| SONNET #100
No brains, sometimes months of muteness
because the visceral chord is elusive.
Try to refrain from the inane filling
of space, stay awake, cynicism
evolving toward a total predicament but
I can talk to dead guys in NY
without romanticism, clear like
rooster, car horn blare, the routine
chopping and slicing of meat and vegetables.
Feet land on sidewalk, find rhythm, radio
plays an 8 bar blues. Secret messages?
No words but riffs swooping around like
birds nesting in the iron beams of
an unfinished skeleton scraping the clouds.
THE LIVING ROOM
There's ten or fifteen faces
that I hold in my head. Faces kept
over different spans of time. These
are the ones I write to.
A guy I know who disappeared
for years. He shows up at my
door after a phone call from
half way across the country. I don't
really know him, but this familiarity
gets stirred into our conversation.
We've been together in some strange
light of absence. I find his words
echoing in the dark litter of
the living room. Our voices going
back and forth, muted, whispered
inside the comforting black space.
It always seems to come down
to a chain of vivid stories, images
that spark inside a secret place
which can be made. He told me
about his disgust, discovering a smear
of shit on the flesh of that woman
who was to become his ex-wife;
years of lessening, passionless sex
spilling over into the wild refuge
of so-called illicit affairs which
were designed to alienate himself
from an empty life. Aggressive,
elaborate fucking so he could feel,
slashing against that predicament
of zombieness. Playing with it,
going on, a weird travelogue of emotions.
I start to fall into myself.
He tells me he envies me.
It's fucking strange to admit
I am beautifully boring;
that I am slightly diseased
yet sane; that the small failures
endured make sense; that laughter
could rush past my teeth in an
odd revelation of absurdity
and I no longer need to tear
anybody down but instead listen
to an acrid private recital where
my son squeaks out Beethoven
on a tiny violin. The ear is
given music, soaked into
the uneven walls of a cramped house.
© Jay Jaworski
|