stone was a laughing sister
sister under the rock, who told mother new words
for old secrets

pleiades was not a winding toy
she told herself often between coffees
i am a stone
i rise in reverse

unutterable silence is the word for mother

father loves his daughter
the mother tells her so

a word for father is “change”
a word for father is “no”
a word for mother is “yes”

“love” is a word for stones
the silence tells her so

a sister rises downward
a mother laughs in reverse
a father changes it to match the silence
the stones see them and tell us so

I wrote this around 2004. It’s a textfile. I’m hoping the spacing comes out alright in browsers.

link

she was well-folded cloth
breathless coffee mornings
she was bits and bits
grey cotton sweater
fat fingers
linoleum
rat traps
she was cold floors
beneath the sink
bare white windows
in the cellar
a door
she was 10th grade tshirt
almost ugly
soft fat belly
cheeks

she was awake
on monday
to the supermarket
washing clothes
painting her nails
she was new shoes on wednesday
thursday’s blind sky
like tuesday’s
already underneath her
at the computer moniter
at the kitchen table dreaming
she was dark friday night breathing
at twilight
little grey stereo songs
in the living room at sundown
locking the doors tightly
alone
smiling at the television
at something it said

she was awake
on saturday
on sunday night
cleaning her room
dinner plates
takes a shower before sleep
touching herself in bed
when she needs it like a friend
or a new house

and when it was morning
illuminated
beside the door
beside the kitchen cabinet smoking
without thought
the way she feels music
while driving to work
heals her
the way she sees the curtains
move forward
so that it’s sometimes a hand
when it isn’t

she was plastic gold frames
with pictures
and lottery tickets
and old receipts

she was a bedroom
where the cracks
like inverted trees
on the ceiling
open their branches as if to say something
in a loud voice
to everything
to make it known

then sits back down
to study the patterned walls
sketched with rough flowers in a rope
tracing their path around the house
around her

“Life isn’t mysterious,” said the old man, sipping at his juicebox, “not an ounce of mystery to it. Start to finish. Here to there. Nothing mysterious at all” He was begining to cough more frequently, the hugging tightness in his chest pulling his thoughts closer together.

Lisa offered a cracker but he refused. She sat down beside him and lit a cigarette. She paused and took a drag, blew out. “My favorite artform is mosaic,” she said. “All those little stones, one after another. I saw a documentary once. There’s these guys in little rooms filled with tables full of rocks of all different colors and sizes, and they riffle through the rocks for the one they want, or need, and take that one rock and put it, stick it onto the picture. Then they go back and look for the next one. Little rocks and shards of glass, one after another.”

“Over and over,” he said. “Not a bit a mystery to it.”

“May I have a buttered roll, please.” he asked. Lisa went to the kitchen and obliged. He sat nibbling the crust gently, thinking. “Thanks.”

Sloan walked in the front door and started describing his day at work: “We made clocks for ten hours. I had to be careful with the gears. They were ultrathin watches for the young jet-set crowd, stylish things, so some of those gears were skinny as paper. I was afraid they would melt if i held them too long. I don’t know where the watches went. They took them away in boxes.” Sloan blushed, looked down, and seemed about to weep.

“Forgive them,” the old man said between a fit of coughing, “they are only human. Everything they make must be sent away in a box.”

“Yeah,” proclaimed Lisa, nodding with exagerated sympathy.

Sloan began to pout openly, mumbling about the fragile little gears he once fashioned into a ticking machine. Everyone became embarassed for him, and looked bleak.

After some silence in which everyone attempted and failed to find something else to do that didn’t involve communication, Lisa looked up, half shyly and half exasperatedly, and decided to continue. “Those mosaic stones,” she said, “come first as big blocks of a solid color. the artists chip off what little bit they need and set the rest, the huge leftover bit aside.” Her tone became more astonished and fascinated. “Such a tiny tiny bit, such little pieces, and one after another they fill up a wall with unicorns or roman soldiers or whatever. Like painting, just as colorful and detailed as one, but coming from everywhere. It’s just so. I mean, my God. Jesus. My God. God damn. Jesus.”

The old man was getting a little tired, but figured Lisa couldn’t help herself. He bit a big chunk out of his bread and chewed pensively, listening piously to the woman’s enthusiasm. He tried to feel it too.

“Jesus,” she said. “My god. Jesus Christ.”

“Shut the fuck up already,” said Margaret. “Who gives a shit about rocks and fuckin whatever. Damn.”

Lisa shut up. Sloan had stopped pouting and was now fiddling with the cuff of his blazer, loose threads being tugged and flicked or chewed on. He eyed a new hole in at the edge of it, and penetrated it with his index finger. “Hm.” he said. He wiggled his finger inside.

“Last night some naked african guys somewhere in africa made a drum and beat it for hours before going off and hunting rabbits in the dessert while fully clothed American salesmen on vacation stared into their dark eyes and saw something like their mother and became frightened and ran off with all the money and the african guys laughed and ate their rabbits with brown sauce and had a conversation as best they could with their inferior african brains,” the television said, matter-of-factly.

“I would like very much,” said Hubert, “to live in a far away island where I could raise a family without the displeasure of having them fuck anyone without my permission.”

Somehow this rubbed Sloan the wrong way. “I’d fuck your whole family” said Sloan, bitterly, “in front of you. I’d kill them and fuck them again. I don’t care.”

He was thinking of his clocks again. Poor sensitive Sloan.

Hubert turned deep blood red all over. “You motherfucker,” he said in a dangerous whisper. “You cocksucking motherfucker. Did you just. Oh my fucking god.”

