Building Intervals (revised)

I
In the city buildings sit
so close together,
you can reach straight out a window
and place an open palm on a brick wall.

When it snows a giant hand
slides manila flakes between the buildings
like a file.

In the summer voices jump
from sill to sill carrying burdens
and joys to apartments
that don’t want them.

Luckily the windows are staggered
enough that you can’t look out
and see a kitchen table full of dust.

II
The spaces between buildings,
too narrow to use, are like the spaces
between fingers of the city, holding
histories never written stories
like an American holding chopsticks.

Might as well use a fork
in the city, the dumpster in the alley
is full of rice and the fire escape
only leads to a dead end.

III
There’s not enough space
between the buildings
for the grass, the flowers,
stop talking with a motor mouth,
all your words running together
the BostonChicagoNewYork Marathon,
pretty soon you can’t tell where one city stops
and the other one starts.

The city is lost
like the punctuation in an e.e.
cummings poem,
only honest politicians
understand the heavy breathing
of a wordless language.

IV
There’s not enough space between
the buildings to see the sunset
or to ignore the child crying alone
at night until it rains
and thunders, but in the city
the buildings sit so close together
you don’t have to close your windows,
the drops fall straight down.

The Barber (Revised)

Come, sit down in my chair,
I will chop tiny pieces off you.
I will smile in the mirror
a sad clown smile and show you
the back of your head. I will
take you home with me,
little pieces on the steering wheel
and stuck between the crevasses
of the pleather back seat.
I will find you on my thumb
while eating chicken wings
and smear you on the musty blue
couch cushion.
I will snag you with a condom,
a long blonde strand entangled
in the short black and I will stop.
I will wipe an eyelash
from under my eye and blow
on my finger then notice
it is you stuck to my skin.
I will shower three times a day,
trying to rid myself,
like a masturbatory priest,
of the ugly shards of work
I confront each day.
I will hire a maid and I will help
clean but I will still find you
in the paintings on my wall,
on the dishes and even
on my keys in the morning.
I will wake with you on my tongue
and curse my choice to enlist
in this endless battle, that traps
me into seeing your face
everyday in the mirror
and makes me wear this dead clown
smile. And one day,
I will say, “I’ve had enough!”
and I will take a razor blade,
scalp that pretty hide of yours
and no one will know that I killed you
because I’ve got all your hair covering
my whole life and how much DNA
is that for the cops to uncover.
And when they figure out who it was,
by that time I will have traded
the red white and blue slowly
spinning pole for a Spanish tongue
and a yacht, I will be sailing
around the islands bald and scissorless,
the last barber left to drown
in a sea of endlessly growing hair.

September 9th, 1942, München

(This is a revision of the old one).

Death walking the street
in uniform humming red
and black, stars hiding.
Lose yourself, now
before they find out.

The belly is a hotel
where you show rapacious
blue eyes to a room,
change their sheets
and give them fresh towels,
clean white ones
for blood stained rags.

You make it easier,
more comfortable for them,
so they can sleep at night
after a day of murdering
numbers.

Kill your parents,
cut your hair, switch
tongues, lose yourself,
just to survive
in the belly of the Wolf.

Concourse D (Revised)

Here I could describe the sensation of knowing no one, of being human, of waiting for a schedule, of walking conveyor belts, of announcements, of footsteps, luggage, of the Eagles in the background, of groups of boys in uniform, of uniforms transcending time to WWII, but you already know this feeling, this holding, this delay, this overwhelming, this no-sleep place, these fluorescent lights and rows of slightly padded seats, all those leavings and all those arrivings, all those sobbing and all those lit faces, all those snapshots of half-hugs and blinks, all those visions of crashing and so much gum, all packed into a small suitcase, all shoved into terminals, all swirling around the stuffy air – there are designated sentimental areas – please refrain from weeping in public– please don’t leave your relationships unattended– if you see lone baggage please contact your god’s organization or the nearest TSA member.

The Prisoner

I step onto cold concrete, stand
facing the cement wall, the metal door slams
shut behind my back and when the officer leaves,
it is quiet. Quiet enough to hear the walls,
to feel the six by eight cell tighter than my skin,
but I don’t yell, just clench my fists white
close my eyes black search for freedom
without moving a single inch.

Makes me think uglier than death,
trying to escape without using walls,
without tearing my fingernails out
digging holes in the floor.
Makes me want to bash my head
into those bars of steel or take those sheets
so pure white and bloody them
red as that little girls heart
I held last night after
her whole body yelled
“Why me?” at the deaf moon.

They take away your necktie,
and your knife. They take away
your right to take your own life,
it’s the reversal of murder,
they make you stay alive, trap you
in a prison cell with the monster humming
all night long, and wake up pleading,
“Devil please, I just want to kill”.