chirograph

[chirograph]

Doing Shrooms At Harvard

Every time we do shrooms, the intention I set before, is always to get over you.

I will you out of my heart, times two, three, five, or more with thoughts so unkind to me.

This settled splinter lodged in my mind, behind the eye.

I pluck it swiftly!

It doesn’t matter which one because I’ll see you later in the morning, in the window.

I sometimes think about leaving, like out of the country—goodbye!

And I often pray you would do me the honor Maybe distance is a cure or the carbuncle.

I’ve cast you out, damned boy! Forevermore. Time and again with gusto and purpose.

No more poems that easily outmatch the zero songs you’ve written about me.

Please get out of my head. I’ve wept this line in many moments.

With my bare hand, I lift your irresistibility and beg the psilocybin to squash it.

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cognitive dissonance

When Death visits me, I hide my face. I want to die, but I’m afraid of dying. He smiles, knowing very well that His grin will keep me from wanting his scythe.

But everywhere I look, there’s fire I can’t put out. The World quakes with Her anger. My own vexation vibrates inside of me, pushing forth in short spurts: a knot in a shoe string, the green light a few hundred feet out of reach, wrinkles in a shirt that will not smooth, the ghosts who do me no favor in not saying goodbye.

When I come home, the lights are dim, the doors are shut, the long hallway deserted.

The phone is silent (unless I use it).

I sit at my desk, or in my brand new bed that makes me sweat at night, and I contemplate His destruction.

[chirograph]

the first man

for V. C.

   did you know you       were my first fuck on a deck        chair by a pool at two o’clock        in the morning––the first to pour         wine into my mouth from the bottle,         to sow your stone and roots deep inside?           how about being the first of any man,         woman, child to divulge such a truth:        “you are more than your teeth,” speaking       with hands on my shoulders, shocked           a person could be so ignorant of themself,     “you’re a whole being!”         not only from your mouth did it fall,         from your eyes seeing mine seeing yours.

             inside this encephalon, your naked ferric body               is eternally gliding underneath a july water;            your tumescence always buoyant against my thighs;            amy crooning, you swooning, the sundial swinging               us into different skies: new york stupid, alabama wise.

           your rhinal laugh lives now in my ears, paying rent            to a tenant named crooked smile. you on this page,             you axon-to-dendrite, between neuron and muscle.          you immortal being, the first man, i think,       in my life to never lie.

[chirograph]

Vertically Developed

        A bird meets you at the impasse.

        It tells you what you need to know—  then,           it goes to the next thing life offers:   brilliance,    something few,         and quite the opposite of blue.

      It flies over ramparts,                  and the missing leg you chew provides no hinderance of any kind.    It’s shocking,        but it’s one story that's real,   alive,   and true. 

      The bird survives without  laughs,     photograph books,       memories of rivers,    big easies,      that pair of blood boots.

        It pushes on with poetry,     cosmogony,        flights that are solitary,    and rolling,             great kisses from a man named Cumulonimbus  (a.  k.  a.    TCu);       where he’s too high for byes      and too low for fools.

      At twenty-thousand feet,     the bird would freeze      (so much is assumed),    but it glides,     amputated,         right on through to a sky anew.

[chirograph]

Faggot

Faggot! And, he shoves me. I met with the dirt, and the diamond of my heart reverted back to coal. Faggot! And, he threatens me. In one fell swoop, I’m thrown in with a bundle of kindling. Fag! Faggot! Fudge packer! Freak! These things are me, I will admit, yet he’s said them to make me feel unworthy. But, see, I revel in my faggotry. As an insult, I don’t get it. Fag is to work hard at something, and I worked it hard into him four years later. Yeah, the one who shoved me didn’t mind getting sucked by me–– didn’t mind squatting two inches above my face to let me taste his homophobic meat. Faggot is to be worthless enough to be burned, and we burned and moaned in our sticky body heat. Fudge packer is what I did to his tight end, and when he said, “Give it to me!” “Give it to me!” again and again, I asked myself, “Who’s really the freak?” I kept thinking as I dressed to leave, with revenge still pulsing between my knees, Faggot is me. My flame shines right! It’s not some puny, little pilot light. Fagot! Fagot! Burning bright! Fucked a homophobe one night, What immortal hand or eye could frame this fucking symmetry?

