A Holy Death

It was at dawn that I knew it,
blackened seraphs spat new truths in my ears, 
draped velvet curtains over every Holy Building
until the gold did not shine.
I had been tasting words for twenty years,
repeating strange things to my ribcage, telling
fresh generations with clean cheeks and lips
that I knew how things really were. 
I licked wine to the left of the pulpit, 
touched the grape juice and the bread, punctured my wrists 
with the thickened panes from ogival arches. 
I left at dawn due to the discord, a break in the harmony
Stravinsky promised, as he sat atop a black piano winking sternly.
Am I wretched now? Bound on some sybaritic vessel to Gehanna? And am I
never allowed to taste quiet calm of Notre Dame, lest the candles tilt
and burn me alive? There is sweat in me to mark the learned guilt,
they have made locutions to question the nature of my condition.
They say there is no salt in me and perhaps I am not salty, 
but I do not want the clasped hands,
the bloodied teeth,
the stink of a lamb too torn by circumstance to walk in a straight line, 
the weight of a wretch
in the mask of John the Baptist.
It was many things, the Holy Death.
It was clean eyes and dead eyes; it was to pour milk over my feet,
to step off the pier, look Dante in the eyes and deny his inferno, 
to delight in those castigated pleasures of flesh.
Mostly though, it was to nod at Toklas,
and know that what will be remembered at the end is not the carvings in a pew
but a woman with her tresses clipped,
wrapped in cubist paintings.

Words for a woman in stripes

Small hips Ro with your stripes and velvet hair, with your paint-flecked cheeks
With your prayer book shut and your crosses clean
Soon you’ll be clasping hands with Him in New York City, in the low east of New York
You’ll be waiting at the cusp of the Atlantic, willing bigger things to happen
You'll have left us all behind, coughing up sand
I can see you on West 23rd Street now, sucking on a pen and winking at the sky

Misdemeanors

I’d eaten it accidentally of course, that cucumber. How was I to know there existed any tangible aesthetic variance between the organic vegetable variety and the generic, supermarket drudgery I had supposedly bought; that a great sickly stench hung over my own purchase? It had just seemed like an ordinary cucumber when I sliced it thinly for a salad; when I poured a little balsamic over the top and ate it alongside a TV dinner. What’s more, it was sitting in my spot (or sort of) in that bottom drawer of the fridge, right there with the tomatoes and the eggplant I bought on a wild culinary whim. Surely a frivolous cucumber accident doesn’t necessitate a two-day verbal stalemate between you and I? How long must this punishment last? I didn’t mean to let that slick green center slide past teeth and tongue, into the welcoming arms of my throat. I swear I never wanted to cause such callous pain.

I've been thinking about Big Sur, California lately, where the Santa Lucia Mountains meet the blue of the Pacific. I think I'd like to be there.

I'm on a public mini bus and I'm on it in Hong Kong

We're heading to Sai Kung. There is a winding hill and bowing trees, scenic things, the things you take pictures of and show to people who maybe care, but most likely don't. You know how it's done: you string all the photos together and make the whole family crowd around.

There are a lot of old women on this bus, little ladies with crooked, scrunched up faces and tiny feet. At the front, up near the driver, there is a bucket of Easy Finish joint compound (ready mix), stacked next to numerous bottles, tools, backpacks, rubbish offcuts. A pile of junk. It's the sort of thing that inspires confidence, knowing the bus could fall to pieces at any moment. ("Hey driver, half of this left wall just fell off!"- "Don't you worry, just grab summathat joint compound at the back. It's ready mix for your convenience.")

The bus stops multiple times. I get off on the last. When I'm off the olive seats for a moment, I breathe in the cool stiffness of a not-quite summer morning, then get on a connecting bus to Mong Kok. The streets we pass are thin, built up along the sides with cramped little buildings and tall, palm-like trees. We pass the sea on the left, and around it, hundreds of white tottering houses mirrored by the clean white boats below. We move through Pak Wai village. It's just a half hour ride to those big Mong Kok streets.

An afternote:
Some punk told me Hong Kong was dirty as hell while he sucked up a drag and blew it out over my face. I don't think he really saw it.

Beat on Silver

(intended for spoken word purposes)

Tiny and me
We gettin off the airplane
Long walk, tarmac
Pickin up our stuff again
Small cops, big heads
Guns cocked, all prepped
We move, we walk
Push our shit straight ahead
“Look out kid,”
the singing preacher said
with a borrowed drawl he picked up
when he was still a Zimmerman

Big hut, white doors
He polishing the wood floor
Hair all beehive
he hardly had it did in time
Tiny scoots right off home
Me and Bee smokin on
Lick along, rolling
Then he cookin up, forest things
“Get that mush
down my neck!”
Well, he says it so polite that
I barely stop to check it’s right

Tall men, they fast asleep
Beehive lookin moss green
Face clean, bow-tie neat
My airplane sailed so smoothly in
We cookin up things tonight
Well, we cookin up dreams
We makin all the plans
and then we dictate what they mean
“Let’s go off,
some darker place,”
Bee and me, eyes closed
No covers on them windows

Flying out of Bangkok

Flying out of Bangkok; the plane slowly gathering speed across the runway. And there are lights across the tarmack, tiny rows of red and blue, and green a little farther up. In the distance, there is the glittering yellow flicker of a city awakening, stretching its great dirty arms and yawning broadly, looking up to greet the pitch black grin of eight o'clock at night. I am leaving Bangkok now, Floyd is playing in my ears (Wish you were here), the song of so many lonely morning coffees and broken moments of forced nostalgia. There are surely hundreds of us here on this souped-up white machine, beginning trips and ending them, running away and running home. There are thousands of us in planes right now, pinned up pricks of light along the sky. We are going places - or we think we are. We are meeting people. Everywhere we go we are all moving the same: touching faces, touching hands, touching more.