that certain woody dimension Stretching out bit by plastic bit that would be marble, Pink and cream, in his mind... You cried: “Say this and that wasn’t wishing well Quite exact. Her makeup rests upon fell Overture of a Town You’ve Lived in for Many Years | 54

Memory’s rickety rocking chair To say, to say... And that is exactly what you thought To say. The thought of going out: riding On the wave Of a malingering blackened future With your acne face and removable sutures --Rush to the window, plant your hands Cake the comers with the streamline Suckling a maze onto the sill put the face Into twilight’s waning beams coming to hover Idly over the city And contemplate what remains of the day. Set the clock. Look for clean socks. A fungus grows in the shoes, imparts a stink And coming to think of it there’s bad food in the refrigerator Eyes that never blink Her countenance is set, but I hope she’s not dead Not true but you had it so “long ago” In the imminent comfort Of your own body stink. Ailanthus turns the mobile above the crib, He is there, as we speak, And prepares us to translate the hours into speech. Tam woke in the morning, then, Within the carapace of consciousness. “This leftover has a bad taste,” She’s said to Thaddeus. And you know I know everything is in place But I’d left my place for nearly two weeks, so it might rain Overture of a Town You’ve Lived in for Many Years | 55

And forgot the baking soda would go. Objects with names (eponymous: epicene: eurinumenical) Certainly relate stories as told, Or show up in grand fashion grave matters Grey matter sooner or later, the latter. Erik, for a box of cereal, climbed the ladder In Rhodendron waters, a gas station, a small port. Sediment thick silk grain. The bartender turns on a heel, she’ll serve him again, She’ll show a hip that cannot be ignored With a forward jerk, knees hobbling, Face constricting, in the slick motion Of a memory’s accommodating creation, There are faces and places with those inevitable faces --But he disagrees, and so it goes: These are faces With places untumely untimely placed It’s a wonder to not be “so bravely afraid.” “That green glass cup, The tie in the thrift store with stripes Attractive, and, so ...while a whole room dissolves “Jesus, it’s just crazy, completely nuts.” Well, “you can’t help it, the room stealthily dissolves “We’ve arrived,” you say, but don’t quite believe it. She’s wearing lime green, a whole body suit, boo! The ball comes crushing crashing down.

Overture of a Town You’ve Lived in for Many Years | 56

The Last Time You Offered Me Quinine

Comfort me, quinine, in this hour: They nod and they wink and wet their Wagging tongues. Show me the map Of the stars--or wait for me yet. The beatific days amass: scintillate. I can see them from tiny blue comers Where memory and feeling have scuttled Like your rouge lips contemplating mad poetics On a tabletop drumming your fingertips. I felt criminal and clammy--a shellfish at death. Beat of a different street But typified by thrumming, Drumming deeply, strumming, dreamy eclipse On a beaten seething pillow. The pillow has phantom teeth which are patient, To a degree. The surf swoons, at the call Of my mistresses’ high noon. I see you dancing on the pavilion, Iridium’s alcove, the clear avid expanse; And when the dream blooms, There you shall have me in your room. But it’s up to you, I say. So you say. As much as you have literally said. From this music to that music, all machine’s The Last Time You Offered Me Quinine | 57

Play out heavenly beats. Feathers are to be rustled. It startles you the way you are startled, As I, by blood and feces found on a wad of tissue, White, baby blue, printed or starch yellow. Heat the covers For my surging arrival. It’s a matter of proper construction… My name arrives Inane upon fragments of conversation, Of How do you do? and other elements of this Peasant fame. Colors of jackets and arms. And collars Against the sun. Did you look long And the exhibit extraordinaire, at the gate She silently awaits the Metro, a steel bar, Round and oblong While his nocturnal stride shakes off and follows the wake “When next shall we dance?” were the only words I caught. Written on the postcard. A sunset, A city blockade, buildings and more buildings So far the eye can’t see The image bearing the resemblance Of my ill-begotten wit’s fame.

The Last Time You Offered Me Quinine | 58

A Desperate Plea from the Rooftop

This she said to me on umpteenth cessation Of our wayward refueling celebration (Pause to take a pee, bushes will sting stream sings) --“Sully, assume caricature digresse, neglect To notice happenstance signs, Watch all signs realign! Where’d you get that stone (Hold a moment) ‘An wrenkin the ceramic waterjar, a clock, Strikes ye a fitfull hour, then do Throw out yer tongue in a lip lock.’ Laughter. That’s what echoes in the those Where’d you get that moments that stone Passed only to reach the further shore Is it hot? the shore we forgot and cuts glass “I’m sure.” This might be the end for you. “We only only just got started.” Really ... “Really.” And flat. The nasal twang of the responder falls on the mat, The old bastard is drunk again. ... Brittle brown leaves occupy my thoughts While dawn approaches the lepers Await and bait their leper messiah, A taker of pictures. Eating the sacrament A Desperate Plea from the Rooftop | 59

