Guilty by Association, Cooperation, and Orchestration

Cigar smoke hangs quietest on back porches in Missouri
In a twilight that can only have blue eyes
While Jesse James cleans his revolver
And smiles wide like an ice cream parlor

Jesse James was present at my birth
Holding me high over his head and hat
I was still covered in blood
When he told my father I was his boy

He told me a man is defined by his first bank robbery
And not by the size of his coffin
He told me when a man kills a woman’s husband
He should send her orchids and not sunflowers

The clerks and patrons are holding their hands over their heads
As if they were holding me on my birthday
And I can think of nothing finer
Than being shot in the head by Jesse James

Drywall

Your house has only three hung paintings?
So I was right
There are things alive in your walls
And you think you know the sound of the air conditioning
But they’re crawling and scraping and grinning
By now you can surely note
That the edges of your reality—
Yes stand just like that and look straight ahead
—They are pulling apart like an unfastened tarp
In the North Sea
And between the folds
There is blackness like frostbite
Your eyes don’t deceive you like your mistress
And turning off the lights
Can only make the walls hungrier
Doors have larger eyes than windows
And you’re a better fool than a window

A Canary Cage and Mustard Gas

Once every two months
I have to take a room at a hotel
“Your highest room”
And I carry my own bag
Counting each step in the fire escape stairwell
Every inch away from the ground
And all of it
Every half-inch of all of it

Up on this height in my room
I move toward the large window
And I can’t stop looking
And I can sense that it has followed me here
With the knocking on the door
“House keeping” but it’s a lie
Scraping at my door
My door that I deadbolt in my room in my height

I re-fix myself on the window
Then reassure myself by going through the channels on the TV
And refilling the ice bucket which I put
By the window
Knocking again but this time fainter
While I carefully stack the hotel’s monogrammed stationery
Into my bag

I lean close to the window
To steal a little fresh air
And the trees blur
With the reflection of skyscrapers and my humidity
Suddenly I want to write a poem or
Watch a film or walk
Because now I’m smiling against the glass
In my smile and in this height

What troubles you and I are bloodhounds
And while I may hide quietly in a sidewalk crack
I can feel the weight of others’ feet upon me
And I make many remarks toward the lack of air.
My scent is sweet and distinct
Like a woman behind closed wooden doors
Left behind in every word
Every imprint of my shoe
And it can follow
They can follow in stride.

“Your highest room”
So I can look out the window
While my trail disappears
And my scent begins to fade
Leading them astray to courtesans
Or dinner theaters
And I, now but a whisper of cigarette smoke
To dangle out above the city in our height
And rest inside a warm love
When the buildings sleep as well

Sur La Table

The day is a well set
Dining room table
Falling off a
Twenty-four-hour-high building
And there is something
Exceedingly curious
In the silence of the silverware
Not unlike
The romances of older women
Who mortgage children
And launder husbands
To pay for half-bottles
Of pinot noir
And stalk like jawless beasts
Through the farmer’s market
And I can sense that
The table cloth is white
Not as an irony
But of bleach
And the salty tears
Of freshly beached whales
Wincing and sputtering
Like a Sunday morning
Without the traces of whiskey
That cling to the eyelashes
Of my better-halves

“Try to imagine that if
There were a slight breeze
Coming from the northeast
There’s a chance
That the glassware
Might not mix
With the potatoes”
Says the tablecloth
Ironically very
Unironically
But while it loses
Itself in the metaphor
Of the potatoes
The tide slowly recedes
On the Thames
And you can’t help but
Imagine how many atoms
Are in your espresso
Or in the girl you loved
Or the other over there

From a distance
I’m sure
It all looks like an angel
Falling from a tall building
And in that day
You’re like the wishbone
Of the falling turkey
Or angel
And all you can imagine
Is what will happen
When the bone hits the
Ground below and breaks
And maybe you’ll get lucky
But the angel lands
Upright

And you’re sure
At one point
It all just got mixed together
Like if you played Pet Sounds
All at once
On different record players
And the volume on seven
Or eight
But when the legs of the table
Hit the ground
I can see a neatly arranged
Dinner for four
And it’s your dining room
The sun has just set
And suddenly as always
You haven’t got a fork.

In Memoriam A.S.

I wasn’t there
But I’m sure you wouldn’t describe the hole
In the windshield
Pretty as an openmouthed smile

“When they ran up
They couldn’t find him
He had flown” that far
That far
Maybe in a field
But not like a scarecrow

I wasn’t there
But I wonder if the car stereo
Went on playing
Like the band
As the Titanic slipped back home

I wonder now
If I knew you that well
Because you’ve flown
And yesterday
You smiled
And thought about things
All the same
And maybe you’re a virgin
And maybe we’ve both smoked before
And maybe your mind thought right
And right hand thought left
And maybe some people never cry
Yet you’ve left the world
Aware of its lacking
And I hope the smile amongst the glass
Was there
Because I wasn’t

And you’ve flown
And we can’t find you
And we’ve checked all the nests
In the neighborhood
For your blue egg smile
And we’ll keep looking
Until the sunsets
And our moms call us in
For warm apple pie
And Nat King Cole

The Vestry

Men burning alive in a church don’t bleed
They burn
The bells ring out slowly, meditatively
Through the cold still air
And you can see the soldiers
Rifles over their shoulders
Worn soles disturbing the fresh snow
Rolling the last of tobacco and lint
From the corners of their pockets
Chapped and bleeding lips
Full of blue exhaling haze
There is no one to kill
As they slowly die
And their lives are a film
Black and white and full of church bells

On the Rusted Gears of an Abandoned Gin

There is a quiet field somewhere
That doesn’t move
Like the city
When I saw it today
And it was all blue
Even the black was
Like the mismatched socks
In my drawer when you did my laundry
Which now we only
Hang one another
Out to dry
And the radio plays the same songs
Something is different
But not with the songs
They rustle the windowpane
And chipped white paint

The field would only have one tree
And in the frozen dusk
The sun already has forgotten
Where it lent its rays
Like the loneliness
Of a bullet leaving a six-shooter
Finding no flesh

To be this alone
Would be to lose the thought
Of my distant field
Or to learn that love
Is an animal carcass
Turned inside out
By the bloody jowls
Of hungry mountain cats
That drip the full sun
In and out of existence
This darkness grows
With their hungry empty stomachs
From the corners of my eyesight

There is everything
In the darkness
That should frighten you
Like nothing
Or if nothing was obliterated
Then dressed in its Sunday best
Given a name
An awkward smile
Then held your hand

Were I To Write What She Will Read

The paper folded in such a way
That would make one blush
Or kiss your wet
Wet your red blush
The note, were it a bird,
In your hands
Would be like a wedding
Flower
Purring in your wet
Your hands
Wet from the garden
And roses
Your slightness
In that dress
Or the late nineteen
Thirties
And I’ll play a record
On my new
Country styled gramophone
Let’s dance with folds
Of paper for blinds
And curtains made
Of mustard colored
Sapphires, rubies
In the sky of diamonds
And please, pleasure,
Please kiss me in my
Dreams, wet,
Dream like paper in static violence
Against the love
In your garden
I kiss your
I’ll kiss your
Sweet
Let’s dance to the typewriter
Your shoulder blades
In the candle and light
Is like a note
Read till read
Then red
And love all day
Like so many fancy
Dinner parties
With my eyes closed
Lips to paper
And then
“In my dreams
I kiss your
Cunt.”









“In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long.”

-From Atonement, by Ian McEwan