Our Andromeda (3 page)

Let's just imagine that you are magical,

that no light would flicker and no battery

die and no lover or wife or other can claim

you while you are with me. Let's imagine

that you shiver and shudder and eat

my lamb and my rice pudding and drink

the wine and the whiskey and the cognac

and the elderflower never taking your

eyes off me. Let's imagine that I am also

magical and can cook lamb and rice

pudding and pour many drinks without

ever taking my hands off you. Let's imagine

you are unable to control yourself when

we are together, that we are all thumbs

and soft mouths and terrible fingers

and eyes of moon and eyes of sea and that

we smell beautiful to each other for no

reason. Let's imagine you drove to my

house and your headlights did not flicker

and your battery did not die and you

were able to control the car and so

are not on the side of the road, not dead

or hurt but not anymore on your way

to my house either, calling your lover

or wife or other to come pick you up

and bring you home instead of coming

here, where there is no lamb, after all,

and no more wine, either, after all

this waiting, imagining you're magical,

imagining what you'd say to her: “Um,

I was on the other side of town to pick

up some wine for dinner” or “I was

meeting old buddy Tom for a drink, he's

just in town the one evening. Might

be home late.” But you were never

coming over, never even invited. As if

I'd ever be so clever. In fact I was just

imagining you're magical when you called,

roadside, nearby, a blown battery for

no reason, for a ride home to your lover

or wife or other. You were on your way

home to her where she was preparing lamb

and rice pudding and when I dropped you

off you invited me in and I said no, not

taking my hands off the wheel, though

I wanted to imagine that your eyes flickered

and shivered and you said you couldn't

control yourself, couldn't take your eyes

off me, that I smelled like beautiful wine,

like elderflower, like pussy willow,

that you called me lamb and kissed me,

knowing that this very last part is the story's

only true part, in which you touched

and kissed me with your wheel of fingers,

your terrible lying mouth.

Pure art is, in a sense, pure innocence.

But artists are, in themselves, putrid with paradox.

The following seven sins/steps should help the wretched

to remember: the pitfalls are the progress!

1.
DEADLINES

Aka Avalanche Everlasting,

Opportunity Oppression.

“You will miss me then I'm gone…”

All at once a million kinds of calendar.

2.
MOTIVATION

3.
GOALS

Stop staring out that old woman's window like a cat.

4.
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN “SAYING” AND “DOING”

“Everyone dies”

is different from

“Everyone died.”

5.
SELF-ABSORPTION

This inner spinning, that petty city

the mind built,

robs the psalm of its robe of calm,

my naked voice thin and shrill in the wind.

6.
DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR

I'm such a fraud

I can't even convince you

of my fraudulence.

7.
EVERYDAY MAGIC!

The new burn on my knuckle,

white, shiny, raised:

our dinner's afterlife, lingering ghost.

At the microphone, suddenly—oh no—

is Sandra the Available,

in her endless yellow dress

and award-winning earrings,

about to sing Rose Dickey's unrecorded

cakewreck of a hybrid poemsong,

“Sheep Child o' Mine.”

Now watch her win the night

before it's all over. She's no loser

with a fever but no lover.

Not like me. I live in a hotel

with no rooms, just a lobby and lifts

leading to experiences.

Time to ask another person,

someone who's been outside

the fishbowl long enough

to wonder if there will ever again

be enough water. Rat race,

hamster wheel, dog run.

(Okay, dog run's different.

It's not for people.)

I'm not a real people-person.

Just like reality is not really realness,

people. Just try and point out to me

what's not fake or paste or false?

Or trick or replica

or denial or dream or drama

or simulation or reenactment

or knockoff or artificial, a ruse,

a work of art, illusion,

a lie, a mistake, fantasy,

a misconception, missed-connection,

delusion, hallucination,

insincere, invalid or invented,

a rehearsal with no performance?

A viable world with no excuse to exist?

In my hotel the sleep is free.

In any hotel. Why shouldn't it be?

And that old girl Sandra?

Turns out she can really sing.

Red foxes are not allowed

to mate with white foxes

because the offspring

would all be female.

And we can't have that.

Blue foxes are not allowed

to mate with red foxes

because the offspring

would all be gay.

And we can't have that.

Brown foxes are not allowed

to mate with any other foxes

because the offspring would all

be, well, brown, in such variety

and number we'd never know

what was what anymore.

And we can't have that.

What we can have is affordable

fox fur, plentiful fox soup,

invigorating foxhunts

all brought to you by Fox News.

I can't tell you

how often.

You in the grocery store

embarrassing

everyone with

the lettuce.

Elsewhere, food

in the file folders.

It's not supposed to

be there, get it?

