1. |
Went Right
03:56
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Went Right
Instead of left
Out of the closing bar
And at E. 7th and C
Walked smack into a stand-off
Between neighborhood grunts
In wife-beaters and jeans
Holding bats and chains
And, turning, one says “What the fuck?”
And another, higher voice says, “Yeah, what the fuck, white boy?”
And white boy says, “Oh, fuck….”
And goes fuck-fuck!-FUCK!!-fucking away
In a dead sprint, down-and-righting south
And west, south
And west, maybe
Half a dozen of them
Hurling batteries (“?”) and rocks and half-drunk
Cans of soda
Piling on insults and jeers
About mamas and sisters
Until the last three
Then two
And one
Give up the chase
And fall back as a summer rain
Comes down heavier and heavier
And drenched on a corner somewhere
Unable to light the smoke dangling aquiver in his lips
A cop car cruises by and slows to this wet
Panting figure in a doorway failing to light match
After match and, laughing, one of them says,
How’s your night, chief?
And the car moves along, a couple
Of honks for luck.
And one year, many stories, and newborn urban
Legends later, E. 7th and C, to the day and at the
Identical time of night, saw a mother strolling her baby
And smiling at the man standing on the corner
With the curious look on his face, holding his arms
Wide and asking her, “What the fuck?”
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2. |
She Calls After You
04:31
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She calls after you
by name
in the quiet garden,
forestalling eventualities
to have one more look at you,
knowing you’re less a presence
than an urge to be moving on.
Walking fast is a simulated act of contempt,
a leap away (and what a leap: last night’s clothes pressed
to the body—airborne!-- and a glad little bastard at that),
but in a quiet garden, under a too-bright sun,
contempt is just an overbearing lack of the right words.
Wincing
asserts a shy
yet firm departure.
Despite yourself, the weather
offers its cue for a walk,
and leads you among mothers walking babies,
among parts of a small dusty town more than the sum of
its heat and its primroses, to a valedictory itch
in the loins, overslept: there’s an unexpected grace in moving on,
in those words to be.
They’re rarely ever used for any other reason than
to take up a role, to be somehow above all the insouciance
of manhood but acquire what? That leap?
You just fucked each other
and dried out in the light of day.
You must get into the car, ride, and wait for the moment
you forget what day it is. What you did not say.
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3. |
The Percentages
03:39
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In the hallway she turned toward him,
what he called
the rightful pivot,
and it wasn’t in the lamplight’s newborn
rite of petition (Ok, yes, I fucked around),
or even the tears all over the rug
that forced acquittal.
He lied willingly, a lot,
which is the heart soaring,
not listening.
If it was,
it would drop, beating woefully
in the temples of his head,
and by this singular force permit that nervous,
quivering motion grief
allows in the door of his mouth
to state its case,
without the harsh clauses
of redemption to weigh it
down.
Victim.
The peculiar sleeping patterns, and the beautiful,
evil confessions
that come seeping out of her
like the scent of dust from the bed.
He goes over them all, calibrating
names of cities, dates,
places-- the whole rotational flux
of images, true or not really,
and they’ll just lay still in the dark,
each of them—information, him, her-- knowing the other is awake,
itching for more.
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4. |
Look
09:52
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But it wasn't, on a mid-winter evening, rising
---not the moon; it was actually some uptown building’s peak light
appearing at a glance out the train window, just as round
and propped in that occurring, hyper-real clarity,
low in the sky.
The surprise alone was striking enough to jot down
in a rumpled matchbook, the only thing I had
to bear witness (and to extend your amusement)
until some seconds passed and you tapped me, saying,
"like that," pointing behind us,
“over there.”
“Look.”
Climbing up the backs of skyscrapers
and still so yellow, not yet rinsed of the horizon,
just as the sun’s melting behind Jersey.
(( I am the sea and the land
And I run through your hands ))
Struck again, only deeper this time: all those desolate
evenings & erratic early mornings waiting on phone calls,
continents apart,staring out of windows and
up at moons like we were banished from everything
critical to time & place,
asterisks in a story of fugues.
