Mass-Produced Profundity

I

BrahmarākShasa 

hanging from the Peepal

chanting—

sarvangasana,

a Hard G 

stuck, matted

against the drywall,

clearing a clog

in my sacral chakra.

A few frantic,

futile pumps of

abreactional attrition;

an undignified

droop;

blood sinks

to gray matter

gutter.

II

Dual black clots

of keratin

leak from my ears,

follicles

hardening to

obsidian orbs

with cobalt flecks

saccading,

peering past

despondency,

seclusion—

into my Clandestine;

hole-in-the-corner.

Siberian snowblind 

contour masks

thin,

pale amaranth

lips.

With a squint,

love-lies-bleeding

blooms into language—

characters foreign

yet familiar—

beckoning.

A soft,

Cyrillic kiss;

cinnamon,

a hint of nicotine;

a broken 

cypher—

Озвиена / Ozwiena

(oh i see and you so do you do you see me oh it is this this is it all of it all us and no you or me or one but both no not both all is it all i need to know if i can die now)

 III

I am awake.

The drywall ignites.

Fetid,

frenzied,

a rusalka rides my face,

hissing Slavic obscenities.

Her clit melts like acid

on my tongue,

scabrous labia

oozing

waves of napalm

down my esophagus.

She is trying to suck her out.

Blood rises again,

currents of molten spit 

snake along my torso,

carving scars that swell—

memento mori 

bas relief.

I come,

and all’s gone.

Surging perdition,

lapping up the

nacreous drops

of my own apathy,

face glazed in 

dead sea 

malaise.

the notion of no more me

a
worn,
dislocated bone
is
sucked
by the surrounding filth.

bare strips
of marrow
bathe
in the muddy texture
of separation,
congealing
into clumps
of milky dirt.

phantom tendons
hum like stricken tines;
the pitch of wispy sinew
lures away lucidity,
inducing muscle memory
to immerse itself
in the intimacy
of isolation.

except...

an errant spasm
in a strand of protein
betrays a figure,
bivouacked
between the helix,
trying
but failing
to muster the solipsism
for suicide.

a limb cracks;
cartilage snaps-

reversion to estrangement.

Carrion Confession

no dread

of the murder-

only her beak.

she preens-

quill to vellum,

perched in black alb,

watching the spirits

spill by,

new moon exhalations,

demons unflasked.

a lonely jumble of strings-

taut, willing

rigor mortis,

peers through the lattice partition

of the solar panel-

[i have been savagely ravaged

by twenty-six;

and there was more warmth

in those dark angles

than i have ever known

there to be

sifting through innards

of the most sensual

human soul.] 

[because we can't see the wrinkles form]

I

My room is a gut.

Ill yellow dim eats me.

Melted wax air

coats my throat;

beads of back sweat

coaxed out by the acid

atmosphere pool

into a puddle-

dripping nanoseconds

now nothing more

than unelapsed stains

on the sheet.

II

Time is

sewn into my skin.

All the drugs

do is try to keep me from

unweaving the fabric.

The only way to know

is to dissect; but

synthetic fiber

is no substitute

for organic tissue.

III

Years from now I was

shaving thin slivers of

seconds from my life

lines with my razor.

Palms red,

sooth said,

               "save your skin

                for the schism..."

somewhere

various parallels offset;

time is divorced

from space:

negated-

divided by zero.

IV

There she is!

My smuggler-

a meandering mosquito

playing Sisyphus against

the despotic oscillation

of my fan.

O nihilistic indigent

bereft of essence,

siphon eons from my scars

and spit them out among the stars.

But what's that black speck

nestled neatly between your lazy legs?

A mosquito with a monthly planner-

she feeds on one hand without noticing

the shadow of the other

hovering above her.

Ode to Dissociation

A plasma anchorman watches me,

recumbent,

fingering myself

and trying to think

non-linearly.

Somewhere there is an affable mass of carbon

orating about politics, unaware of the woman on her bed

sliding in and out of poesy and sophistry, writhing

under the onerous weight of detachment.

     We are two distinct entities:
     a double negative;
     a divided dash.

The furtive blank paper between the blots

of ink is what I can't understand, or dismiss,

because somewhere in the nullity

is the fountainhead of my isolation.

So I fiddle around in there,

slipping into the slit

with no protection,

feeling around for context.

     Why is it always flesh with you?
     Perniciously lewd;
     facetiously crude.

I was being dishonest when I told you I felt ill.

I did.

But I was speaking in terms of a permanent state of being

or an inherent character flaw,

not a temporary affliction.

So then I made up that bit

about my Circadian rhythm

being out of whack. 

Your lack and my lack

combined

was off-putting,

so I lied

and left

to lie

here,

manic and morose

like a lycanthropic ghost:

a ghost with nothing to do,

who never could be bothered

with having any business

to finish.

The moon is enshrouded by a cloud,

the sky

and

the stars

and

everything else around it

a cheap cardboard backdrop. 

I'm safe in the anonymity of my tub,

bathing

in the blood

of those

who

Live.

            Laugh.

                            Love.

                                           How does    

something

                             that has always been

something

                                             dissolve

into garbled jamais vu?