[chirograph]

Videotape

I watch us––stretched, faded, with streaks of color that now stain our static flesh. I wonder if it is my green skin that shaded your cynicism–– or was this developed post divorce? There are moments I hear it leak through your tone behind the camera–– constricted, sharp, and searching. Or maybe it’s simply the Betamax tape muffling your love the auto tracking tries to, but cannot, correct.

[chirograph]

Ichor

      Why is he sweet to see        in bright windows awakened     from pulsing sleep?     Why does he smile           as if gnawing some incorporeal     meaty desire?     Why does he look        so swarthy with his neck chain,       black leather, and cotton?      Is it 'cause I grasp        at every flaxen tendril    with my lips?      Or is it the swish-      swing-dip energy      of his legs and hips?       Is his blood––God Dammit!        Listen to your beating mind!

[chirograph]

Bandon and Crey - an excerpt

          Crey was a sickly boy, not yet ten years old, when the monster took him to the deep places under the bed. Like all stories that begin with children and things that do not exist in our unfortunate world, no one knew that Crey was gone. For whatever reason, for the sake of the life of this story, his parents did not come in to check on him that night.           Perhaps they would have if they hadn’t made him put all of his toys in his wooden chest.           Perhaps now, as the beast from under the bed drug Crey kicking and screaming through dust bunny colonies and mountainous piles of bug carapaces, the plastic Weebles would be on their way down the hall to his parents’ room. There, in whatever way they knew best, the Weebles would sound the alarm, and Crey’s parents would awake, knowing that their beloved son had been taken.           No, but of course not. This is not a story where parents check on their children or where toys are lifeless, plastic things stuffed with a polyester-cotton blend and stay where you leave them until they are moved by someone else. This is a story where toys come alive, where monsters pull children kicking and screaming under their beds. This is a story where little boys are named Crey.            Depending on who is reading this and whether or not you are a glass half full or glass half empty sort of person, it was fortunate (or unfortunate) that the only one who knew Crey was gone was Bandon, a stuffed bear his Aunt Mary (MeeMee, he called her) had hand made him when he was five. After her sudden death, Crey made it a point to never put Bandon in the toy box. Now it was up to Bandon the stuffed bear, with his lop-sided eyes and overly-stuffed body, to brave the unplumbed world beneath the bed. He grabbed the boy’s wooden sword and a tattered shoe string as a makeshift holster and descended beneath the bedskirt.           Like many fantastical places, under the bed seemed to stretch out in an incomprehensible way, bending space so that it was truly a landscape that rivaled the heights of the White Range mountains in Peru or the vast flatness of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Instead of Bactrian camels, there were camels from an abandoned building block set, their cube-ish bodies almost wading like slugs through the dunes of dust.

[chirograph]

High Coos

     Please know–grasp! There is        a higher chance of kissing      you, than he and I.      To me, we’re better       together–timeless. He will     be evanescent.      Don’t worry, compeer.        Two boys forever clinging–      O, my chevalier!

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to Melville, for Herman

          Was it Ahab that killed your Confidence-           Man the way the world reduces the pen           in my hand to soot? Do you know the fame           you once had was built from the foundation            of your failures up? And could I go wrestling           and waging the selfsame war-–the wonted               failure and misery never knowing, never owning             a phenomenal dime of what is yours (and mine)?           O! White Whale writer, what welcomed wisdom             did that Scarlet Letter spirit lend to your hand?            Did it flesh out Ishmael? Did it damn those men?             It wasn't long after your service bent to them.              Will I bend to that end? Will I suffer like you, friend?              You succumbed to sadness. Apoplexy! Albatross!               Completely forgotten, fallen, a minor cloaked figure.               A mere shadow of the Man, the Mariner, the Mystic.

[chirograph]

Maelstrom

                1.           An inky doom—a never-ending blotch                that snatches the kingfisher's rattle and stains the ant army                  marching back to its dirt-dome—pushes itself along the firmament.                Mud miles away seeps into the nostrils of the Fowler's toads                hiding beneath the ditch soil flipping above their resting hearts               now rising into a horny, bacchanalian frenzy.                  Common yellowthroats zip over the cat tails to pick off damselflies,               who see their deaths in a tanbark blur—never the warblers.                 2.              The airy swell—its looming shadow squashing out light—               oozes overhead, descending so close, barely touching                 the loblolly pines. They are safe, for now, from the imminent break       of white-slashed cinnabar—                 3.              The water wall rushes at the diminutive world—              a cloudburst eruption with no definable sound—!                It hushes the Southeastern cricket's whining and halts the wind           so that not even the susurrus of cordgrass,—        the amphibian orgy,—                 or the yellowthroat's goddamn whichety-whichety-whichety       can upstage its crack-boom,                                         its spraying buckshot,                                                          its paroxysmal entrance!

