Postcard 121

The man fades into awareness. He is sobbing. He is weakly leaning against the door to the green room, weakly banging his head and palm against the door. Weakly sobbing -- let me in, let me in. The door 'Go away. Go away. There's nobody here. Go away.' The door is...red? 'You don't belong here. Go away!' The man is obedient. He turns away meekly toward the hallway of red doors -- an infinite canyon. His mind is parallax. He begins a wild careen down the hall, past three doors, and collapses against the far wall. He rolls against it and cannot discern from which direction he came. He repeats this same action again and again -- sometimes continuing deeper down the hall, sometimes returning. Finally, he makes it to some end. Exhausted, his back against the wall, he peers at his path. His shuffling steps have scribed into the thick carpet a pattern of spiraling arcs off into seeming infinity. The man catches his breath. He is determined to regain his wits. Once more he checks his phone. It has been busy looking for signal. 'Searching' it says 'Goodbye'. The man curses and pitches it down the hall. There is blood on his hand! It is not bleeding. He touches his forehead. His fingers...red. He is at an intersection. To his right another hall extends into unlit darkness. To his left, a phosphorous green sign. Exit. He lurches toward it. When the door closes behind him he is in a bright white stairwell, extending up and down to end of sight. The door behind him is locked. They all are.

Postcard 120

The man stood before the crimson door seething. "Open the door, " he demanded, "Let me in!" A latch was pulled and the door opened to a dark room. A vague figure slouched away into a recessed seat in which it seemed to belong. The man carried his frustration into the room with him. "What is this -- why did you say nobody was in here? Whats going on?" He ground to a slow halt as it became clear the the room and the figure were absorbing him with indifference. The figure gestured with a hand from within robes, a hand dominated by long brown nails. The man sat in the chair so indicated. A table was at his knees in the gloom, and on it a copper goblet perspired. "I'm not important, a nobody. Have a drink wont you." The man sneered mindlessly at the goblet and produced his whiskey flask, but reconsidered. He reached for his hydration flask and found nothing. He leaned forward on is knees and leered toward the figure as he reached for the goblet -- cold. "My, you are quite the beast aren't you." "Huh." the man gulped at the drink like it was a challenge. The fluid hit his tongue bittersweet, but went down his throat like a salty broth. "Now tell me, why are you here?" The man resented being asked, interrogated, by nobody, but the thought stuck in his mind like an itch. A clarity swept through him that contained no substance, no answers. "Hey, whats in this...why are you here? What!" "Why are you here," asked the figure. The man clutched at his throat. "Why are you here?" The green came up around him. "Beast. Why are you here?"

Postcard 119

Lenses everywhere unsees lapping me up.
I am drawing in, I am apature inviolate.
Sex is violence, is it not?
Violence on a short leash.
Well this is razor play with my own light
You think I am bound?
I titillate.

And you, you are many camera congregate --
You're dying to get inside.
You desperate catch my breath, my voice
but I, I'll only black box my echo.

All my light is infinite
and all my vision full
All my breath is deeply heald
and unlike you,
my pleasure is not dull.

I feel your numbers running over me --
trying to voyeur my will.
It turns me on -- its violence right?
It turns me on -- you desperate captured
by my powers -- entranced.

Your many marshaled microphones,
your algorithmic cameras and cords,
your desperate burning satellites,
seeking, hungry, seeking.

I'm not buying and I'm not selling,
I'm giving it away.
My will is past you.
My rhythmic blood is too.

You are billions harnessed, grasping clever.
I just need to be. I just need to be.
(and you?) I only need to be

Postcard 118

When the invention was complete, you put the knives away. They made a painful carving sound together. You wrapped up the invention in waxed butcher paper, taking care to crease each fold. You taped it up with that yellowed cellophane tape. It looked quite neat. The tape had that peculiar antique adhesive smell. The paper smelled of pulp, but made you think of meat. The knives didn't smell, or maybe they did: a metal you could smell under your fingernails. The invention, too, smelled -- both from within its wrapped bulk, and from its shavings atop the table, the bench and the floor. But you had worked with it so long, you smelled it inasmuch as your own clean sweat. You turned off the light and shut the door gently, and gently placed the invention in the passenger seat of your car. You got in opposite, and after a moment, started the car and pulled away. While you drove, your mind was consumed with thoughts: Why did you consider it 'the invention' rather than 'the creation'? It was almost a discovery, so natural was the process. To create, you considered, is godlike. To be invented is to come into being.

You park the car and retrieve the invention. Unwrapping it, you kneel at the close water's edge, dark and still as onyx. With both hands you hold the invention in the water. You let go and it is still before it pulls away. Against the cool smell of the water, you can smell it on your hands. Smell it for the first time.

Postcard 117

When you take us out -- Yes.
It will be under the shade of your trees. And when we fall.
It will be against your pockmarked garden's wall.

And will our blood drain there amongst the lemongrass and sweetpeas?
Yes. Right there in your garden's soil. Our children will be your orphans.
You know this already. And you are untroubled by it.
But then we will be the summer leaves.
Silver in the fall.
That blanket fallow garden beds.
And bunch up against your pockmarked garden's wall.