Or like we were lofted too, and were now coming down
through winds and meridians into the solid presence of this train,
these seats, the passengers around us, the shitty but welcome light---
everything taken captive for our new eyes’ sudden appraisal,
our own keeping,
together.
(( Sun runs through your veins
Comet trail in your brain
Sunrise in your veins ))
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5. |
Solo
05:24
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Ana
slips deep
into the corner
of the sofa
lights a smoke
and curls her legs
fast among the crumbs
and coins
saying little
or nothing at all
to withstand
that deepening stare
that whips up
a pass
through anonymous
but inviting
climes
and comes perched
despite
her critical stores
of boredom
One
frail shift
and that
brittle perch
comes undone
collapsing
one blink
at a time
into the low
opiated rumble
since departed from
her ears
once she really
snapped to, hissing
shit!
suddenly mindful
of the fresh
nail polish
she daintily avoids
smudging
despite her burning
cigarette
and mother’s
mothering calls
she could
be rising
again
padding barefoot
into her room
like that
shutting the door
just
like that
to
him
to him turning
that strange
blue
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6. |
Good Shit
04:43
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We were told the bubbles should look
like little pebbles you could pour
clean into your hand.
“Go on, shake it,”
said Peanut, junk dealer, mechanic, and feral cat wrangler by day,
shiner by night.
“Shake 'er up and pour some
in the cap.”
We shook our samples, twisted off the caps
and poured.
“See that?”
And they were like little pebbles squeeze-rising
atop a float of clear liquid, rolling over each other,
fighting their way to the surface.
“Now,” he said, dropping his voice
to a firm, reverential whisper, “that there, boys,
is good shit.”
It hit us like a vow,
and then became one,
and we each bought one of the re-used
plastic Mountain Dew bottles for a couple of bucks
and took them back home
and drank them slowly that night,
feeling the good, tippling shit roll down the lengths
of our throats and simmer in our guts,
so that each passing sip became a deeper nucleus of lush darkness,
whetting some soft, citified manner we could never lay claim to
nor hope to abandon in another dark, balmy night years later
when Peanut’s loose-limbed, drunken body plunged
end-over-end from the water tower,
reclaimed by the backwoods of northern Florida.
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7. |
West Virginia
04:16
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Darkness batting from the gaps of forest trees,
and above us, “clouds like great,
great brains….” By nightfall
Louisville is blacked out & reduced to crucible-quick
chatter in candlelit bars and other spotty garrets of light
way up the road’s vanishing point.
Nothing in over 500 miles was sky
but rippling aerial geographies licked by wind & rain,
wholly something more baleful & not simple
at late sunset....
Somebody please fire up the bath salts!
This weather’s telling too much truth--- lightning sizzling down like
so many strung links of torched pearl--- and it’s been dogging us
all along.
It’s been madness from the evening-purled crests
of the Shenandoah peaks
to this barren town waylaid in the final
morning stars mobs of sparrows are breaking through
like cackling disembodied heads,
like arias,
like eerie legend: our eyes forced wide open
to a desiderata of noxious, weeping tree smoke
dawn lights up over West Virginia.
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8. |
Enopolis
05:08
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He’s claimed ether for bones
and coils a curious, magnetic way up
and up and up along a nameless vector
Rhythm’s pithy tendrils comb and warm to
till a familiar caress roots, dipping
down sinuous anchors
like falling stars
to feed this gently
tricky surge more
astral flux
And here things turn spooky:
more white hallways’ hatches open up,
accreting and voracious, and through every
hatch he plummets down-spiraling in ape
face, accorded its place as defined
target, so the target may take its muted
blows into godhead.
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Enablers
Band Members: Joe Goldring (former Swans, Toiling Midgets, Touched by a Janitor) on guitar; Kevin Robert Thomson (former Nice Strong Arm, Timco, Touched by a Janitor, now Hazel Atlas) also on guitar; poet, writer, and narrator Pete Simonelli on vocals. Rounding out the line-up is drummer Sam Ospovat (Ava Mendoza, Brendan Seabrook, tUnE-yArDs, William Winant). ... more
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