by Lloyd Wallace
But death’s not all
That I remember
I knew time
That layered sea
Behind my eyelids
Time is what handed me to death
But I forgive it
Time is a genre of moisture
Time is two hands passing
Back and forth
A gray hot dog
Time is thickened light
Time is made
Of donut particles
Time is a shoe that spits out socks
Time is a prank
Played by electrons
Time is a hat
That protons wear
Or
Time is death expanding
Toward itself
Time is a horse
That space is riding
Or
There is no such thing
As stillness
And time is the name that we’ve given
To the only place space has
To go
Time expands like ice
In the throat of the freezing
Time is a muddy partite thumb
I like to unzip clocks
And pull out the organ minutes
They’ve been hoarding for themselves
Death is what expands
Inside of you
Black mountain range
When you close your eyes for the last time
That’s cool
I’ve had enough of time
I’ve had enough time
To decide that
Death is the only way out
Time never taught me anything
Except the way that minutes puncture you
As they pin you to yourself
(756 – 836)
Nine moons
Nine burning coffins
Nine foxholes
Nine question marks
When I turned 29
The moon took off
Its white bikini
The moon was a tremor of suds
I opened my eyes
Like envelopes
To see the moon
Is allegorical
A ring of dolphins
Chewing off each other’s tails
The moon beat me to death
It beat me there
I sealed my life shut
With this poem
When I turned 29
I wrote this
I watched the winter
Shave its eyebrows off
The snow fell like blank pages
The snow was a white mind
Blown to particles
I was one drop
In an overflowing glass
The frost drew
Its initials on my window
The heat went out
But I never stopped glowing
Like a bible in a microwave
Like a painting
By whatever-his-face
The past was still nearby
And nearer than I knew
The past had missing teeth
And the most beautiful white sneakers
I didn’t care
What the future looked like
My teeth were wrinkly
My nose was glum
My blood was stringy
And prosaic
I went
To the library every day
And let the words do what they wanted
The sky grew closer
Every night
So I ate books
Like mold eats people
I tried to kiss a rubber glove
I went to Philadelphia
Where the moon
Was god’s recording booth
And the streets were straight
And the buildings were old
Like applesauce
I woke up in Pennsylvania
Every day
Despite how it sounds
I liked it
I spilled the red M&M’s
Of my blood
Sirens splashed
Against my windshield
I get older
I get older-er
And Pittsburgh’s still here for me
The rivers squeeze my eyes at night
The long necks
Of the mountains
Cough out clouds
Murray Avenue is strange
The buses roll like loaves of bread
And I run down the hillsides
After them
Tearing the light
With rusty kitchen knives
No wait
Those are my hands
(1,058 – 1,168)
Again the night unbuttons
Like God’s miniskirt
Again the moon insults the sea
Again I find a bone
In a bar of dark chocolate
Again the hours grow
Into themselves
Like fingernails
Again I try
To claw myself
Out of the mirror
The sky stubbled with rain
And question marks
A face grown ironic
With kisses
The wind touches you
Like a dentist
The trees screaming out of the earth
Transparent music
Dolphin oil
A stall at the farmer’s market
Selling corncobs
Shaped like the president’s shoes
While the past goes on
Inventing a new kind
Of winter
Parliamentary croutons
I’ve got to hand it
To the future
I’ve had to hand a man his ghost
In a dew-dirtied alley
Toilet paper is my friend
The world is creased
Like a parrot’s intestines
The world is heavy
Like a bank
Persimmon particles
A wild agrarian
Tutu
There’s a restaurant
On Forward Avenue
Where the dead collapse
Into themselves
Like whispers
There’s a room where the dead play pretend
And dress up
Like the living
I think I’ll go to work today
They whisper
Then they laugh
And laugh and laugh
There’s a party downtown
Every Monday
Where the dead
And the living switch places
Though I don’t get it
No dead person I’ve ever met
Wanted to walk
The world again
I don’t think the dead envy
Our sandwiches
The rain writes down
Its name on your umbrella
Donut blood
And axolotl tears
For 7.99 a pound
The sky in springtime is a paste
But we’re not there yet
February is a doll
With painted eyelids
February is a briefcase
Full of endangered
Polka-dots
One time
I built a snowman
To do my killing for me
But he just robbed me
Then went home
Bony rain
A man marries his hammer
And cheats on it
With his lathe
Nipples for lips
A storm cloud is a textbook
And its rain falls
Like footnotes
Every day
People grow crueler
To strangers
My heart eulogizes
My blood
I write my name
In the snow
With my sweat
I have grown impolite
With research
I am cilia’d
With factoids
Like plants are a dream
The soil’s having
Businessmen hide numbers
In their lungs
Every species of bread yeast
Is sentient
If you cut a tree
Into cross-sections
And put each one
Beneath a record player’s needle
You would die
Of alpine sadness
Well before
The song was done