Vibrant Ghost
Peter G Res
Vibrant Ghost by Peter G Res
Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA
Vibrant Ghost by Peter G Res Copyright © 2009 All Rights Reserved. Published by Differentia Press Book Design by Felino Soriano Cover Image, courtesy of Duane Locke
Except for the sole purpose for use in reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, without the written permission from the publisher. Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA 93458 submissions@differentiapress.com
Differentia Press Poetic Collections of the │Experimental Spectrum│ differentiapress.com
For my mother, Barbara In all forms
Acknowledgements
Primary thanks are due to my family (and close friends) for providing emotional support and space during the unexpected malaise that has entered our lives. Somehow, the unconventional formation of this collection has found an equally unique home. For this, I am indebted to Felino Soriano for the opportunity to present my work in such an exciting and open forum as Differentia Press. Our correspondence over these past few months has provided me with rare poetic hope and philosophical solace. Thanks also to fellow poets Danny Ross and J. Hope Stein, for reading over infantile drafts of “Neon Soliloquies� and expressing their excitement for the project as concept. Thanks to Duane Locke for the use of his wonderful photo, and to my dear soul Ofer Levy, for capturing me.
Table of Contents Neon Soliloquies______________________________________________________________10 Medicine____________________________________________________________________16 Circus______________________________________________________________________17 The Oxygen Revolution________________________________________________________18 Sunday______________________________________________________________________19 Bask________________________________________________________________________21 Yard Work__________________________________________________________________22 Carousel____________________________________________________________________23
Vibrant Ghost
Neon Soliloquies The eternal setting is a prescription stamped with thin ink like the light that pervades our house. If we had maps and cannons of bone marrow for Stevie’s cancer my sister would have her bike unstolen: heavens of pills would pour onto us in warm letters. We’d be kids raving with bright globes for eyes falling into flower pots of death and laughter. A woman at the drug store stops me. Stills with violets in her hair and triple antibiotic ointment in mind. Asks: “I think we’re on the same path?” I smile slightly. Place her in shadows of mind. Grab my goods for the filling and fly.
From home-windows splayed open a traffic signal explodes: the bell of her skull cracks as a watermelon slides down your throat. Little black seeds take root in your digestive come to coat the walls and ceiling as disruptive eyes turning over your stomach. Linger all light in waving arms till the belly of the sun bulbous and purpling vomits out wings of flightless birds beautiful smiles.
And the clouds would be ribbed dragon scales like bright rinds echoing night: where was my kimono? Purple and violent among fireflies burning jade as night falls to its side tells us to leave well enough alone the house is crashing into light. Sing in a slap of night. What great clay palms squashed your sorrow? I’m glad. Go off to darker galaxies of mind bring back radio active casseroles with pills lined inside. We’ll eat with the moon break mother down to our bellies glisten and fly.
Figure the pink shadow of the sun unspoken through blue parens crouching beside us as we die. Get born! Half-still in light retreating a while white flag burning from a stethoscope of oblivion in her eyes. Float upside down until a menace of mouths comes railing from all the banisters of your life bringing water and soft hammering to the easy borders of clouds like black checkers crossed with your blood: tattered transfusions in mistaking your garden (the girth of tomatoes) for hearts. Foam a bright linen web descendant in distant waves of saliva warm of the pets and pollen bowls that outlive us. So swell that porcelain! Stained into our bones seeped into the marrow clear and clear broken on the floor of our ears.
Today we say: fuck the sky! I rest my head on the dog’s brow because her softness clings to the supple eyes of time unquestioned. For she has eight breasts with enough milk to feed us. Today, Julie came home from Brooklyn for Mom’s sake with a bike she sewed together herself. Dad looked-up the cure for all ails but refused to call the hospital. Mom said: take out the ‘must’ bring me mashed potatoes and hot turkey no rush. We brought her electrolytes with gravy and summer ice for the fungus from raw borders of our shoulders where wings won’t grow. We fight over spots on the porch. I remember dad yelling: “stay away from me and your mother, whatever this madness is its contagious.” But I’m an artist I tell him in dream. I keep this up so our ghosts won’t lose interest I tell myself again and again.
