They’re painting that screen red
and in the blue light
we can over-expose our hearts
through acetate with lines bright as black.
Lay there, get buried in ink,
I’ll just flood myself
right on the silk sounding like a scratch,
let it sweat through our bitmap faces
and hit that pulp like a fist.
In the claustrophobia of the sink
I’ll dilute the blood in your veins
and we can de-emulse ourselves
in that spray of toxic and chemicals
in a mist down the drain.
We’ll paint our walls with water
so we can lay on sand all day,
and watch the waves
of the wallpaper flowers.
We’ll sculpt our hearts in paper
so we can feel them beat
in our chiseled hands,
and hear them laugh through our teeth.
We’ll swim in each other’s veins
but we can feel a leak in the bloodstream,
blooming roses on the ocean of our rooms,
and we are slowly losing breath.
In the Acadian afternoon
it might just be a dream
like Cleopatra on a canvas,
and like drips from a paintbrush,
on the wooden floor.
The weeping flying fish
tells the seagull,
“Stop laughing you make me nervous.”
Darling by Charles Bukowski
He was diagnosed with cancer
and prescribed
one sexy salsa
and a few million tangos.
I’m sitting in the classroom
with a million of them
elephant dumb
in their plastic chairs.
There’s this young novelist,
in the dark getting strangled
by his typewriter ribbons.
We sit around & we scare each other in front of a screen & we stay up for hours talkin’ about the extent of the universe & how I’m actually you & you’re actually me while we crayola around our rooms & think we’re Monet’s children. There’s those crazy girls & they’re laughing through life, we dream of painting films & writing all over Hollywood & we drink wine by the gallon in dark rooms while dancin’ under the covers with each other. We don’t wake up because we never sleep & we play Bob Dylan on a detuned guitar & half a harmonica. We take photographs & photographs & photographs of all of us wearing flowers & looking at the ceiling while listening to the Grateful Dead & we go swimming in pools of smoke full of alcohol in our brains. We’re still young & we know it, we wear denim like there’s no tomorrow & we sing louder & louder till’ people complain. There’s knocks on our doors at 2 a.m lookin’ for a cup of tea & an all night dancing jam & we open the door & the flood of crazies comes in & we uncork cork after cork after cork (gloo gloo gloo) & we start moving all over each other & stumbling to the beat of our lives.
We were walking
and it was raining.
The street was filled with people,
some walking fast
and some walking slow.
Somebody yelled, “Taxi”
and a taxi stopped.
Up 3rd avenue
there was a puddle on the ground
and I threw my cigarette at it.
I missed.
