Zizi and BooBoo

 He picks the olive from the glass, examines it with sweaty cleanpicked fingers.  He orders his martinis dry, always dry.  He squints at the obstinate red pit.  She squints in bored emulation.  What else to do - the airport terminal bustling like a negative void, all the going and all the coming cancelling each other out, all just steps, in step.  An equation of ambivalent addition and aggressive substraction that collapses into a barstool, where she watches steps march through the terminal one two three two one zero.  Dry, always dry,

       she thinks, watching a blond child with toothgaps large enough to amplify a shrill voice, screamlaughing towards the gate – because what else to do, remembering youth and its false-eternal tingle of odyssey.  Everything was bigger then, she thinks, I grew and the world shrunk one two three

                       four two he sips glass and complains about matters within the realm of dollar signs.  She juggles her mildewed napkin between her fingers and thinks how in school she used to strike the dash across the moneyemptied “s” aggressively, almost violently, like a counterfeit threat.  An afterthought after numbers.  Now dry always dry

as waterfeigned alcohol seeps over his proudpouting lip.  Are you listening he injects but she imagines the bear of her childhood, the babygurgle name she christened it, how she was a radiant abstraction when her budding arms held it, and time marched forward two four six and she left him outside the terminal because her parents whisked her up out because late because time marches forward twelve twentyfour fortyeight and her mother teased her about the tears

she stares unseeing at her drink stares dry always dry fully filled and empty

are you listening he repeats a marcher stops and gazes self-aware embarrassed but for no one zero zero

Zizi doesn’t answer

Bloated

tongue slobber lip slup

of pastries puffed hollow

with phantom flicks of wrists

in the lull of sticky sweet

they knock unnoticed

still they stick

to the skull

and drill

the fist of if

into arteries of sun smell

and tree taste

painted on foot soles

all leads to if

and appetite

And Then the Nightmares Began

You won’t believe me but one night last month as I was trying to sleep an unknown hand divine or otherwise presented me with a monster.  The monster had coarse deep-red skin and a cheap ill-fitting suit with a large porkpie hat and a kind face except for the hungry menacing look in the eyes that revealed itself if I gazed too long.  I waited patiently for the monster to begin to frighten me but he just stood there swaying a little as if he were slightly drunk and eventually I became uncomfortable so I asked him what did he want.  He said he didn’t know.  It occurred to me as his low staccato voice cracked on “know” that he reminded me of an old lover of mine so I asked if there was any acquaintance between them.  He couldn’t recall but conceded it was entirely possible.  We fell into silence.  I began to watch ill-conceived shadows of mundane memories crawl across the wall through the dusty slivers between the blinds.  They materialized and faded at random without acknowledging either of us.  The monster failed to show any particular interest.  Perhaps he was observing them, or perhaps he was engaged in some personal inquiries, such as what did he still have in his refrigerator that he could make for dinner, and did he remember his keys, and was he going to file his taxes on time, and what could he do to make that lady-monster across the street finally notice him.  After a while he stopped swaying and asked if I was afraid.  I told him I was afraid I did not know what to be afraid of.

              He sloppily tipped his hat and saw himself out the front door.  There was a careful click in his wake.  I did not bother to rise and engage the lock, though I lay awake for a long time.  The shadows became darker after he left.

A Sighting

We can tear a hole

through the universe,

ignore the cry of

Saturn’s weary rings

and the foreboding

glow of shrunken stars.

We can raise our eye

over the ripped edge

of infinity,

wishing to view our

selves in soiled beds,

coins skipping from his

pockets as he re

claims his pants at noon

while her blond hair drips

soft its dewy trance.

We can claim the prize

of an impending

universe, but all

its imprint shows us

is a white bear drift

ing on an ice cap

and vast continu

ations of nothing   .

Blues

honey, I could love

ten men

divide ten

by the number

of those who slipped

roses under my

pillow as I

feigned sleep

and you calculate an

                                               

                                        error