[chirograph]

Animals

          His arm hangs over the edge of the bed. The ceilin’ fan was on high when he went to sleep, but overnight it came to a stop. Watchin’ the motionless blades, Caleb’s eyes don’t blink for sometime. It’s the ringin’ of the phone that makes him close them slowly. He’s surprised a call is comin’ through. The bill wasn’t paid this month. It’s more than likely Alice tryin’ to find out where he is. Their first class starts in three minutes, and he is fifteen minutes away. He didn’t go all week. He waits a few more minutes, takes a deep breath and throws the sheet off of him. It’s cold and he’s naked. He walks quietly to the door and peeks out. The hall is dark, and the light from his window spills out onto the floor. He tries to cup his hands over his tumescence, but it doesn’t do much good, and he dashes toward the bathroom. He hears his father groan through the wall as he bends down to turn on the water: nothin’ happens. He was dreadin’ a cold shower but now he wishes he had not dreaded it so much. His father groans again.           About eight months ago, his father slipped a disc in his back while throwin’, what he was told had been, a huge rope to undock a boat. After that, his father couldn’t work. The only job he could do his body didn’t want him doin’ anymore. Some people watched the apartment, followed his father to see if his injury was legitimate. His father received a lot of money from the incident, but it disappeared with his mother: to Vegas or Belize or even Belaruse would be better than here he assumes she had thought. The lights and water must have been turned off during the night, he thinks. The phone will be next. He grabs a towel on the floor, wraps it around his waist, and walks back to his room to dress. He pulls on some jeans, a t-shirt and grabs an old jean jacket from the closet. His hair’s a mess, and he feels dirty but he’s already late and never washed his underwear. Might as well add a cover to the pages, he thinks. He grabs his satchel and walks out the door.           “Caleb!”           The voice comes as he shuts the door behind him. It’s Paul. He and his buddies are still up from the night before. It was a bad night for them, Caleb assumes.           Hi Paul. How’s it goin’?           “Fuckin’ starvin’, man. People think this is free.” He grabs his cock in a bunch of denim. He wears a faux leather jacket and in places the wannabe fabric has flaked and peeled off. His jeans are clouded with holes. It’s the wear and tear from sleepin’ under bridges because no man wants Paul in their bed (only in alleys or in the back of cars did Paul ever receive the dignity he thought he deserved). “You wanna help me out?”           I don’t have any cash.           He doesn’t want a favor from Paul. He doesn’t desire Paul and, even if he did, he feels that he should not have to pay. He wants to go. The other boys make him uncomfortable. Paul is the only one who’s civil, the only one who comes from where he comes. Paul just happened to fall a little further. He looks at his watch. Class started two minutes ago.           “You can be such a cunt,” says Paul.           Caleb watches Paul rub the sole of his boot against the sidewalk, and he knows Paul wants a different answer.           I’ll make it up to you. I’ll see what I can do.           “Too late, man. Gotta do it my way.”           He shrugs and walks away as the other boys approach. He hears one say to Paul. “You fuckin’ him?”           He takes his usual trek to school, the back way, up through the Pinebrook neighborhoods, behind the Books-A-Million he once worked at. He thinks about when he worked there. He was fired, unjustly, and the bitch that did it is still there he assumes. He sees her car now.           She’s a stupid nigger, he thinks, but he feels bad for it, so he goes into his head to try to justify himself. She’s a stupid goddamn nigger, he thinks. He’s no racist. The bitch just happens to be black. He thinks it’s every man for himself. His mother always said, "Use the weapons you have, Caleb. Even if it’s hate," so to him, if callin’ someone a nigger pisses someone off, then by all means call someone a fuckin’ nigger. Faggot, cunt, gook. Say it and then swing your fist.           The azaleas push their potential and, amongst all of the new growth, the pecan trees look like lepers, with twistin’ branches raisin’ in praise, beggin’ for the return of Jesus or Buddha or both. He stares at the jays flittin’ about, and he hates this one guy’s house because there is a banana tree in the back yard and two palms on either side of his driveway, and it ruins the look of everythin’ else in this neighborhood. The houses here are big and the kids who grew up here go to that big nice college on Dauphin Street, but he is yet to be impressed by those folks. People don’t ever say anythin’ about ‘em because it’s a $36,000 a year tuition. He’s met two people that go there so far, and they’re both underwhelmin’, and their personalities are like that little burn you feel when an ant bites your toe except in this case it doesn’t ever stop even after you smash the shit out of it.           He sees the bell tower peerin’ over the oaks. It’s the new one they built a month ago. He picks up the pace. He rounds a corner and bumps into Habibi, one of the two $36,000 students.           Habibi is interestin’, he thinks, but interestin’ in the I want a good laugh later kind of way. She is this girl with skin the color of an iced mocha. She has a minor case of buck teeth and doesn’t look a day over twelve. She joins everythin’. She is cause-happy. It’s so bad that people don’t know whether she’s white or black or if she’s an atheist or one of those girls who meets behind the frat houses to give thanks to the Earth. One day she’s Catholic and the next day her head’s wrapped in a burka and she has Allah comin’ down. A few months ago she was a lesbian and joined a bunch of LGBT causes and then she became suicidal and started this little suicide prevention group. He doesn’t remember what it was called. She parties hard, shakes her ass, but she always makes sure she squeezes her two cents in when it comes to advocatin’ modesty in the Pope’s good name. She once said she’d lay down in front of a tank if it meant savin' the Vatican. Jesus Christ, he thinks, rememberin’.           “Not the person I want to see, but have you seen this?”           He looks at the newspaper she shoves into his face. 'THE NEW COLOSSUS,' it reads. There is a picture of a golden woman with her arm raised to the sky and in her hand a torch. She stares off into the waters. The glare of the sun hits her face, and the light reflects and reaches out across New York, across the picture, across his eyes all the way down in this hick town.           Yeah, I have, and I don’t wanna talk about it.           He did not like it. The statue stood for freedom now, she would want the poor and the hungry now, but she would come to not want the prissy faggots or the dykes or even the crusty old niggers and white trash down at 14th Place. She wouldn’t want the towel head women who people still look at funny ever since those planes crashed into those buildings. She would turn as green as the money that stained every hand in every executive office of every car company or bank. She was gold now, but once the rain came, she would tarnish and start to crumble, he thinks, and when she fell, she would be swallowed up by that harbor and that would be the end of his life and this stupid Habibi’s life and the life of every down-trodden son-of-a-goddamn-fucking bitch in this shit hole country.           “Figures. You’re always the same,” she says.           Always will be.           He walks away. He needs to walk away first before he starts cryin’ and yellin’ and not makin’ any sense. He doesn’t argue. He feels her watch him, and it vanishes when he rounds the corner. Alice is waitin’ by the trash can, smokin’ her cigarettes.           Alice.           “Well it’s about time. That’s the third time this week, Caleb. What’s the matter with you? Is it your dad? Is he still messed up?”           Hello, twenty questions. He’s fine. He’s fine, and I’m just tired. I ran into Paul and his mates. They think we’re sleepin’ around.           “You and me?”           No. Paul and me. They think Paul and me are sleepin’ together.           She rubs her hair and scrunches her nose up in displeasure. It’s frizzy. She’s skinny and pale. Her eyes are green and hollow and her hair is blonde or kool-aid. It has a kind of orange glow to it from the kool-aid. Her fingernails aren’t painted. They haven’t been since freshman year. Black specks are still on ‘em near the cuticles. He likes ‘em. He likes her fingers and her hair. She is beauty, he thinks.           Her father died when she was twelve. She was there when it happened, too. He wasn’t really her father. Her real father doesn’t even exist. It’s like her mom was the Virgin Mary or somethin’. Her father, or her step-father, was some Asian guy. He owned a bunch of grocery stores near Tensaw. One day, two goons came in, blew his head open, brains everywhere: over the counter, on the radio that played nothin’ but Aerosmith, ruined the $4.55 Marlboros and the Buy 1 Get 1 Free Camels. The new owners kept the shelves, though, and the counter where one of his eyes landed. The place still gets a lot of business. No one remembers, or they do and it just ain’t worth talkin’ about. The news says it all for everyone, every day, until the end of time or until it stops sellin’. She just stood there, Alice did. Her mouth was open, and she says she remembers sayin’ "Daddy, daddy, daddy" over and over again. All she could do was just stare at the two men. She doesn’t remember why she didn’t scream or cry or run to her step-father. The two men just looked at her, one even rubbed her head she said, and they left. Still at large. No motive. The camera system didn’t work, and Alice is blind, and you can’t draw faces from voices.           “Well, I’d do you,” Alice says.           Don’t say shit like that. People can hear you.           “Are you ashamed of me?” She laughs.           No. I just... I’m not feelin’ very good.           “I thought you said you were fine.”           I meant I’m fine as in I’m alive. I'm not okay, but I'm like... okay.           She smiles and squeezes his shoulder before flicking her cigarette at the wall. Someone looks at her as if she were ignoring the convenient ash tray a few steps away.           A squirrel’s going to eat that, and its death will be on your conscious.           “Did you finish Hemingway?” she asks, ignoring him.           Yeah. I liked it.           “I did, too,” Gage says, coming up behind Alice.           Caleb never speaks to Gage. Not on purpose. He just never knows what to say, so he usually nods or shakes his head. This time he nods. He always feels like a caveman when Gage is around. Gage has this look to him. It’s a look that says Ask me anything, and I will know the answer. The brown eyes help this appearance for some reason, but Caleb isn’t sure why.           “We start Faulkner today,” says Gage.           Shit.           “What?” asks Gage.           Caleb shakes his head.           “He forgot his book, I bet,” says Alice.           You’re a real genius.           “Just look on with me,” says Gage.           Caleb nods, and his gaze doesn’t break away from Gage’s. He feels like a deer caught in the headlights. Gage smiles, but the smile disappears quickly. Inside Caleb a storm is brewin', and he hopes Gage didn’t see it. Caleb looks at Alice who‘s standin' there watchin' them with her ears while she chews on her hair.           “I’ll see you in class, then,” says Gage, and he walks away from them.           “You could try and be sociable,” says Alice, punchin' him in the arm. “I think he likes you.”           I think you should stop settin' me up with faggots. I’m goin' to class now.           “It’s your funeral,” says Alice.           The day goes by, and it’s one of those days where every five minutes lasts an hour. You think you are goin’ mad, but it’s just a societal construction that nothin’ else on this planet abides by, so Caleb sighs at this and continues on. He moves from class to class, three of them, where he sits unsure if he is understandin’ anythin’ anyone ever says. Gage taps him on the shoulder.           “Wanna grab lunch?” Gage asks.           No thanks.           “Alright,” Gage says.           Why ask if you give up so easily?