                                   And what if that

something

                                     were someone? 

Or everyone? 

                                         Everything?

A teacher felt she could confide in me once

as a precocious youth. She asked me if I had ever repeated

a word so many times that it lost all of its meaning.

I nodded,

and with a profound sadness

too disinterested to be marred by tears,

she told me that

every day

every person

she

was the same word.

Atrophy

plexor

pressures

knocking

on my knee.

zeitgeist

measures my

reflex

but time

is

relative

so I wait

for my moment

to kick.

Hair of the Dog

The black and white horizon flips and spins,

my right cheek snow and left cheek moonless sky.

Semi-conscious I can feel his shadow.

(Line and pour me half a dozen shots...)

Warmth pours from his skin into my stomach,

but my fingers and my toes are still black.

A piteous kiss would reverse the bite.

(...one for every month he hasn't touched me)

Instead it's revulsion that snuffs the heat.

He leaves me naked, rotting in the cold.

(He lacks the balls to fuck away my ennui...)

Some stars appear in the black of the left,

a white, puffy clustered constellation.

(...but has the balls to ask why I seem restive)

Now they form teeth and legs, tails and white fur.

The bigger brighter canine blankets me

while the smaller one licks at my burnt ends.

(Please forgive me, drinking turns me tasteless)

I am revived but the two curs linger...

(Thank you for your kindness and attention,
now would you be so kind as to point me
in the direction of Orion’s belt?)

COMPLICATIONS

Which one of you is the guardian?

The child raises her arm in her sleep.

Ah!

You!

You've been demoted...holy decree.

I squeeze the cherub's plush bottom,

pluck off his wings

and toss him to Hades.

-----

I imagined clay;

or wet cement;

even a grapefruit.

It was harder,

but only at first.

Like pushing through thin ice,

except the water below is warm and thick.

Her eyes never opened,

but there was a coo.

And shit in her diaper.

The tip of my Sharpie disappeared

as I scrawled the despicable noun into her belly.

Too gently.

I barely stifled a snicker

at the thought of tickling her.

-----

...past 4am now

The message is next to mommy

on the bed.

For three and a half months

I have been glued to my mirrors,

trying to hoodwink one of them

into casting an honest reflection.

Liars.

When she wakes up,

I'll see my facsimile;

and

(if she remains conscious for long enough)

she will see a grotesque silhouetted doppelgänger

sitting on the windowsill,

wearing her white coat

and a pair

of bloody latex gloves.

Offal

I

The spectre is warped,

an inverted white shadow smeared

flat against the wall

of my unlit bedroom

(a distorted mural,

magnified through the glass and liquor

lens of the bottle on my nightstand).

Concavity spars with convexity,

ultimately yielding

as the form emerges from the wall

to try the third dimension on

like a wedding dress it can't afford.

It's a bedsheet ghost,

floating with two opaque cutout eyes.

The compulsion to stick a body part in them

makes me ache.

I tongue the two slits;

the ectoplasm coats my buds,

smacking them with an aftertaste

of spoiled milk.

The wraith fades,

shrugging off space and time,

but the flavor lingers

and intensifies.

Retching,

not yet

having had my fill of spirits,

I grab the bottle and chug,

infusing vodka and bile

in an enzyme cocktail,

crafted to be expelled

not ingested.

The toilet swallows the vomit,

but you still pollute my palate.

II

No one should see this...

the submission in the kitchen.

I unscrew the only bulb

so not even the nosiest ray

can escape to steal a glance

and refract through the window

to gossip with the stars.

No. What happens here...

(the driving out of the loiterer in my mouth)

is to be absorbed,

smothered,

forgotten

in the dark womb of ante-meridiem.

A brief glimmer is permitted

(to snatch the head out of the refrigerator)

then snuffed.

Now it is fingernails

peeling skin,

old skin,

tissue paper

flaking off like a scab.

Little bits

tumble out onto the counter.

My fingers roam and probe

until they have the hilt.

It feels profane

to turn a knife sideways,

like flipping a cross upside down.

Yet the blasphemous blade hovers

then descends,

smashing one of the morsels

and splitting its thin shell. 

Popped like a blister,

the fresh skin underneath

is slick and sticky. 

I slip it into my mouth and chew. 

Acrid, bitter waves roll over the rot. 

Swallowing,

the sharpness spreads,

and I think I've won. 

My euphoria blinds me

to the laws of Nature

and the inevitable ebb

of every tide. 

The foul rot,

eroded but still standing,

pushes back;

the taste of the garlic

recedes and washes away. 

A fiery paroxysm of ire

bursts loose,

singes sense and reason. 

The conflagration forces

my burning fingers

around the cool blade of the knife. 

Both hands slam

the heel to the counter

(over and over)

crushing the cloves between. 

The harsh, raw garlic

is iron infused,

bloody crescents

pulverized and masticated. 

Instead of overpowering

the rancid aftertaste,

the three elements synthesize

and metastasize

leaving me terminal. 

III

My life was saved by a sprig of mint. 

In the desperation of dawn,

I munched on some leaves. 

The pain abated. 

Calmly,

lying in a hot bath

with what was left

of the sprig,

I rubbed the cancer into remission.