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She tells a story She tells a story about a creature. She says I wave my arms: you grow smaller and smaller. She says a creature sits in our stomachs and gnaws its way through. She says I want to take a bite out of you, find out what you’re thinking. We carry nothing in our pockets, nothing will weigh us down. Her voice under his ear, celestial and falling. So who apologized? So who apologized? I was sprawled, a handful, postponed, a smashed up radio. I said restore me and I was fixed on one channel, paved over I mean I was shellacked, desert struck, without shoes, jabbering, name shouting, a house guest in my own apartment, lots to write but nothing to eat I thought I smiled but I licked my chops. I broke apart the frame and the whole fucking world crept in. If I sang it was a squawk, it was an argument, an embarrassment, something bitter. A droplet, a voice that pretends it is always dark. Like we were dying piecemeal. My theory is that God does not know what to do. He plants lemons, he cleaves us as soon as we speak. I traded paper for birth. If I was that creature I’d do it all over again, only better. And I wouldn’t worry about falling, I’d worry when it stopped. Fate a fate we are waterfalling convulsive, turned around by hints or swerves with lack of middle ground disguised as animals men inside animals discussing the nature of stars as painted so accurately on the ceiling of the emperor’s palace, where it is always night, where night is always falling. What is sight if you won’t see me? Wings The creature has beautiful wings. He uses them towards terrible ends. He has escapings, he flees with his mane towards Jerusalem and every stone shivers with his approach. He lies down. She gets up. They are an unvisited town. They are a barren thing that lasts, a story which resists being told. He’s saying now I’m here I better dance. She’s saying we should be cities, complete with factories full of music, brimming with ash. And we sweated besides overflowing dumpsters as we described them. I wouldn’t push the dark into the creature’s mouth, the creature says. Falling, the story she told A creature, it kept falling, even when it stood still, the world rushed up around it. The falling creature, seeking to understand its condition, studied and ate. He devoured his teachers: they trembled in his thoughts, they ran in pools through his belly they fell with him too, entire libraries, tumbling, even the story of flight it sank alongside him. He ordered his servants, he said the world is smaller now, fetch me a teacher: I am so hungry I wait by the oven I linger by the stove I sleep in the kitchen I wake up in books. They brought back a rabbi. The rabbi said how do you know what is more pleasing to God, your studying or your suffering? How do you know what was written before the creation of the world? It is written that God is a jealous God; it is revealed in every word. He is the oven, we are drawn up to heaven, we fall, there is never enough to keep us lifting. The rabbi kept talking and talking, all the creature saw was a little fire inside his mouth. When he heard those words he felt them, the creature, he got up from his bed, he commanded his servants: go to the rabbi’s house, seize his library, incinerate his books, make every word turn into ash. A powerful creature, wracked with vertigo, could do these things. The creature said now let’s see, which is most pleasing to God: Inventor of Gravity. The rabbi, brushing the soot from his beard, said it is a new year, our names will be written in countless books. We are forbidden to look to the future because time will one day stop. We study the past for traces: we’re such sad and splendid creatures, we can’t stop it from happening again. God made us with two parts missing, one from the skull, the other from the heart. Knit it was Knit it was busted it was dark yeah and yes. It ripped up and fluttered. Sentiments, slop against the order there, as it hurts the sky, as it was shanked, as we staggered apart. What sticks in the red junk called the sky? It’s falling now, like so much snow. I was crooked. Yeah and you bet. I stooped with crooks. I admired their hands. My eyes hooked. Uneven as winter. Good with my arms, awkward with my hips. As in the other world. Any other world. What the rabbi said What is the use of an obsession if it fails to linger and kick? We are lonesome wretches set in a universe of trash and crap. Seamy and deflated, I can see it now, working downward, I laughed at this, the rabbi said, and perfected my downward gaze. He said a lover describes death so that the other will not enact it. Or falling slant and suffering, each terrible moment of make- believe life, no place among real people, no peace in Egypt. The rabbi lives in California, where he thinks the past is lit with spirit to keep the future dark. There is a clock and falling trees, steel ball bearings dropped on the table, it