310. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Night
Gotta find out just why
there comes up out of the gut the whole of it
in a great mess, the black and slime
and unholdable masses, what
can’t just be held back or in, and
Gotta find out just why
the body is oiled but gritty
filled with hoarded bits of sand
and twigs broken off once-live branches,
all of it knitting itself into a moist and stringy web
catching all these things
I just can’t lose. Busted
bellies of each guitar, there is
no music to them, but their strings
swing into it. Maybe only hope
holds their music together or the breathing
of the wind pushing from the east
where snow comes from and we
pull back from. Can’t live through
the history of the Atlantic anymore.
Need something drained of history,
something unknown and wretched,
my neck cracks when I turn to see it,
moving west to where the sun goes black.
Seems this car can’t run itself
even though there is no car and I am dreaming
except that I haven’t dreamt for years
and live always awake or waking
or resting from
wanting to wake. Engine is a block
like my brother or the brick
that’s kept the door open so I’d pass through
as if there were no door but
only the mention of door whispering at me as
I pass through
the scanners and they see my body. Am I
naked? or clothed? or close to
getting far enough away that it wouldn’t matter
if either I were running through
(the branches cutting me in little places and ways)
the woods leafless and wet
before a real spring and my haughty gaze
King of the Skunkweed, King of the Oak
or standing in a two-piece suit,
piercing pink tie against a pure white shirt against
a black coat, the black of the pants close and snug
against my small waist
and I am held in
and I wait
for it all to begin, music of the morning,
pieces of shadow the afternoon falls into,
the turgid layered ways of the evening.
It is all so quiet
perhaps because I have fallen
asleep and over the couch as I walk
through the night trying to write
for someone I can’t find
somnambulanamanuensis
but whose voice I hear
and repeat
in ink. What if, I wonder if, there were an engine to it,
something that could run it through
and through, a way to make it seem mobile,
kinetic, not static, vibrant,
vibrating
or just alive. Engine like a heart, heart
like an engine, heat and motion, but the metal
beneath your hands, the warmth of the engine beneath
the metal, beneath the hands, a body in bed at night,
and to sleep into it
would be to sleep into warmth
to suck all the heat out, to let
or lease or steal, to feel the seep
of the heat all out
but, because of it, into
the body. It is a transfer of properties, a brightness
kept in darkness and close to the body, the scent
of cloves the color of the room at night, and it pulls
it together, over the head, and the body thinks
of itself
as the body as the heart as the eyes
which don’t blink with these sunglasses over them
night made into night by nightshades
(such a sweet taste)
and the body moves as itself
as a body beside a body and a berth
as a body beside a body and a birth
as a body beside a body
it is a mind
or
there is to it
a
mind in the body
that doesn’t break but is twisted
like metal and you cannot twist it back into shape
by the portion of a version of incursion
into the senses and the sense of the night
as something warm and cold and dark
and we don’t know what that light is
or like
and we don’t know what it is.
We never know what it is
there comes up out of the gut the whole of it
in a great mess, the black and slime
and unholdable masses, what
can’t just be held back or in, and
Gotta find out just why
the body is oiled but gritty
filled with hoarded bits of sand
and twigs broken off once-live branches,
all of it knitting itself into a moist and stringy web
catching all these things
I just can’t lose. Busted
bellies of each guitar, there is
no music to them, but their strings
swing into it. Maybe only hope
holds their music together or the breathing
of the wind pushing from the east
where snow comes from and we
pull back from. Can’t live through
the history of the Atlantic anymore.
Need something drained of history,
something unknown and wretched,
my neck cracks when I turn to see it,
moving west to where the sun goes black.
Seems this car can’t run itself
even though there is no car and I am dreaming
except that I haven’t dreamt for years
and live always awake or waking
or resting from
wanting to wake. Engine is a block
like my brother or the brick
that’s kept the door open so I’d pass through
as if there were no door but
only the mention of door whispering at me as
I pass through
the scanners and they see my body. Am I
naked? or clothed? or close to
getting far enough away that it wouldn’t matter
if either I were running through
(the branches cutting me in little places and ways)
the woods leafless and wet
before a real spring and my haughty gaze
King of the Skunkweed, King of the Oak
or standing in a two-piece suit,
piercing pink tie against a pure white shirt against
a black coat, the black of the pants close and snug
against my small waist
and I am held in
and I wait
for it all to begin, music of the morning,
pieces of shadow the afternoon falls into,
the turgid layered ways of the evening.
It is all so quiet
perhaps because I have fallen
asleep and over the couch as I walk
through the night trying to write
for someone I can’t find
somnambulanamanuensis
but whose voice I hear
and repeat
in ink. What if, I wonder if, there were an engine to it,
something that could run it through
and through, a way to make it seem mobile,
kinetic, not static, vibrant,
vibrating
or just alive. Engine like a heart, heart
like an engine, heat and motion, but the metal
beneath your hands, the warmth of the engine beneath
the metal, beneath the hands, a body in bed at night,
and to sleep into it
would be to sleep into warmth
to suck all the heat out, to let
or lease or steal, to feel the seep
of the heat all out
but, because of it, into
the body. It is a transfer of properties, a brightness
kept in darkness and close to the body, the scent
of cloves the color of the room at night, and it pulls
it together, over the head, and the body thinks
of itself
as the body as the heart as the eyes
which don’t blink with these sunglasses over them
night made into night by nightshades
(such a sweet taste)
and the body moves as itself
as a body beside a body and a berth
as a body beside a body and a birth
as a body beside a body
it is a mind
or
there is to it
a
mind in the body
that doesn’t break but is twisted
like metal and you cannot twist it back into shape
by the portion of a version of incursion
into the senses and the sense of the night
as something warm and cold and dark
and we don’t know what that light is
or like
and we don’t know what it is.
We never know what it is
Ahhhhhhh, my husband! Very lovely...
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