I Made a Pretty Suit of Clothes and Fell in Love With It
Shoes hung by their laces from the telephone wires,
across the street in the city which breathes asthmatically
in the sweltering heat of August;
4am in the morning
threading through sepsis streets
with my pockets full of crumpled receipts.
In the cavernous buildings
people are sleeping next to each other completely alone,
walled off by photographs, sauces in their refrigerators
that speak different languages; streets like a current
where we all swim together
Streetlamps splash the sidewalk and my shadow in the
light is sweating, mosquitoes bite it and I am the one
whose skin breathes lumps.
When I get to my apartment
maybe it will feel like home. But I guarantee
there will be cortisone cream-
The pictures on the wall
will watch us sleep;
You and I will build a castle
of blankets and dead skin cells-
I promise I’ll change the sheets one of these days-
You will mumble “poetry is about language”
before you close your eyes;
I will let used furniture dealers sing us to sleep
we will entwine our arms and legs
and dream entirely different dreams.
Pilgrims
They wend their way, ergonomic travel bags laden with treasures;
iPads, gold watches, electric toothbrushes, kidney stones-
the gilded trinkets of their age-
along the high mountain passes, the trees shining under the stars
rustling in the breeze,
a journey of a thousand leagues on foot
young old healthy sick;
not all even Catholic;
footstep upon footstep to the old stone church
still standing upon its ancient foundations
in the windswept capital of old Galicia-
her expatriate pilgrims of old christening their lord in blood in silver-
and now they unshoulder their packs, combing matted hair,
light their candles as they kneel unsurely-
“Anachronistic” is the word
-hop heads in line for clean needles
jittery in anticipation of blissful forget;
The 10th grade Art class standing before the gleaming marble of David;
A sea of red flowers, black hair, saris of many hues
like tuna in a net up to their knees
in the shit-stinking Ganges as ember ancestors float by;
Or dusty men in overalls, children too hungry to cry,
you can see their faces in sepia prints
in the National Geographic on the doctor’s waiting room table;
You check your phone in line for the bathroom
in a crowded bar on New Year’s
with the miles of the Plains unraveling through the window of
a ’98 Corolla- Once, you thought you saw a buffalo
but Jesus, you were tired-
Tattooed, young, swaddled in winter’s unwanted scarves
(original owners too uncouth to know their value)
standing in the wind whipping of Brooklyn outside
a club far too small to hold all these devotees
to whichever mustachioed swami blesses the throng tonight;
Pockets unleavened of rings, jewels and bills;
Coins tossed in some forgotten well
(El Dorado is undiscovered because it is in our hearts,
or, more accurately, our guts)
by crowds, insulated human-meat seeking, seeking
-always seeking-
arms outstretched with eyes closed
that elusive eternal thing;
We awake the next morning, rub our swollen eyes,
Wonder if we missed the moment,
and go on with our lives.
