If answers were trees,
this would be a desert.
This is a desert,
so I will conjure a flood like so:
a flood is coming, desert;
a flood of answers. You ask:
Will they be correct? I respond:
Will it matter if they are not
as long as this desert might bloom
in the aftermath of the flood?
These are questions, of course, and
we have no answers for them.
It’s killing me to hold back the flood.
It’s killing something in me that, perhaps,
ought to wither
and blow away.
O
squat full
of masturbators!
I have entered
either an undiscovered
ward of hell or
a poetry reading.
O
evidence of
my mistaken path,
an entire life devoted to
the twinge given by
a good word! Silence
is honestly more
potent — see how a silent body
in a noisy room collects
all the spark
to itself? I’ve been
a damn poet so long,
I had forgotten
what a useless thing that is
to be until,
upon entering this seediness,
everything became clear
and I lost
my appetite
for myself.
O,
the tawdry tragedy —
the open unnecessary question —
why not stop?
As if
I could stop,
this close to closure.
As if
the light and the sad floor
could deter me.
As if
the better words of my betters
could cow me from failure anymore.
So,
I say, move over, all;
I will squat again
and what will follow
will be what always follows.
Son, don’t even try
to clown here — not when
your wife’s made
of cuckoo feathers
and talks in porcupine quills,
not when you’ve got
those two poison-dart kids
with grouch bag eyes that match
their limb-licking attitudes —
son,
you carry your relations,
and I will carry mine.
At least when I am with my lover
and I lower my mouth onto hers,
I know I won’t come up
choking on the taste
of anyone else. Can you
say the same? This bar’s mad full
of lips whose flavor
you might recognize
if you did a little research,
but I digress —
stop clowning, son;
you’re under the big top now
and not even close
to being top banana.
Dark Matter 