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Part XII: Parties In Paradise & Purgatory

part xii of my new long poem Cruising or The Death Of Oblivion

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I am self publishing a chapbook and here is the cover. If you're interested send me your email and I'll message you a free digital copy!

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Tollbooth

only one car on the highway a silver Buick headlights dimmed stars splintering moon coated in dust driving towards a tollbooth a beacon the Buick pulls up and the tollbooth worker is asleep standing up and the driver rolls down his window and the whooshing slicing of air awakens her and she hands the driver his ticket and he studies the words the price of his next stop and drives off and she checked the fake Rolex on her wrist and sighed and gazed out into the black endless highway no headlights only a dark eternal expanse breathing in & out

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hi! thank u 4 following. :)

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Dust Into Dusk

Through evergreen trees marked by fog wooden wheels send dust into dusk four flickering lanterns illuminating wordless whispers willow in the wind here nature rules the mind magic runs in the veins and rivers the rivers end at the clearing where the spirit and the sprite lie waiting hands held in a ballet of spiraling rings groups linger in the grove quiet and resolute of their new home in the forest the rest lie asleep on the other side eyelids sewn shut

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some of my favorite teachers ✨ who are your favorite poets??

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CAROUSEL

slow dancing in a clearing entangled in burnt leaves nightingales cried from black trees black tuxedos, black suede shoes branches crackled underfoot rested my cheek on your shoulder gazed off at a hollowed hole imagined a rabbit & his husband nibbling away at a plant and you stared behind me eyes wide open at a carousel golden circle of rusted ponies hooves of metal paint chipped peeling like bark stuck in space how they have rotated around this tower for years and years not breaking free from their pole and galloping across the dirt path out of these woods into a field to bow to the dusk to rest their sturdy legs against a plain of mustard wheat to slurp water from a trench flickering light bulbs gleamed as our bodies slowly turned as the earth does as the past does as this carousel does and there was no music no twinkling bells just the mute sound of stars then you whispered to me something I couldn’t hear something about letting go and the carousel stopped spinning with a mechanical lurch mouths of stallions agape frozen in midair the lights went out darkness fell and still we slowly turned

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The Bride

A darkening sky. A skeletal moon. She stands beneath, white gown iridescent like it’s underwater, the stars aglow, the stars dead, her life ahead of her. She cannot see this. She can only see the bare woods beyond the farmhouse. She can hear the people behind her, the way a crowd of voices sounds like a language from a distant planet, alien and unknown. They gather like a song, until they reach a crescendo and it’s too much to bear and she decides where her life will take her and she lifts her dress and her ankles now bare begins to run, past the lit windows of the home, past the dirt path, into the deepening woods, where the fallen leaves crackle under her feet, where the trees clap as she twists her way through the wooded maze and onto the other side, a long empty road, the sky now black as black, and there’s a blue pickup truck that’s slowly disintegrating into copper rust, the headlights shining on this phantom, this bride that waves like the driver is her secret lover, and when he pulls up and rolls down the window he looks her up and down and gazes into her orbital eyes and does nothing but nod and reach over to open the passenger door and when he does she runs over, climbs in, pulls it shut and tells him to drive, anywhere, it doesn’t matter. Dust swirls into the air as the tires spin and they vanish into the night.

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The Veil

I. Death Waves curl like flames, rustling, roaring, expanding, retracting, backwards, forwards… a veiled woman wanders the shore, funeral dirge amid the silver twilight, the procession of souls now gone, they have evaporated into the sand, and her hollow voice is humming, song reaching the birthing gibbous, she sits, baptized by the waves, saltwater dousing her dress…

she looks down the way, glimpsing the orange glow of windows, blinking spectral specks of green lights beyond the dim horizon… waves crash against the steeled hull of a fishing boat, foam illumined by a spotlight spinning on the deck, shining its beams across the universe, every few minutes capturing the shadow of a jellyfish, the shadow of a shark, as they drift across the sky… men lie asleep on benches, awaiting the dawn, the harbor… they rise in the night and throw nets into the emptiness, praying they catch something, anything, everything; peering into the black water as if it were a mirror…

stars gleam, celestial headlights, whispering their icy breath upon the ocean- spoken from their mouths, spiraling into a cyclone, rising to the velvet heavens within a swirl of dust, dust that will explode into an eternal star, stamping itself across the vast darkness…

the woman stares at these stars through the veil that hides her cheekbones- her eyes reflect their shimmering bodies of smoke. And a tear forms, infinitesimal, in the corner of her eye, and it slips down her cheek upon her lips, and the men feel the weight of fish, and the stars shoot like glowing arrows, and a wave rises and levitates, shells and stones floating, and it crashes down over her…

II. Birth Fingers wrinkled, eyes blinking, like one does when they step out a movie theater into a summer afternoon… her mother cradles her in her arms, her father hunches over- the baby’s eyes are stars and inside they can see waves and flames and fish. In a few days the man will return to work, on a fishing boat in the Atlantic, and he will gaze over the railing into the endless sea, and see on the shore a phantom, a tendriled woman, buried by the fiery waves.    

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this album rulez

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The Fawn

below paned glass a fawn, eyes glimmering, a white moon nested in her irises-

she stumbles, newborn, into the middle of the road, spotting tall grass and a home

in the distance, overgrown and tired- through the window a woman walks

with a cloth over her shoulder, and a man sits on an armchair in front of a television.

The fawn wanders off in search of the light. Far off in a dusted field her mother weeps.

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A Lonely Person Shops At Christmastime, 1958

neon signs dazzle from their posts

OPEN CLOSED HEAVEN’S THAT WAY NO RETURNS

you stand in front of the department store window oil stoves electric microwaves boxed televisions carrying a brimming shopping bag you will set under the haloed pine tree but how long will you stare at yourself how long will your bones carry your skin snowfall gathering in heaps on the sidewalk there is a primordial loneliness in those who walk alone on city streets staring at the pavement staring straight ahead staring at the burnt clouds of smoke in the sky they see right through your emptiness they want nothing more than for you to stop and ask for directions to the cinema we know one when we see one and as we walk past one another eyes etched in ashen stone we nod in recognition and as you turned away from yourself in the mirrored window I saw you

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Evening In Summer

It happened slowly. Genetic. Corrosion of matter, hammer taken to brain, smashing it into shards of a mirror, the one you shaved your slender neck in, wife tightening your tie, saving minutes in the morning. Your souls live inside the glass. Now you wander streets eyes tilted to the flamed sun. It happened slowly. You sit in a wheelchair, bony wrists curled like spoiled milk. My father sits in our dark kitchen burning holes in the tile. A flash of clarity. You tell him you’re ready. That it feels like being young on an evening in summer. Tired, spent the day swinging baseball bats. Then your mother calls you home. It happens slowly.

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The Oracle

a wrinkled woman with three eyes and a shawl is perched atop a telephone wire. a crow black as death tilts its head, snarls, flies away in a flicker of dust.

she crawls the tightrope. a spark strikes her spine- she rattles, drops to the cracked cement, a porcelain doll, shattering-

and her second eye blinks, then her first, then her third, distorted song from a static radio,

and in a dark room the spectacled broadcaster folds his hands and the lamps around his head dim as he shuffles a stack of papers, lights a cigarette and leans into the microphone to speak-

when the summer is nothing but a shadow- when dawn and dusk are doppelgängers- when the stars are white bones and the clouds wool blankets- who will pray for us all? who will bend their knees and feel the dirt and pray for us all?