Exaltation for a Wednesday Morning

It’s an icy Wednesday morning in my tiny room,
oh, it’s an afternoon

It's a Frank O'Hara girlcrush hairbrush
afternoon.
Chelsea New York USA.

I slept on a bible, my hair half-covered it,
the blanket half-covered me,
I thought of his hair, longer and silkier than my own,
and the content of it is Youth.
Personal photographs were a different thing back then,
ya know? So goth.

You died in the fountain, you did,
you still looked good in shorts
golden child.

Walk across my brain
in this silver hour.

Flash photo:
the spine of laughter
inside the body of death.

The bliss of it
is right there
for sure
looking easy

swan dive
forever swimming pool
meet me there, bubbles

Too yawn didn't read:

I wanted to scratch something out of the interior of a poet,
like deveining a shrimp

My body:
I don’t have to apologize for it
it’s only a secret,
always already
apologizing into my pants.

And speaking of pants, where are you,
my destino?

You found your soul at the nightclub,
you stepped right into your new self
like pulling on sweatpants

You sing terrible pop songs to yourself
in the shower.

What is your life like now.

II

I wanted something to get stolen from me.

Looking back, it was a way of joining the world,
to get torn open, spill.

Dumb but like a therapist once said,
your feelings are never wrong.

I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that one!

Brother, the streets are jumping tonight, sleep is a nuisance
I sleep with the lights on to refute the tyranny! of sleep
as I sleep

Yes, it happens.
I slept with some books on the bed too,
if you can call it sleeping, if you can call it books

Just kidding, of course they were books.
My hair my cells layered in the books inseminated the books and they paisleyed up my dreams, interpenetration is a word and art critic could use a few decades ago, a few decades ago

but it happened to me.

I put some man-underwear over my eyes to refute the light which was there to refute the dark, it was complicated, I didn’t rest well.

How many books has she slept with.

Tearing, spilling
I am a Doric Ionic or that other kind of column, scratch me up
from crown to toe and mix me like a cocktail into the ink of night.
I can scooty scoot like an curious Octopus.
I can crawl like an old pickup.

I’ll go to California or Arizona or Mexico and sleep sometime, maybe in a couple months
Like that one time, when I found coyotes in the
backyard who wanted to sell me sleeping pills through the window.
Still the 'wild west' after all.
This time though, I'll take them up on it.

Here, my brain keeps jogging
like the running man on the Modern Library edition of
Freud’s Basic Writings
For Basic Bitches

I’m writing such great poems today

The coyotes stole my bankcard.
"Skimming," apparently the new dance,
they duplicate your card somehow,
physically duplicate it,
and pick up your PIN somehow
like maybe some man was watching over my shoulder
as I tap-tapped it in
or maybe it was electronic or
be careful what you wish for

in any case, I’ve been living on beans
and secondhand smoke

But I have you.

III

I’m not so much a museum as a museum gift shop.

You would have hated me.

I can’t stop walking again.

The stores on Broadway were screaming with lights but closed,
it was near midnight.

The shop ladies, off duty, settled into their cots for the night.

I'm a bee, a ghost, I passed right through the man stepping out of the bodega who was seven feet tall,
okay maybe six five, and his angels’ ringlets were so long that they tickled his calves as he stared into his book

I passed right through him
I bet he has a pet reptile
a green dragon
who warms his shoulder every morning
when he takes his coffee

New York
Starry Night

how I wanted to telegraph it to you.

I kept going--
There were Debbie Harry’s Lips, throbbing
a beacon from the window of the dumb chain music store

They can’t take everything from me
Debby Harry’s lips will remain plump with divine knowledge

The pharmacist is also something

IV

A pharmacist in every poem

I’m so lonely I could die
what does that even mean

it feels like my heart is hyperventilating, like drowning,
a near-physical panic
because you left me
it’s okay that you left me, it just feels like this

I’m trying to take up smoking to spackle it shut, this screaming monkey mouth in my chest
bared teeth
I stuff it with cake
it likes cake

It’s flopping like a fish on a kitchen floor
It’s dumb
It’s what I wanted
Help Me

V

How did you cut the sun right out from the sky
and upset the grand ecology--
the sky can’t breath.

I stick my finger in the hole.
It’s a sad, slow emergency.
I go broke, a natural uncoiling.

Slack straps.
It’s a poet’s morning,
it’s an afternoon.

Let me tell you about this embarrassing thing.

VI

No, let me tell you something about Cuba.
It’s more important.
Well it’s more interesting.
Well it's what I'm doing.

Did you ever go there?
You or your comrades?

Imagine you there, sleeping, a doll on the soft green beds of cane grass
I collect you and draw you up towards the sky

I’m in shorts, that’s embarrassing.
I blow you out, smoke

Well what do I say about Cuba,
when I was just a rat, taking pictures with my ice cream eyes?
Put aside for a moment that I am a wretched tourist.
Can we? Because I want to tell you things.

Just a couple of things.
Just one thing.

I visited to a Witch
who divined my situation using his tools, small shells
I don’t want to say much about it
I almost can't
but I have so much I want to tell you about it
the small things and the big things
the tiny cup of coffee brought by his mother
his particular homosexuality
the everydayness of it, like yeah I know some eternal goddesses, I mean they're all over the place but I have their personal cell phones numbers and sure, I can phone them up and
tell you what they say

and the things they did say, the instructions he passed along
about how to heal
using the colors white and yellow.

He also said to wear less black.

Latter Day Marc Bolan

Who wouldn't fall for you?

I wrote this to you:
Do clouds care about time zones?

A mood, an elegant vapor,
preserved under a small jam jar

nevertheless disappears

In the inside of my fingernail lives a love affair
don't you think I'm smart?
I'm in Soho

My cunt’s heart, yes I said those words, my meat,
ground beef in a bikini,
the shape of a woman

type it now speak it

at the make-up counter, a backpackfull of effort,
heavy for you

I learn to walk in heels and now I'm crawlin'

My heart is a sad clown.
Honk.