[ a mean gram ]
it’s like, you already knew all these,
the list of complaints, black ink, white sheet,
your day completely gone to shit
and then it further hits
the proverbial fan, splatters,
stinks like rats’ pelts
left out in brutal weather.
how to withstand the wear
and tear
of this low-rent, low-rate
existence, as if you haven’t lived
till you’ve cut your deal with the devil?
I did it, gave myself o’er to the fire,
temptation, the life rife
with addictive proclivities,
epic vitriols,
incalescent lust.
the judgment was pronounced: slut.
Gift means poison in German.
sweet little babe in a manger,
replaced on his day by a jolly fat Santa.
funny how they all wear red. Satan,
minacious, plunging from the skies,
give me your best embrace. kiss
the Daddy’s girl: parental,
all and only is paternal.
[anagramme]
[ o, brief de{r}angel ]
today the wind blew in, boreal
and truculent. no comfort, not in fine labor
nor in love. someone very dear
has died: poet, friend, wildely read
—he of silver beard
prodigious, he who bared
psyche, soul, confessional;
spilled the stygian noises, flacon
of the anima, a prised
precision of despair—
cigar smoke wafts on air
bereft. he’s left us here.
in his death I relive
all those my dearests; revile
the damned, dark dearth.
who is it snips the thread
anyway? the one I’m named after?
myrrh, dark berry, bitter fate.
[ an elegie for dr b ]
[ one mind. tea ]
i’m losing my mind,
she says, her voice grown dim
and slow on the messenger
call. her, me, geneses:
she taught me to read,
how to adore
her careful letters on the chalkboard.
this is how you keep your mind broad.
now she’s living with my sister: set
the scene (bonjour tristesse)
for greek drama
born of wildchild karma.
what’s that word again, it starts with a D?
her memory a shard, it twists
and turns, turns traitor.
rain. rust. tort,
this brain-change is fuel
for nightmares out of fuseli.
at 3 a.m. she’s afraid:
up surge the old dire sheafs,
hope and nostalgia,
the bleating of a slain goat.
she wakes, makes a cup of tea.
the drip, drip, drip of faucet
left on is not our fear: synapses
brittle as shaky aspens:
not just cranial fog,
we fear the conflagration.
[ on dementia ]