[chirograph]

Burning Man

          Each word exchange bursts with trepidation,             so the Spirit gives me warm well wishes and thrusts              good fortune into my hands. What do I do with it?           It had been so long since I saw such things,             so I carried it aimlessly for a few days                 until it was suddenly the Spirit's letters that it became.             I watch them burn now in the fire pit at the dead            end of Short Street—where my old house sits vacant.                  The Spirit's words are smoky, and only on fire, with such energy,            do they touch me more than his hands ever did.                This miasmatic caress is more than his trepidation,        more than his self, more than we.

[chirograph]

The Tall Whites - Part One

[chirograph]

MMXII. Empty

This short story was originally published in 2012 Oracle Fine Arts Review.

[chirograph]

bitty glimmer

   near to where    there is light       is always a struggle.      back and forth shadows        slip like the tide: in and out,    give and take,     rush and retreat(        the monsters in the closet,        and the parent-left door-crack         slicing darkness down its middle–       to the edge of the bed–        along the silent faces          of pluto, hydra, charon, and nix.          )always this bitty glimmer watching,           staring and spinning affectionately,      at the edge of time.

[chirograph]

big loved

     i love you so big,   tall trees:     creation's limbs,   soul's knees,   with eyes     of a prey bird       and little skinny wings.     it's destiny's    destruction       of governmental fleas,     so says the ant,   the earth,      and the rolling rock:     between the stars     between their toes.      the mind cannot die,      so i say, so says      time and the spirit.        so screams life and the trees: tall    and big loved.