Requiem

1.

lately

collisions

with walls.

sharp touches sharp

and soft on soft

always what should be

but not now

nor ever really

like that.

sometimes sharp on soft

collisions.

sometimes hot

like a stove

not like:

did you see

him? i’ll take

one of those;

or hear about

these collisions

they have seen

and paid to see

excited by

rather

thrilled to death

it’s the dry face again

and dark moves

around me

touch soft to sharp

to see what would pop

and what would not

stays, o.k.?

2.

buddy at the loft all night

m.d.a. and dancing

mad, unshaved, uncaged

mouth open wide

screaming to blow

dancing to go bang

to go bang to go bang

buddy outrageous

swishy pasty fat buddy

with a glass full of remy

and twelve marlboros

filling up ashtrays

to all day lucy

strange demented buddy

pasty, thin, unshaved

eyes like grey quarks

of despair

dancing like an ass

unable afraid buddy

busted open from within

busted open by doctors

by the flea

wretched half-alive flea

snorts up his d.n.a.

snorts his brain through its

half-alive flea nose

seizes big unshaved buddy

by the hair

and beats him to the ground

this fucking half alive flea

dragged him over the bones of friends

dragged him through glass

through his own shit

through headlights

over asphalt, black snow banks

over bricks and tires

and through the dog grey air

of the river,

by the dump of potter’s field

in march 1994 he was forty five

with wrecked birds all around him.3.

i couldn’t stand the sight of tangerines.

my throat smelt like a rusty pipe.

all the time walking

through sheets and no ground

pushing at air with feet

so hot and erupting all at once

buddy told them i was dead

and when people would call

this old thing again

i knew i would live

4.

candy apple circles on the ceiling

dilate and shake over steps,

crepe, stone and cellophane

echo back and disappear:

forgotten self

left to hang in the eyes of friends

lovers

and everyone who ever hated

yeah

but you forgotten

drift at my fingertips

always bounce clear

till you’re gone

5.

it takes two days

these days i know

always dropping

from the old inevitable everything

abstract, nounish, spoken,

odd, exploding horses

what ever cold insult you prefer

to this attempt at.

but i don’t know who i’m talking to.

just picked up the phone

and you were there

it was 1989 i think

and a voice had wrung me up at random

barked high and fast

about everything i had left out

of everything i have ever said.

can you imagine that?

this…this stinking pile of….

well

you get the point i said

and hung up before saying.

6.

the air just hardened up with light

and shadow.

branches, wires, birds.

and bright vinyl siding

a tangle of gutter pipes

the dust of this place

reeks dull

the only thing to do–

interrogate the paste

the panels

floor cleanser

chaos of crap

and twice colliding

with the black wall

this soft skin of everyone

popped

as if scissors, walking

had punished the air

and the blue of it

cloud of it

warmth of it

sweet of it

vanished

and this side

and that side

weren’t sides at all

7.

daily despairing of it

chaos of crap forbids

any moment to consider.

and so i went down

to the beach.

clumsy but electric.

it was just past sunset.

smell burning leaves

and forsythia brightens

unexpectedly

rain and bark and mud

with dabs of new moss

shining in shadow

you can hear them laugh

and fight from the sidewalk

voices of fathers and boys

over dishes

cats yowing while the sky slowly drips

out here i can see them

walk through the patterns

pine boughs make with lamps and pavement.

stepping through this filigree

each one stares and thinks at me

before slipping off the edge of my sun

and wondered what i was doing here

why had i come

to circumnavigate their dream

and know what is wrong.

“you ask so much of this,”

she said.

8.

to the beach.

i pour my own salt into sand

to wake and admit them.

even lurid pictures of them

with bloody chins

staggering from horn to horn

twisting from trees

in arc lights clogging the river

swarming through sixes of graveyards

with liver and spleen on a hook

and eyes like dekooning

whatever astonishes will do.

9.

where did you go.

and how was it.

was it.

10.

“he came home drunk every night

and on prozac i didn’t know what

to believe the doctor he said

said to take six a day

he was forty five and talked

such shit so loud and stupid

all the time a quart of vodka a day,”

peter said on the phone.

buddy

up from the small

soft hole.

i used his face

and body

in the other half

but not his voice

in a camel hair coat

with greying hair

slicked back and full

always talking such shit

and full of my blood

and spit he stood before me

against the sand

and the words weren’t his

but peter’s

swelled from his mouth

and moved gently

and relentlessly

around him.

he always talked such shit jon

ever since i met him

even at the loft

i couldn’t stand it.

ßthe rubbed grey eyes

and big cheeks before gaunt

with his white scarf

crossed in front

he looked beautiful

and prosperous

and gone.

11.

you

crowd out the others

till they pull you in

and kick you back

to get at the bloody hole

i’ve opened into

for finding and feeding them

so jon comes up

tousled jon

in his floor length flannel gown

so sick, i had never seen….

his krishna man and siva man

his blue man with bangles

and a playful wicked smile

these peacock gods of yours jon

and incense and things collected

from men who wouldn’t need them

yeah

well

you are boiling a pot

of nasty smelling herbs from chinatown

and roasting a goose with juniper and current sauce

your eyes bleached like canvas

look, i have to do this you flea bitten

taoist madman you political poet

jon you first avenue freak

no one ever scratched so hard and well

and loved so well to scratch like a dog

as you did almost to make me wish

i too was covered with itchy sores

and had to shit my brains out for a year

till the seat was always stained a pale

greenish yellow and the poster from germany

of a man sucking cock hung from one thumbtack

and swung when i shut the door

are you all right

and i am walking up university

to union square, dean and deluca for coffee

and organic bacon for hoppin’ john on new year’s eve

but you were making lentils

and leaves circled over asphalt and concrete

we walked with our heads down

and you never stopped talking

or years before in my kitchen

5 of us around a bottle of scotch

touching shoulders, when we all smoked

and sat sweating and laughing

the door open

red and white tile, fridge and stove crammed in

smell of dead mice, radiators, still water

in air shafts and garbage

laughing so hard and you never stopped talking

or once, when i was as mad as you were

and both of us were dying only you much faster

laughing outside about how there were less

homeless these days we both remarked

cause so many dead of.

i saw you big jon

when there was no meat left

you gave your skin.

and someone got

everything you got

from those men

who wouldn’t

be needing them.

12.

peter

found a cheap crematorium

so buddy was saved from potter’s field

peter

climbed over the black

wrought iron fence of grace church

and scattered his ashes

in ivy

and tulips

that circle the trees.

13.

some with eyes came.

some without.

no tiresias, no one to beat off.

some still ragged with the anger of life

some like buddy stifle the laughter

of crows to go bang to go bang to go bang.

sometimes just a box

these eyes

to hold pictures

sometimes nothing

but a smell.

then bubble gum, bracelets

of jasmine

your breath close to mine

when few could touch you

cause so many gone

and i see peter

slide towards the hole

but i can put his panel off today

renew in boxes

that are eyes ears nose and mouth

the taste and touch of him

the soft of his humor

the warm of his chest

the moist of his speech

and the sweet of his breath

before evening.