stirs inside each dream of you, the evidence amazes me. What if there was a center that could be trusted, a word I could say that you could believe? He looks at her hands like he would look at his watch. Corrupt, old as the sea I am corrupt, old as the sea, blind like it too, and incomplete, the sea, a diminished, swallowing, the sea that kills, that I could eat, I would swallow anything, I am always hungry. Think of the hidden stars, think of the waiting, who will carry you, who will carry you across the swollen sea, the worry of worries, I buried the sky and it grew birds. I live this way. I come before you and wait. You ask of the time, the other, the little singing, the creature with the honey voice that looks just like me. You mean the creature who lies about the past? He breathes hot breath upon the world. Houses burn and no one will ever fix things. Houses slide into the sea. What if I was found? What if I was a coat pocket, Something kept in a coat pocket? I lived in your house and I sang of rowing, I sang God can’t find us, he isn’t looking anyway, so we do what we want, I knit the stars with this knowledge. The rabbi opens his mouth and the night is ink, his heart is paper: his blood is the sea but it is too dark to read, he keeps writing, he feels written black upon, he keeps writing, with enough lies a tattoo will form, a permanent scar will stick, the heart will worm its way through while the creature stretches his wings over the world, like a projection, a film of night, starring us, playing on cloud screens. Monster hands She says now that we’ve seen the world, images of the dead are finding their way through: corpses without shrouds, slack bodies, bloated, muddied faces turned back to make you feel monstrous. I feel fine. I am drunk as a saint, I get away with everything because I am owed so much. Because walking is hard, flight requires so much planning, I want to be a storm, I am fitting for this weather. The sky lights up with me. Surely we were invisible, surely no one saw us change. I hide my monster hands, learn to like salads and the other stupid things you like. I drink so much dirt to keep you happy. Contortions He says if I was an angel I would be invisible with permanent and tasteless joy. If I was a ghost I would long to be seen, to slip into something comfortable. He says if I was a monster, I would pick a fight with you because you’re mine. If I was a rabbi, I would give bad advice, you would listen to me. He says if I was a machine I would be a camera, I would record in each snapshot every speck of loss. If I was a creature I would be exactly the same as I am now, I wouldn’t change a thing. He says I am unexpected splendors, I come out of nowhere I drag you back there with me. I cannot stand still I cannot be fixed. He says if I was a ghost I would knock the frames off center. He says if I was an angel I would darken the negative with a breath made of light. All of these things are contortions. Metaphors for what comes after love. I traded the earth for you One says, I traded the earth for this house, another says I abandoned the house for this sky, the creature tells them both you don’t need to have a heart to own a soul. I wrote what I heard. I lost my name when I heard your voice. I forgot the light, every kind of light. I sleep facing you. I divide the day into days, your shadow falls between them. When I am dead When I am dead to you what will happen to me? Will I discover wingedness, will I make a little slip? Out of this life and into another, a new city, a house? I will have a where, a no story to tell, erotic because I can’t tell anyone about it. We shared an unhinged heart. I could see you in flashes. I hate you for this. You said we are a house, a creature sings in this house, our arguments give voice to his song. In the attic of this house, the melodies and harmonies are exactly the same because distance has ground them together. When I am dead to you, I will be turned partways, invisible, if I can’t be seen I want to be heard. The dead weight in me wants to be heard. Can’t eat or sleep: I do not want to be invisible, I want to be transparent. Step inside this house, the rabbi says, pointing to the frame, the smoldering timbers. The last thing the creature said the food is clay. the drink is mud. there is no light. the dead sing in the dark, do I sing in my sleep? they say it was written that the dream was terrible because it was true. I who was there, I was with men who dressed as lions. one seized me, then another. I cried out. I was afraid. no one helped me. no one is left to guide me. Angels and ghosts And me, as I describe them, I say a ghost is a creature of memory, an angel darkens thought with furious light. When you walk through a ghost you shiver, walk around an angel and you are crippled forever. I don’t know what happened to you. I have no right to decide. I only insist that some part remains, even if it gives me no peace to believe these things. |