Snow Refracting on Cedars

When you made love in the shower the morning
before he died in the boating accident,
you wore nothing but your wedding ring, and the
sight of the two of you,
through the pebbled glass of the stall door,
the sight of the two of you,
had there been anyone to see,
had the daubed thickness of a Van Gogh,
the swirled livingness of a Renoir,
the beige desolation of a desert O'Keefe.
Only the lustrous annular permanence of that
precious metallic band seemed
out of place as,
with him behind, your fingers clawed
at the door, everything
else a rushing, steaming, wet, soft, fastness
racing to a conclusion passing then,
past. Again, had there been anyone
looking at the keepsake pictures of your deceased parents,
they could have observed the sheriff climbing
the steps of the porch,
then knocking just outside the screen door
--- his uneasy regret-to-inform speech ---
they would have seen it all reflected in the
framed glass that protected
those photographs, as in the
tranquil precision of Vermeer.
Had there been anyone to brave
the snowstorm outside the courthouse, the air
solidified into a three-dimensional rush-hour of
unique flakes, distances diasappeared
behind the strange shapes of gusts
--- tumbleweeds, funnelclouds,
horizontal tracer-streaks,
layered laced curtains pasting themselves to
the rooted wings of weary cedars --- as if nothing
far away were real, and
only what is close to you
exists --- and had they peered to see
the black mesh of your mourning veil
on the witness stand, draped in gloomy shadows,
the courtroom wick-lit by oil lanterns
with the power out --- justice
extremely dark but never blind,
it would have been the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio,
with a pointillist haze from Seurat
that met their eyes through
the blown glass panes.

In the darkness of that room
was the sound of snowfall. Caught in the glass
of your tears, a single aquifer whose wells
are legion, clung the scent of pines,
as if hung in a museum to distant lovers
(the ones who do not exist),
beyond the scrub of reason,
or the clutch of years.

Typecasting Porn Stars

(audio at chomsky in chains podcast)

Another case-law floor exercise:
some four-door snuff-film needs a
skywalking deadbeat with a
divining-rod and execution-stay to
rule on a decision. Days like this make me long
for my birthmother, or at least
her business card. From the faith-healing on the
day bed, the restraining-order in the
breadline, before there was even time to
typecast a porn star, bar-code a
cloud chamber, rent-control
the exit-wound of a coffin nail,
you could still lip-read contradictions between
cash flow and crop rotation, landing-
gear, duty-frees, dry-ice-smoke and
overloaded lifeboats.

If you could attach greaseless eye-shadow with
lugnuts, or fickle proximity-fuses with
magnetic-tape, you could eliminate the grab-bars and
love-handles, burglar-alarms, Miranda rights,
and the universal-precautions
surgical-gloves.

Criminal Justice.

Eventually you will discard the bracket-creeping lynch-mob,
and the bounty-hunting day-trading for the
forced-march from assisted-living to
estate-planning; combination-lock on the cutoff
man. That you could find a countable-infinity
under house-arrest, a sex-industry in
riot-gear, a pleasure-calculus with
release-forms--- what jackbooted think-tank would have
thought? Some chain-smoking creation-scientist,
some home-schooled creation-scientist goose-steps
through the airdoor with a bench-warrant for a
condom-swallowing drug-mule and demands that he
childproof his dime bags.

We arrive at the graveyard
shift. Intensive-care booster-cables jump-
starting the occupational-disease of
hedge fund coronaries, the electro-convulsive contact
HIGH. All the double-dutch clockspeed in the world can't quench that
Los Alamos controlled burn: gut-bucket in the daycare,
hack-saw at the eye bank, stiff-arm at the NICU.

Life will be served au-jus.
It may make you homesick.

She Really Gives Good Abstinence

She Really Gives Good Abstinence

(audio at the chomsky in chains podcast )

She's such a good good girl
she's been born again it’s true,
doesn't fool around
but she knows just what to do.
Where her parents’ lead her
she's always gonna follow,
no matter what they feed her
she always gonna swallow,

because

she really gives good abstinence,
I found religion with her down on her knees,
she really gives good abstinence,
she’s still a virgin but she knows how to please me,
she really gives good abstinence,
doesn’t need a course in sex ed,
she’s just using her head.

Feel like such a lucky stiff
when I see she’s goin’ down,
sure ain’t a movie but
you know it’s sensurround,
saving it for marriage,
that-don’t-make-her straight-laced,
she’s such a connosieur
she’s got such a lotta taste,

because

she really gives good abstinence,
I found religion with her down on her knees,
she really gives good abstinence,
she’s still a virgin but she knows how to please me,
she really gives good abstinence,
doesn’t need a course in sex ed,
she’s just using her head.
she’s really using her head
getting ahead on her head
she’s really using her head

Chaser

Tonight is
a verb.
To “night” is
a verb.
To spend, to thrive, insert
yourself in the unknown,
rebel, revolt, re
-verse the premises of day,
the light of reason with the amendments
of debauch, the codacils of defiance,
the bill of rights for deviants,
the shifting alliances of the hearse
and the brothel, the nurse
and the harlot, the praise of sin with
the virgin corpse. Gin
and tonic. The cognac dusk.
The grenadine of transition.
The Kahlua of sweet
desolation. Flesh a single malt
butter-scotch.

How will we night?
How were we will?
How night we were distilled
and transentient, sententious
and prevenient, contentious,
expedient, unrepentant and yet,
nonetheless, defiled.

The stylus of time makes
present.

Impossible tonearms dance,
fulfilling the mumblements of prophecy,
while the thrill of cash
chases tequila plans.

Night and be-
night, quite and re-
quite. Morrow and tomorrow
in what petty pace
becrawl. Deny
what being cannot be,
the whole of nothing,
the night of all.