MISSING

Time is too fat for the Olympics
so a blowtorch lights my way 
while Social Media onslaught
pumps toxins thru my speech bubble ellipses.

My mother tells me that she is always
depressed on Sundays. I didn’t grow up 
with a Father, so my emotional problems 
are like bizarre exit music on albums. 

Warning: The recent propagandists for 
Poetry would disappear if theater 
reversed its scientism & came of age 
like a French proverb dug out of a book

that announces the coming of the 
Age of Unfairness. I sacrificed myself 
on top of the Georgia Guidestones: 
that bloody-looking spot isn't blood. 

It’s a post-Romantic vomit spot. 
This is as morose as I’m going to get 
because I’m not trying to rectify 
telephoning you every half-hour

for contending with my own introverdness, 
& will this severe drought peel itself off 
like waxy skin & sling sodas at these
summertime blues? Oh, this muddy water 

I’m in. I’m in the art-for-the-artist crowd, 
tracking down precincts, spying in a 
see-through door; I’m a drawn curtain 
that you paint while you multiply yourself 

justifactorily to subsequently become 
as aloof as everyone else with disorders. 
We’re all borderlines. On the verge 
of something. Layers of this. Layers of that. 

Numbers not quite numbers that appear 
in other forms; their rivals’ squelching, 
too pleased to believe how one’s sins will play 
catch-up. The butterflies are gone; you’re 

no longer enthusiastic about my existence
& are you still attracted to the same sex? 
I watched as you eyed attractive women
the way that I stared at the lizard crawling up 

& down your parents’ curtains in the 
living room while we watched The Count 
of Monte Cristo. Am I still irritating, or
have I become merely semi-annoying? 

My attraction is like a scientific invention 
gone wrong; my sexiness is sagging shallowly
in your Physiognomy Treatise. Oh well, 
I’ll just become a seer, banging these 

same ol’ drums with the hands of Orlac. 
Have you ever noticed that there’s something about
Yesterday that’s always unique to today’s calling?
I want to be told the truth, harshly, confronted

to the face like the Apostle Paul to Peter. 
I come with a rod or a magic wand (two sides of). 
Can you grasp the fact that my
skinny-dipping skin is like hopscotch 

in the rain: the chalk-lines are invisible, like 
your sassy silence, dystopic like a ripped flag
clutched by the hands of a dead General’s daughter. 

POEM

       Inside of every clock

Death shakes like chrysalides

       with every tick.

       My heart is like a painted snowflake 

in the middle of summer
       & gradually the sky climbs into Autumn

       while Winter is an avenue away
& in Winter,  I watch
       as birds ice-skate upon the frozen sky. 

       Each of our souls are Music Boxes
full of singing memories.  We are
       all capable of being pearls

so that even the oyster is aware
           of the dialects of our hearts.

EMPTY SUITS

Empty suits sporting silk ties
with no eyes. War criminals
winning Nobel Peace Prizes

licking their chops,
ice-cream & french fries.
Little Lies enlarged

when outcries
from the Black Community
is like a high-rise alert.

Mishearing words like
Jehovah Wickedness
banging on my door

saved from the “deathly trance
of materialism” dogging
all of our heels.

“Ding, Dong and Ditch”
is one way
to spook the spooky.

Death rides on a carousel
circling                         
         circling       
                    circling.

POEM

We’re all wearing scarlet letters upon our breasts
as intense as the counterpoise, the burn of watered-down
joy to punish thoughts by acting on their distinctions.

Out of the Maelstrom, I put a rope around the wind
as I ride upon the Euroclydon like an idea on an eyelid.
The rain pours like a woman’s fountain, flood, frond. 

And because I’m a Cyclops with Second Sight, and 
because the slowly sinking sun is slipping into my skull
through an invisible tube made of wormhole residue,

each day seems to have been poured out of some cauldron 
of molten metals from the sky; the unrelenting visuals,
congealed and in longing, are mere abstract patinas 

while we “made do” and wasps bounce upon the air like 
invisible properties, and a calico cat standing on a 
speed bump stares at me, or through me, while my spirit, 

like an eagle, glides above some horizon like the Yukon, 
the way that my body disappears from the bed when sleeping: 
a kind of Possible Elsewhere, a Periodic Table of Dubious 

Apprehensions. I am the Majestic Plural of the Hypocatastasis 
still frolicking in your ancient daydream’s garden 
with Spring’s regalia choking me through this revelation; 

the daffodils are sipping my coffee in exchange for visual 
photosynthesis. My body is groaning for resurrection. 
I’m eating the flaming torch that stings sweetly

flapping in my brain like the shape of my tongue wrung out. 

