by Ryan Adams
foolishly bought in line
one stub
just me
I do this shit all the time
think for two
on my sea-lined shore of fake bars
with fake lights and fake nights
and fake drunks with fake drunk fights
there are holes in my wallet pocket
from where my lonely chair rubs
as I write nothing
but alibis
and you will not miss this when i am gone
things
they might have been different
had we a map
anyone’s
but I am not going back to the airport like that
even if you died first
which you won’t
unless there is some sick sense of humor left
in a universe of irony
because
to you I am certainly dead already, lover
at least
those stars
shine from someplace beyond
maybe I can go
but
I leave with my head hung as low as a gong
for now
for you are strong
and weighted to the ground
and
you will not miss me when i am gone
the million years
it took
to become starfigures
weight-measures
and moon
dissolve
in cups of solitude
bad poetry and cash registers
collapsing into a taxi door closed and moving
slow down
I came all this way
he
he closes his eyes and drinks her
as if in prayer
the spirits come take him and
she is more than that
I throw a pillow across the room
and
fucking
this is destroying me
not him
but to her somewhere
as if in a dream
sign the receipt
go home
it’s 4
and i have had enough, my dear, for both lifetimes
sorry fuck
so
so
so
sorry
fuck
Elf Mountain
…Elf Mountain,
i rely on you
and a soft gang of unicorns
plus
the medicine
to help me find that strange thing—
that strange valley
sleep
i find it so hard to imagine
or reach
…Elf Mountain,
do you have a favorite
set of marbles in your
jar of brains
of things to help you
do “that” but something
opposite
of me when i am awake
like this?
I bet
—suppose we dreamed some people up
just like ourselves and here and
now, as i write or you read,
made them, you know…
fit and freckled
or
you know, whatever tickled your belly
or my belly, you know, like whatever
really and we just
set them free
like you would
a butterfly
no seriously
if it landed in the palm of your hand
i know someone
you
that this once happened to
and
with a smirk and a mouth full of teeth
and bad ideas and godknowswhat mischief
and crushed it
like a bug with wings
crushed it
its living colors dying
fluorescent bloody wings
oozing guts
green with
somebody, somebody so beautiful just laughing
like in a face,
beyond god if god were a figure standing
behind him a thousand shielded angels
with swords
ready to engage the wicked
…Elf Mountain
you know, she and i barely spoke
so it never came up
she and i, we kept it
juvenile and crass
like our lives, and that, that romance
was like smoking cigarettes on the fire escape
a metaphor of our lives
in the cold
of winter
always
…Elf Mountain,
i was admiring your flying machine, that blanket
with satin at the edges of it,
a little worn for the worse
you have a favorite, see we all do
maybe you build them at night
like i do
helpless against dreams
and silence
which to me
sounds like screams or madness or something
wicked this way always coming
always
smoking cigarettes on the fire escape
his cloak
glowing
and rushing to kill me
so i am riddled with that natural
or unnatural fight
against it
but your hand so freely reaches for the light
and you dine on your peace
as a swallow of water should
but my
body and soul
just say no
naturally to that place of letting it all go
even though,
Elf Mountain,
it is THOSE quiet places i rely on
so if
i should happen past her on a street
my eyes will be as blank
as
all the lies that it has
sweated in a kitchen to make
so poison pie
may clog the lake
and flood us all
inside my face
the thinnest walls of a skin
versus a time, time winning
always scientifically
smoking cigarettes on the fire escape
in the always winter
i rely on dreams
and the medicine
or die
Elf Mountain, and you
you
A Death
i feel a Dying in me.
a death
like my inside cat knows
like,
It eyes the door
and i am not
not helping
today i held the door like a gentleman
yes sometimes for real sometimes pretend
who looked up at me
from her winter hat
White Eye, one
and the other
its gaze straight through me into infinity
beyond blues
laughed
she wheezed a healthy laugh this woman
as i hovered round the cash register
and i swear
she acted like
a death
i had a handful of dvds on the Dalai Lama
she asked me what they were i said “movie tapes”
or she said “oh those are those movie tapes
that go inside the television box”
how ancient
she smiled
and it scared the man who rang up my things
i paid in cash, which is also ancient
and it was like he had forgotten what that was
stared but tried
not at that woman
that woman
a death
on rollerskates so to speak
eyes like the devil
ancient and evil
for the seeing of the littleness of an everything
; fuck her, i thought
i see the balance
and i choose the light
into the sun and never a night
wins against my lonely
insides
grizzly bear hibernation lonely
but full of wonder
books
stacked where a woman goes
if she were to find my bed
hidden now from even me
location protected
by geography
and time
still
my toes do not stop their locking
and that pain
like my body knows
a death
still
my knuckles and toes
do their ghostly locking
and unlocking up and down
my legs and arms
my body
so quiet
creaks like a door
in a ghost house
and that pain
like
i feel a dying in me
a death
but seriously
so
fucking
what
whatever
right?
