Tunnels

The end of the world came in a balled up
kleenex, the dogs avoid sleep like we do to
stay up and see red Mars fall on our heads and
break our chattering teeth and stab at his
meat with a fork
I fold my hands one hundred times
anxiously in the subway when they watch and
wonder what my mouth is doing or whether my
lips look stupid because any moment I will meet
Her and He will smile on me if only my lips
don't look stupid or if I'm holding my hands right and
I read Him and read Him over and until his words are
nothing and I exist in a receding tunnel and the car is
disappeared

Clinical Depression

I stopped enjoying food a long time ago
I eat now because time becomes bewildering
when I don't
I want to concentrate myself towards a perfect moment,
to sense my being not still in the now but
like a spear stretched out and pulled through time and
hurtling towards some beautiful climax
I want to die, but the story has to be good

How To Be

Lawyer's panic, the tyranny of taste, a bedouin and his cigarette, a kissing gypsy, a leaf a curse a lapsing judgement, a holy instant missed by everybody of consequence,
a slave of conscience taken in by drug dealers, a family, a flight a hungry night a taste of children with straw hair playing in a corn field next to the big house with the beautiful kitchen, a prayer for
Jacob, a song for Israel, calorie counting, today and tomorrow, lies and skinning a rabbit in the frost January 1990, I was still shitting my diaper then

I want to speak in a natural language, I prepare my hands to do work,
there's an uneasy pause before all things great, but gifts are bestowed
to those patient devoted who trust in Him,
I want His gift
Until then I'm content with my orange, the egg whites, and salt cod,
I meditate on grace

False Priest

I'm worried I'll disgrace myself tonight,
that I might fall into some clam shell and forget
my place
I can't go on waking up with the taste of iron
in my mouth, I can't go on waking up next to
victims
You said anything you thought mattered,
but I shot you anyway
And now I'll live with that, with the taste of iron
and the stains on my bedsheets

Manifesto

And I must keep you canine and protect my lineage from
your eager transformation and I must shelter my
children from your threatening curiosities and I'll
smother your literacy and suffocate your firstborn if
her skin is too pale and I need you stupid and I need you
strongbacked and I can't afford to lose you now to
justice, and despite the rationalizations of our whitest scholars,
all this comes down to is food and shelter in the shadow of locusts.

Church Sunday

To give who got a pocket stomach knot whose
little pots all cook the lot,

these bitter things I like are like a white lip secret
thrilling tips of tongues held tight

Big bear big nowhere big little big heart big
pouring jug whose wine and holy water make
a line across a line

He crossed and said a father ghost son three he
kissed me then and blessed my dreaming be and
wished my be to be a better be than his had been and
wished the beans and rice of modesty upon
my doorstep

Internally I a crafty liar lied a most elaborate lie to
gain his trust so I could
sleep so deep and deep inside the side of righteous
Sky King high

Eternally hungry but
eternally fed
I
dream this dream that
He's forgotten more of than I will ever remember.

Don't Be One Of Them, Unaware

The Universe laughs at you for trying

--

I am a lack of hours I am a no time