He began to breath heavily, and deep dark wrinkles could be seen now under his eyes, as if his eyeballs were casting shadows. Suddenly he was screaming and pounding his fist with loud booming crashes onto tables and walls, breaking glasses and scaring the pets and children.

The whole room woke into bloodshot awareness, all eyes on the rampaging Hubert, who was at this point heading towards Sloan.

Sloan was slumped on a bench chewing his cuff. He was thinking about all the clocks he had made and would never see again. Tomorrow he would’ve had to go back and do it again, but Hubert fixed that when he used the nails he hadn’t clipped for at least a week to dig into the flesh on the side of Sloan’s neck and rip out a nice sized piece of skin, deep enough to loose the jugular blood in a magnificent spray. Hubert dug a couple finger into the gap and ripped more, tossing the flesh aside so as to rip again. the right side of sloan’s neck became a giant red hole pouring blood onto the ground.

The old man was outraged. So close to the end of his life, so close to having to piece his life together into a package he was willing to send off in a box, and here was a guy soiling his last page with bodily fluids, with blood. “What do you think you’re doing? How could you do that!” he screamed. “The poor boy was just angry and sad! He had a bad day at work is all! You asshole!”

Lisa was crying loudly behind the old man. She held onto his robe at the shoulder, and peered over at Hubert, who’s starched collar shirt was completely stained red. She trembled.

Hubert panted and stared with sleepy eyes at the old man and Lisa, like a giant bear with a bloody mouth, carcass at his feet, staring at another opportunity to feed. He considered. The blood on his hand began to cool, and Sloan ceased to leak. Tendrils of Sloan’s juice spread on the tile flooring, breaking into long branches and rolling streams of scarlett across the room.

Margaret, all this time having stood observantly, chewing gum, polishing a set of glassware like a waitress at a diner, blew a bubble and popped it coyly, as if she were the coolest bitchgodess on the planet, and said “What a bunch of bullshit. Hahahaha!” Then she walked away, and the lights went out. No one knew what to do, or felt like figuring it out. They all pretended to be asleep.

——

Probably written around 2007

I would have liked to say hello and
goodbye in the same sweet breath, the dead
girl says. I was cheated blind out of
happiness, the old man sighs. I’m thinking
of starting up a band, the rocker declares.
There are certain places where the light
is soft and easily breakable, the magician
hopes. I spent my last dollar in the world
on cough medicine, the father realizes.
I used to hide in the cool under the bed
whenever there was a thunderstorm, the
birthday boy recalls. I pray for my mother’s
health every night, the seated woman
muses. I’m a jerk when I don’t get my way,
the cigarette vendor confesses. I’m ashamed
of the fact that I feel no pity for the weak,
the lost princess confesses. I discovered
sex at the age of twelve, the classroom
confesses. I pray for armageddon each
and every night, the quiet child confesses.
It’s hard to believe death is actually possible,
the wind says. Life is nothing special, the
dead girl replies.

morning
went to sleep
woke up tired
brushed teeth
opened eyes
breakfast
window check: snow
computer glow
cigarette
music
19th century lit.
20th century lit.
cigarette
19th century lit.
window check: snow
afternoon
lunch
music
cigarette
music
computer glow
computer glow
computer glow
computer glow
music
evening
cigarette
dinner
television
couched silence
purple sunlight
night
window check: snow
window check: cars/people
19th century lit.
television
computer glow
resisting sleep
resisting sleep
resisting sleep
sleep

my father my father burns
my fifthgrade brain
onto his so that it
twitches when he
twitches
cocks the rifle wanting me to
feel the
stiffness
and warm iron density
my ugly hair
in tags
blooming off
the side
of my face
eyes me and his
acne scars glow like
pots of oiled
lava
deposits this
thin metal
math equation
inside my upper arm
in second grade
that equals a cartoon mallet
smashing my mamas face
until the blood squirts
with a sharp brow
eyes me hotly
because hair is in my eyes
not in slick needles
bent back like
everything in prayer

on cold nights i stay with him
he stands in my closet naked sweating
i bring him sandwiches and he spits
his hair in greased onyx curls
a mouth full of a thousand
transluscent needles
a wound in his throat

i stand in the red steam of his face
my finger prodding the empty bag of his eyesocket
he snaps my head back
and he screeches he screeches hallelujah
a gigavolt of hallelujah
and an eye running down the side of my neck over the blood

my life has flowered like a bruise
with all the heat in the world
the man in my closet
smiles and drips from his teeth
and he takes a step
shaking behind a curtain naked
illuminated in the heat of the televsion
i shake towards the light, my face blank and wanting
my words stinking with sweat
then an applause from the TV
the old man tells me who I am but first
it’s time for the commercial break

i play the dishveled poet
reeling in amniotic fluid in a sack in times square
everyone watches me as I suffocate for lack of placenta
i play travis bickle’s mohawk
i brush with colgate and kill the president
every muscle must be tight
i am not hamlet but mel gibson as hamlet
in beaming iambic pentameter with a corpse at my ear
i play the suburban drug store employee
handing the laxative to that happy nigger
with the bleeding assholes instead of eyes
so happy i could give him a rimjob

my head has collapsed
i have no blood
there’s just dust in this body
i lay at night like a pile of sand
and i hear such a hiss from the sky

—-

For the record my biological father is virtually a non-entity. I was never abused. This poem is just a ‘pataphore or something.

EDIT: this couldn’t have been written in 2007. 2004 more likely.

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