The Bathroom Light

There is a light that can be seen
through the window in my bathroom
when the down the hall neighbor
turns hers on.
Each of our windows look out into
this shaft between apartments
with a skylight at the top. I don’t know what else
is in there. I don’t know who built it.
The glass is not clean. It’s textured
so all you see through there is light or darkness.
I’ve seen that light go on
many times in fact when I did not expect
a light to go on at all.
One night I wake up and the clock says
four thirty-four. I go to the kitchen for
a drink of water. The cat emerges from
somewhere unknown and greets me.
Stands in the orange
triangle of light from the refrigerator. She’s
as confused as I am as to why we’re up.
When I’m done, go back to the bedroom
and see my sleeping girlfriend
with one leg out and her mouth open.
I imagine her sleeping alone. I imagine
I do not exist anymore. Lower myself into
my now cold side of the bed. The ceiling fan
roars down at us like the blade of a guillotine.
The smoke alarm’s test light flashes
green as is expected. I replay the argument
we had about hotels. Rehearse it for a follow up.
In blows the night—strangely indifferent.
Cooler than the previous week. “Broke”
as they say about the heat. The room also
seems larger in the dark, a large purple box, which is
I’m not sure how it should be. Shouldn’t it be
smaller, cozier? The cat slinks under the bed.
We’ve got ants. Cold cuts in the car still.
I’ll have to throw them out. Saw a pigeon
get run over by a bicycle. It seemed almost impossible.
The man on the bike wearing a red
backwards baseball cap that simply read, “shit”
in white letters.

Thoughts in a Cafeteria

I.

Maybe it’s that
the one
who does the killing
keeps you alive
in the
meantime.

A nurse. A glad, pale nurse
you never see again.

There is no killer
without that
killer
patting your heart
to keep it beating
in
the night; without
that killer waving hello or massaging
your troubled brain.
Blessing you
with
hands
made out of grass.

You are taught lessons
in the heat of summer. These
lessons
are like baths of
cool water:

On your lifespan, your
need to
love and be loved, how to spell it,
how
to hold on to it.

II.

Then there are the faces
in the glass
reading
books or magazines,
waiting on busses, pushing elevator
buttons
and strollers, damning
their own children for fictitious crimes.
Violent men and desperate women.
The lonely and
the
out-of-time.

There are the folks who read the paper
out loud to hear some
voice
of reason.

There are those with their arms in slings
waiting alone
in
the dark to heal. With prescriptions,
essays on hell, the best way
to care
for an orchid. Listening
to tiny choruses
gracing
miniscule graves.

Ants in the cracks of diamonds,
cigarettes
in the hands of
unemployed
angels.

III.

Feed and wait.
Breathe in and wait to breathe out.
Marry and wait. Pray in
flea voices
over ten dollar breakfasts
and wait.

Moving down the line
with trays of grapefruit, oranges,
yogurt, breakfast pastries. The scent
of suspicion; they are
missing
in their own minds.

IV.

The executioner leans
on the lever.
He is a retired bookie
with an
owl heart and dysentery.

His own burial plot is wider
than ours.

Full of his nameless
predecessors. Their birthdays
are
our birthdays, their deaths
tell
the future in messages
of stones.

And there is no cure.
There is no cure for the body
you’ve been given. The
mind and spirit.

There is only the sun’s radiation as it bids you good morning,
the close hum of
decrepit
bones, the insignias
of
lost men. White-
faced, blue-eyed, whiskered
and
shaking
in front of the shaving
mirror.

Glowing partially in their own eyes, and partially
in a new time, a new fatherhood, new
action. We all have them,
every one of them
inside
of us more than halfway flickering.

Believing someone good was supposed to be waiting, that someone
took us from
our real homes. We must have been
kidnapped.

V.

The cemetery grows hair
in between the slabs. The cold beds.
Roots grow

into our cellars and
carry our bones
on
even deeper. Further

down. Disassemble

them and pound
them

underneath us,
underneath our land

like
joyous drums.

Calypso

Happiness is the clown
that ate its head like a cantaloupe. Like a
piece of birthday cake.
Calypso dances like a shaman
on her island, brings down on you
the currents of love. The rain arrived
like a beaded curtain
with a skull upon it. A candle exiting
the room in yours past’s cupped
ghost-white hands.
A drowned comedian washes
up on shore. His jokes still
being told in sodden pockets.
There is an extinct sea animal
decomposing in my brain. Giving off
that putrid odor of wasted things.
A fisherman who thinks he’s made a fortune.
Holes in ships. Wives that have dissolved.
The lightning pulsing in some
faint message. Popping the miracle
of words into my brain. The water

snake uncoiling, writhing, spelling
it out.

Animals

A colossal bird came
to life and now
feeds
the whale. Each
moment passing
some
bit of him breaking off.
Coming loose from my
descriptions. Drawers
of silver
spoons and knives. The
bloody sun
cooking its head.
Forbearance. With
balloons
tugging at our wrists

we
all have plans
to die.

Not just make it there
but
actually do it.
Celebrate with a small
gathering of wilted relatives,
plum pits, music and
the firing of a
pop gun.

Serves you right.
There must have been something
all this time
as life
coagulated at the joints.
As evil men walked through
evil time with pickaxes,
sunk them into
newly
finished graves, looking for
their mothers.

Near and far. In a
flatland called Medea. Her name
stitched
on maps. Sirens all night.
And the deep, macabre woof
of a dog

I’ve never seen. He brings
something to me in my sleep. Is it

the bone of my aunt Marnie?
Is it the bone she lost
when
she tumbled off
her bicycle?

The spotted moon coming out
from the rotted door.

Entangled and newborn out of the universe.

The aimless glow-faced animal
that prowls

the courtyard.

A Woman With No Gender

She’s scattered about the dark like dreams
or shoes, like memories of her mother’s nylons.
Her diamonds and her mirrors. Powders
and blushes. The scissors she used to
cut out her womanness for the final time. How the
clock smiles at her at all hours, and she
smiles back. And the nameless idea:
A baby and a summer clamming on Long Island.
Birthday cards and cards wishing her well
on a speedy recovery. The letters she wrote too.
The many versions of her story which she whispered
in the blood filled grapefruit of night. Each doing some damage
to some presumption. The white heads
of dandelions. Potted basil and thyme. Washed dishes.

And her past and future combining to make a
pink cake.