i. what really happened last night
Last night I stepped through Patrick’s dream portal
to hear the words of the Poetry Gods,
they said,
“Life is good, you skank whore
son of a bitch.”
and they laughed
the muted energy
of now and then
fell out from heaven
from earth
and into the parts of me I hide
the invisible parts that God knows
the visible parts a pet monkey
would pick lice from so sweetly
the real parts that jizz soul on red brick
and the imaginary parts that leave me
victorious when the sunsets
Patrick said
that art connects us to
what is civilized
I cut that chord and crept back
to my barbaric loves:
asparagus, mountains
and sex.
But not the baby white asparagus
or the foothills of mountains
or pregnancy
the hardcore pornographic
slice of yes that grunts like a pig
the snow in august that won’t melt
the green stench of well made urine
and the silence of children gone off to live.
The poetry gods,
they mocked me
there with wisdom and years
words and paths I can not take
I smiled,
but seethed inside for
my lacking — so obvious
it must be hard for them
not to condescend.
a thousand poems
I’ll write next month
but every first one will
die on my lips
I have only the empty words
that land in a small dusty pile
before the portal to dreamland.
Patrick will be kind to me,
he always is, the kind of perhapsfriend
that reminds one of decency
and the odd ways metal pierces flesh
water pierces hearts
air pierces dreams
and of course
earth suffocates.
The Poetry Gods, do you hear them?
They are saying,
“Stephan,
you are dead. You are dead, but you don’t know it
yet.”
Do you know them, with their black skinned beauty
with their pale haired arias to lush despair, with their
horned rimmed glasses, with their credentials and credibility,
with their publications
and the means to afford
that trip
through Patrick’s dream portal
to the land of oh dear lord
it’s so beautiful
to the land of fuck, yeah
baby
to the land of have you ever tasted
anything this good
Do you love them
too when
they fall at angles
straight
and curved
when they careen heartward
and outward
and toward your nostrils
with the scent of shit and gold bullion
when they hope
when their faith is real?
Do you love them then?
For me it is green, it is jealous, it is rage
that I can never be that poetry god
For me it is another million burning crosses
dug into the little pits all around my stomach
where the bile floods up my throat — alone
and puking, alone and aware of my eyeballs
aware of my earballs aware of all my balls
and my alone-ness
my alone-osity
my alonity.
The poetry gods — i wonder,
will they let me through
the portal to Patricks dreams?
No. I dare not hope.
hope is such a nasty smelling jacket
in the closet.
Last night, I dreamt
of heaven — floating
on the vibrations of an Earth well struck
tuned to the every damned thing I’m not
of a copper paint bucket
that grew from granite
full of bull semen and dead flies
of a nifty little path
swollen with ivy and grape vines
engulfed in evergreens and oak
swarming with the endless rotting
of my very best bits
“Stephan,
you are dead. You are dead.
you are dead.”
I love them still,
i want them so.
Dear God, I want them so
to love me once.
Those vicious gods of poetry
who only kiss my corpse
who only see a statue
where i stand.
Life is good. It is.
I think,
and
(alone)
leave Patrick’s dream portal
behind.
ii. locusts, love and my best nightmares
Major Jackson talked of his moment
in a cloud of young men and pot smoke
where he realized
he would be a poet — perhaps
this was his dream portal
Those boys so high, they soared —
his spirit guides for his life of wonder
and deep true loves
I am, as yet, unguided. My moment
(that cold hard captain seeking that same white whale
as me) waits on Whitman’s ship
I lay here on a large sheetless bed
covered in warm blankets and my favorite plague
a sexy rush of locusts and laughter
awake, thinking of Seneca and Gwendolyn, we
make love the locusts and I, we
dream of being black, we
write white poetry.
the dream portal is closed tonight, for me
but Major slips through, i know
because he is a poet, a dream
while the locsts eat my blankets, loud munching
sounds fill my heart, then they eat one last supper —
we commune — they are flesh of my flesh
blood of my blood
I forgive their sin
the holey blanket covers us both
we prey together now on Major Jackson’s dreams
of hoops and Why
do I not seek some real good;
Why i do not seek some good
which I can feel,
not one which I can display?
Then, I am gone — one bug at a time
on flapping wings, now I soar.
I am the dreamer
of the dream
in Patrick’s portal
my side pierced
my hands pierced
my feet pierced
I am the angle
the way
the holey food
for locusts
for every plague
I am the sexiest of plagues
I am the nightmare
you want, you bitter poet
I am the word now,
pray.
iii. between the tuning fork
Patrick made a bridge from here
to heaven
i tried to climb
but where it split
i realized
it was a tuning fork
i have no porpoise.
i ride to my bathtub
where the baguette
porpoise’s smooth skin
sweeps around in eights
and zeros — splashing
and squealing joy
all over my bathroom floor
i am so big
and he is so little
so french-seeming
still, a giant
i beg him
“Heaven please!”
and point
at the tuning fork
We strike then
in perfect C. This is our nature
to find the note
and carry it on
We are the poets
and the porpoise
The world
on the back of the turtle
This is the dream
we should dream, I tell him
This is Patrick’s hope:
that we will find these words
dive on from the reduction
through the refraction
to the abstraction
that is God’s cock
so that we
might suck the creative juice
so that we
might taste the place
where reality flows
then hunt for that woman, we
call Earth
“Ok, Ok,” i tell my porpoise
that is not Patrick’s dream
that is mine.
My art.
My Hope.
My love.
My life.
the porpoise snickers
gags on the puke I spew
but we swim on
Patrick’s bridge to heaven, we
bang it again
and the note is sustained, we
are sustained, we
write the poetry:
me
with a porpoise