My father pisses off the porch shying at the sight of me hiding beneath the rose bush with my own thorns painted purple idling at the stillness of the yard as a mirror: spider cracked in three places duct taped to the base of our mouths. I crouch and politely ask him to leave. Me with a taunting sky keeping its salts from us in patient gusts of no wind that ever bartered so deep as a figure drawing or the letters we stamp out for the family gathered in their respective orbs corners of blaring sky blinding all our shields of forced air freshness laughs at her immune system: “Mom’s fever has gone down to a hundred.�
Medicine The etymology of spices, flicked into your boiling cocoanut water. A hint of tooth at the nostril a love for texture beguile outside for a change. Someone tossed lemons they’d gone flat in the bowl like miniature suns or dried-out stars you were sparring at the refrigerator when it happened. Assuming the drawers had locks like the mind closing its exhibit on a scuffle between birds: Bluejays drunk on sky and the light from the kitchen. Behind the chairs a paned door that never opened. Lemon juice would be cause for remedy instead you figure odd inclinations of wind and the widening eyes of your trees. Note: this possession recurs in dream. Your head is a waft of summer bees restless in the stench of your cocoanut water.
Circus Sleep is a sparse handful of curled centipedes in your milk the half-and-half from France draining silk into your pipes—bones your father fixed in the scaled dark with that infamous Klein toolbox. Face you kept up like a nervous system of bees in your closet—never stung. So what comes at the foot of Insomnia’s writhing anyway? Are there inverted choruses and trampolines spiraled back to life?
The Oxygen Revolution You come gather your echoes like an embarrassed mother in the flowing darks of dignity and disgrace we dawn suns from the blinds. Keep in mind the insipid rinds that were shaved into your skin from being forked out of that swirl like a thermophile baking in its cell before oxygen brought the grand death of carbon monoxide atmospheric genocide in your prelude. This is how you connected to yourself in the garage behind the wheel like an understudy turning the key and blacking out the superfluous breaths practice, your fingers numb and feverish as a kid playing sick before the hit. And none of this really happened of course your mind the scrapping point for each dream a waving scene complete with millimeter film and the prints. How you scoured constantly huffing that steam rose from your pages. Borrowed the ages of relatives to preserve mother’s Ancient
sieve that you might strain some life-out-yet. Time you quaked in the ruins of my mind those flimsy fouled houses got bought out by the government. How I could hoard you like my father does with every tooth we ever lost. Browned from generations of greased hands the cold wet spaces of our moss.
Sunday Stunt-like you spoke to the people who were holding your father. Forest tinted jar they kept his brain in glowing as an orchid with big black eyes. Worlds pulsing in sunspots tooled armor of plasma cutters and the rain. His body broke its limbs in reaction. Became monk-like miraculous and still.
Bask Rock-euphoria from the underbelly of our patio bubbling in elderly swills—winds chomp lavender soft madness into solace. Your mother comes running with penicillin smoothies fresh peas of all memory forgotten. Piled in bland expansive folders posed as long-lost neighbors or former cells: here to discuss the health of your garden.
Yard Work Barbara died in her under-worlds and holy shirt, braless as a Buddha caught off-guard. Flash frozen in your garden, cursing her flowers for their planting, the watering gone undone. Simple weathering lilacs on granite countertops close their eyes. Hide in swift clippings of buds like the bulb you stole from your sister’s bathroom to illuminate only your corners. “At the funeral for the dog, you’ll have a real casket” or one fashioned out of her hair. Bury her fragrance in soft mulch and impatiens whatever absence lingers to know: The garden is kept concentric and clean nothing else matters.
Carousel I walked to the exact spot where I had been killed as a child. Saw it happen to others. Did nothing. Then I woke: to an airy economy hotel room. From what I can remember there were life-sized installations of letters from friends bloc-ink-blots shouting lime.