HEXTERIA
Selected Poems
1
This phantom fragrance has me
Philosophizing about trees falling in forests
And mind over matter
And trace decay
And all forms of unknowing that I know of
And crying
Mostly crying over a thing I can’t see
Only interrupted by warm bodies crudely passing through me
And through the city wafting distractions
All of animal variety
This redolence is sweet but
Off
Like honey with a note of wrong
Like sugar crystals and hebenon
Something that I tasted once and only once
And will not leave me alone
2
You’re my vapor veil
A steam cloud on the street
All echo and no beat
You’re my secondhand specter
I inhale you and I hold
I double over and moan
All skin and no bones
And when you are down to exhaust
I sweep your ash to thumb a cross
3
Dogwood, milkweed, morning glory
Choke the life out of this party
Double-canined and dripping
The hand knows where to be
What to do
When to squeeze
The air is thin up there, downwind
My calves pressed to plaster
Cooler than a casket
Back on a mattress
Pulse and throb
The body’s alarm system gone decidedly wrong
Put your finger in your mouth
He said, then pull it out
His witch sisters taught him all that
They powdered his face for the final act
I came to kiss us both to death
I left with all my things but breath
4
A whisper is ugly
Tongue fluff for the comely
Substitutional gesture for a love of uncertainty
And hunger
And fervor
And birds fed with hookworms
Your whisper is an overexposure
A dearly departed sun-bleached photo
Hailstorm muffled, siren smothered
Perhaps to feel your own hot breath
And how it says you love her
5
It did not creep, it did not crawl
High kicked me and boot pinned me
I could spit and scream and I have and I will
Still no rise
Still no fall
Threw myself into the ocean
Threw myself off a cliff
Threw myself in front of every car that vaguely looked like his
And I’m still down here waving
My arms quickly fading
I’ll be down to shoulders and shins
And hurling phantom limbs
6
One day I wake up and I see
This thing
This monstrous thing
This enormous salivating thing
This poison spewing ham-fist thing
This inside of a coffin thing
This little bit too quiet thing
Let’s start it from the top boys thing
Then one day I wake up and I see nothing
Not one single thing
7
They think they know
When they snap the latex and eye me
There, there they say
Take a deep breath and you'll be ok
It's nothing but deep in here, deep deep
Left or right they ask
I tell them right but it's a dead end I know
Let's take a look left then
I take a deep breath then
That one’s dead too but it's still fresh
They think they see me then
I rejoin the cast a veteran of my craft
Sometimes they speak then
Or worse
Run their filtered finger over blush parapets
They think I don't know
The difference between process and probe
And this thing that I mostly forget
Comes back from the dead dripping wet
It thinks it knows
And I think that it might
It says go on, dig up the rest
That jewelry box where you kept your deaths
Stick to what you know and I'll do the rest
The right hand serves to sever the left
8
Mercury reaches down to touch my tongue
I close my mouth around his finger
We grin and bear a curious fruit
A silver-sweet exquisite dinner
The moon held in its two hands
A milky white lake, an opaline ache
Little glass petals fractured from the weight
Floated drifting magic mirrors
An Echo in and of Narcissus
9
This is what it’s like
And this is what it should be like
What was I thinking
When I crawled into this space
And dragged my expectation
To what’s never taken place?
There is a tremolo to start
At first a terror tremor
One long panic attack she said
But what happens after?
A sort of euphoric state, a sort of
Hazy glimmer
And now there are prisms on the ceiling for you
For you, for you
I put these prisms on the ceiling
One two, one two
This is really beautiful
I wish that you could see
I wish that you could see it moving
Can you?
Can you see?
I wish that you could see it moving
I wish that you were me
Everything’s a poem
And everything is free
I wish that you could see this moving
I wish you knew you’re me
Look at this place you’ve made for yourself
You’ve done all this for you
You put those prisms on the ceiling
One two, one two
This is a love poem
This is what it’s supposed to be with you
With you, with you
I will not come out empty handed from you
From you, from you
I cannot come out empty handed
Everything’s in two
I thought that it was fragments
But it’s fractals now instead
Little fragments multiplied
A prism in my head
And that’s what love is I think
I think, I don’t know
I often swallow love up whole
I cried so much through all of this
Until I couldn’t feel
But here you are on the ceiling
You’re beautiful and real
This is all so beautiful, just feel
Just feel, just feel
I lost you for a minute there
Just feel
Just feel
Look at this thing you’ve made for yourself
It’s beautiful, it’s real
You put those prisms on the ceiling
You made it real
It’s real
You thought you were having a bad trip
You said that to me, you
The worst nightmare you ever had
You said that, not me, you
Everything’s a poem and everything is new
Everything’s a poem and everything is you
This is what it’s like
And this is what it should be like
It should be you
Be you
Look at these prisms on the ceiling
One two, one two