ha
One Sharp Ending
the natural law says no
that’s what
that is why your eyeballs hurt
when you think of dying
why they blur from printed skirts
and static
why your chest heaves as she goes
into what
that pain is now
not her
but you
and your feelings, mister
it is like a jewel within your brow
your brain only a machine with legs
now
made of butterscotch minus drinks
and cigarettes
and loose tears
falling into neighbors’ sinks
body upright
head, over and down
hair everywhere
over your nose
as you sniffle out the rose
and let in the air
no letters home from italy or somewhere
haunts you like a flu
in a flu hotel
that girl does
it is why you were born, reader
to fall in love
over and over
to die again
and push pain over
on its side
so the stories will spill out
war stories
about your mother and father
and nazis
scumbags, all of them
like children bent bad
playing follow-the-leader
listening to the sound of their own roar
the lighting of the churches
follows the ceremony of madness
that world
was burned to the fucking ground
blown straight to hell
for the making of new evil empires
or a mid-game Christ rebound
half-court shot
nobody knows really, only time will tell
either way
do this, if only for me please
redeem the powers of the gods
somehow
you can look at that part in her dress
where the shadow moves like a golden cat
undercover
in a strawberry mess
and
you could get busy dying in that
however many tiny deaths
it takes
to make your eyes roll back
or
if you let it pass
if she liked you
and
you give her a chance to undress
or she undresses you first
it would flow
out the sides
those stories of her fathers or mothers
through your mouth and insides
could root
or seed
and if it rained, which it will
it would let the growing come
up a city block of grainrows of you and her
to repeat
that doom
that cycle of living and dying
for every child brought into a hospital room
has no idea
there is a leaving to be done too
so cruel
Man
a monkey with a stick
with
one crushed handle
from bludgeoning skulls
and the other
thinned to a point
by nature
with
one sharp ending.
52 Pieces
silence
broke you
into 52 pieces
while
i watched
i saw you
you
you
were en route to buy wine
you
you were leaving
somewhere
already
and i
i think i liked that
and
i think you knew
you
you knew i would rip open the air
and
make a space
large enough
large enough
for two
so
you could go through
because
i am always going through anyway
like
changing my destiny every hour
time travel
easy
is the same thing
same thing
as if i delivered pizzas
no bike
and
those portals are my version of the subway
which i dislike
my version of public transportation
is sitting still
and waiting for new clicks
on the wheel
of time
and
also
i saw you smile
and
i thought i could catch that in a jar
like you were a lightning bug
and
you knew i had holes poked in the top
from a flat head
pressure drop
me with my can full of holes
for a head
and
the glass was as deep
with me
and
the glass was as thin
as the idea
of
a fluttering of wings
easily shattering
offering
some release
as thin
as the idea of where
where my bedroom door closed
and
where my bed began
and this
this
this is our story
for now
A Sister Scowls
a sister scowls
at the monster
she knows
she knows
it has arms and legs like a spider
and a stinger
boxed with booksmarts
plus poison
fucking monster she sees
in a form
of family
and YOU know
and she knows
and
a sister scowls
a red overcoat protects her skin
under a sweater you gave her
you got from somebody
from letting someone in
into, you know
the kingdom,
blah, or yuck
your mother’s daughter, she is
your mother’s jewel
your father’s memory
of stilts
and heels
and wheels
and bells
and observations of machi
ne-gun fire in a belly
surrounded by nazis
one of them
maybe from up North
maybe who made a mother
out of us all
us children
later
a delicious woman who likes pasta
and gin gimlets and artist fodder
but sometimes with boys
my dear,
your memory fails
your baby-fat face with eyes low
under the fire of some mythological color
i so desperately desired
a halo and a heart
in the form of a fire
no gasoline tanker could start
for its cargo and shell
felled
like trees clogging the drain
in a sink if it were a well
of bad ideas gone wishes
and
nobody left to tell
you
a wildflower blowing a breeze blown round
party to party
endlessly
endlessly nobody
collecting personality confetti
after-hours
before the floors are swept
for good
matching colors your designs allowed you
entrance
with a face
and an accent
like that
whatever that is, that day, anyway
somewhere
your father lurks
a chamber of bones
his mouth
bloated germanic snob loud
and screaming at the monster
on a tiny pink telephone
with his stuffed rash bark
that dog
that useless patchy fog
of half ideas
on a loudmouth answering things
no one person might ever resolve
oh god
blah, and yuck
and YOU know
and she knows
and you will never cry
for a time before a sound
tells you
why
and
how
for a thought hits under your heels
and smashes to the ground
underneath the wheels
of my rig
full of cock and hope
and eventual betrayal
and you know
and she knows
and I did not
but she is full of fear
which makes me hot
because you scare us all
and she gives or gave me hugs
with every ounce
of an arm
she got
from your mother’s lovely make
and skeleton gift
and
her name is genuine
as her gaze
in THIS dimension
nervously she laughs
all of us
aware
of a why
a when
and a how
but still
she knows
she knows
and in your direction
unaware
at the monster
a sister scowls.
Rain on America
so dirty
so dirty and so mean
is a rainbow
is a letter-stained
is a blowhole sewer
that’s right
just a touch of little america
in a small town
wishing you were gay
or allergic