Window Dressing (First Go)

1.

The story of a Boy is the simplest story of all

“Pick up your shoes from the hall!”

That is all.

2.

Sinuous urinals and doorless stalls of a Tree Grows in Brooklyn

But first: here we are old enough to remember

Which insects we discovered in what order,

And which leaves die first

And which names of which streets are mysteries

And tell of scheduled visions,

            A three channel love affair adjusted with a fork.

3.

We are born into a crowded world if we are lucky

We are born into well-buttoned sweaters

And storied basement spelunker career moves

Before you even notice it

We are born into unassailable truths and paradisiacal futures

Holidays with a capital Ache,

Math for geniuses and

Meat is still a good thing.

4.

On the horizon anonymous marks on the horizon line

Two point perspective, me and the other me

On calamitous collision course with wish fulfillment.

“Hair and the increasing variety of the proof of our bodies.”

5.

It is only the body that means anything

Underwater or puffed up on sugar fried in the

Sanguineous oleagination of love.

Amazed we are not a nation of diabetics

Instead of the broken hearted moguls our

Supply side ménage have fantasized.

5.

The boy’s body – nowhere to go but up.

Follow it with spontaneous herald -

Social Studies is anything but

With designer jeans recessive in a few years

And the bathroom bolted against self-discovery.

6.

Dissolve then, so simple

Into the front and center lactations of little deathly collapses

Is it really where it begins? 

For the story of a man, yes,

Less simple but no more complicated.

           

            Lord Jesus Christ you never told me it could feel so good.

Hail the herald of the sun!

Compulsive milkyway emissary!  Galaxies within us!

7.

The price, a certain loss of control.  But submit before you are subjected

And learn to see in God’s inconvenient timing

The warrior potential in your stubby.           

Would it be cliché to speak now of pencils?  Certainly

One thing follows another, but what is good for physics

Does not apply to poetry

(But then again it does)

8.

Few things are as erotic as the mother son bond.

Pause

Instead, skip Church and save your soul.

I watched my dad urinate, you know.  I will spare you

The horrors.  Good I was already in the bath already

And could wash away, you know, the honor.

9.

The society of men: An essay in multiple parts by author deleted

Who is a Man himself and thus of unique qualifications to expound on the above subject.

Part one – The expletive deleted

Part two – The “brain”

Part Three – The heart and its conspirators

Part Four – Youth and pride

Part Five – Postponed till next

Part Six – The inevitable mistaken

10.

Free Association Therapy: Big 80’s

Whither the beef?

The Berlin New Wave

AIDS

Every breath– what a fucking disappointment

Freebasing that summer Susie sat-house with the pool. I dove and sloughed away our teenage skins for all of us.  Good as it’s cracked up to be.  Becoming:

            Weightless crystalline ambition, till half an hour later all was heck

The Downtown Scene (general and specific)

Off the Wall

My underwear is stuck to my prick, so good your

            Hips felt on the floor of the sunroom, blackened

            With ficus and wicker and Eames recliner

            And amateur masterpieces from a similar era when art was

            Something we all still

            Loved and knew nothing about.

Galaga
First smoked pot in the basement and after decamping to the backyard I tossed                             Spaghetti

                 Over The Fence to the neighbors

                But it was just an arbitrary boundary.

               A world seething with aliveness, interconnectecated, ya dig?

Drama class, Tea and Sympathy, pause between lines

    Because I am on the phone

Friday’s Mescaline;

            On the running track I became bird, curvature, Aztec wind

I am in love with my best friend’s armpits

Murphy’s law

Slaughterhouse Five

Oil of Olay

My dick my dick.  Am I ever done talking about my dick?

            Thanks Dad for being Italian

            Thanks Mom for letting Dad

11.

The Russians have taken over the neighborhood and now the math team

The chess team belongs to them alone

12.

Full disclosure I fucked a fifteen year old (I was seventeen she took my cherry but had prior lost hers to a twenty one year image who drove up from Florida on his bike and dumped her)  I fucked the Cornell barbarians too. A wooly Jew pussy at the time a wee bit repulsive but now such foresty cunts obsess me.  I saw mother showering.  The water ran over her breasts and rivulets off her own pubic mess and I thought she was peeing.  Doctor?

There has never been anything Oedipal at all, which is not to say

There haven’t been moments I wanted my mother

Dead.

13.

Doctor

An aggressive strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder

Has taken over my room and I have lost my

              Eyeglass for good

14.

I found these magazines in the basement ceiling

And after you (only direct reference) died we found the cash and the grass

Cell differentiation

Gastrula blastula, preppy, jock , nerd, nuclear waste in overdyed

Canal street bargain bin awkwardness.  Other brothers in Jean-Paul

Or speedball blackglama VIP room snake pit cocksucker couture

15.

If a fork splits what is it called?

And then when it returns to the road,

What then?

I follow my pee stream over such

Cartographical anomalies

Back to myself because I am infantile and fascinated with the world

That begins and ends with me.  

            I bang, you whimper and this is how the world is made

            Architects, I am tireless pharaoh

            And a thousand sexy slaves in thongs raise my

                                                                                      Obelisk.

At night we worship Baal

Because it just feels so fucking good

I wrote the part of God and I will cunt her scenes

To fit the tale

16.

Now the afternoons are that much more predetermined

Fulfill bourgeois expectations in café reminiscent establishments

In a new century where no one knows what anything means

But what the heck pretend it is meaningful

Or just don’t care at all.  It is a momentous

If pretty lame choice to be left with. 

But that is the world at large and we were already deeply

Engaged in me.  And I know misery enjoys company

If it can wait long enough

I am a century too late, maybe a bit more

But there is no cure for

Chronicological distemper but patience and wine.

17.

Sixteen ways of looking at the same thing:

(To be filled in later)

18.

Metaphor

More all-purpose with the emphasis on all.

Don’t fall for it.

This becoming that.  An easy way out or in.

Four years beating around the bush

The sheet of glass.

Eyeglasses are a mask

So what is a window?  Some elaborate garment

All bustle and cage and seamless seams of transparent not dreams

Veil

For vain cowards.

We shall return to this theme in time.

18.

Hitting a milestone – why doesn’t the car breakdown then?

19.

I never dreamed I would make it this far with nothing

I run on fumes, dizzying and smelling like crap

My nose is like my prick, more like it even than the thing itself

So much more directly connected to feckless Eros

The little bitch himself summering in Turkey, not the real one but

The image of a perfect Anatolia

As historical and central to the development of western thought

At the picture of Wet Pink

Larry Flynt, long lost Papa suiciding

Spermy and horrible.

I have run out of steam many times, my deflated distractions

Stuck to my leg.

Remember thou art hairy

And thus a man but I am not made a man by my hair

But by my cowardice in the estimation of

A thousand blonde centerfolds and tax returns.

Know though, o wise one, that hungriness is reflexive

I have a taste for the food I am too.

Don’t bother.

I am done trying to figure it all out, isn’t knowing enough enough?

Lets pretend the mistakes are accidents

Lets believe in that mythic idea of the endlessness of love

And all its manifestations being

Right and pure but ultimately painful, sheer torture really.

Insert British accent here, all merchants of ivory despoiling the

Belle letters of better halves.

20.

Window dressing

And we have arrived.

I am naked composing and one day will decompose in a silly suit.

The dead man’s necktie redundant

And shoes an awful loss.

Five hundred lives behind the glass

The quiet one in the fraternity and not an idea what to do

With the fact we are all stars and tragic figures

Mommas stories is on and I am talented

The city pays attention.

She has never let me down even with the knee on the neck