Half-Recovered

Tired Hecklebey: this was my uncle’s name.
His face was the red blown-up balloon of youthful morning
Made grotesque because he wore it late in the day. I work
All day, he liked to say and throw his hat in the air,
Missing the coat rack by several feet. Old Hecklebey,
We can’t even remember what he did for a living.

Though his wife was a piece: this is what they said.
Who said? The men who saw her in jean shorts, leaning
Sexily on the shopping cart at the P&C. Mind you, his wife
Was my aunt. Don’t talk badly about her. Her life was long,
Long and lonely. She made apostles and angels and even the Christ
From paper cutouts. She was a Christian woman who carried a camera.
She never showed her photographs to Hecklebey; we think
There was probably good reason for this.

I’m reaching the end of the poem. I don’t know. I can’t think
Why I summoned these ghosts from the cellar: my memory. Only
I am being selfish for making you listen to me. And selfish to them,
My Uncle Hecklebey and his wife, my aunt, whose desirable red flesh
Has grown around, thereby covering up, her name, for asking why I
Should let them live. Surely, you agree, they shouldn’t vanish as easily as that.

Cosmetic Dream

Having woken, I found that I was not wearing makeup.
Yet, why? Had the dream not been mine, I might have been
More eager to read it for its symbols. Had the dream not been
Mine, I might have found the dream poetic. I might have explored
The possibilities of meaning: I had a dream in which I woke up
From a dream to find I had painted my face in my sleep. Lepor!

The dreamers’ dictionaries told me I was hiding a more true identity;
Also, I may be looking to redefine my persona. What persona?
Lepor! You are as real as your fingernail. Do you know how I know
That my fingernail does indeed inhabit the sacred space? Because,
When I clip it, the nail divides into a piece and a part. One, the larger (part),
Continues to mask the pink, sensitive flesh; the other, the flying crescent (piece),
Ends up beneath the kitchen table, with dust clumps, crumbs, and shadow.

Easter Dinner

The evening has such small hands. What a stupid thought.
I think it must be gorgeous. A petite man with a woman’s bottom
I have been courting all fall without much luck, I told him: The evening
Has such small hands. What is that, he said, poetry? And I laughed.
Yes petite man, I said and slapped his back. You are right! Poetry!

The village is a silver fireball tonight. Why? How is that even possible?
Lust occupies the imagination and makes all meaning meandering.
The petite man eyed a glimmer in the gutter and took it for a stud
Earring. For breakfast I slurped a bowl of shimmering white spume
And spat in the olive dish.

The evening is for petite hams. Human skin makes me hungry.
I can’t create barriers for myself, not at this point in the process. Poetry
Doesn’t work that way. Imagination, on the other ham, originates in the gut.
Lay on your belly, Little man, and be milky with me. I’ll mash pig vision
With prick vision and you’ll be delirious in my hairy arms.

Black Mustache

Some writers, they write for money.
You don’t say. Well, it’s true. Even Poe.
He wasn’t otherworldly, not by any means,
According to a new biography; he was a satirist,
Dreamed up a mustache, a successful newspaper
To woo the public, to woo the money. I don’t care.

Now imagine my skull is made of rose glass,
Won’t you? And imagine a flame burns inside.
Now imagine a hand descends from heaven and
Waves its palm over my flame. Oh! Divine hand!
You will singe your skin. Don’t you care?
The divine hand doesn’t care.

Poe was funny. I’m funny too. Poe married a girl,
Thirteen years old. I’m married to an imaginary flame
Burning in a skull that isn’t real (rose glass? Of course
Not). And I don’t read his poems anymore,
I don’t read his stories. They were works I enjoyed
As a child. Just as my own work is work
I enjoyed as a child. Excuse my throat, for it itches.

For this poem I wander into a glass temple. White
Ferns brush across the glass pillars in the wind. Something
Of the lazy movement in the white fir trees makes me
Believe that a great period of creativity will occur. Somehow
We will all – writers who write for money and those who don’t –
Escape the hungry, beating death. Now I too wear the black mustache.

Pinata

There is a grave in my basement.
I don’t know how it got there
I creeped down the steps (I crept)
And smelled jelly beans, lemon-sugar powder
Purple flowers (what are they called?) Surely
There is a skeleton in those shadows?
He will come a’rattling and ask me to dance?

Delirious! Lepor! You are smiling all over yourself.
Your pink emotion has rather ejaculated. There must have been
A death acceptance somewhere in my past. There is a grave!
There is a grave in my basement! No, I am not comfortable with this.

Here is something that cheers me up: The great fog of our lives.
We walk to work with our trenches up over our mouths.
Do you smell sugar-powder shit? No. Do you? No.
The fog of our lives! My friend, Le Jennifer, asked me: Is there
A grave in your basement? Why of course! I felt one of her breasts!

The plague is here (but don’t tell anyone). Because when
It is clear, when it is clear that the plague is here (the fog
Will have lifted) then we will see the thousand corpses, their sores!
Their sores! Whoo-Haa! And we will feel one another’s breasts. Our
Genitalia will come to life as on the third day of spring! The plague
Will force us into goat-footed position. The balloons will rise from our arses!

Stop. Now stop. Open the basement door. And quietly, now, quietly, you creep.
You’re creeping. Is that a treasure for you and me? The gift of our futures.
No Lepor; No Le Jennifer; No, even Elliot Le Ginn. These are graves.

Gargantua

Depression discovered me as I walked, as I walked
To the bus. A giant with legs as short as mine
Crawled between my knees and asked for the time.

Why! You silly little thing I shouted, how is it
That you are so small, yet tower over me? Why
Am I so frightened? You are a fantasy. You belong
To the French and treasure born from imaginary sand.
Are you real?

This question confused the giant with legs
As short as mine. You’ve created me, silly thing,
He said, you nurse me all of the time. The giant
Then made himself just as tall as me and unbuttoned
My shirt and removed my breast. My man’s breast
Was a woman’s breast. You silly thing, he said and began,

He began to suckle at my teet. The milk was red.
My teet was sore. I begged him to stop. He would not let up.
He grew larger in size. He was a giant after all. His shadow befell me.
Have I lost my head? I asked the world. But the world was not there.

He said: I belong to you; I hold your sadness in my hand.
Your happiness is here, beneath my codpiece. I won’t
Tell you where I keep your desire, he said. But I knew,
But I pretended not to know. And I felt nothing at all.
Now I live in the shadow of my giant. In the morning
Sometimes, while I walk to the bus, he tricks me by asking
For the time and ends up sucking the milk from my breast
And whispers that desire is my imagination too; happiness
Is a crutch; and sadness, Lepor, thanks to me your sadness
Is no more!

There is This! There is This!

My pillow, I love when you are beneath my face
I carry you into the bathroom with me, hug you
While I squat. My pillow! Soft realization of my dreams!

Not the dreams that make a man a poet, but the dreams
That make a man confused! I stumble at every avenue.
My back’s the same as my front. A clueless boy with pink fruit
For elbows asked me in the canteen if I knew him.

I swear. His eyes were like raspberries, just like
His elbows and he was so thin I swear he was a phantom.
Have you not died, I asked him. He was a homosexual,
I found out soon enough. He invited me up into the vent.

We crawled inside the vent: dust. My body is a fruit;
You can crush it between your thumb and forefinger, like
A fruit, a wild berry, and I will stain your skin long enough
For you to taste me and then I will disappear, he said.

And he disappeared. We were like dust in the vent.
I carried my pillow with me back to bed. I love you, my pillow.
You are real and your shape changes with the contours of my face.