prison-house section

as promised, here’s the section of my new work-in-progress, prison-house, which I read at the release party:

__________

I hear a good many things about my life;

the best I can do is repeat them.

I am told that my parents, concerned

with poisoning me, bottled food to feed me.

I am told that once, at the beach, I refused

to return home as a cohesive unit, denying

familiar bonds. I am told, at a certain point,

I refused to return home whatsoever.

I am told that I loved someone and that

someone once loved me and we lived together

for many years in several different apartments.

I am told that a good many things about my life,

denying familiar bonds, refused to return home

at all for many years in several different apartments.

__________

traitorous cancer, serpent denying self

bad-bad train bound for nowhere good

inexhaustible nothing/something

lying on the dark dark green sheets,

twisting and twisting, waiting

for the whistle to get blown

for something something to get not-

foggy, to get a fucking job already,

to get fucked every which way

on the roof, in a building, in a car

or in a noose, or in the proverbial

lie of an originary truth, small thing

eating words and crawling, small

thing, a loved and not-loved thing,

small thing, reading fast, never

really learning to walk upright,

small thing crawling, small thing still.

as a small thing, I was held,

remembered strange stories

in the night, words confusing

to a small thing,

disappearing immediately,

reappear later, interrupt

creeping into the stairwell to sleep,

my lip gushing blood I lay, blanketless,

on the carpet, I remembered the strange stories,

felt nothing was right, felt something

__________

To get on the stairs,

I would have had

to have been in one

of many apartments

with someone who

I loved who supposedly

loved me, and that

supposition, apparently,

would have been false.

__________

unspeakable disaster, me and not me

unspeakable disaster, warm and heaving

in the bathroom, seeming to die

unspeakable disaster sleepless and seamless

and shirtless and full of glitches,

things unsaid unspeakable disaster

got me on my knees, unspeakable

disaster forgetting and remembering

Unspeakable

disaster,

I’d call

on the dead

for remembering,

but the dead,

like me,

don’t remember

a thing.

Unspeakable disaster, tell me sometime

I knew nothing truly, not that nothing

of nothing but nothing-nothing,

the small thing. small thing lost to me,

muddy in the garden watering roses

with Mom, diaper-clad, pulling

the cat’s tail like a personal handle,

cutting a thigh open on a Chevrolet seat,

eating chocolate cake, feeling scared

at night, loving Daddy so much,

privileging disaster.

Tell me

there are no

limit-points,

that it’s all

a part

of the same,

that I need

only press my ear

into the silence,

that it

will speak to me.

words flash past my face.

I’m kneeling on the bedroom

floor, looking up at god,

considering dead letters.

cards coming up in the hands

of my mother, her long red nails

against pale cardboard.

aardvark. tarantula. lemur.

animals I will never meet.

I’m strong, made strong

by freshly ground fruit

and vegetables, denial,

and devout abstinence,

but I’m weak as I try,

as I try to picture

the things before me,

fail, can’t put anything

between the aardvark’s

A & K, can only think

of noah and his ark,

my future exclusions

__________

this is interval one.

no spaces between the intervals

but more intervals.

no intervals between intervals

merely cuts, empty spaces

no knowledge of interval one

until interval ten,

no knowledge then either

interval outside of intervals,

ending interval systems:

hunters have found a body

in the desert. unidentifiable

at the time. heavily decomposed.

aardvark, tarantula, lemur,

coming home to roost

many years later in several

different apartments, aardvark

in the living room,

the subway rushing by

outside, making static on the TV,

shrouding the hard-shelled beast

in darkness, aardvark in Venezuela

where mother and sister worried

the house’d burn, made clothes

by hand, constantly fearful lemur,

intangible, tarantula, unmentionable.

__________

he could be anyone.

the man who watches

you cry,comforts,

the kindest old fool

on the block.

he might be crouched

with the aardvarks

in the flickering light,

under worrisome noise.

he might have prayed

for these outcomes,

and it would be the prayers,

not the outcomes,

that could give you nightmares.

You might have forgotten about him.

I have forgotten about all of them.

forgetting is our human duty.

one must forget, and live on.

__________