Offered at the table. Yet, still, the hour was late. And there was rain, again, ... Brittle brown leaves occupy my thoughts While dawn approaches the lepers Await and bait their leper messiah, A taker of pictures. Eating the sacrament Offered at the table. Yet, still, the hour was late. And there was rain, again, And we were all, after all, quite drunk by then. ... ‘Lichen to you and shoals of many armed threats Hounding out noises moisies poesies on pipes All over the mascara dumps and grinny tooth people Dressing corduroy loam and cotton dark’ ... Conscience pejorative wept blindly into corners Of her room, looking for her two lost loves Which the crow had disregarded looking for its lost kingdom In dry grasses and skeletal willow branches. I seen men standing on the shore. (Neither high nor low tide: go.) But where are the sailors at shipdock. It’s time to go. And where are the pine needles and manzanita In the high of summer’s cheerful campfire? Instead, the little deaths men call their lives Resounds in my ear drums and brain, And there are only pirouettes to disperse more drowning pools Where the shepherd insolently pines and cries. ‘I remember the day when laughter Imitated the campfire’s dry crackle Until we bellyached as one, as one Is to sing here A Desperate Plea from the Rooftop | 60

at the Altar of Miraculous Tomfoolery.’ Loud psalms fill the well-known arena. Sheets of pure horror, stretching out, stretching out Nurse in the ADVAB second story floor in Tuscany, (That’s in Italy I think) pulls the sheet taut taut taut. It’s tight and good, but no quarter. People walk up and down The Block. Stuffing things and their hands Into tailored slack pockets. And the Father of Thousands At the flicker of a proffered match Holds, in chains and the wooded grove, The troves of my duality. Simple. I forgot all about it. Well, you didn’t? Some half-forgotten, Half-realized potentiality. The meters running. “Are you getting in?” It was a question. Yes. Yes, again. A nipple never quite nurtured. You, who I served in Tangier, You identified the possibility of another future Soliloquy sodomite As yet unrealized. It is true, then, you can’t hide HIDE HIDE HIDE She’s coming when the string crumples What’s on your inside I think it’s the spine “How prophetic you are . --Je me suis enfui. O sorcieres, o misere, o ha:Je ne, c’est a vous que mon tresor a ete confie! “There’s always crochet. It’s by my overstuffed chair. The people were talking about a court case They said it was a dying disgrace, They covered their mouths. They covered their ears. They covered their arses and their eyes. A Desperate Plea from the Rooftop | 61

They have made successfully The tricky conversion, transformed themselves. Oh, my god: This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening This isn’t happening “What did you say--I could croquet?” Looks pretty good to me Where did you get that thing? That’s drugs got a monkey on my back And they all pissed off all to hell. Well well well, oh well. But I said to myself, This is grief and there is no helping it. Judas came to visit in November I remember An incarnate society “I think they have ill intentions.” Just watch yourself heal yourself scream once more “See yourself? See how you are?” That’s enough, The point being made, the point is no longer passable. In a nonplussed, noncommittal vacancy... To know that life is a string with beads In this or that fashion and, most important, a season. And dangled above the breviary and brevity. Or at least that is what thinking Makes me believe. Make believe. If I were to command Authority on whatever global binary The epistles, and reviews, and committees, I in turn should accuse you justly, Though: Manhattan comes when the darkness covers The land, comes at twilight, at midnight, whatever And the dove between steel tubes climbing upward break the spell And only I am witness to commodious conscription. Down by the harbor, that’s where A feather it coils A kettle it boils A torn leaf From the bedded axle-tree And a game of knick-knack paddy-whack Give the dog a bone... A Desperate Plea from the Rooftop | 62

This old man supine At the altar of the dog Money police govern by mockery, Whilst Isabella Dandruffi profits By inveterate apertures Cum laud detritus of this perjury. We must inquire the specialists: What has happened to the Queen? Tossing back the drink, Ah, well, after all--you! you curse aloud! Taking off to the john to relieve yourself.

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Two Sisters

I. “These mad poetic nisus You confess to us every day this time on the downtown bus (Though a clock tells you it is much later) Divulge, nippl’d halos’ nimiety, in precisely arranged rows Outside the ocean bay window... Like popart manikins unclothed) arranged In drifts of facsimile paper: They stand on their heads.” I think I spy, in the tide, negrescent Nereus shoveling night soil. Inspired by this momentary niminy-piminy, I am inspired to smile. Moving a hand to my chair, The lamp’s light’s low curmudgeon. She turns her head behind a veil of cigarette’s waxing. “You barricade Reason behind sliding glass doors.” Her panties leap out at me And snuggle back between her legs. Reason snarls behind the sliding glass door. “Nihil obstat. I auscultated your meaning,” And audient, she spies the source of my Augean mirth. Nereus blows coolly through the tumbleweed. A painted demeanor demands expense (Caught in the glare of a vase of lilies), finger suggesting a minor digression. “What do you say? “I did but it was in the telling.” And this flatly. Stars, stars, stars Constellations roll out of belabored Jars, cars, bars. Throw up behind rusted, abandoned cars. Two Sisters | 64

