[Yes, I saw them all, saw them, met some, Richard Hell]
Yes, I saw them all, saw them, met some, Richard Hell,
Lou Reed, Basquiat, Warhol, Burroughs, Kenneth Koch,
and it all left me feeling invisible or fucked, fucked
sideways, fucked by a john who stiffs you on your fee
and doesn’t leave a tip, it wasn’t impressive, it wasn’t literary,
it wasn’t titillating, I hope you are not titillated by it, their loathing
of women was indisputable, sometimes leaving genuine bruises,
more often just a sneer or no eye contact, the eyes wandering
off like dogs looking for something worth peeing on, or rarely
but potently and maybe worst of all something involving the word
beautiful, weaponizing the word beautiful, finally I took a turn
and made myself atrocious, like drag queens and anorexics, I did
not want to be acceptable, I wanted to be alarming, hulk, colossus,
freak, maybe not a great life plan but a step in the right direction.
_____
[Frank. Robes]
Frank. Robes,
I can’t picture you
in one nor I but I have seen you naked in paintings by Larry
Rivers frontal
hands folded behind your head very come hither and boots! though
I love Double Portrait of Frank O’Hara one face affable the other
fishy your high
forehead receding hairline I wonder did you hate yourself
and Alice
Neel’s portrait of you in profile your nose
just hanging there
like a flag in babyland on a windless day
the edge
of your ear a little flushed and a curl behind it
_____
[Frank: Here’s some deep gossip for you: Your good friend ]
Frank: Here’s some deep gossip for you: Your good friend
Kenneth grabbed me by the hair and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I’d come
to his place to pick up his manuscript for retyping I was young I thought
I was hot but didn’t know what I was doing in truth
only a couple of my dimensions had opened up
didn’t have a clue this particular iteration of grotesque was gunning
for me. Oh not me
in particular I imagine Kenneth
did not discriminate. Here is a photograph of him at your funeral.
Youngish dimensional capable of sadness. Now he too is dead
and his life spread out before him like a map I picture
the two of you leaning over it smoking
cigarettes the part where he’s on top of me
just a red glitch in the far-right corner
_____
[I wish I still smoked so that I could sit outside in the dark]
I wish I still smoked so that I could sit outside in the dark
and smoke rather than just sitting outside in the dark. I’m glad
my parents smoked even if it gave me asthma. It was worth it
to hear the roar of the match and watch them bring fire so close
to their faces and from across the room or yard to see the lit end
grow angry and then out of their mouths came a blue dragon
that climbed and swelled in the air. I’m about to be poor. I’ll live
as my mother has lived. Dish soap and dryer sheets and bird seed
and greeting cards from the dollar store. Yet not being a tightwad.
She’s like Jesus with the loaves and fishes, always a few bucks to slip
into somebody’s hand but never the collection plate. Unlike Shirl
who held so long to a penny that it turned green in her hand. In this
way, I don’t need a bible. The parables are there like the free cigarettes
tobacco companies handed out to patients in mental institutions.
_____
[Frank I need]
Frank I need
to throw some stuff at you milk
weed buck
shot menstrual
rag funeral
salad
cicada unaccompanied
by Ulysses
and this: what if
I
am
the you
of
now
_____
[Tony said being an army brat meant he was from everywhere and therefore nowhere. I am from]
Tony said being an army brat meant he was from everywhere and therefore nowhere. I am from
somewhere and therefore not everywhere, a small somewhere, nearly nowhere. Either way the wind
blows. It blew the flesh from Tony’s bones. A provocateur, and mortal. Predicted his own death
in a long-ago poem, “Barton Springs.” Small, fierce as a shrew, the way they tunnel under snow.
Quick to anger, to judge. Overestimating what he could get away with, weigh-in on. Overestimate,
underestimate, it’s one or the other for all of us. His kindness never sappy, as least where I was
concerned. He got people to take notice of my second book. At the one dinner we shared I saw
he was a person who tells the waiter all the things he doesn’t want on the salad. Where I’m from
you eat it and say thank you too many times. I felt embarrassed, self-conscious about liking my food
more than he did. Now I’m a thundercloud, more like him than not, can you imagine? Wind’s army
brat, going where it drags me. After all the fuss, when the world turned against him and he was
banished—easy to do these days, you don’t have to look people in the eye—well, after all of it,
he’ll make a smallish pile of bones. Larger than a lamb, smaller than a sheep. Where I’m from,
you bury them deep. Nothing will grow on the farm if you don’t pray over all the bones.
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