inherit

Her voice evaporates out of the answering machine--a
vapor that my switchblade is lost in.
The whole cloud of her voice is inherited.
The sum total of my inheritances. A lightning bolt scar
twigging up the middle finger is gradually extinguished by
nervous blood rushing to tips.
Some night I will touch it to a person's face and observe as
nothing happens. Ugh!
What a klutz this alien was who zapped me.

Her voice is yelled through the wrong end of a riot cone.
It comes to me while I'm gazing at a haystack scene that
isn't there. I have inhaled too much turpentine.
'A person in pain will walk on a despised crutch.'
What a prophet you are and what a day this has been.

Bob Dylan with his cranberry voice. "She's delicate, she
seems like Vermeer..."
Swaying blues singers with voices of saliva and cocaine.
:Lay my head on some lonesome railroad line. Let that
train pacify my mind."

Observe in my voice the vulgar kid of vulgar America.
(Lolita swinging calf on knee hinge, smeared painted lip
and tear.) "Oh my Lolita! Frayed red ribbon in her country brown
hair."
His voice has lingered on a sailboat, salt water mixed with
gin and tonics--penetrating airs of no man's land

On the morning subway her voice has acquired a homegirl
twang and I remember her crusted bathroom walls.
We used to sit controlling birds with our eyeballs.
"Semi developed motherfucking freaks" we'd say to them
pleasantly.

He carries his voice through the Lower East Side market
past A and B and a shrine temple and hanging rugs and
chickens
early morning irish pubs and backward avenues.
art is artifice. clear is clear.
Learn it. Recite it. Report back to me.
He tells me a story and then has to leave but who cares?
I take joy in recalling the fucking story. I mean i take joy
in recalling the story.


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