gangLia

My nerves at night
were trained on others,
the straining of telepathy.
The silence of their thoughts
oppressed me; like monsters
their villainy was constructed
from common objects,
faintly outlined,
in a darkened room.

The day comes like a siren,
in hot pursuit.  She is made of helium,
her voice as high as angels,
rising, diminishing.
She is about to disappear.
My nerves bristle; the skin
(once thin) is made of needles.
Excite me and the balloon of you
POPS!
Whats left?  A broken condom,
a puddle of nerves.

My nerves have been highways,
and railways, and random
jangled, jack-knife paths.
They have pursued phantoms in blue
forests filled with the nocturnal.
There is the danger I have
mistaken for life and the life
I have taken--stupidly--for granted.

And now as the ganglia
retreat--stung and humbled--
they wither
like a parasitic vine
wrapped around the host
(which it has killed).  And still
the net of neurons comforts me
a quilt against the shade.

The patchwork pieces--
the batting, the lining, the skin--
are held together in constellations,
tiny pins pushing through
some cosmic acupuncture.

Night falls
again.  The ganglia ignite.
This bed becomes
a lake of fire; the sky is crowded.
There are one hundred thousand eyes--
our gods, our tricks, our ancestors--
unblinking,
rapt as taxidermy,
looking down.

Congestion

The knot of destinations
untangled on the station wall
suggest the limitations
of the trains.  Their tracks.
parallel rails finding
the same distance
the same direction,
were lain as long lines
in a time of aspiration
by men defending hope
and wanderlust.

The rail yard is a brain,
and ganglia are waiting to move
populations and product.
Nerves know their urgency but
sometimes
ignore it. 

In the distant metropolis
where I would like to live,
the traffic is congested.  Drivers
hoarse from their frustration,
say nothing now and now cower
behind the wheel, behind the car
that is behind the car
that is behind the car
that is behind the car
that is stalled on this December morning
when no one will be
going home
again.

But there are planes
and there are aeroports.
And there is the idea
of flight.  I might begin
this journey here
and through the clear blue sky--
or ink black night
or through a cloud that sweats
out rain and thunder--
I will, god willing, arrive
at the exact coordinates
at the exact time
my nerves require.

Tremors

I find myself in front of a mirror.  Morning or night, naked or near naked.  This is a matter of practicality and not of narcissism, proximity to this cracked sink defines the utility of this place, in this moment.  I am not here for the view.  This is a simple task of hygiene.  And to be honest, it has always challenged me--the same old lassitude of an uncertain future erodes my commitment to this ritual; I am easily persuaded by the sloth so symptomatic of despair.  Hence, it is not a small thing to have arrived here.  To  find myself standing here, water running, in the nude is something even if in the end I am unable to engage for five (vigorous) minutes in the act of brushing my teeth.  The mint swirl sits gingerly on the bristled surface.  I hurry the balanced blob into my mouth.  Spit-activated, the paste  begins to fizz and lifting my elbow up into a kind of salute, I start to scrub.

Add to this challenge the tremors, the epicenter is in me.  My feet, unable to find balance, are awkwardly beneath me, searching for a stance, a position.  There is no marbled me rising out of the tiles.  I wobble, a little.  I am posed as a mannequin in quicksand.  I try to stand.  Still, the surface of the Earth is made of unanswered questions, unsure ground.  I am quietly panicked, trembling from ankle, calve, knee, and thigh until the belly--big, hairy, gelatinous--takes to shaking.  Laughter is a halfhearted excuse for the temblor.  But don't be frightened.  The fragments of the sculpture you would have been are scattered; meanwhile, notes are boxed and archived.  Hinted at, you will be found among these ruins.  Faultless now, you are more, you have become whole continents colliding, realigning, mountains crumbling and the humbling continuity of creation.

The Heart Quickens

These lines are the capillaries that carry the myth.

Crowd them with your desire.  Design
a man (or a monster)
to measure this bed and breathe the dead
air from his lungs.
Under the thicket,
thickened by dreams, the body begins
to stir. I have heard the urgent murmurs,
that first strangled gasp.  If he doesn't cry,
he isn't alive.

The revival is electric.  A writhing, rhythmic choir
defies the devil and the hot, night air.
With simple hymns and a convoluted theology,
they will convert you.  The holy spirit has decided;
he conspires
to ignite the monster's tongue.  The sparks
spit from the anvil might be
fireflies, or lightening.  The sky
is too hospitable to legends.  The clouds
get caught on the mountains
like a knot, on a comb.

He is screaming.

Bad dreams seem less
austere in daylight (when compared...)...

You tear the linen,
you upset the bed
when you discover the body,
blue beside you.  He is grinning.
With sinister lips
that curl back from teeth
lacquered brown by his bad habits,
he should have spoken up.
This was a second opportunity, missed,
to choose his final words. 

Instead, unheard from,
his voice trails off...
like smoke from a switch
or the bolt
from the blue skin,
protruding.

Tremble

The water trembles
the diver's shiver
as he passes through
the ice-blue sky
God's shattered mirror.

The earth trembles,
the dreamer's shudder
under heavy blankets
the quilt still feels
the plates collide.

These miracles of God's imagination,
slack-jawed, all agog.
Why should I feel differently
when my hand shakes,
my fingers tremble?
Are not these cells--this body, this life--
part of the mystery of creation?

The grass trembles
the wind
invisible lips
and a single finger
invites our silence.

We close our eyes
this time without prayer.

Tin Man

Rust is slow,
growing
only where the waters trace
and tears deface
the expressions
aching
to be oiled.

Frankenstein

The electricity jangled through my ganglia getting stuck in the kinks, the energy lost when it tried to fire down the length of a spiral of nerves. The stickiness in the switches smothered the fire leaving a twitching body by the side of the road, a rising stiffness, a tightening in my throat, my countless digits, trembling. It is colder in the world than it is in the grave. My master says. I am an assemblage of many men. The sinew and skin is sutured together with a dissolving filament, the thread of fading memory. Why am I so frightening? It is not so much my appearance as it is my gait, the hesitant, halting, awkward movements and the gurgling groans that make up my speech. I remind them of death (and dying). And they remind me of life's mysteries and the absolute knowledge that I will never penetrate these.