scruta

You told me I was nothing

And I laughed.

I suppose I misunderstood.

+++

I remember how you and I

Held each other naked against the cold,

Clawing, gasping for breath

And in that moment finding nothing

At the same time.

+++

When we awoke, everything gleamed.

Everything in all off its wondrousness.

Everything, everything, everything.

+++

Because you were nothing to me, too.

I raise these hands hewn roughshod like sandpaper.

In the dim light I’ll try to read their lines,

Knowing they tell how I came to this place,

How my toil will give a man his dreams,

Or perhaps give me my own.

+++

But soon I tire of all of this.

Soon I’ll only rub these hands together

Vigorously trying to rub away this coarseness,

Forgetting the lines crisscrossing my palms,

As if to bring me back to my home,

But mostly just to stay warm.

There’s confusion in your demeanor,

A double meaning perhaps?

There’s laughter in your words,

What words can be made out

Through the blaring fog of your sonic soundscapes.

+

You’ll wrap yourself in cords!

You’ll prance above the electro-base!

You’ll call into the Mikes (and Marys),

Blaring hard down to their soles

To jump and do the cha-cha-cha!

Listen!

I stood by an oak tree in fall

Trying to capture its beauty

The leaves afire with color

The branches balding slowly

But I couldn’t.

–

No words could speak this sudden bereavement

Where the coming cold turns the world ablaze.

–

Acorns were strewn on the ground.

The squirrels had gouged them for nuts

Discarding shell fragments.

–

Words are these shells

Rubble, shards, flotsam

Of the world in its changing.

–

I chose the task of fitting them together

Trying to show how the world vanishes

And bursts into flame at the same time.

I looked at this picture of you and I was full of envy.

The sun was so full, streaking through the sky.

The clouds were so soft, dancing in the rays.

The trees were so proud, grasping for the mist.

The grass was so high, waving in the wind.

The flowers were so sweet, curtained in the grass.

I should have envied you for being there with them…

(But I didn’t. I envied them for being there with you.)

The two of you gripped tightly

Vowing for the top

Unimpeded by the strange nature of your footholds

Brass, twisting like flowers and dragons, flowing in on themselves.

The years will go by and this gate will grow

So high you might think that you can’t reach the top;

You’ll say you can’t find a foothold in the tangled mess,

But even then you still can.

Cast it into your mind, burn it

Into the inky grottoes of your hands, you

Aspiring verse varnishers:

We impecunious pugilists of poesy

Tread many paths,

So many that they would ask us

How many styles the universe would weave in her unveiling,

Bidden bride that she is

Coyer still as we read her vows.

We, who are lovers perverse as possible

Sleeping on the sepulchers of

Our ancient polyglotted professors

Licking the gritty granite

Sanding our teeth on the cenotaphs.

We, who bankrupt the bandits

With eternal promises of eternal life,

Sitting at their banquets, bibulously

Devouring and disdaining all that sits

And flits and waddles before our eyes,

Hypocritically calling beyond this brine of truculent tyrannies,

Howling those words to undue our patron’s plans

Equality! freedom! wisdom!

Howling them at such a pace

The dervishes deign to dance

And our alliterative angles

Finally find a voice.

We, who make the lovers weep

To etch in their hearts

Our little songs cut deep.

We, who make the madmen sane

Who give the pundits pause

We, who stop the mobs of men

And garner their applause.

We, who find the words

That let us all adore

Our favorite thing

Is just an appreciative note

This and nothing more.

Smash of a bottle, and raised

Hands grab for shirts to rend,

But only scuffle and writhe

LIke an immense octopus

Plucked from water and thrown upon dry land,

Its suction-sewn tentacles wriggling to bring it aright

With eight minds of its own.

Someone brings a stool to bear upon the behemoth,

To bring its feelers to rest,

To smack its parts into submission,

To break its cotton binding:

The relationship that went wrong between

These affronted fellows, falling to the street.

The crowd gathers and gawks and jibes,

Salivating on the sight, as if waiting for a feast.

Soon they’re cleaved apart, these octopus fighters,

No doubt to fry in holding cells. The crowd is sated,

Taken in their fill.

Though the three thousand,

thinking thoughts

through theory threaded theses

thumbed thirty thrones,

throwing thrills thrice,

thumping threnodies,

these thanes thawed thinly

thereafter threatening their theatrics

then thieving the three thousand

through thalassic theocracies.

There was a child playing unattended,

Balancing precariously on a rickety, rusty public trash can,

Using a low hanging high-voltage electric cord for balast,

In the rain.

***

A man screamed suddenly next to my ear,

Abrasive, unrelenting, stern.

The entire street of vegetable sellers looked up.

I shuddered for a couple seconds,

As my mind sorted out what the hell he was saying.

Chinese often feels like that,

Like a parallel universe suddenly opens up before you,

And you need to process, to sift, to lay yourself open

And see the world as it could have been.

Up ahead there was a shopkeep quickly stepping away from a cart.

She was trying to steal his umbrella.

He was telling her to back off.

***

When I got home, my neighbor was howling,

Screaming to someone on the phone,

Wailing incomprehensibly in Chinese.

I didn’t want to get involved.

The next day the police came.

Her entire flat had been robbed,

Even the furniture,

I’m still not sure if it was hers.

***

Today someone new is moving into the woman’s flat.

Their new belongings lay strewn before my door,

Like a new furniture store, full of promise.

I saw the same little kid munching idly on some fresh dumplings,

Even as he goes to throw away an empty cola bottle, there is no mischief in his eyes.

The sun is shining. The vegetable sellers have no need for umbrellas.

***

This is the way that life wags on,

Never speaking.

As if the entirety of its creation was a secret,

Where one doesn’t know the risks, the trials or the sufferings

That moved to create it.