35. MISPLACED ETCHING

       I’m a horse that can’t be
subdued or consumed
eternal mane-flame
       flowing over you
sweetlings of flower-puffs

       strewn through fields
of invented inanimate heavenlies
of which I float
       through your bosom
My eyes are sharper

       than the vulture
& is it any wonder
I’ve become a scavenger
       in this world
that’s gone to hell

       in a breadbasket
that I feed on
Bring back the universal
       flood next time it’ll be
fire & the earth will

       rise like leaven
& the patriarchs will burn
will burn like witches
       at the stake

you can wear camouflage 

       but I still see you
through you because “Time
is corroded from within,
       exactly like an organism”
(E.M. Cioran)
 

       don’t I resemble
an organism to you?
a lack of visibility?
       anything? I go around
the bandaged globe
  

       of paganism in how 

many days “in no time”

I should’ve been a rebel
       WITH a cause
wishing I could go back
 

       in time & join my old boss
who was born
in New Hampshire
       who hung out with Mafia
in New York City
 

       hung out later
with Hell’s Angels
in some other inflamed
       city of madness
but I’m the anti-type
 

       the underling
the freshest prince of all because
I fire at Will
       I’m a nativity scene
I just want you to hold me
 

       like a child in his mother’s arms
I arise to weep for death
we’re all black on the inside
       snoring
like morning glories

34. SOFT DISCLOSURE

              for Frank O’Hara & Ted Berrigan

                                              

                                      September 20, 2015

Summer is nearly “over” but it’s still hotter
       than a pepper sprout & I’m collapsing
like Lana Turner as I chug train-like along in the rain.
       My mother has cancer. The brakes on her vehicle
“gave out” yesterday as I sat sucking back
       coffee-flakes into my veins, “keeping me going”
like a jet engine. Welcome the storms! A blow
       to the head, cold O, cold like a snowcone, O a snow
-ball freefall to the freckled face & tell me, what
       exactly is a Simple Life? I hurry along “scooting”
“shaking a leg” in the wide open terrain
       of traffic, flicking lint, photographing strangers
who find me strange; their eyes like skies
       as if the blue carries onward into the folds of space—
double-folded layout, up against the Siamese blue—
       & Lana Turner collapsed into my lap! She
got up alright. Maybe you were gone
       too soon, Frank, before it happened, but she got up!
I’m getting down like a spaceship to the ground.
       If I were a Crop Circle Maker I’d ‘carve’ your name
in the wheat fields—maybe you’d let me pet
       your beautiful hair again, rub my fingers across
your eyebrows & let’s have a tea party shall we
       in the very center of the circle like two Alice’s
pulling rabbits from mad-hatters’ hats. Lana
       is behind a tree listening-in. She’s the life
of the party but stays hidden like an introverted
       hermit—Hermes! Do a little dance! Bottom’s up—
hyper-rationalizing in a digital glitch—Giambattista
       Vico calls this poem a myth—it is! As are all poems…
aren’t all poems mere revisionist reminders to “go further”
       into the lonely void of liberation? My halo
has slipped over my eyes, now resembling
       Geordi La Forge’s prosthetic Visor. I’m a star-gazer,
just trekking along! I’m destroying all of the melodious junk
       this day & instead I’m listening to Thelonious Monk. 
That makes me a Force of Nature. The soul’s asylum
       is a runaway train & I’m off the rails because I have
loco motives.

33. GENTLE GRAVE

Now that I’ve landed in my gentle grave—
this dusty terminal of fallout particles,
clothed contagious, wrinkled like a mummy
in aurora-florals (I’m still breathing)—
I demand that you applaud for me
to the ends of the earth in animated revelry!

