conversations with the hat man 2

i can't get too close to anyone.  i don't blame you for this hat man.  you shaded me, sheltered me when no one else could have.  you took me under your great dark wing.  you took the singularity, the secret, and you absorbed it into your giantness--

there is no measuring the depth of a shadow.

you are like the night sky with red burning lights throughout you.  you have a thousand hearts that glow red like hot coals.  a depth to dim the glow of day, a warm if unfortunate dream, a whisper that rises from the seed of the heart like a pale shoot.

i dreamed of warmth from the depth of the cold and you allowed me to dream.  hat man, shadow man, your hands and face of iron.  corner man, rag man, your hands and face of black iron.

i began by asking to come out from the corner
begging like a bad dog--to come out from the fringe
to be anyone's toy.  but maybe
i am just a gradual accumulation
of heat, and those who can survive the burning

will come forward.

conversations with the hat man

the nail's long gone.

you have a lot of third noise, Anthony, somewhere in you.

hold me in the cell.

hat man is somewhere where time isn't an arrow, except as the metaphor of St. Sebastian.  where time is cortege, is in attendance.

hat man was there when it happened, and i knew it, kind of.  the shadows that dampened the experience were his--the ones that took it away were his.  hence he may have been the only witness, taking me into the fringe of things and
seeing
for me.


the way they preserved their napkins from dinner to dinner.
and the slide
of the fingertips
up the thigh.
the sound of the macneil lehrer news hour.
how he would peel the oranges,
everything with its method.
getting trapped
against the car.
she would take me shopping for groceries.

preserve me from ritual,
god.
preserve me from
the golden hand
with its golden finger.

send your dark messenger--

Anthony, the third sound is yours.
And for me? EKRUM.  eat
of life's plenty.  bite down.
hold     and know.

my love is a fire

i'm unconcerned with what things look like
or how they appear--
even if you were a skeleton
i'd still love you, dear.

even if your flesh had shrivelled
up to the bone
i'd still hold you this close
i'd still call you my own.

so you see it doesn't matter,
not your form nor your face.
so don't even try
to leave me alone in this place--

because just with your presence
i'm so satisfied
that i really don't care
whether you're dead or alive.

i learn to sing when things are hardest
pushed to pain and pushed beyond it

places: no title/written on the body

i rewrote myself on the point of inscription
balancing on the cusp so as not to fall into the darkness on either side
when the blood welled red i got it off
leaving only a faint pink smear
near the torn part.

just a faint crust
to answer the question
left behind the rewriting:
why?  why did i?

who do i think i am,
remaking god's image as i remake myself?
what do i honestly think i've left behind

and how far will i be able to go
into that pink-smeared wasteland?


it's starting to burn now,
the cusp sinking, myself listing heavily toward the dark sea
on one side the dreams of teeth beckoning
and to the other more and more inscription, inscription upon inscription
until no course seems even slightly open
but that one breathless   breathless one--
i will   rewrite me   again   and again
but i will not   fall   willingly

places: failure at something small

but it doesn't seem small, because i have no perspective.

also, no grasp of what's expected.  i always had assumed everyone was exactly like me, or
nobody was anything like me, and hence
there was no need for context--everyone already, or
no one ever
understood
everything.
or anything.

so these sins, the clothing of my deeds, i don't know
how to account for, or
atone for them.

(walking out into hip-high banks of snow
and the mist that kept my hair damp for an hour,
seeing the distance-fading outlines of the black trees standing
shocking up from the white snow and thinking two things:
one, that what i call getting through the next day
is actually me using up my life in heaviness--
and two, that the mist in the trees makes good werewolf weather
by r.k.o. horror film standards.)

places: kenneth fearing

i had thought
a sense of humor to be in debt
only to sadness, but

in rereading the big clock
i remember it can be a product
also of wild rage

places: scissors

1.
at the crossroads between two concepts:
that there is no one to stop me;
that there is no one i would let stop me.

2.
i wait for years
to know if i felt what i thought i felt--
not wishing to be taken as a liar,
i show little
to preserve myself from untruths.

3.
one lays claim to the moment with sound and white
like the arms of the fire
reach toward blankest oxygen.

places: candles piled on a spindle-legged table at candlemas

thick candles, lying against each other in uneven layers
the table resting on four fine points
if it had not been planed so well
the candles would spill
potential light rolling thickly
all over the floor
as it is they rest loosely
and no one will touch them
unnecessarily
surprisingly sturdy
on such
light
points.

places: cragga "mr. postman" remix/stooges "dirt" -- cragga "mr. postman" remix/stooges "1970" -- cragga "mr. postman" remix

1.
ttttt t t t
   ttt t t
     tt

oo ooo o o o
   o ooo o
     oo o
u u uuu uuu

   uu uuu u u u
     u uu
cc ccc cc c
   c cc ccc
     ccc c c
        c c

h hh h h  hh  h h  h
   h hh h h hh h h h
     hh h h h


mm mm m mm m
mm mm mm m m
m mm mm m m m
m mm m mm m m
mmmm m m m m

e ee e ee e ee
ee e ee e ee e
ee e e ee ee e
e ee e e ee e e
eee eee e e e e

   once once inside the thigh
   once once upon the lid of my eye

   twice or more in any place
   you may find inspiring to your taste.


fi fi figure of a woman
within the drawn-back lips
i will take it all
the skip-beat
and the shot to the heart


2.
you scholar withhorn-rims
your hem riding
the shinbone
hard

sweet sweet bone
a sweet goer

your breath of candy
in your mouth like liquor

respect

for what it is--
a whore

in a summer lover's dress

ended in their own sexes
fucked exit
cracked eitlan enakgest
through herden latslag inhead
RATHE RATHE RATHE

against the dying
of the light.


3.
jaw tenser than a building in wind
nothing but tensile strength in the seed

i had my jaw stretched so high and low
it was a scream in the throat but in the lips it was nothing like that
just silence weightless and sweet.

i have so much self-control
i can hang on for years
and not say a word.
hang on to something
for years without one word.

i hanged onto a life once--it was mine.
i hanged onto the rhizome of my family and friends.

i hanged from the root once.
i dampened it all over.