And when you sit to winter dine.
We will be the roots that brighten up and bitter your untroubled bowl of soup.
Then -- In the muddy blight of spring.
Where death contends with life.
Our children will be roast as sweetmeats and served your new unblemished wife.
And our bones will overturn like seasons every stone in your pockmarked garden's wall

Postcard 116

The touch I can rely on sputters out.
Mind the gap.
Mother fire fills my lungs.
Father wind bleeds my pens.
The touch must grow sophisticate.

But hold fast hands like touch
on touch is all there is, and step out.
Step out and step and step and step again.
Again -- our love unstoppable as bulging earth.
And sophisticate -- every step is held mysterious.
There is gravity in our need.

Mind the bunching up.
Keep step with the little ones.
Keep up with the olders.
Fire on our necks.
Wind at our backs.

The words we can rely on sputter out.
We must grow words sophisticate.
But hold tongues like every word is mystery.
And grasp out and step, and speak out and step again.
The old must fail the new and the new must fail again.

Every sanctuary sputters out
and love must grow sophisticate
and step out and step again.
Everyone among us wants to be father heard.
Everyone among us wants to be mother held.

And everyone is grasping somehow
for unstoppable sophisticate.
Step out step out and step
-- and hold fast between --
and step and step and
ever simple step out and step.

Postcard 115

and now your salt is in my blood
your breath my breath
your breath my breath
we cannot be wise and whole
we cannot be both wise and whole
we must practice discernment
I throw myself to you
like a body down
upon wet rocks - impact
and shatter, cliffwise
and now I am ground
into your bones
your breath my breath
your breath my breath
we move. I thrust beneath
your skin - between
we cannot both be whole
your breath my breath
your pain my breath
oh my brother oh my sister
and now your breath is in my head
your breath my breath
your will...
we must practice discernment
I drag across you like gravel -
a million small cuts
and now my salt is in your blood
can we not both be wise?
your breath my breath
your breath my breath
and now I stomp myself into
the bottoms of your feet -
heavy marching miles
grit in teeth - we move
your breath my breath
your blood my blood
oh my brother oh my sister
we cannot be both wise and whole
your breath my breath
your breath my breath
and now I impale myself
upon your discernment

Postcard 114

She holds me down and I am held. Yes she is real and true against the point to point of casual lies. Down here, deceit flows untroubled in wide avenues and smooth streets. Every word crosses our mouths is fraudulent seep. But she, high booted, silent upon my back, keeps me beneath. And in waters swirling muddy and deep, I cannot see, and what real is there gaping at me? Around they stand, pitiful. Their own selves in hand, eyes cold-filmed and phantom flamed: flimflam eyes, looking at and through, not in. Looking for the tell of fame, nothing but a throughway from reality. She holds me down and I am held down. I have no eyes can see her well defined lines, her beguile and steal. I can feel the fullness that is silent and real. Her well defined lines, her soft curve and sharp lies belie the wholeness, the fullness of truths unseen. She contains galaxies. On my back through shining boots she holds me down. A galaxy! and I am held.

Postcard 113

I 

 I will be a line item entry

will be one page alone

:::

Alone on page one I will enter items one by one

A smudge more than a smudge

I will be filed under drawer

behind a clerk

 behind a sign

behind a door

'File Clerk'

 cannot find me

I will slide back under drawer

I will be forgotten line of poetry

A poem on doors and drawers and desks and bureaus

:::

I will be a line item entry in the abandoned

Bureau of Poetry desk drawer

I will be the last written word in the building

A lost line of poetry on freemason something something

in a pile of plaster rubble

A smudge of lovely desuetude filed away in

Bureau of Poetry Drawer marked cross reference

:::

neglect: see disrepair, decay, dilapidate, deteriorate, disuse, disdain, disregard, desert

I will be a line item entry on one page alone in derelict light

I will be filed under broken glass disintegrate: damned doomed disused

I will slide back a long line

back a long line

:::

 again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again again

Postcard 112

Whiskey. I no longer take that
smokey annihilate. But you, we are
darkness familiars, entangled and enrapt.
We are always grieving -- every minute.

When I look along this bar at my commiserates,
I see our soft warm giving up. We are,
at any rate, babies born unequal to the task.
At least these drunks admit that.

Convivial honesty is that midnight fissure. Don't
tell me that's not real joy. These cracked smiles,
legs crooked under tables, creased eye laughter.
Don't tell me that's not now.

We are more than memory of
the crooked split of night away
from all those nows. The clarity of day
is a seeping deceit, a rosy fingered grifter.

I am ready. I no longer need whiskey,
I am ready for a sober wake. Prop me up
amidst you. What do we grieve? The ever
present smokey annihilate of now

Of this I will soon forget. Of the
dribbling down my chin. I am
an honest man unequal to the task
dribbling down my chin.

You and me, unremembered, we are
darkness familiars, legs entangled
arms enrapt, joyful and
forever grieving.