and dances in the step of the old ones, too,
it grasps, it owns,
it turns swift and has a handsome dip
to it. Every curve insists.
* * *
It insists.
It isn’t always right, but it insists.
* * *
Perfect.
Young Poet Just Misses Getting MF DOOM’s Autograph
I just wanted to ask about the mask.
I just wanted to ask about having a spare self,
a decoy for before worries. I wanted to ask about
leaving a talented neighbor my cloak to bear
the burden of my heavy lurid verses while
you’re elsewhere sculpting the scheme in the
next scene. I just wanted to ask about the name.
I could never imagine being
the lord of so any realms, with so many realms
within me fighting to escape all the time. Not escape—
debut. I just wanted to ask about the mask.
I wanted to ask about being a whetstone
and a blade all at once, steel against steel,
tongue as a stun gun weaving words for the young ones,
running with homespun puns willing worlds never undone
I just wanted to ask about the name,
the pride in becoming the villain
in places where that was all we could excel in
* * *
but I never quite got within autograph distance,
and that’s fine, maybe in another moment.
Kanye West’s Internet Bodyguard Asks Hastur to Put Away the Phone
Damn, this thing just
loves to find something that means something
so it can swallow it in swirling jaws and erase it all.
* * *
He was just walking down a Twitter feed late one night
looking ironically for a hamburger
and he met the mess rushing upward on the sidewalk,
* * *
swearing across the cold while some other VIP walks away
chuckling. He takes out his phone to catch Ye
in the entire internet. He spins a slick caption
* * *
underneath to snare a couple likes as they crawl upwards.
Hastur shouts Worldstar! out of sight, a gleeful
judgment-sound, lucky no one will hear
* * *
until it fades into the midnight. The whole block
puts a part in their mouths, laughs their little laughs
with their mouths full, oh he so crazy!
* * *
When I see it, I remember nearly passing out
with my own desire to disappear. I remember
the sidewalk of my own timeline rising up to meet my nose
* * *
and strangers kneeling to ask me if I was dizzy,
bringing tepid water, wiping my bloody forehead.
I wonder if Ye brought any friends with him to the club.
* * *
I wonder why no one’s taken Ye to bed. I wonder
why no one’s taken Hastur’s phone. I wonder why the street
is always so full when Worldstar and always so empty when world-weary.
* * *
The video stops trending eventually. Maybe we’ll
think about it so we can redirect our
judgment, feel better right after feeling bad.
But the video never comes down.
the one
830, 831, 832, 833—
on his digits he can
see the crumbs of past attempts at family.
He licks the strawberry stains
and lists them in turn:
• rejection via drowning at a river in Estonia
• so many silver baubles as he wooed British royals
• a dozen unique moments when
men wanted blood more badly than he did.
In a new almanac flyleaf he scribbles
I keep counting on the One—
952, 953, 954, 955, nine-fif—
teeming with restless numbers,
he goes into the university racket,
slings pure uncut figures,
counts the hairs on students’ heads for boredom,
knows each test-catalysed yawn or sigh in a tally,
tries to keep his failed love number small:
962 times I thought I’d found the One.
Too many years meet each other
and concentrate into indefinite
infinity, the kind of
thing he hates not fathoming.
The bookstore owner is also an infinity:
she resembles that one free belle
when he nursed wounds in Georgia,
her giggle takes him back to
a brook in a countryside he barely
remembers but closed his eyes to hear
each drop.
* * *
She is briefly
the only thing that makes sense.
One whole thing or
a collection of points in space or
{all the fears you can have in your body | those fears < boundless joy} or
P(reciting an old poem he hadn’t heard
since Dickinson waved the page at him herself > the attacks that come to her in the middle of the night sometimes when the wrong song plays on the radio)—
* * *
they touch and
the only thing that counts is her.
* * *
What were the odds?
She’s read enough lifetimes to
feel just as old as he does.
In the small spaces between lines of postmodern poetry
he can count entire continua
clashing for a chance to sound.
Cthylla Asks for J. Cole’s Autograph
ask a creature of contradiction
and unfathomable mathematics
about the paradox of
how does a man better himself
in the same sentence he uses ‘bitch’?
preceding praise for promiscuity.
maybe you’re only saved from the mayhem
by thinking from the basement.
Cole slides out the front of a Bentley—
rented; true power is spending money
on transient glamour—and their eyes
meet in the meat of the avenue.
he ain’t headed nowhere in particular
she’s in the area for him
you can hear bluebirds somewhere
she can still unravel the fact that
he says the word bitch eight times
in the first five minutes of meeting
two of those times he whines awake
that he should stop
but they aren’t even the last two
she doesn’t care
if anyone needs rescue last, it’s her
she smiles at every scratch of wit
asks coquettish for an autograph
a pic for the ‘gram
he takes a blue sharpie to her chest
barely smiles into the camera
someone shouts across the street
that she should stay away from him
he waves the shout off as haterade
as the girl-god distends her jaw
don’t save her
Lovecraft Thesis #3
(There Existed an Addiction to Blood, Track 12)
* * *
The fact is, you are just a chalice
for the ritual of melding truths.
Your ribcage holds them badly,
but you are.
* * *
Because of this, the death
your poorer historians have stored to ink
is never the true suffering.
* * *
It is always forgetfulness.
Don’t even let them offer you the instability
of your walls of thought.
* * *
You can let each fear of forgetting
fall against your tongue crimson like wine,
like nebula dervishes rich with dreams,
and in you is a chalice for them all,
* * *
and you go running toward the fear
and drink deep,
get lost in them,
you love the way control fades.