I’m the Diphylleia grayi
that you’ve placed into my blind-pulsing casket.
(I’m still breathing through this mask,
shifting like shadow-spasms.)
Soon! you will see the icy black soil
glow brightly upwards out of every schism
bursting out of the fractured nimbus-bonnet
of the earth’s temple, beaming forth
crystallized illuminations—spectators
whistling through the silver air…

And on some glorious night
as you’re arm-in-arm with your newest love
underneath a starry sky, I will come
from forlorn exile to unravel around you
as an apparition of smoky plumes
with a great uproar like angelic multitudes
cheering-on my visible-absence
in tethered plethoras; a ringleader
of hypostatic disunions, a tribunal of ogres agape,
tusks of wild boars; my eyes aflame
as if impregnated by sun-beams,
returning effluvious with the might of typhoons
from the Celestial Atlas, crushing
the constellation’s memory of us
(a heaving bosom of folklore running amok
like a creeping hum) to HAUNT YOU wholly,
to HAUNT YOU slowly, dissecting rawest,
gagging your freshest love’s holy blooming infancy
the way that Hercules strangled serpents in his cradle.

How then O Great Silencer, my Stoic Amphitrite,
will my life be valued as I rush like bulls on parade
towards your invisible arms?

32.

Origen is said to have castrated himself

            clipping the eucalyptus of his manhood
Must’ve then Crossed the Rubicon
     of the Epicycle of Existential Spatiality
                                                   hot
on the spore                   bathing
       the mushy genital corpsefig
                           in a mad fever of the utmost

         Too            as legend has it         

reports of beavers ripping off their genitals
& throwing them at hunters!

Nevermind        just spike your mind
like a football           Watch as the horsecars
return on Old Broadway            like a magician
on television
                    that has fooled naïve audiences
         in their living rooms

Like me     the most naïve person you’ll ever
know               The Magician is an anti-hero
Like me           

       
         Dream of the day            excursions to
wherewithal whereabouts       but no place         

Two people performing sign language
                                                   I watch them

                                                   from afar
thinking that it’s like
                    the Hieroglyphics of The Airy

Language our bodies emit to test
                                                      the air’s
patience

31.

I imagine that woman’s braces
slicing my lips
tongue of greatness tongue

of Sparta my Achilles
tendons are jelly
at the thought

Could snap off
the bone
I walk limp

across the sidewalk
with a rip in my britches
I don’t give a (flying) rip

I don’t give a rip
if I walk on hot coals
or over thorny grounds

Have you danced
with a devil
like dust floating

in a sunbeam?
Have you felt the angels
howl for you

as you love so deeply
they mourn for you?     
My lips ache

at the thought
of your dewy mouth
pressing like a rose petal

to mine (because they never do
& never will) like
pressing Gertrude Stein’s

most tender butt
-ons
Take me up on that

like shoulders
that bear burdens
As you go to kiss

his mouth I pause
the action
I take his place

in a moonbeam
(as an objective illusion)    
What you want to kiss

is a mouth of tragedy
Horror-Eyes of Lady Macbeth    
Watch as the sea

swallows me
& at least values
my existence

to destroy me       
Why didn’t I drown
in my mother’s womb?    

Will you wipe away
your Judas Kiss-saliva
off of my cheek

as I stand in standing-water
with wounds open
in the pearly fern-furls

in our Valley of Emptiness?     
Leave me be    
Let the rope break    

Will all silky fragments
of the memory of me
continue to evaporate

& land as dewy thought
-drops in a deafening silence
that is felt by the whole orb

of the earth? I behold
its blank depths
like a landscape

of bleached snow    
tapping the sockets   
like a loose sprig

seen sprouting
from some barren scene
like a red stop sign

barely visible
in a blizzard of snowflakes    
a kind of swarming swathe

as if white locusts
were pulverizing
the perilous air

30.

How oft I repeat myself to hear
“another part of me” speak
bearing it on my forehead
like an arbitrary accident
as if I were a blindfolded Dipheus
waiting for signals to emerge
out of the ascendance
out of the static-swirl
like speaking to one’s “selves”
through walkie-talkies

29. ‘MEAN SUN’

Imagine if we gained everything
we wanted in this Life:
constant amplifier

scooted through Whitman’s
vocal cords—this is the
Song of My Intuition’s Perihelion,

day of direction
-less urging, iron flowers
clicking in the properties

of the mind-chaotic owls
hooting hydraulic mouthfuls
of air-raving, dark mottled structure

of red: Claw the parasite away
from waxy white promises, away
from luminous organs, carrion

of foul odors scented through
windows verifying that
I smell straight. I put my eyes on,

self-clocking. Damaged, I’m like
a pack of jackals clawing
through fields of sugar cane.

