Jouissance

Perverse, you! Spooj bath...pain, you. Teeth that chew...and teach—joy? Groans, drones...you knew! Eroded, you. Sanguine monologues— we don’t bleed on the virgin bed. We, not you!...we don’t pray, we preach. We, not you!...we can’t love. Yes we, not you!

Pic: Joe D'Alessandro, Andy Warhol's friend (1973)

Play

They keep coming
Four…three…two…one…

Four—
Slimer

Ready to slobber and slurp
All fed and bloated
You hear him fart.

Three—
The pointed heels
Have travelled from sepia to colour
Back to sepia again.

Two—
The hour of drag
Sunsign chains, good coffee, bad fucks.

One—
No one
The sound of brush

Whitewashing.

Wicker chairs, little flies,
So many stories, so many lies,
Little flies—tell me where you’ve been
Tell me what you’ve seen,
Of those straw-hat dollies
On the wicker chairs, unwither’d.

Or the little blue umbrellas
On which sit the black-feather’d pigeons.
Cruel pigeons, who refuse to tell me stories
Only mutter in their gibberish tongues.

I was scared of your groans
Scared also of the flies (who visit the dead)
Scared that someone would steal my dollies
Or they would get up and walk away.

Until I realized
That the bamboos too were dead
Dead yet waiting
They couldn't get up and go,
Like my dollies, like me.

Frozen Overture

It was three then—
You nestled your nightmares into my lap and crooned.
With fingers of frozen mist I stroked your hair
And pried open your clenched fists.
I sang to your closed eyes
Anchored in my tune
I thought I was safe.

It was three when—
I had wanted you to show me the vacant moon
In the only way I knew how.

Its three now—
You know mist thaws
Once your fingers have warmed.

And mine weren’t even human.

Were you hungry tonight?
If they had words
They could have painted your tears.
When was it you last saw
That pyramid of skulls,
Where moonlight shines thru the slits
That were once your eyes?

Ill take you to her
She’ll turn you into raindrops
And sing you the lullaby the leaves sang
When they lusted for autumn.
She’ll show you the door to the pyramid’s heart

And youll be hungry no more.

Skulls ramble
Wolves wag their tails when they hear the familiar voice.
Scratch, Scratch— dried leaves on marble
Sound of tears...
The specter weeps? below?
Little Bo-Peep will find his sheep
A carcass now, after the wolves have done with it.
Do skulls laugh too?
Yesterday was again a Sunday
They found him beneath the marble.

He must have let his wolves loose upon himself.

A decade ago…
When I began my journey from the wolf’s skull,
I didn’t know Id end up—
Following its howl.
Now Ive seen myself in the moon
Walked the lines on my palm
Until they met at a crossroads
Where the moonman dances his naked dance
And howls the wolf’s howl.

A decade hence…
Im leaving the crossroads
Where the wolf was shot dead by the silver bullet.
The paths have bled and drowned in red—
The moon’s shadow in my eyes.
My palms were too small to hold it.
Ive skinned the dead wolf
And from my severed skull begins his journey—
The stranger wearing the moon.