Futile Efforts

by Piccirilli, Tom

of a sister you have not seen in twenty years,

  imagining what it is she thinks,

  what she fears as she approaches from the other end of

  her world,

  and how similar that might be to your own panicked

  contemplation.

  Her gaze holds you swaying, perhaps dying

  or losing a touch more of mind, the scraping of personality,

  and you wonder just which one of you it is

  they'll eventually let out of here.

  Adjusting the Atonement

  Your scars don't quite travel the length of your body

  They end here and here, which isn't quite near

  as you think—

  the old man is rummaging in the fridge again, screaming

  for beer—the twist-tops leave the mark of Cain inside

  his palms,

  at the throat and under the ears are bags of gray

  wrinkles he begs

  you to carry out to the trash—this is the history of

  fear in action,

  set in motion by nature—he was at least as young as you

  once, but never

  quite figured out how to steer around the sharp curves,

  the exit signs always

  going by too quickly, the off-ramps cluttered—he

  never learned

  to shift into fourth gear, to parallel park, to change a tire—

  there are things

  you must do now for your father, whether he's still alive

  or not—you

  must polish the picture frames, consume the pot roast,

  buy your mother

  fresh towels, and wait, there's more—

  you must put the dog down, empty the contents of your

  eyes, swindle

  the neighbor and wipe away the tears—he sits at your

  left hand

  for a reason, he's that much more able to pry and to peer,

  and the world doesn't quite look as ripe anymore—go to

  the garage

  and sit, turn the key,

  back out safely, watch for small children,

  never look in your mirror again—it's been a pretty damn

  bad day,

  and remember—you were never really here.

  The Toll of Your Personal Evil Troll

  Maybe it was true what they taught us back then

  about the sandbars of sins, the snapping forest traps

  of potential failure and fear—perhaps they were

  in our backyards all along, like the legends laid out

  against the cool stone and brick, the nearby scent

  of fresh-cut grass swaying us from the shadows

  of apple trees, with

  our scabbed knees and swollen hearts.

  That was the trick.

  The sunlight boiled and poured over our tanned backs—

  maybe it was true we were destined to stock our lives

  one against the other, comparing trunk space

  and our children's faces, tax shelters and plumbers' bills,

  the size of our porch swings and car dings

  and manly things. I was once a bridge troll who sat in

  hairy wait

  for the marketplace sellers and farmers and troubadours,

  all shouldering their pushcarts,

  and the drunken city guard who danced with their daggers.

  I bore your burden. I demanded my price and I was paid,

  or my claws would catch their scornful sneers

  and I'd take their ears.

  I kept their contempt in a vase,

  and their overbearing eyes

  and sweetie-pie gazes in a wine barrel. And when

  they brandished their golden chests and teeth,

  I plucked each upon each within

  their easy reach, and although I was the ugliest,

  I was the best, and I never needed rest.

  Show me the photos of your babies once more, delight

  in your tiled kitchen, the in-ground heated pool, expound

  upon the quiet of the filter, the thrill of the hot tub—glance

  sidelong, with pity, at me one last time. My price

  has increased. Bring me your carefree chatter and looks

  of derision, tell me of each and every precious vaunted

  well-planned decision, the power of your flesh,

  the grandeur of your credit report,

  the precision of your manicurist, each light of your life.

  For they've built a bridge beneath every mall,

  on every corner,

  on the way home from every school,

  right beside your bed and next to your sleeping head

  and I'm waiting beneath them all.