[“Are you in contempt of my pores?”] Reason gums a toothpick, smiles wanly From behind the closed door. II. “Are we late, then?” Effervescent nocturne she bids returne. And, I Was picturing yellow moons jumping over sand dunes. If my self-confidente were a package, postal workers On cold tiles should mark it first class. Corybant awaits our ASAP on the corvette USS Corvus. “Who else did you expect?” But then, “It seems only I forget.” Or she will improve her make-up In the passenger seat of a moving car. ... The stereo hammers out edifices rendered curvaceous By jowl’d lunatics, “hear ‘em howlin’”; while white pale and pasty figurines Scribbled personal histories in ichors spilled from broken lanterns. On her belly, that night, her fingers Toy with the milky secretion, The telephone that rang and arrests my confusion. Waves beat against the window (And, she recalled, against the headland, which made it only a sound). The ceiling creaks, a memorable Terror. Waves on the beach. Visits To the city later in the week. III. (Abuse follows abuse) and on one Hip, a cheap nylon skirt: “This is all I have to tell you.” The clock says it is time to go.

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I heard whispered from over the way, “Do you think that is what they meant it to do?” She opens the window. The sky invites cool absinthe sentimentalities in the morning, this time, time at two (Of which I am possessed), “I have stayed much too long To be of much further use to you.” And, standing in a crowd, breeding in us, breathing us in, Was that a tear from the corner of my eye That follows into the sunset which she and I have missed? You apprehended the resistance And detail the fear and fright. Confabulated, these negotiations Have had their turn: “You were right” Later her friends would say her charm, (And she fills the glass with water at the kitchen sink) Stranded on a highway late at night Is hardly scandalous. No less, She coins the remark inoperative. Two screws less but mostly--baffling. “I thought she was an atavistic cosmonaut.” Cosmetology? Suspended, in Savannah, Seeking out to resuscitate the Nine Days’ Wonder. IV. “You and the city share but the same face” I have noticed, briefly, My face reflected in the alleyways of the city. And I found it impossible to report what I had seen there No matter where the distraction dropped the ball in my court. No matter the distraction fit and lost, Checking garments and laughing, starcrossed. And remind me of eggshells in a room. I surrendered to the moment ... Two Sisters | 66

And when the moment was gone Pleiades made room for me. Laid bare, wet bark smells and sweat under white sheets. You might say your pores, at this point, Develop an ethereal cancer, but very much real, And seek only to be removed ...Bare skin, Lying quietly, naked, flaccid flagstaff Imitating some burnt out candle--laid bare In bed, just beyond the window. The telephone rings. She almost whispers, So that I cannot hear above the throb of sounds Coursing through the crack in the window. A dead jellyfish floats in the fishtank Mouth-to-mouth aubadean, The murderous mountebanks In Mpongwe moving pictures are at it again ... The evening, then, exhumed, and then resumes Carries out the catechism, Solemnly and finally...diffused. Life! But how she will say, “I...don’t have time...for you.” Tightening the belt around your yellow waist, You set out in search of something that isn’t read by the pursuant(s) In your starched white bloodless face.

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The Feast of the Glass-eaters

The radio is on, the radio is on. The radio is on. Is on. The radio Is on and on and on and on... Careens (Pause) (Fitfully, abruptly) And bounce the remains down Diverging streets. The sign always says one-way And no parking to be had For no one but I Extends a bony hand, Give a sand shake, handshake and reform it periodically. Now we gave a run at magazines. Now that was smart. I fold Nocturne unto the rivermoon distance And call you by eight! “No earlier than that, I’m afraid.” How the hours work at the bone, How the hours do come, after all, to me. On the stairs in the rosy half-light christo mary Is returned in tomorrow’s temerity. Mutual funds, 401(k) plans, bonds, seals, trust funds and trust fund babies. Where the daylight stands There the faces linger Unreal time and time and time ...for you and me. And all the cuckold’s constituents, Their brawling purposes in divergence And diverging banned yearlies and positions, The clambering hands All turned pink. Dream. Dream of you. The Feast of the Glass-eaters | 68

Onward (id) disgorge perambulate and effect due The necessity of angels Scream treblings crowd surf And throat out meridian clefs ... Stumbles the wayward Hepe, the bar has closed, We go home. We go home, But she’s drunk and can’t walk,--at all Clamor for trifles (in small paper boxes, shows print, design) And bestrew nostalgia (our laughter fits small spaces) From rooftops to low trestles (grew elephant herds and echoed) From letterboxes to haberdash (down the side street and trashbin) There is no daylight hummingbird. Drone. Tempest. Gundrop. Mother Superior: accelerator: purpose. But he keeps saying, what is she all he saying? Curator of the skin. (The flesh is off of the bone) Supraliminal and the Jew’s daughter All vanish from my spectator’s dream. Knee we in supplicant fashion, for a silk purse That greased sow’s ear. Blood on our hands. She weeps againe.

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Jesse De Clercq was born in Stanford, California. Educated at the University of Nevada-Reno, he has been writing poetry off and on for over twenty years. He published his first poem at the age of 21. Also a visual artist, he has had the opportunity to participate in a group showing of artists in New York City. Jesse currently resides in North Lake Tahoe.