28.

Granny said “if only I had a nickel
for every homemade biscuit I’ve made.”
As a boy, I looked at my granny as
the grandest of the land. We’d venture out

into nature together & pick blueberries
(“the poetry of the earth is death”).
She’d point out to me the names of
flowers & plants. Now I’m half-dead

in black-&-white, the hag of eternity,
& I’m thinking of a muffled workforce
& why people complain when they’ve
“got it made,” which is like complaining

about being bitten by a flea while being
eaten by a bear. Home is where the heart
isn’t & I’m there. I’m bathing off with
a startling starling dishcloth. I feel like

a human scorpion. The sky this day
is as clear as cuddling. Every precious
stooge adores me. Time is a murmur.
I’m in a foxhole, rolled & downturned.

Grasshoppers hiding in my head. 
It must’ve been incredible to have a name
like “Grace Hopper”. My granny stares out
of her kitchen window, wide-eyed hazel eyes,

while nasty Nostalgia helium-howls at me
louder than a monk’s silence. My pawpaw
is covered in oil as he comes into the house
& my uncle & I hang in the sky like

a heavy jar full of stained glass holding up
the universe’s milk. I told him that my eyes
are pale asleep this day, as he uprooted
dandelions from the hard, Georgia ground,

reminding me of the loss of things, the way
Carly Simon sings about nothing ever staying
the same, so you have to play the game
& I now hang my head from this window

the way one is weighed by thought, alone.
The way that a coffin-cover will always hide
the remains, of what Is and Never Was. 

27. BROWN RECLUSE

That brown recluse
crawling across
the polished floor
is Emily Dickinson.
Ruby Rose
said that she could
“play Emily”
& so could I,
because I am
Emily Dickinson,
which makes me
“nobody!”*
I close
jagged drawers
where love letters
as dusty as
the first compass annulus
clouds-up
vintage ache
-breath, forges
surfaces to awaken,
heralds shadows
like a “mackerel sky”—
saw-tooth waves
is how I’m viewing
History through a
dicroscopic eye
-piece, double
refraction
summoned
to appear as if
Harriet Shelley’s
apparition
re-appeared at
the top of the Serpent
-ine. Where
I spotted the recluse,
the over
-stimulated sensillae
of the floor
wintered-over,
spearmint output
voltage, slipping
a chill of seasonal
spaces, flipped
like Geomagnetic
Reversal as if
Stephen Hawking’s mouth
had been turned
upside-down.

________________________________________________________________
* Ref. to Emily’s poem, XXVII: 

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

26.

The rainbow patters glitch patterns
Digital gadget pageantry, gelatous
Matrix, an indelible stench in this

Place, olla podrida, nuclear saps,
Slapstick comedy when the feline
Jumps when the fleas bite strictly.

What probability of failure could
Phony sermon pep-talks from
Two-lipped twist drill mouths with

Small beads of moisture be encaged
In reservoirs of absolute drizzle where
The points driven-home to make

One’s case before the Jury isn’t
Out—retractable tricycle wheels
I remember looking back to see

If I were being fooled, the way that
You should go ahead & deceive me
& make it public, why don’t you!

The ambient temperature of the way
Mouths move in debates, gorgeously
Absorbing sufficient reunions of one’s

Memories. Being here is a dynamic
Drag. Brain like reindeer moss.
Crumb into me, into you, heptagon

Of sensible ages this flirting dismay
Because my consciousness was a mere
Throw-in.  History never repeating

Itself. Mandrakes as “venomous spirits”
As “troops of error” so I speculate
The urn; the ashes of Omens, of

Prophecies & who do you trust in this
One-sided World? Who not to trust?
The Flatterer: He wraps wasps nests

In gold foil & scarlet ribbon. The resonance
Is infected, like the timbre of the
Voices of ruinous homes abandoned.

Who do you welcome in your life?
The Welcome implants that she carries
Is a foreboding gravitational pull,

Sentiments of Levitation; a thought
Bursts them, fluid like Time we move
Through like de Kooning paintings.

It’s true: you can’t fall down the
Rabbit hole if you’re already in it.
The carnival continues even after

The music stops. Spacious emptiness
Loosens the gills & quiets the mind
Like a disabled telephone wire.

25.

I eat the apple of a dream—
when I gulp, icicles form
on the back of my skull;
my frontal lobe warms
my dome & a waterfall falls
throughout my soul in the night.

