I remember when I was strong.
When we left the Village and jumped on the
Subway
To 125th street.
And we stabbed our veins,
And you told me I was a genius
But I was uncomfortable with that,
And you laughed.
I never told you this,
But when we were drinking our
LIT’s, on familiar ground,
So high we just held each other;
Oblivious to everyone —
And you would say that nobody would fuck with me
Anyway,
I wanted to run away.
But you were so comfortable in my scars.
But now you are gone, and so am I.
I have to wonder
Why you left me standing here.
I remember when you would hold my arm
And pull me toward you.
You would sigh
in your half sleep
And plead for me not to leave.
But where did I go wrong? What did I do?
You never told me.
Even now, you won’t tell me.
And I suffer.
Aeschylus with his Agamemnon.
Ovid,
Virgil,
All the way up to Camus
And beyond.
Kerouac,
Wolfe, Thomas, that is,
Chopin and Brecht,
And don’t forget about Garcia Marquez.
Hemingway with his whiskey,
Along with Jean Genet looking for the key,
Shirley Jackson and her Lottery,
And Hegesias’ lectures just might set you free.
Locke and Roth,
Sandburg and Eliot,
The farm and Kesey,
And all that fucking Greek tragedy.
There just might be something else
To get us through.
Passing dirty streetcorner
After dirty streetcorner,
Long ago.
Squalid geometry.
With all those dissecting miles of asphalt,
Dotted by sewer plates, and narrowed by endless rows
Of parked cars as far as one can see.
Making my way
To that sacred building of self-salvation,
With its Ionic columns and Beaux-Art style,
Where old friends would wait
Patiently
In exalted timelessness among
Law,
Travel,
Religion,
Et cetera, et cetera;
Poised to impart
All the beautiful philosophies
And jaw-agape stanzas
And
Stories and experiences and dreams and tragedies;
To coax the soul from its back alleys.
And you sit a moment
And think
“They are all dead now.”
And the dark fact that you had such a stark thought
Makes you question for a lonely moment your sanity, or
At least
Your immediate hold on your own
Sopping emotions.
But you are pulled from this,
Quickly,
But
Ever
So gently, in all that vaulted solitude,
As you turn your eyes to those wonderful
Rows, and your
Nascent
Epistemology.
Back beat.
Don’t you know that I love the sun
And
Retreat
More often than not.
And for all my books
I still can’t find
The answer
That I’m looking for.
Long roads leading nowhere,
I stand still,
wondering
Why I can’t get there.
How many times
Can I make the same mistake?
How many times
Can I ruin my life
And still face the day?
“You smell like apples,” she said.
“Is that really possible?” I said.
“I don’t know, but you do,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“They say you read a lot,” she said.
“Who is ‘They?’” I said.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“I just want to go home,” I said.
“I will take you,” she said.
And I say:
that the torments of my soul
are enormous and simple.
And the corridors of my existence
lead backward,
toward unhappiness and bloodlines
that did not consult me,
in the ironies that trail me
like Karma.
And marked upon my past
like the residue of history,
is a discomfort of endless inconsistency.
A psalm, and a truth-rich reality —
a force opposing that of which is already
written in ancient ink —
becomes, that of which,
reconstructs us
as we move sadly
within and among the ranks,
a tragic parade.
I lost all my genius that night.
And all the colors of my mind
ran away,
and fell
to an indiscriminate gray.
All my exploding canvases
woke up and decided
to go away.
And all my poems are now written in a sad,
empty light.
No more fight.
No more sight.
No more little smiles;
a sad broken heart,
in the emptiness of night.
My Toulouse-Lautrec died in a train wreck.
My Dylan Thomas drank himself to death.
And oh, my Van Gogh
eventually gave up,
realizing his Gauguin had gone.
But more than that,
My Beethoven,
stuck his head in that
Sylvia Plath
“I don’t care anymore” oven.
The music that comes from
your soul
is so unlike mine.
Because I know
it’s all a matter of time.
I don’t think you should bandage my wrists anymore
because my planet, baby,
has been rocked to its fatal core.
Hope always falls down and gets hurt.
Spinning around, I fall down,
face down in the dirt.
you said I was amazing.
you said I turned you around.
you said I changed your life.
and I remember right where it was.
you slapped me and said to never
forget this moment.
and I loved you for that.
I’m banging around this life
Like I’m in some kind of holy closet.
Light off, head hurt.
My heart has been torn from my chest.
This world has fucked me up.
I’m gone.
It has kicked my teeth in.
And there is no woman on a white horse.
I have so many things to write, but cannot.
I hate being broken.
