Another Novena

Trying to remember,
when I die will there be doves?
The thick cloth covers me.
I remember the chocolate,
remarkable in the cup.
Everything seems beatitude.
Memory isn't film,
the various disappropriations
of day, hour, minute are
catalogued, but not precise.
I am trying to remember
which experience awakened this need?
Which day did I telephone the saint?
When did I do that tarantella,
confusing each of you,
this feeling for that?
And this life seems only
time noticed, mercy spent.
Outside, an awful noise.

Arise asshole.
Shake the dirt from the box lid.
You're kidding yourself again.
This isn't the way out.
Just the usual awfulness,
and you know it doesn't have to
be this way.

I am buying a ticket
for another ride on the carousel,
the painted pony
rising and falling
with every breath
I am rehearsing the old song.

mandolin lesson

admired is he jerking this chain
or playing with his mandolin? on
certain tuesdays he hath gambled
with his heart or with his hammer

undefined the past an arrow
glancing harmless off the shoulder's
blade the memory of all that chipped
it's place in the quill deceptive

china boy china boy broken
at the top of the stairs limited
scope the arrow spent the mandolin
played song of repentance

lyric of defeat its tuesday
now the wheel spins to double
naughts my warming self to see
its constants in the mirror

brief melody played murder
unremembered chosen from the
list of static tactics you
heard this apology in the wind

"and the mandolin wind
doesn't change a thing ..."

2's a Crowd

these posts are at best noises
in the night's carnival a song
sung once and sent alight to that
euphemism they use today the cloud

there is a secret captured
by this advice the sands of
missives past thrown in
your face there was no brief report

it added up to a simple sum
the wages of pride and the knowledge
of little the impermanence relied
upon for, what, privacy?

even now. You ask me all these
questions like a network affiliate
seeking a secret hook into the landed
class you smile with your ambition sleek

like a power suit in that once
gleaming caeserea our parting shot to the anima
selfless now in either desire or hysterical
fear the days repeated the days

mere abstract measurements for amazon's
cloud I'm keeping the words there now
it's here it's not here it's here it's just an
idea like this poem surely there is

a place for that you should

the latent map, again

chambered heart the pieces of pie
each plastic triangle smooth and creamy
consumed by that devil or the ghost
who thought I was his brother in the
dreaming disguise the hotel discarded
in the subconscious town the one he
thought dropped from the latent map
the apartment segued into the house
of his memory the one with the basement
running through the many rooms
something not quite right in every one
chambered life the heart caught in its
lust for recognition or for someone's
desire but no one remembers this
unruly hammer smacking wildly at the
construction of these days the point
is still there, though, that one person
or another, still opens their plastic
container and sees the detritus
this chambering of being this wax on wax
remarking of one bright blossom to the
very next, covered in the nectar that
implies a kind of salvation who am I today
that I should break the hours into minutes
the days into hours, the weeks into days,
the chambers following each the other
through the basement up the stairs
trying to find the forge, or the bedroom
whichever one is truly meant looking
for that satin doll who's life
is like a poem itself her actions
all of a sorting she brings what knowing
I can reach into a focus showing me
the peeling wallpaper the ceiling leaks
the change that isn't dealt with these many
days across the desperate train ride
we are now on ...

somewhere then
the rest of the noise abates
into song the tin cans
clattering on the string
duke ellington in
the elevator

portrait fermenting

the serious thought came from below
the frame was empty at that moment
in the air is the light is my sudden love
who was he in that time who was the marker
that marked the page who he thought
he might yet be in this new time the marker
marked the thought still the actual frame
was empty its rustic construction un-
encumbered by any given stain Or

was that man still painting in Springfield
was that song still in production
at the theatre centre or maybe in that bar
the crows mill school was the idea finally
brought to light your ... sentience an
anamoly or am I now a peasant boy
just buy a new white shirt take home
this bottle of wine from your painter
friend have yet another sip and stain the
paisley from that memorized and unremarked
reaction yes this flesh is just what you
must be this time around it is all flesh
to be accepted

in the frame the face
wearing the days so well
the hair is tangled still
so very long
the wasp flies audibly
from one brief thought
to this one
now

the sting no longer the governing memory