Born Twice

For Ross Hulvey & Gary Adkins

Orson Welles Picking His Nose:
"Who shall we eat today?"

The boy
wore his overalls, covering up
the semi-instant possibility of an endgame.
His fevered selfishness disguised
moments of mendacity as just a fey
tic. On the widdershins of this seamless
life came that ship of days; a buttload
to be precise. & suddenly out of the
beaded player arose Orson Welles,
with an eye on a blonde or two, and
a parsimonious rap, waiting to be
absorbed by the dark sorceress.

How many days do thusly pass?
Enough to anchor the seamy memory
of what was that girl's name again?
Heidi, and her father who denied him.
While we watched bad television,
smoking endless amounts of cannabis
on Pat's dime, & Our Boy
consoled himself with thousands of $s
in electrical toys and books and records
far beyond a normal appetite.

Mata Hari, she styled herself, joked
about his "Toy." She, not quite right
herself, ran the silver insult like a
stream of honey down the days. No
escape, like Shelob, she removed
what juice she liked, and handed him
over to the bookstore girl. Not as
kindness, but as placeholder. Dark
lady she reached over to his old friend
and gave it a little tug. & that & a
perk or two took care of that. Left
him in a similar cave on Lowell

with a wife & stepchild
& ever closer to the widening
gate that had once closed
before him.

Photos man! Beowulfian friend!
Co-owner of the Red Star! Amazement
at the spiral of the hours! See you
in its contemplation! You who
were once so close! You who
kept track of your single shrimps,
afraid of being cheated! You
who taped all the movies on SLP
so no one's eyes were undamaged!
You are the last edition of your family now,
no fourths in sight.
nothing in the record, a Fug's discography
the story about consuming
an infant in the united kingdom
passing passing passing

now, slouching off down the road to the underworld
not persephone no, rather
a monster, coveralls muddy
and ripped. Hands empty after
so many seasons, taking nothing
photographs abandoned
the screen empty now
an honest self evaluation

snowy day, part 2

Your song that echoes mine
a complex harmony in a very surprising
third or fourth act to this otherwise
pretentious life And on the snow day
we see a way to happiness all things
are present in the present moment the
marking of the calendar merely the
blocking notes on a script
We make our way through the sweet hours
Most of our words belong to the girl
she is what we have come to and what
I have found with you, this beautiful woman,
this true daughter of the Lady
I'm no Jimmy Stewart, but I hold you close
my own blonde Kim You make me laugh
You give me meaning In your eyes
I find hope, and a new world, and a place
we can be surprised by all that
our little girl has to say, a place
to breath easy, a place to stay young

the insurmountable nature of desire

there are two roads that track each other
fear and desire
sometimes these ribbons run together
sometimes they cross each other
sometimes one or the other will double back

I am in a vehicle, my body,
that races along this road
it's fuel is time and since time
never stops then this vehicle
never stops

one day I will fall down dead of course
and my version of this journey
will have gotten to wherever it got to

some days I realize I am on fear's highway
and those days I seem to go ever faster or
ever slower its a perceptive reality

some days I recognize my true path
is always the path of desire
though what or who it is that I desire
is never quite clear

but Nabokov said that what his book, lolita,
was really about was
the insurmountable nature of desire

so do I wish to overcome desire?
the buddha advises it
and if I do, is it even possible?
isn't what vladimir is saying here
is that desire cannot be controlled
and inevitably destroys the self?

I wonder about this.

the story on hemingway was
that he killed himself because he couldn't
get a stiffy anymore now that I'm sixty-ish
I have a little more sympathy for that
than I once had.

did he have desire, but the inability
to act on it destroyed him? so desire
ultimately destroyed him?

and my desires are not just that one
desire, no more really the wishes in
my heart have more to do with
opening the path to those others
I love and cherish, wife and kids

what is it that is left for me to see
in the distant mirror what is left to
fear, the sharp noise of failure
whistling in my ears, each morning's
memory of a hardon echoes that
past of giving into passions
right or wrong good or bad
the mistakes I learned from
the children that I had

this is just an exercise in
an al-jebr* that doesn't exist
geometry I could do
symbolic logic structures
suddenly eat the holy self
the worm ourobouros
can I see into my own heart?

*al-jebr, arabic meaning "reunion of broken parts"