jayivan

direct your gaze below
the nose

Club the night
Dub this flight
Syncopate your makeshift plight

I want to pry but
I want to spy inside but
I want to lie but

I trip on my lip
and gag on the word flung back
into a dry throat

One night, I crawl into That Thing:
The Growth Machine, its oiled springs
a spastic being brings.

they bulldozed your hobo poems
as they bulldozed your victorian home

the wraparound porch, long-delayed,
thrust by indifferent day labor
into your fast-decayed living room,

peeled paint layered between unpaid bills graffitied with verse:
this surface they send,
this surface you fill,
a check for the future,
an unsent verse
from the bank of forever forever.

d. dances into the room,
shawl-wrapped and singing
“i am not the dee you know,
no no i am not the dee to thee”

you send her back to the kitchen
with cold lips and warm eyes.
shawless she returns
with milky water in spotted glasses.

you search again for
stacked within,
the lost picasso,
sketched by the artist for you,
a sketch for a sketch,
in a city by the sea
where all men were artists
pride-free and giving.

Platform form
Patiently worn

the shine of skin shaved
begs my eye to follow lines
enshrined and contrived

A mosquito spinning mid air,
one leg snared by an absent spider’s absent thought.

I watch its struggle.

The swelling cherries on the boughs,
The dark’ning clouds, the sweaty brow,
The swarming gnats congratulate
The coming storm: this is Spring’s wake.

Honeysuckle, burnt marshmallow.
Oil stains on the weed-cracked sidewalk.

Scratch the needle across my skin,
Cut the ink into my softness
These misty mornings are too bright.

Lean against the shaking door,
Close-eyed and listening,
Cup-eared against phone,

A lost voice captured
In a message on repeat—
A figment stretched thin.