with Dorothea Lasky
Animal
I have lost my mind completely
Animal is in every room of this house about to walk in
He is turning the corner with his giant red, ghoulish head
What will he do to me?
I do not know what he will do to me
Darling, I am sitting here and saying goodnight to you
We can be friends if you would like to
I would like to
Be your friend if you will have me
Now I am leaving this room cause Animal is moving in
Making his way into the room, his eyes are on me
I am going into the bedroom that he can’t get in
Not one person who will do me harm can get in this room
I lay on the bed and everything is safe
And with the words of this poem I am thrusting Animal everywhere
I am putting him everywhere
He gets scarier with my every word
I am shining through my fear with the dreams that the lovers make
The dreams that the lovers make, I do not make alone
I make with two people, their twin heads fanciful and wise
And utterly blond
Gleaming in the sun with their yellow teeth
My twin lovers
The ones who will save me from this nightmare
Two-headed
Turning their heads towards me and then towards the ceiling
Unable to see themselves
This monster that escapes me
*
The matting in my mind
And the matting in yours
Records a place not qui
te here the ways the wor
ld possesses us and surr
ounds us with products
Of no known substance
This is what it means to
Make worlds and make
Them urgently our comb
ined speed is blood as the
Time it takes to form that
Definite idea clear as fuc
k when we breathing tou
ch and our breasts touch
And thus night interrupts
Our continuous burning
In which open flame str
uctures the breath and is
Far away in a mood of
Fear no brooding can ba
nish nor God apprehend
Even through our trembl
ing kisses veils are tears.
This weekend’s aeons reek
Of evidence wanting to take
Everything further worlds
Moon-signs and signs of blood
In alphabets always bursting at
Their skin with what life we would
Like to share but never can the
Lips born together to any satisfaction
Other than adequacy but then ideas
Like blood rush upon us love
Us more than anyone we could ever
Know when they touch no one
Is the wiser when they fill us with
This warmer feeling of knowing and
Not knowing somehow that you
Or anyone I love will not always be.
You sing of larger structures in me
Of rhythm still with monsters growing
Bigger into the sky scaring-off all
The guns and weapons we were once
Serving the night the servicing night
Using us up into the night that night
The human once grew to like a giant
Ear filling-up all we once were all
That was an empty head so that’s all
Hearing is and speech and music a
Function of animal vigilance a need
To hear the vowels these origins stink
Of blood before melody and motet
Dominated us with numbers with
That music militant in essence.
There was no sanity
But trails of resources and the
Soul given to money
A phylum written
On the backs of organic history
And women and slaves
And children we will resurrect
Them with our sounds
That are not music controlled
By a deadly logic of wise-
Schools and science and rhetoric
Hardly for any people
Singing into each other’s breasts
We must destroy those deathly
And insane songs of ratio
Singing the song we must sing
A crane fell this was all emblematic
Of the economy laboring to make
Of itself like any good soldier or cap
italist something more than it should be
Without a structure to distribute wealth
More fairly or enact laws that counteract
This fundamental unfairness of the human
Since we are human and we made those
Cranes they are part of us and when they
Break they are even more a part of us
An accident may be more meaningful in
Its effects than any cause it manifested
A militarized sky mocking our civilian
Domination by glass towers and glass re
flecting helicopters countless times over
When the sky should be one subject.
