Being Serious, and: Vestigial

Being Serious

welcome my irate tonguepushing the fruit further in my mouth

the universal sign for helpI’ve forgotten

no foghorn in the desert notime stamp on my exit no

it’s like looking througha small window—

grimed over by the years—into other people’s lives

if you want a new songif you want the next best thing

set your watch to eveningtime and be flammable be

goddamn beautiful & explosivefuck your mystical light

and piano music in the elevatorI say fuck the avant-garde

my dear I don’t know what you meanthe way you Ouija dream

I mean I want to feel youto wash your feet in silver tongues

and soft focusexplosive and goddamn beautiful

Vestigial

It takes a lot to make me cold.

I run like a flooded river.It takes a lot to make me coldand I hold heat in my hands.

I drip like a busted faucet.

My cartridge is rusted.

You lie in the grass like a snakewithout fangs.

I’m a lime pit. I breathe your bodieslike match smoke. I turn them putridand pretty.

It takes a lot to make me coldand I’m old as a dry river.

Your future is a confluence—always eventual, rivers meeting,an unbroken line in the sand.

Like a snake in the grassyou suck milk from the earth.

My waters, my hands, are angelic.Black soot in the flue of a fireplace.

My proper place is in your hands.I boil like an unwatched potpressed against your belly.

What’s pressed in palms?

I ate the smiles from your facemy pink carnation.

Coins, prayers, dried flowers?

All rivers have their devils, baptizedsame as you and I.

It takes a lot to make me colddevil as I am and lust-worthy.

Like a snake with its head screwed on backward.

I’ll tongue-cut you, whittle youdown to nothing. My sharp stick,my moth print.

My hands in the pit of love:

lime-shorn, bone-white,more flesh than a delicatessen.

It takes a lot to make me cold

and then them waters flowing outof me steam and curdle and spit

like a snake in the grass, under elm or pine.

What’s in a name?

Bowels flutter like a coin purse.

I curse your singing sweetlyand sweetly sing a curse.

I want to shrink your head, little acorn,until you come apart and be mine.

The water stings my eyesand slips me something for the pain.

My skin covers me—like a shadow—from the rain.

What once was there now is gone.And from the empty space comessilt the color of gold and blood.

Under the birdless sky you bloom in the coldwater and land awkwardly embracing, twisting, wrung out

like sin in religious hands—what’s pressed in the palms?

Wetness.

Nothing.