My friend wants me to apply for the Peace Corps with him,
he says we are ta-veren, greater minds -
I promised only to be the joker to his batman,
the juggernaut with the blackthorn heart, no piledriver
copilot, only tinker-terns to pick the bonefish gray
and trimmed in my jailhouse wake -
I, who climb hills to feel the cold sweat seep into
sockets on the trip back down, mocking Sisyphus
for choice, choosing arms over arteries as the blood
seeps into safety nets.
So swing low sweet oracle and rend off your clothes,
carry me back to the bar at Sleason and Bouldecrest,
prop up with puppetry my rapscallion hackle,
losing lost again in The Floating World -
oooohhh the whiskey bitter, the supple amber irony
of eating oneʼs own words, call it love -
and sheathe my shaking body until I quake no more:
heaving reeling, look to the sky like a fiddle and
hold on, hold out, someone or other might hear
that batting lash averages mean median things as
I stumble to slumber alone, shaking shaking shaking,
where I can disregard words and replace them with
SOUNDS.
II.
Sounds, reticent with hobgoblin resonance, reveal a
heart too keen on keening, the keelhaul crawl of crickets
cross sprucewood and horsehair strung sturm und drang,
drowning in Souther drawls as they lose themselves
to British Twee Power. It was I,
the American Oisin in Morgul,
walking sidelong with Samedi, died on the bayou,
with the Backwoods Bastards and Old Curmudgeons
queuing up for the downstroke cakewalk,
loa low voices droning deep pagan wavers,
radiant in the firelight of The Wicker Man -
as goats bleat bahbah blacksheep with some
jalapeno 100-proof heaviness, I tip my skull cap
to the boneface top hat as I settle down for a
long summerʼs nap, pulling reaversʼ ripped sleeves
to my cheek as Baron and his corvid companions
crow, raven, and rook watch Mamn quiver,
he croaks like an oak oar salesman -
“Iʼll show you the life of the mind...”
III.
The life of the mind, becoming ocean,
breaching with a hunchback wail as spine shards
clack against ribs, the husky heartbeat of the bodhran,
leaping up out of war, Shermanʼs Hell to the sea -
oh mare mare quite contrare,
wash my feet like Jesus and
batter rafts like Yahweh, witness my
last horse in the sand turning tail and trotting
clumps up to sting my eyes, the lachrymose oracle
rain oʼer me, lightning a smokestack to
center solemn solace - it kicks like a mule but
helps carry the load to the city in the bottom
of the well, LIUNA union offices
brimming over with devils beating
skins of their sanguine sins, hearts alive!
For when the leviathans break, the seas will shake,
and what beautiful ruins this city will make,
cold driftwood if I could but I canʼt so
Iʼll creep.
IV.
Creep rock steady over cobblestones,
the wharf aglow in moth-light, where the bilge-rats
whisper sedulously that nothing is true and
all is permitted. See Israel Hands hold court
in the alery, sentencing all to the stocks for
the black-spot exchange - forgive me Captain
for I have sinned, its been a few pints since I
tipped the deep end. With a ski mask over
my skull and Fifteen Covnts of Arson I watched
snakeheads swim the Amistad mile and hoped
a revolt would result before the kraken felt
the tremolo of unnatural terror, fleeing fleet
on bikeback, that sea-shanty town,
shrieking Blitzkrieg Stuka swoop,
Holland 1945 Iʼm alive! Counting and
breathing, maypanzerous still quivering quills,
the Prince of a Thousand Enemies, no longer
hirsute but still son of the hare, digging,
listening, running on The Long Patrol,
bleeding red Irish bulls:
As long as Iʼm dead they canʼt take me alive!
V.
Canʼt take me alive, my salad days with
a sponge of vinegar vignettes, a brace of
conies fallen, my good Great Eye down
on the street, where the rain bitches sniff out
bum cigarettes - one stopped me to explain
her better-day beauty, I smiled at the pavement,
rattled by the -how-did-it-get-so-low, the pendulous
and reverent remnants of youth.
What if no she said no she wonʼt No?
Then my Sierra Leonese sister never graced
these stone shores, blown back my ballistics,
trbucheved to the bone, no Sunn to rise and
pass through Stonehenge hands,
nothing lost, nothing high gained,
Marshalled Orangeman claiming the Vox
populi, loud but not so Hiwatt as nailbombs
or Sandsʼ silence, silence that is simply the
sound of words all the way lived.
VI.
All the way lived, a life to own the sky
beating black coursing green in The Waking World,
trembling eyelids shut wide open in the life of the mind -
I climbed out all the skin that drenched me, haunting me
down as the seas opened up and
I tried to find my way home, and Iʼm sorry, and I miss you -
following salient songs of whales past
The Baronʼs balefires in the city of the dead
disposing of themselves, Gorbag, Shagrat and me, t
he dead eyes and murmuring hearts of those
reveling in the absurdity that engulfs them,
the cackling saints starving in the belly
of cold sweats and whiskey shakes, the
weeping Arimatheans mourning those
who have no one on their day of the locust,
those peaceful corpses, my friend.
I wrote this in September 2010.
