two: Kaddish

Tag
best friend
funniest person
known forever
absolutely amazing
a bit of a weirdo
smarty pants
good music
look up to
just because
used to be close
spotty freak
missed muchly
pretty eyes
far far far far away

new friend
electric fence
bee hive
party animal
glam babe
social butterfly
coach or teacher
a boy
a GIRL
lives nearby
met travelling
bus pass
shares your first initial
gemini

the rain beating on the window
the window beating on the rain

beneath the white sheet
fear like a galloping horse

flooded the floor
movement in the foreground

movement in the background
line of no variation

knowledge of change
leave the gardens to decay

irises in snowlight
and it was snowing

the room was full of white light
where the windows were broken

don't believe that when this
switch is turned on

electric light
illuminates

sister
fragment of a wall

fragment of a figure
your other lover

by the bend in the river
the place the river enters the sea

She runs from the room. The sky is an elaborate system of scars & failed trees. She kicks open the door & jumps from the tower. The bed is unmade, the trees make curious ticking noises. “Very unlike a clock’s.” She pauses on her way to the tower to wear shoes. She cannot stop sleeping, whatever the situation was.

Close beneath the sky are the names of God. They are difficult to hear, for the noise of the clicking clocks. You’ll not learn her name from this, puts a needle to the flame. Rats gather among pools of salty honey. Her hands dance, she takes the cigarette from a flame. She cannot sleep, though looking down from the pit she sees a cinema melting. Her eyebrows are a motto of moths.

She is perplexed by uncanny correspondences between the map & the city where she is dead. She laughs, once, quietly so as not to wake herself.

There is a storm blowing, terrifyingly still. She gets on hands & knees, to crawl the last few feet to the top of the tower. The city hovers above her, stinking & bejewelled.

Fucking fucking near where the streets drown•shakes into jeans, hurries into the room•cameras listen, blindly, to shimmering laughter. The names of God run from the room, they carry drowning suitcases & circumstantial murderers.

She lives in the room as still as the storm which continues in melted down cinema. Her hands have detached themselves from their suitcase, & follow the poetry of maps to the ends of the.

She runs from her room in the sky. She burns the bed & the door & pins a curse to every tree. It is dead inside the bed, her hands dance on the pillows she pulls the needle from the flames. Shakes into jeans, down to the shops. Thieving time. Cameras watch, deafly, fucking fucking where the streets near drowned.

2 texts

1) They gathered at the location of dispersal. Delirious apples redirected crime via immodest science. It became irrelevant as police cars & their wailings faded into her dream.

& in her dream she sleeps on buttercups, the river above her head the stars at her feet

When she viewed herself again on the perpetual news she desired herself as an abstraction desires salted bread. 1 day it will be the weekend oppressively. She said goodbye as though it was possible to mean anything.

2) But our patience is wearing thin.

In the call center, the cubicle is bamboo colored. I have pinned a post card of a Victorian lady to it. I look at her and she looks back. She tells me that she’s dead. I tell her I know. I ask if she likes her ghost home on my wall. She says it’s as good as any.

All over the room, there are voices murmuring and tinkling. Although I know the faces of the speakers, I prefer not to look. All of us give the same information over and over and as long as it remains the same information, the voices stay cool, quiet and shady. Only when we are made to stray from this do our voices start to frazzle, to bray and break with impatience. I don’t like this effect of the outside seeping in because this is a heaven of a kind. It is dull but then again so is heaven.

In other heavens… a light box where he reaches me. A radio sound accompanies whether or not we can hear it. There is an attic room, a bedstead and a washstand, a pearl colored slip underneath the pillow, a lamp, a cigarette and a pack of playing cards. There were foot prints in the dust that led you or maybe messages rolled up and left in your pocket. It might have been a page from an old diary that, once treated with lemon juice and held up to the light, revealed a map of the ether. He is an artist maybe, a farmer, or a Victorian lady driving a truck.

Yehe shlama rabba min shmayya.

Her ghost has entered my blood stream swelling and bruising my legs. They ache with nightshades, with poisons. I take pictures of them in the dark. I take pictures of my still lively breasts and of my face all withered with insomnia. Earlier, I had thought to leave my face suspended in the black plastic window of the bus. I had thought to do this but must have left the bus too soon to stare at waxy fruit in bins. In the 99 cent store, I saw two dolls suspended from the ceilings as if they had been hung. Even in representation, bodies are alarmingly expendable. I buy salted food from the market and preserves and carry them home.

I sleep, or don’t sleep as it may be, with books I have carefully chosen for this purpose. I have books of philosophy and autobiographies of old singers. All of them are dead, this is important; Hegel and Ethel Merman, Heidegger and Mary Garden. I hold them above my head as high as I possibly can so that the texts loom large. I hold them until my arms start to burn and shake with the effort. Something like my people have done on Saturdays for a long time, parading scrolls and kissing them like madmen

veshirata tushbehata venehemata

the mouth of the statue of liberty
is 3 feet wide

man running backwards
over the brooklyn bridge

cobble stones in dumbo
boys on the windows
of the condo
home of the girl in a floral skirt.

it is based on a grid system
right angles
some squares are green

courtesy, professionalism, respect

Take a r. on tilbury towards the prom
go 2 blocks. cadman plaza west
turn r. half a block to clark st
turn l. 2 blocks to henry st
turn r. there is peas and pickles.

68 jay st bar down in dumbo with the bridge shaking

conversation
if you ate all they gave you
you would have a heart attack within half an hour.

sign (good design)
CHOKING VICTIM

he says i said read the read me file butt head.

i want to be arrested by her
the one with the haircut
the hot cop


one way
ONE WAY STREET


look at the way the paint has been rubbed off the brick. nice shapes there


this is bergen street on the f train

future bloom

tracks


like tiles
coney island bound


avenue X
neptune ave.


like

next stop is.