jayivan

the road to freedom
a powdered trap

peak into the box
and see what’s made it under
the lid loosely shut

if anything

scream:night
punch:flight
acid:insight
numb:blight

put it together,
just to tear it down again?
I get it, I do.

80 degrees, 8am April 8,
Steam rises from the cusp
of disappearing dew

The black room,
a place as pure space,
a thing within-without itself,
surface and substance,
word and thing,
where sex is sex and nothing else,
where cocks are out, in hands or mouths
or any limb from human sprouts
there gripped and turned unquestioned out,
eyes-wide sweat streams pulsing down
gurning cheeks, jizzle-crowned,
hopes abandoned,
all ye fears,
turned
to salt,
a stain,
a mark,
a line,
a dot,
a joy that found its missing core,
outbursts from hadron’s godly swirl.

I may not play roles,
but I can be different me’s:
it’s so slippery

The sun burns my face
tender on midwinter morn
a finger through a flame

this prick I pricked you
with, it sticks

i fall on my knees
before this wasteland of words,
the books abandoned

to basement junk shops,
aligned on splintered shelving
ordered in chaos:

orientalists
and philosophers unread
(unread as undone,

the pages gone blank
the letters turned back to white,
white on white thought-blight).

Yet still I write,
a pliable sight.

the burning jewel
glows beneath the icy lake

the space within the space
I need that break
air without oxygen
place without grace

The skin rent,
dried lace
wet pink

The fear, my dear,
is real.

my love grows as trees
that dropped their leaves, and bare-branched,
braces against wind

shifting soft-focused self
unbordered-dimming
dithered-dreaming

The trees still, silent
above muted cars speeding
cold-dumb, winter-numb

a face of smoke with powdered lips
wafts through the lights,
a sight abliss

the storm returns thirst:
for the hip-swayed and pill-popped,
for sex with strangers,

for the pleasure domes:
swollen cocks pressed tight in jeans,
gray matter synapse,

each seeking relief

from urban dunes breeched.

Pass me secret notes
unrecorded in ones and ohs

We are happiest
on cloudy days as if sun
burns through our thinned skin,

lays bare the vessels,
dries out the circulation,
mixes the message;

we could hide in shade,
just be—wordless, sweatless
on each others chests:

listen, your heart beats—
quiet, my heart still pulses—
it is all we are:

Two humans spinning in space
Lonely, but for our embrace.

a breath upon a chest
a chance glance
a bump before a hump

a blind orchestra
paints black noise on black canvas

the islands are all sunk now

this you know—

hardly a thing worth saying
(so obvious)

barely a thing worth knowing
(as a thing impossible to not-know)

still i miss the shores
where the big blue turned a quieter hue

red-eyed
I stand before you
consumed

walk slow heart beat fast
i want you sweat-washed heat-flashed
walk slow unattached

Dance me out til dawn—
sweat-spritzed chests rocking bliss hips—
the horns sing s u n r i s e

Yammer-stammering,
The cocaine brigades don’t dance
no more: they grow fat.

Dance, my city dance.
Reclaim the dark light, bodies
Rock the night in flight.

I cry on trains and
taxis speeding away from
the possible me.

The thing that remains:
a slight reflection painted
on passing landscapes.

Old woman in black,
sitting on sepia steps,
smiles a young girl’s smile.

The silent face stares
back preserved but present,
holding its blue breath.

Tangle of wires drape,
urgent messages of Now
race invisible.

The bright spring
Of fallen green
On wet-black steps

Step into the heart
of the great beast. See the beat
of fear in motion.

the too-soon spring sun
rides the morning train to work,
missing the green fields.

the pale city men
cower from the burning bright
clutching coffee tight.

Too much to hope for
a smile after a long day,
apparently so.

Form is not the thing,
Nor the substance really —
Any word should do —

Chemical salts cackling beneath my boots,
Abandoned among the streets’ many truths

Hangman, take care!—you
misplace the letters on which
your hollow life stands

I conflate the giver and the given:
the death bed beneath your head,
bound up within the surface of sleep,
the brain aweep

the ties that bind, them-
selves, things untethered, silted
ribbons, tied in bows.

Loosen that gripped fist!
The diamond is safe. But oh,
your sweet coal is gone!

Do not speak of love—
anything but that distant
moon, faceless, weightless,

Wasted and pox marred.
Do not speak at all, the words
empty themselves fast.

a deaf orchestra
paints white noise on white canvas

The Hideous Specific
clouds the vagueries which lie
at truth’s empty core

To pick a flower—
pinch the the stalk
between thumbnail and fingertip,
catch the freed bud in palm,
and place in glass vase,
on dinner table
or den table
or bed stand—
a piece of beauty all your own
an innocent thievery.

But you are not innocent,
and I cannot forgive you.

You do not pick flowers.
You rip the garden by its root
and salt the earth with your evil eye;
you dispose of flowers in trash cans
and toss rendered grease on top,
and return to your underground lair
to sweep and clean and scour the filth from the outside world seeped in,

never clean since it was never dirty.