24. USA: U-NDER S-URVEILLANCE A-LWAYS

I want to be followed by Men in Black suits and shiny black glasses.
I want to be followed by the CIA. I want to be followed.
I want to be low-brow, but I want to be followed.
I want to be followed by the United States Government.
I want to be harassed by the United States Government.
I want to see a surveillance camera hovering above my head, like a halo.
I want to see their dark eyes look back at me. I want to be followed.
I want to see drones in-person. It would be cool to see a drone in-person.
I want to be followed and I want drones to land on my windshield and come along for the ride.
I want to be a hacker and hack the cyber-bushes into twigs.
I want to be followed by men in black suits that act tough with their angry voices.
I want surveillance cameras to chime in. I want to wave into their dark spying eyes.
I want the United States of America to place surveillance under my brow.
I want the United States of America to paparazzi me.
I want to Foresee the Future like a Science Fiction Movie coming to Reality.
I want Huxley or Wells to follow me around, like the United States Government.
I want to be followed by famous authors of famous Science Fiction novels.
I want it all to be pushed down my throat. I want to be followed and watched.
I want to see the Beginning of The End while I am being followed and harassed.
What I want is what I’ve got. What I want is the resurrection of Burgess Meredith.
What I want is to be followed by the United States Government FORCES.
What I want is not so outrageous. What I want is what I do not need, but still want.
What I want and what I need are far more precious than imaginable.
I want the United States Government to stop my mandible. I want to be chased.
I want a surveillance camera hovering above my bed, like a dream-glow.
What I want is to be spied on by ominous men, like decrepit surfaces.
I want to see mass hysteria where suburbs are turned into Transylvanias.
I want the Government-funded news media hounds to thoroughly convince me of Life on Mars.
What I want is not that big of a deal. What I want is to be in a Secret Society.
What I want is to be followed by Secret Agencies. I want that. I want the pendulum to swing my way.
I want the Government to tell me why Secret Organizations need to be secret if they are so powerful.
I want to be stepped on by Men in Black, the way the Lotto rolls over.
I want my hands to be tied in a Virtual Reality around our Real World.
I want the United States Government to thumb their noses, to give perpetual pink slips.
I want that to happen so bad that I bat my lashes and wait for a digital code to pinch my flesh. 
I want to be experimented on. I want mind-games to be the common matinee.
I want to be imprisoned in a seaside village, like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner. 
I do not want to be a Man. I want to be a Number. This is alluring. 
I want nothing but bitter pills to swallow while the plot is brewing.
I want to be followed. To be Wanted. 

23. THE DOOR

The door wants what I want:

Openness, stillness, a gentle sway,
A sudden slam, a vanishing wall, 

New spaces, a solitary breeze
That unhinges full dreams, 

A fresh coat, soft hands & 

Closure.

22. THE GREAT DISSIPATION

i.

Briefest moss scatters a trance
of ripest aromas freely
from the wind of my fame love’s lash,

clashes like belated blown kites,

like winter’s chisel reappearing

in the star of your eyes’ light.

I spin    I spin    spin in that
centrifuge & let go of a world
I once knew with pincers unclasped.

As I head towards 33-½ 

I hang like Christ,
frozen like a glacier

but slowly melting (dialysis drip),
my spirit still flapping
like a lawless honey of voices 

along the earline of a parallel time-band,
& because words make or break
my esophagus swells & I hold up a mirror

to you & see all that I’ve yet to say
like a Red-Bellied Woodpecker’s
retracted tongue wrapped around its skull.



ii.

If the glorious Present sought to exhume the Past

I’d rapidly have to play possum with Myself

so as not to remember my own face in a mirror

so that the light that travels to the visual source

is interrupted                                       to vanish

before being gazed upon.

21. ENTER TO FLOG MY WARES

There is a three-foot replica
of a Coca-Cola bottle
sitting like a Buddha
across the street. I’ll say!

It’s only there because
I’m bleak & blank in these
lonely days. Six-foot evil
hiccups are coming out of me

because of this over-priced
coffee. It’s real mud. I’m
fingering the hole in the
wooden chair. I’m “playing it”

like Tibetan finger-cymbals.
Nineties-isms are thrown
around me. I just want to
take the hand of a stranger.

