i am alienated.
a wasp penetrates a piece of wood.
i walk through the man’s house, a specter.
his two sons. his pretty wife. luxury abounding.
(there is no way I will ever have this).
i become ugly and deformed.
i join the ranks.
in an elevator i see my reflection.
the ship is leaving for the promised land.
At the meeting the women shriek across the room at each other. The men…I get up, walk out and slam the door. It reverberates in the high empty room.
On the street is the city. Everything is different now. There is a gigantic Nordstrom, that is the same. surrounding this are plaza upon plaza of circuses. Rides, clowns cavort in manic sepia nostalgia. Suddenly shooting the pop- pop of bullets flying what happened to these people? There is a crowd of people all turned insane. they put something in the drinks.
Pacing around the concrete are the barking men who scream with bloody mouths meanwhile an alley of black stone buildings with black mirror windows occasionally a plant on a tiny veranda or on top of the air conditioner. Blank facades the windows miniature
“have you ever been inside the buildings with black windows?” we walk on a terraced landing and I watch all these odd new constructions jammed into every available space, compact pressurized dwellings
“yes,” she lies.
“you never have. Are you a tour guide?”
She staggers along the cobblestones in a sparkle mini dress. Stilettos.
“yes,” she said. “haven’t you figured that out?” I get a light for my cig from her device, which looks like the space station.
Someone is calling my name on the street. It is a young black guy with dreads. I don’t know him but he knows me. We hug. He is out here hustling. It is so good to have someone who knows me.
At the shoreline, across the river, is another borough. The buildings glow in the setting sun against a Dutch blue sky. A man with a hose on the opposite shore hits me with water. On this side, Hasidic boys are going to school. Black outfits and yarmulkes in the sideways light.
We climb the wall (new yorkers are used to adversity) and drop down into the shrine community. I see Albert there. He has no more dreads.
“I am very serene here,” he says. “no coffee. only tea. coffee drives the vices,” he takes a long hit on his vape.
“uh-huh.”
(there was the combat boot store that had Converse with a zipped-on sole, flayed tie-dye rainbow pattern $97.00).
i end up in a ground floor place in Provincetown with a calliope ride in the
living room and an emphysemic orange cat.
the ride goes round and round. a plastic-windowed door where i at last find
some kind of deadbolt. the plastic window shows to a crowded hallway and then
the street.
Bowie is there, making songs. i film him then i am pregnant with his baby.
(he wears a lot of glitter).
disconsolate, i walk Commercial Street that is blocked off by country-style
furniture. a book of poems concerning angels appears in my hand..
i put it down.
everything costs.
i come home to my cheap room, shed layers of clothing to arrange things in
some kind of order.
(seems i have a lot of shovels piled
haphazardly in the place).
the caliope goes round and round.
Rough Western men come in: drinking.
i am drinking.
distraught and confused, i search for the receipt of my return ticket out
of here.
We stand in the heavy rain in the night in the black water parking lot.
“This isn’t legal,” Lois says.
“Yeah, I know.”
The store is having a SALE. inside, employes appear as pitch outlines, backlit by anemic bulbs.
“probly gonna sell it as a second,” the guy tells me and smiles, showing slimed teeth.
I stand behind glass as he crosses main street, his beard partly gray, his part gray. Two plants have joined the elephant.
My flower is gone.
The silver man
Sat on the stage
Pulled one leg up to his chest
And watched the crowd
The set a freight train
With no brakes
Screaming down
The mountain.
My skin so dark
Next to his
(sometimes he is quiet).
they came and took my manuscripts
my notebooks all super-size they took me
to the Plaza Hotel.
but just before, Lois and i had done our shopping.
we were all set for the week and they took me away.
(the old man glowers at me).
i am not allowed to see her.
they give me a giant bag of apples
that hangs down to the floor plus
my Plaza card.
a demented elevator jockey
hits the button
he is blond and like the Joker.
“oh no,” he says in mock horror, “watch this!” and he
cranks the door open at 180 mph.
the boy next to me shaking with fear.
we rocket up.
and I am on the floor of the rock star’s
tour group. everything in the hallways
is very dark as the women complain in
low husky voices about the insufficiencies
in the accommodations.
they separated me from my wife
all in the name of something in the manuscript.
i tell you, they will not find anything.
(the scientist Ari Lieman).
Bill. i heard the lady with the hanging
gray hair under her visor go: “hey Bill—do we
have any more strawberry cream cheese?”
i love you Bill.
the tall girl went in and she got blood
on the door handle she thought that was
funny. long legs she had, in black
sweats. she looked like an athlete.
his hanging brown hair.
i stand with Lorraine and we talk about
never growing up. he is there he sees me
i catch him watching only once.
he’s good.
the baby screams as he walks past.
everyone is in a good mood, including him.
in his white hoodie with tattoo patterns
he walks slowly out into the pouring rain.
that section on the courtyard
with closed-in hallway
baby-blue cat bowl
empty.
red-wing blackbird.
little windows to the parking lot.
matted carpet floor.
i will cover my arms
with pictures of you.
your jeans too long
dragging down the sidewalk
of the ugly town.
on the public conveyance: South Bronx of the 70’s outside.
what is this?
“No, no,” the man says as he opens the window to a view of a berm.
“Don’t let me die without a view to the sky.”
I roll him over
“Look”, I say, “up the mountainside. At the very top you can see a piece of sky.”
***
We decipher the jewelry, red- beaded with pyramidal stones. He seems to know the key.
Up a series of pallets in the City of the Dead to a barn door.
Slide it aside. It is a movie theater for the damned who sit inside munching popcorn in the blackness.
At the yard sale of the apocalypse is a porcelain couch shaped like an elephant. Buildings go by. How could this squalor have been transported? “Just make sure”, he says, “to get an apartment that lets in the light. Some of them don’t, you know.”
she’s going on about this ice cream hall (which I could never afford).
My ripping heart. There are dwellings at the end of the earth. He is in one. The woman teaches kindergarten and we have all come down with The Plague. I am sick at heart.
You know what to do. You only have to do it.
Green pills and kicking garbage cans. Dishwashing jobs and the overwhelming urge to be with him.
“you’re not sick. You just need to decide.”
Houses at the end of the earth: some shaped like gas storage facilities, aluminum-clad at the terminus of sodded runways. A beagle lives on the top floor. The world is ending. Ocean twinkling. The rich guys over here and the room for the dogs.
He is there. I want to throw it all away. Then I don’t. “you know what to do,” says the woman.
Be myself? Be someone else.
“I remember when you and Jeff walked with guitars and gave to the needy.”
He is there. Waiting for me.
mkrashes 