Another time you

were rolling down a hill

like a blueberry

rolling toward

me, a bear who will

eat anything

this time of year

but wants

just you. Then

you are not you but

the plum of a pebble

that I skipped

into the lake

and found somehow

night after night.

Perhaps an implantation.

Perhaps there is no soul. And biotech

metaphysics can't prove I'm whole.

If there were clear demarcation

between
me
and
why me

then why wine and why whine

and if so, why not all the time?

Since flavor is olfactory

and pleasure in the brain,

does it make sense for the mouth

to open and admit blame?

Fluid body, fluent tongue,

flu-like symptoms hide a hole

through which a neutered fever catches

neutered cold. I'm told a kind of eerie light

flicks on when mind becomes itself.

Like when a book is opened,

and read, or just falls off the shelf.

I spent the whole day

crying and writing, until

they became the same,

as when the planet covers the sun

with all its might and still

I can see it, or when one dead

body gives its heart

to a name on a list. A match.

A light. Sailing a signal

flare behind me for another to find.

A scratch on the page

is a supernatural act, one twisting

fire out of water, blood out of stone.

We can read us. We are not alone.

after Richard Brautigan's

“A CandleLion Poem”

What began as wildfire ends up

on a candlewick. In reverse,

it is contained,

a lion head in a hunter's den.

Big Game.

Bigger than one I played

with matches and twigs and glass

in the shade.

When I was young, there was no sun

and I was afraid.

Now, in grownhood, I call the ghost

to my fragile table, my fleshy supper,

my tiny flame.

Not just any old but
the
ghost,

the last one I will be,

the future me,

finally the sharpest knife

in the drawer.

The pride is proud.

The crowd is loud, like garbage dumping

or how a brown bag ripping

sounds like a shout

that tells the town the house

is burning down.

Drowns out some small folded breath

of otherlife: O that of a lioness licking

her cubs to sleep

in a dream of savage gold.

O that roaring, not yet and yet

and not yet dead.

So many fires start in my head.

I sit looking

around expectantly,

though really I want

nothing but I'm

so accustomed

to waiting around

I'll just take whatever

shows up. Or I look at

things I don't understand

and want them

though what I want

is understanding.

I take them anyway,

turning them over

and over in my hands

in the dark

as if holding such

things can give me

back some sense

of what it was like

to really want something

regardless of what

I had already

or how long I'd waited.

The wheels on the bus

go round and round.

Round and round.

But I am going nowhere.

I've not been waiting

for no bus.

It seems unlikely that so much literature

could be made from twenty-six letters.

Doesn't it seem it could all be boiled

down to one sentence?

After all, the entire volatile cosmos

seems to circle and spin and rotate

so you'd think round and ellipse

were the only shapes possible.

You'd think a square was an ungodly

fluke, an aberration, not the life force

behind writing tables and scaffolding.

Not the product of a natural human math.

The kind of math that says: if you

are sentenced to be hanged

and the rope breaks in the middle

of your hanging, you are free to go.

Such a sentence, though uttered

without error, doesn't say what it

means: life may be a circle, but death's

elliptical, swinging and missing.

Criminal, hangman, judge, and witness,

each matchless and speechless. Why say

anything, ever again, after such luck?

Why not shut up and run?

Yes, you, fool. You don't fool

me, you fraud.
I'm
the fool.

I don't care. I run without

pants in winter, cock

tucked into my asshole

for warmth and a fun feeling.

It looks good, right? I take

my feet in my hands

and fringe the public scaffold

with my skunked stuff. Sexual

and digestive. It's so funny.

Are you embarrassed?

Why? You didn't do

anything but like it.

Foolish reader, can't like

what you like.

Like what you want to like.

Do what you want to like

to do. Don't do what you don't

want to like to do.

What did the stand of pines say

to the herd of elephants

wearing swimsuits

and carrying large suitcases?

“Nice trunks!”

The everyday truth

of the night's delectations

appears for us in our dream.

We all ate the same food

and made the same love

so we dream the same dream,

which was: the infinite wine

was rank, undrinkable, lost

to a rot somehow familiar,

a delusion or virus, perhaps

from childhood, parents

deep in their cups.

It could have been worse.

Upon waking, we might not

have had or needed wine.

I smoke between one and three

cigarettes a day.

Sometimes a whole pack will last

a week, sometimes three

or sometimes I don't keep track,

just give them all away.

I can always get them back.

There isn't a tree

on the street I haven't given

the time of day.

Time for us to meet, or maybe

eat, between one and three.

A cigarette or two or three

with you can't be beat.

And sometimes I forget to eat,

forget the pack, and that too

is okay, you always say.

What other way, but to

forget, is there to endure

the day, the street?