Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems

The Beast & Burden: Seven Improvisations

The Beast &Burden: Seven Improvisations I The Vicious Fear threads its song through the bones. Syringe, stylus, or pearl-handled stiletto? He's fallen in love with the Spanish garrote; trailing a blue feather over the beast's belly on down between his toes. Night-long laughter leaks from under the sheet-metal door. Blackout. He sits under a floodlight mumbling that a theory of ants will finally deal with us, & reading My Lord Rochester to a golden sky over Johannesburg, a stray dog beside him, Sirius licking his combat boots. 2 The Decadent Herr Scalawag, Esq. dances the come-on in Miss Misery's spike heels. He does a hellcat high step stolen from Josephine Baker, holding a fake flower like a flimsy excuse. A paper rose, poppy odor of luck & lust. Look, he's placed himself upon the night's maddening wheel, reduced from flesh I23 from I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head into the stuff dreams are made of. his smile working like a time-released Mickey Finn. Hum-job, 3 The Esoteric Unable to move the muse with narcotic sweet talk, he muscles in on someone's grief. He's on the glassy edge of his stepping stone, a ghost puppet stealing light from the real world. With a wild guess for spine, a face half-finished on the blind lithographer's desk. Canticle, cleftsong & heartriff stolen out of another's mouth, effigy's prologue & bravado. He fingers his heirloom Bible with rows of exed out names & dried roses between yellow pages, searching for an idiom based on the color of his eyes. 4 The Sanctimonious She wakes to find herself washing the beast's wounds. The Woman at the Well with bare feet in compost, emissary to the broken. She leans her body against this born loser, her hip into his ungodly mercy, her hair sways with his breathing, her mind intent on an hourglass on a stone shelf. Bronze green. By now, as they rock in each other's embrace in the cold half-light, I24 N EON V ERN A C U L A R she knows every doubtful wish inside his housebroken head. 5 The Vindictive Smiley, the jailer hums the bowstring's litany. His pale voice breaks into a bittersweetness, his face no more than a half-page profile from a wanted poster. The iron door eases open. Blameful mask, memory's notorious white glove unstitches the heartstring. His leaden stare tabulates the spinal column like a throw of the dice. Satisfied defeat has taken root, he smiles down at the prisoner on the cell floor, his touch burning like candlelight & crab lice through black hair. Wagner's Ring ofthe Nibelung plays on radio across the corridor & the smell of mignonette comes through the bars. He tightens his mystical sleepholda carbuncle of joy underneath his kiss. 6 Exorcism The beast's charisma unravels the way a smoke flower turns into dust. Hugging the shadow of a broken wing beauty & ugliness conspire. Forced to use his weight perfectly against himself, the beast is transmogrified into the burden & locked in wooden stocks braced by a cross to bear. o how geranium-scented melancholia works on the bodyI25 from I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head smell of ether, gut string trailing lost memories. Detached from whatever remains, one note of bliss still burns his tongue. 7 Epilogue: Communion The beast & the burden lock-step waltz. Tiger lily & screwworm, it all adds up to this: bloodstar & molecular burning kiss. Conception. The grooved sockets slip into each other, sinking into pain, a little deeper into earth's habit. Tongue in juice meat, uncertain conversion, cock & heart entangled, ragweed in bloom. A single sigh of glory, the two put an armlock on each other-matched for strength, leg over leg. Double bind & slow dance on ball-bearing feet. Arm in arm & slipknot. Birth, death, back to back-silent mouth against the other's ear. They sing a duet: e pluribus unum. The spirit hinged to a single tree. No deeper color stolen from midnight skythey 're in the same shape, as meat collects around a bone, almost immortal, like a centaur's future perfect dream. I26 N EON V ERN A C U L A R ...