* * *
You are less fragile, then,
than you suppose.
The Metaphysics of a Wine, in Theory and Practice
whereas many more presumptuous
theories suggest an interpretive dance
in five deliberate movements (Marling &
Batmanglij 2017) or else a general physical
denial of body through writhing-as-dance
under strobe-lit dark,1
the newly discovered academic consensus is that
multidimensional transcendent astral travel
is only possible through
wining
the dancehall take me
to Heaven last night
and I wish I coulda stay
the adequate performance of gyratory sublimity
is capable of euphoric states, restoration of
stamina, and treatment of anxieties,
but at supercritical depths
a wine has the potential to bestow
near-preternatural consciousness to the
recipient (Ziggy Rankin 2004)
I wish it thought me
worthy to linger in
the light of the gates
I wish the seraph in
the purple skirt or
the archangel-boy in the tight jeans
found nobility enough in me
for the night to never cease
because in that night
God’s name in her native language
was on my hips
tempting my echo of its swaying syllabisms
never illegible
but forever unpronounceable
critical-level performance of the rite
has apocalyptic properties—
that is, both provably destructive
and with great potential to induce
prophecy
the music did hit me
and your body did catch me
and somewhere in the centre
of those competing gravities
was the cosmos in its own waistline motion
lover, your bumper bring meh back
to the first time meh mudda
call meh name . . .
at a terminal velocity, surviving
subjects have documented a shared
awakening, with potential to span miles
of air or sea2, lingering within the senses
as stored rhapsodic biodata, an open-circuit
physical ecstasy and a redundant
rotational climax
under closed eyes
the shadow of the world does turn bright
hot on the faces of the next world war
and warm on the hands that halt it
I done sail across the black in this wine
take large swallows from the swirling nebula of it
lust as its nucleus
opens my eyes to star-birth, star-death,
the warmth of your hot celestial body3
this euphoric quality is known to be
intensely addictive at even average
potentials, especially for men. It should however be
noted that excessive wining
can be destructive to the recipient (Machel
Montano 2012), even inducing animalistic
transformations in male recipients
(Anslem Douglas 1998). Also, coercion or other
non-consensual gyratory communions
are discouraged, not only for their
lack of energy potential, but their
ability to harm performers,
severing their connection to the
enthusiasmos; the power of the
ritual is placed firmly in the waist
of the oracle (Patrice Roberts 2014, Alison Hinds 2005)
if I could stay drowning in the syrup-sugary-smooth
sway of your silhouette ‘til sunrise
God knows I would die against your body
but the Holy Spirit does only give you
the Pentecost that you could handle
so you step away with a wink
to join your crew for drinks
gates to abounding knowledge closed again
until some soca
draws them golden open
for someone luckier than
me
1see every single American teen or new adult drama film since the 1980s
2evidence of distance-resistant wining effects have been well documented in Japan; see ‘Japanese Wine’ (mini 2008), ‘Kanpai Wine’ (Barbie Japan 2009), ‘Wine For Me’ (Rudebwoy Face 2009)
3a peculiar star rich in copper with an orbit too fast and fierce for a rock like me to not erode in its power
time, and time again
long before our time:
we were forbidden gentlemen,
sneaking held hands under coats
and hiding love’s passwords
in simple sentences.
my heart is a hummingbird
and your lips
are sweet as a hibiscus—
* * *
tuesday:
I wear the only suit I have,
you bought it for me because
my own was loose and moth-bit.
the morning’s speckled with sorry-for-your-losses
and your sister mutters at the wake
that God would’ve kept you
if you didn’t love me
and I don’t know if I disagree
and I can’t forget the sight
of you, restful, in your last bed.
I want to be wrapped up in you
and hear you whisper
‘don’t forget you owe me
a kiss in the morning’ one
more—
* * *
wednesday:
in another universe
I get up
and pay my debt
you get up
and collect
in another universe
I take that other me’s place
and you are still sweet,
as sweet as the crash never happened,
hands living-warm against my cheeks
when you ask,
‘come on, baby boy,
why you cryin’?’—
* * *
friday:
I have tried to find
the space and time
when you still are.
the curtains have been drawn
in the living room since the funeral.
your mother brought brown rum
and lasagna
and tears to my eyes,
said no lover has never been in your corner
as long as I have.
I let slip that I’m still hoping
that you get up before death counts ten
and give life a wicked left hook.
you still owe me a
blasted kiss—
* * *
monday:
for a gasp of afternoon
I am when you are.
I don’t stop crying,
crying ‘I miss you, man’,
and I stop trying to hide it
and you stop asking
because I kiss you like a
glutton. time won’t even
let me have you for
six minutes, but the air
next to the dining table
still smells like my sweet hibiscus boy—
* * *
sunday:
by now, it’s become
a given. I step between
two worlds, and just
one knows you. on the
other’s anniversary of burial,
you run your hands through
my hair, and I pay
dozens of arrears you don’t know about
with interest
like it will buy your body back
from the earth—
* * *
long after our time:
soon time will grow
bored and cast us in
some other dollhouse drama.
you ever wonder which?
star-crossed spies? partners-in-crime?
or are our roles so honed
that I can stay the eager clumsy hummingbird
at some stiff house party
bouncing from wallflower to wallflower
‘til I rest my lips on you?
* * *
tuesday:
you owe me
my blasted kiss.
do you hear me say it?
Can You Sign My Tentacle? Page 3