tristesse
she drips expectation from her moony eyes
laid back against the dustgrain rear seat smell of dead skin interior
beautiful in the dark of starlight.
here is the champagne:
i am a bottle bursting,
we shake until the cork explodes.
and in the phlegmatic afterglow of a slept through ten minutes
i think of the old greeks in the dunkin donuts,
drinking kafe
old in a new world,
talking politics they know nothing of,
filling the air with cryptic gargles,
their forgotten sons grown up in skin too tight,
dropping coins into a wishing well
(circling the drain):
a dollar for a scratch off --
today could be the day!
(each day)
what relics are here in the palms of their hands!:
"agape mou, saga po toso poli!"
lifelines and wrinkles,
old toys,
a bitter bauble, balanced on a finger,
nameless anything, in swaying half-fall,
endless teeter:
I.
i look to her, her silent breath,
her wide eyes emptied to the night,
mirrored ghostly in the dirty windows.
what questions i have for her
that i cannot ask.
i wonder if she thinks of things so far unrelated to
this.
we are a pocket of space, undetected, but our minds
holes in that pocket.
where does hers leak to?
in each thing we are dilettantes,
armchair experts,
our truth in three paragraph news stories.
cancer cured.
nation on wrong track.
god found in piece of toast.
longform is useless to us, we know,
we do not need to say.
we will leave soon, in silence, sleep restlessly, and wake for work.
6am, like always.
we will think of nothing.
that's the key.
can't take a shit when you need to,
because you must perform your duty
as a functional member of society.
emotions must not cross the threshold.
we eat things that come off the factory line,
unfarmed,
our worlds are tunnels into computer screens,
120 characters,
funny pictures of cats,
a baby laughing,
ahaha
how cute.
and when i get home i strip before the mirror,
i see william carlos williams dancing russian, staring back,
trying to convince himself he is half-joking.
i sit in my living room, my crypt, mummified
with a bowl of pressed-wood cereal,
watching people try to smile in spite of it all,
everyone dying, everyone afraid,
every channel a detective tries to solve the mutilation of a child,
and cracks jokes each two minutes, right on cue.
i pull the blinds:
these suburbs, tribe of zombies, dead men watering plants in plastic unison.
such stickered smiles,
monochrome faces,
nimby high priority.
they're all trouble, them,
the different,
the tinkers,
the thinkers.
i'd rather have my sunlight through a tv screen,
than be blanched by my one, my own.
when i was young
there were echoes in my voice,
of wonder choked:
i would look at the crags of a stone and marvel:
how, and why!
what color!
what history!
and i was punished for my idleness,
my transgression against god.
so i forgot it, and moved on
to this more natural life.
the thoughts come to me
through these pleasant, inoffensive ejaculations,
exclamations between the lines of her palm.
i trace those lines with the brush of a fingertip,
and she mine.
and in that moment,
i imagine we are alive.