I want to take the land into
my body—the land that
we once walked together.
What are you waiting on?

Destroy my whole self—
let no trace be found! 
Stomp my already-sprained
ankles until they bleed!

The white of my skeleton
is showing through my flesh;
the base of the parietal bones
of my skull is bare!

20. KINESTHETIC IMAGERY

If Thought
were to become

Kinesthetic Imagery

absent-mindedness
would become liberated

from the mental phenomena
of the invisible

like being
a ghostwriter for ghosts

watching as the words
slowly vanish

as if they’d been written
with icicles

19.

No one reads my poem-blooms
so I read them to the moon.
     “You’re waxing gibberish!”
     it tells me in the lurid, pale light.
And still, yet, I swoon—!

18. AMERICA’S MOST HAUNTED

The house grows cold like pink-ice on an Eskimo’s nose.
Nightmemories cover me like clouds of balaclava.

My eyes stare out, short-sighted though nebulous gulfs,
because the light was on at odd hours. I don’t breathe

unless your breath softsteps & curls around the plateaus
of my ribcage. I’m a ghost with blood in your ghost’s purse,

clanking the loose change, zippering the airlocks, looking
for a reimbursement of my regretful speech to implode

the banking system of my plunge into the abyss of all these
silent days, where I’ve become a sub-atomic passerby to you;

a doctored hallucination? I’ve given in to our mysterious
bond like children that eventually surrender to Reality.

I’m in a shallow pool, a bottomless attic as you hold
your tongue of many possibilities. I’m a cobweb of

superficial coloring to you—I see through the grey area.
Desperate is the thick flesh of each passing day

where I hold tight the sweaty hands of Hope. I cup the head
of a flower, gazing at it as if there’s nothing else, as if

like a childhood crush, a blush is all that is needed
to color the world. I’m a glint on every plant in your garden;

the greenhouse is a bodyguard of our imaginations; the wettest
petals impersonate our conscious & unconscious minds

which is like an unintact screenplay. If you were to
touch me now, dearest friend, would we be like mere corpses

clawing through the same sepulchre, transfixed to the cold soil
of yesterday’s mummified arteries?

17.

God is closer to me
than my own breath

here where I rot
like an orca whale

dried bones of
Orson Welles

on a polluted beach
where suddenly

I’m resurrected by love
My tongue like

a colorized silent film
here where

the blazing summer sun
heats everything

with the boil
of a king’s throne

16.

O sweet House of Nothing sweet House of many Fables & Secret Sorrows!
     you steer these vessels within my body of light maps against all methods
body of angel-fog body of bodiless mystic ellipses rose of re-bloom the hour
     of no earth the heaven that clatters upon your magnetic lighted celestial
voyage pink-balmed crested zest of our encased eartinuums where
     the Reset Button turns out to be a Detonator              It’s that feeling you get
                                      that feeling you all know well
        when you think back on memories     
                                                                    not necessarily nostalgic-inducing
                                                       but that sudden hulkish
                                      punctual unpredictability
          that arises out of you!

I am a spasm in a flower vase          I am “on the double” like a doppelganger   
Your eyes are like ripples in crystal clear swimming pools
       You are a flower vase in a spasm           where I grow like a bushwhacked
phantomflower                                              coming back to life
in percussive re-growths of earth-sounding
                                             shattered metasynths
upon the mathemagical concerto of our quantum physiognomy

The House is turning in on us      paradoxes     parodies       
traversing the unnecessary           The Centipede’s Dilemma     in redux
     We’re falling from an indefensible roof of stars
where all the world’s a cage

15. THE TALL, LANKY MAN

The tall, lanky man sitting in front of me—
his shoulders as broad as a wide-open
Canadian horizon—reads from a Sandman
graphic novel—turns his head to look out of
the window at the roar of the thunderstorms.
He looks back at me & says: “You find out
in life that when it rains, it pours” & he smiles
& his teeth blind me, like certain descriptions
of Henri Michaux’s experiments with mescaline
in Miserable Miracle: thinking of them now
paints my green eyes into silver, like the pouring
rain, the train heard in the thunder, my whistle
blowing like my old middle school P.E. teacher
who blew his lungs out one day. I agreed with
the tall, lanky man & said: “You also find out
that there are different kinds of vampires in
the world” in which he snickered while looking
down at his cell phone & kept grinning as if
he & I were trapped in a scene from a film.