  This Cape is Red Because I've Been Bleeding

  Don't ask me that again

  You're eager with death and muscle, choosing to place

  your damage up against mine, our arms thrust together,

  the burns bright and pink, stab wounds healing

  but not closed,

  never filled—we've stepped on the same nails,

  chewed the same gravel,

  bitten off the tips of our tongues, mine yours,

  yours mine, we've loved the same woman, and now,

  now she lives in your attic I'm told, rocking with one

  baby or another,

  the ghosts of our uncollected promises drift on the

  ash-strewn wind

  and swim in our bathtubs

  Your tears aren't as wet as mine, you can't compare—

  sniff this air

  and tell me you still want to share and shoulder another's

  load,

  you act concerned but you're not, and it's cost you

  your hair

  Don't speak, don't say another word,

  you've got nothing left to tell, just sit

  there and wait, another moment or two, be patient,

  it's coming,

  just the way you wanted it, here, open wide

  wider,

  I owe you all of hell

  Nunzio, Sixty Years Dead, Lying

  at My Side, Staring

  Rivers rise just high enough to drown our short regrets,

  the tall ones, the weighty ones are harder to hold under—

  I roll them

  facedown in water but these bastards have lung

  capacity, they

  can hold their breath—I've given them great strength

  the way I make

  everything much larger, more looming with doom,

  but maybe I can kick them to death before my chest

  needs another rib-spreader—my heart's been massaged

  by some prick who never washed his hands, my

  organs have been toyed with, my spleen set aside

  in another

  room—I am a vassal located in many vessels, my shoes

  have tassels,

  my mouth is taped shut, you'd think that by now I'd be

  used to seeing

  the pieces scattered over the floor—I can pick mine out

  of a lineup,

  look, there's my pancreas, my left testicle,

  my medulla oblongata—the hell?…it's my mother's

  hysterectomy

  come crawling after me—some

  grow back, some are sent away to college,

  and a chosen few know what to do when

  they climb back into the world—my sins

  are accomplished, they are time-consuming tasks,

  they are sweet as ether

  from gas masks—Grandpa went loony during the war,

  this was a dark secret

  let out by one slip during a drunken family meal, no one

  took it seriously

  but me—Grandpa, give me your hand you old fuck,

  you've passed down the same shit luck and bad knees,

  a leaning towards diabetes and heart dis
ease,

  a love of boats.

  Nunzio, perhaps you're my foe,

  Grandpa, pat my head, pat my back and help me down

  from this ladder,

  out of this hospital bed, off with this plaid shirt,

  away from this rack—I am taller

  than you, I can tear off your small ears and put them

  back on

  again—I have your red hair but only in my beard, which

  I never grow.

  I am lagging, ragged and gagged and de-fagged,

  we share the same frayed nerves—maybe they called this

  a quiet condition once,

  but now they just wrench out the bloody bad worm in

  my guts

  as I stop being so uptight and nuts and quit shrieking,

  learn to smile, and

  start ripping out throats.

  A Symbolic Interpretation of the

  Worst Day of My Life

  Without a hat he wanders in the rain, down by the water,

  searching for sea monsters and finding them—the sands

  are full of beached demons, with shipwrecks and broken

  necks, with mostly-eaten apples—it's been a long time

  since his birth, he's even older than the beach,

  he has a much longer reach, reaching backward

  through time

  to a morning when the surf ran in a different direction—it

  came out of his eyes,

  carried away a whole world that looked something

  like this. The swirling sunlight means nothing, the moon

  has .air, it stalks and hides and schemes, that

  is what the depths await, for the game to begin. He isn't

  without sin but sometimes almost thinks so, it's easy to be

  persuaded by a fervent voice—they ring around the moldy

  posy off those who are prochoice, they scream and chant

  and throw red all over the bed, and hang dolls from

  short sticks

  and suck off fifty dicks. He's here to tell you all the truth,

  you don't get that every day, as he smacks the squeaky

  clean faces,

  the guileless leers, glaring down each of those well-trained

  sneers,

  raises his arms into the air and the grinning beasts of

  the deep

  stumble ashore and climb into an infant's hair

  and descend into your dry mind's lair.

  Concern

  So much of this concerns fear and hate and the bad

  dates with rage,

  but what of love? I hear you asking, wondering,

  underlining, circling,

  hoping to find some small egress into the meaning

  behind such images,

  beneath all vision, above the clean-cut cadence, and

  around each sound.

  I talk often of you and us, and not enough of me—

  it is a distinction

  I wish I didn't have. Almost all of them murmur on

  about I, I, I,

  and I know how easy it is to lump all words atop

  one another,

  in the sump, into a mound of well-trod ground.

  I understand

  how easy it is to fall into song without consequence,

  filled with

  hard-earned experience or just dripping with

  catclaw fantasy.

  I will not rhyme this time.

  I won't discuss Italy or tombs or the hospital again,

  you've seen

  too much of that sort of thing before here. We're

  trying to avert

  boredom, we have a mission to underscore storms

  and thrashing

  willows, brainpan wars and the edges of chewed pillows,

  hideously

  torn hearts and other inner parts, big cuts, big cunts,

  assholes large

  enough to drive a truck through. One day, when we're both

  in better shape we really must set all our separate

  deaths aside,

  hide the murders, the bitten off tongues, put the gin bottles

  in the closet,

  bury the crushed dogs,

  and speak at length of love.

