the janitors of existence

My friend says we don't have breakdowns, only
breakthroughs. I think
the operative word here must be
break, something related to the present tense form
of broken. Either way
the breakthrough
is a breaking through
of the bottom.
After all,
the bucket empties
whether you kick it through
or down
doesn't it? Either way, a lot of liquids
to deal with. I think the operative word here must be
mop, with all that you've got to do in life;
I wonder if we are just the janitors
of our existences, mopping
up the excess fluid
or simply
spreading it around, depending
somewhat
on the nature of the pay.

I climbs the ladder
twisting away from the wall


I cleans the adder, sets him loose
to crawl the bedsheets of the bathroom stall


in daylight broad as the sun
and as deep as the sea


and will continue--to set before him
the things he wants to eat


chicken egg or leaf
marrow yolk or grief


(rat after rat after rat
eat and eat and eat)


if that is all there is for me to know
when seeds don't sprout


and plants don't grow

2am

The processional of pain

in the artifice of your heaving
chest. Your mouth over the porcelain

god, your putrid and
chunky

offering

a sick and rejected
nutrition

of your earnings: a liquid
pyramid

of decayed
process. I would get you clean

baby, if only I knew how. I did
my best to reach into

your mouth

to pull out the thing
eating out your guts

but lost my hand
in the process.

headfirst

Gollyjeebers what a pretty fucking day.
Outside, all the fun.
The sun, the lake is making blue,
blue that's as wide and clean
as a white-toothed grin.
In here, in the book cave, all the interminable
think-time proceedeth forth
like a monotonously beated line
--one-two, one-two--
all the introspection that tends to drive poets
of all schools, eras, and times
headfirst through the wall.
It's too sunny to think about
dying but sometimes I wonder
how to think about
anything else.
Go outside.

I want to go out
and smoke cigarettes in the sun
to do the healthiest thing I know how.
Tell my therapist I'm worried

I'm always worried.
Now the days are turning wider
in a more optimistic gyre,
and I wonder how addiction works
waiting on my wife to come home.
To have indulgent
talk with her. Ask her do I only indulge
myself?

She understands
my crazy songs
translates for me the wider world
and I play her not to sleep
as the days get wider.

stillwater, oklahoma

These people are fishes swimming in a sea of heat
drinking it up. Daylight drinks are done well,
or light, not done up. I feel doomed
to follow you there,
dudes. I wish I was with
my lady friend, my sanely friend.
But your hospitality
is mead-hall worthy, and the sway
in the leaves matches it.

I could tell her about this
instead the bottom of these multitudinous glasses
which, if melted,
would cover these dusty tables nicely.

Calling from Stillwater, Oklahoma
where buckles are big and hair is short
and the heat flows
from the great gas spigot in the sky
and I am a dog listening to all the whistles,
where there is more hospitality than I want or need,
liquid hospitality, that is,

and I think about my far gone woman
probably asleep before me,
how I would like blushingly to hold her hand here
and say look darlin how good
they treating me
fighting hard not to feel scared.

Upstrapped by his boots-pulled,
he set about opening coffee chains
and the girl down below
moaned a blue note, a blue note, a blue note.

The great erring pains
of bearing the ugliest goddam baby in the world
tore out his wife's temporal lobe.
Step aside, he said,

gesticulating at her. She stepped.
Her little white gown swayed a little
in the ICU air.
He motioned towards his feet, and she kissed them.

The ocean turned in full defeat,
the denouement undone
or undoing itself until full night comes,
neptune on its back.