I would have compassion for you,
but it is my passion you have gutted:
sweep all you will—

the stains of innards splain
are all you left me as remains.

Fit to flip these lips

cross hips that grip

I tell myself:
it is the dark
it is the cold

But I know:
it is the heaviness
of eyelids closed

December, you thief!
Give me back the things that cling.

Bit-lipped and heart-slipped,
my face (gravel-embraced and
black-booted) erased.

scrapple thoughts
melted-fat-splatter

Be the tree: empty

at your core, a hardened lore;

thin-skinned, sun-akin.

Look: pelicans fly
low in the dusk, over waves
curling between us

on the hunt or just
gliding past, both us and them,
floating free, perhaps

choosing which current
the body needs to push the blood
and swell our sources breed.

“The firefly’s gone dim,”
Cricket chirps from weedy perch,
backlit violet sky.

The bitter taste of orange rind
Sunshine for a brickle mind

River, bright and high,
rise against pale sky,
cast your waves upon my shore—
currents pulling more and more—
until an unmoored me rips free
into the sundrenched narrow sea

on my back : take flight
to the skies : I write

Purple and blue striped sea
Weaving sun unto the islands seams

Wind cools while sun warms
the bare chested river pier:
—surfaces glisten.

On these rocky shores,
reach out, take my hand: starfish
wake from the cold sea

Forever, we lose.
Forever, we gain. And so,
and so: on we go.

the other shoe falls
just within hearing, perhaps
the cat knocked it off

bad weather won’t stop
us from driving in reverse
tail first around the bends

spring rain taptapping
on my windowsill
cloud’s will

Settlers of the sexual frontier:
the warfires call you home

An ocean away,
Islands crumble, atoms crack:
Spring starts unaware.

Tight jeans and oxblood
boots stand cross legged
in the blue sun.

A haiku is not

a sentence broken by sounds:

it is a no thing.

A dark country road, (three lives lost,)

broken tree limbs,

the blood splattered snow.

Motion brings joy.
Try standing still—

See, agony.

Stronger than I think,
stronger than I want to be,
except for right now

Weimar giddiness
Via Cairo’s cobblestones
Burdened and unknown

Until stones were thrown,
Pent voices flew home into
Mouths wetted with tomes:

Curl tongue and purse lips
Shape the sound and let it slip:

On the corner of grand and Crosby,
A narrow strip sunlit:
I bask in it.

I fell into a room of chattering twins, hundreds, thousands maybe. Difficult to estimate. I couldn’t see the far corner over the heads of babbling mirrors, identical faces preening each others’ thought, plucking the stray thread, the uncouth expression.

you press me against
the bathroom door, hands scrambling
to avoid the floor

Daily the sun edges
upward, stretching towards summer
in the darkest days.

The big big strums
kicks me in the heels
roll along boy

I stare through you—
a stranger on the platform,
caught in the white light.

We crawl over gods tossed aside in the gravel lane: there
is work to do. The bleeding body beneath our boots waits in grace,
eyes up unblinking at the Open Mouth.

Words come in sweaty
Fits.

My kite broke free—

I stared at the sky
In awe of blue:
Not a reverent awe,
But an awe of old:
Immensity and Terror and The Big Big:
Blue.

The muse, a poison,
must be sucked from the conscience
it contaminates

So, what do you do,
just sit and wait for it and?…
…Nothing else to do.

This arm, every arm:
This eye, this chest, this mind: This:
Of everything: forms

it’s the way you lick
your lips after coffee sips
that makes my heart thick

The blue jay cries out:
Shriek! to the red leaves! Shriek! Shriek!
Distant star! Cold light!

On your shoulder I
nestle my bearded face as
radiator cranks

This silence, this one,
just this very one: only
this silence is death.

We made the forest
a temple with hearts and words,
then had to drive home.

The spaces we share,
despite their bright abundance,
have dusty corners.

I wish I could talk
to you instead of writing
sad poems, yet look.

such things—metaphors,
nothing more than verbal whores
jacking off the flaccid bores

These are lies in the guise of truths.
A cloak flung over the shapeless beast
that shakes and barks in the struggle
to throw off the ill-fitting sack,
you hack.

Your big toes, so big:
simian and suggesting
prehensile pressures

I knocked on my skin—
just the cat replied—
a hungry miao

Too tall to be short!
you, you belittle and snark
at my shrinking heels?

the job, just robs

Today, I erase:
strike-through half thoughts deserving
to be laid at rest.

this fever: from my body,
dissatisfied and burning, perhaps
it’s just august heat

sweating in subway
cars full of sweating people

bloodshot eyes swaring
at their reflection’s swagger

in passing, a grope—
while waiting, a spit-slick palm
pressing under jeans

I do nothing but
Piss you off, sometimes,
or fall in love, so.