  Choke and Throttle

  We are the whispering forces set loose in hometown dark,

  of closing clubs, the last-call bars, side by side

  down the narrow musk-laden halls

  leading out to rain-soaked parking lot hells,

  where they, like us, pause behind their steering wheels

  staring out at Route 231, listening to church bell peals,

  cops doing a slow ride-by, easing past like oil. We will wait,

  we'll hold court and services and our seances here

  while the engine thrums. The heater hums

  and the radio is stuffed with static and call-in love shows—

  there are voices you recognize, shades wave from

  the other side of the final highway, and they know

  where the substance of reverie goes.

  You're not that far off from your first love,

  you've never moved on and she's gone and come around

  again, and again, and more. You tasted your first bitter beer

  off her lips.

  There was a time when this was no greater than you

  could dream,

  when the world was no larger than a tank of gas—

  she ushered you in through the back door, tippie-toes,

  silent,

  just for a moment, the heat of her cheek in autumn,

  the smell of soap on her hands. That was almost enough

  for you, once. Dead leaves and dead men drift

  along the curbs, stuck in sewer grates, the ice-cream trucks

  speed by neck-in-neck with ambulances—there is dying,

  and then there's merely waiting the wait.

  The glove box contains your 4am life: a foam can holder,

  pack of condoms, lint-covered mints, nickel bag,

  poorly folded maps of poorly folded places, you recognize

  every street sign, every nest, all the car bodies up on blocks,

  and the rest, the suburban loss of charm like an amputated

  thumb or leg or arm—we have circled

  and circled and run screaming

  in circles, there's no need to look in the mirror—we all have

  the same face. We were all lined up together on .re,

  shoulder to shoulder, bright eyes even brighter,

  burning, phosphorous, at the beginning of the race

  before the many wrecks.

  The parking lot is slowly emptying, everyone's

  finally leaving this place, and soon it'll be your turn to go.

  We take turns, you know, passing around the luck.

  There are things unsaid that will never be said,

  until we lose

  ourselves and live (you thought I'd say "until we are dead").

  The gears have slipped, our tongues have slipped—it happens

  like that when we're caught in the grip of October cruelty,

  and your choke is let out, the throttling won't take long

  with such a thin neck.

  In this dark what matters most

  are these staggering concerns

  of the heart, but we cannot get ourselves out of park,

  and the car won't start.

  How to Make It Through a Friday Night

  Without Biting Your Tongue in Two

  I never got blind drunk for pleasure, not once—

  the taste of whiskey made me want to pull out

  my own fillings, squeeze the bar rail until

  I'd scratched up the brass like digging gold coins

  out of my own ass—I'd pour the rum down

  faster than a sword-swallower seeking to pierce

  his guts the hard way, from the deep i
nside,

  where all your locked-closet fears hide—

  the gang would laugh and eye the girls, sip their shots

  slowly, acting as if this was pertinent, held meaning,

  that this might somehow be action, motion,

  vision, a step on the stairway to something

  far greater than themselves and their fathers—

  and me, nervous, sometimes trembling, the vague

  world growing more blurry each hour,

  my glasses dirty with ash, the beer bottles

  sweating no worse than us,

  mirrors bearing unknown faces smiling

  our same drunken grins. I held my breath in

  and gulped tequila the way that can kill a man.

  It was stupid but sane, the shortest line

  to oblivion—they'd tell me, later, how I danced

  and how I ran

  from women, from the cops,

  once from my own mother,

  down the streets laughing and howling,

  dipping into pools of strangers,

  waking up—sometimes in midsentence—

  lying beside a half-clothed half-beauty, my teeth

  marks on her tits, my pants off but my shoes on,

  the room too dim to read her eyes,

  as her fist tightened in my chest hair

  until it felt like a hundred spiders

  were biting me there, and she'd talk

  of an ex-husband who didn't pay child support,

  the baby at her sister's, the classes in psychology,

  the poetry of the Romantic lunatics, and me

  still no worse for wear, but awash

  with the unbearable unwillingness to fail.

  And I'd wonder where the hell are my pants? My

  keys? Needing badly to take a piss, searching for

  a pattern to my own ensconced misery—too blind

  to ever see,

  and she'd ask, "Do you want a drink?

  You really seem to like to drink…"—and

  I'd say yes, of course, thanks, because

  although half the night was gone

  half the night still lay in wait before me.

  My First Groupie and How Much I Love Her

  Despite the Failed Assassination Attempt

  I gave a reading last week, the first one in a while,

  fairly big crowd, rows of well-scrubbed faces, a couple

  of old ladies in front, the lean teens in back unsure

  of what to expect, staring at me and wondering aloud,

  Is this what passes for a literary figure