Some of the prisoners were strung like beef

From the ceilings of their cells. “Gus”

Was led around on a leash. I mean dragged.

Others were ridden like mules. The guards

Were under a tremendous amount of pleasure.

I mean pressure. Pretty disgusting. Not

What you’d expect from Americans.

Just kidding. I’m only talking about people

Having a good time, blowing off steam.

She gets herself so wound up. I think

She likes it. Like a wrung rag, or a wire

Wrapped round itself into a spring.

And the pressure, the brute strength

It takes to hold things that way, to keep them

From straightening out, is up to her

To maintain. She’s like a kettle about to blow.

All that steam anxious to rise and go.

I get tired watching it happen, the eyes

Alive with their fury against the self,

The words swelling in the chest, and then

The voice racing into anyone’s face.

She likes to hear it, her throat hoarse

With nonsense and the story that must

Get told again and again, no matter.

Blast off! she like to think, though

What comes to mind at the moment

Is earthly. A local wind. Chill and small.

Give a man a stick, and he’ll hurl it at the sun

For his dog to race toward as it falls. He’ll relish

The snap in those jagged teeth, the rough breath

Sawing in and out through the craggy mouth, the clink

Of tags approaching as the dog canters back. He’ll stoop

To do it again and again, so your walk through grass

Lasts all morning, the dog tired now in the heat,

The stick now just a wet and snarled nub that doesn’t sail

So much as drop. And when the dog plops to the grass

Like a misbegotten turd, and even you want nothing

More than a plate of eggs at some sidewalk café, the man –

Who, too, by now has dropped even the idea of fetch –

Will push you against a tree and ease his leg between

Your legs as his industrious tongue whispers

Convincingly into your mouth.

Mostly I talk of rep ties and bow ties,

of full-Windsor knots and half-Windsor knots,

of tattersall, French cuff, and English spread collars,

of foulards, neats, and internationals,

of pincord, houndstooth, nailhead, and sharkskin.

I often wear a blue pin-striped suit.

My hair recedes and is going gray at the temples.

On my cheeks there are a few pimples.

For my terrible eyesight, horn-rimmed spectacles.

In my monk cell,

my trunk coils –

a crucifix

or a question mark.

Which one of you

unscrewed me

from the blue jungle

like a chandelier

and placed me here?

After my mother and father fight,

my father takes my hand

and we walk down to the Mississippi

where he smokes Camel cigarettes.

He flicks his ashes away from me.

He rarely says my name.

All day on TV, I watch monks

in Saigon douse themselves in gasoline

and light their saffron robes on fire.

When they ignite, they do not cry out.

I study their silence to comprehend

how a tongue turns into flame.

Six monarch butterfly cocoons

            Clinging to the back of your throat –

            you could feel their gold wings trembling.

You were alarmed. You felt infested.

In the downstairs bathroom of the family home,

            gagging to spit them out –

                        and a voice saying, Don’t, don’t –

Do you want Batman or Spider-Man.

Do you want the wizard hat or Professor X, the green skull

            with a rose in its teeth, do you want

the thunderbolt or the smiley face.

George Washington with spirals for eyes.

Get down on your knees and look in.

Bring yourself close and look in.

A’s and B’s, upglistening like fish.

Upglistening and then lifting

            over the pool.

Ahh, Behh, breath over water in the air around you,

what will you bathe. Throat-Stander,

            in the song’s black pool?

Daddy was often eager to play catch, since he felt society expected this from a loving, caring father. A confidence that soared and a glovehand that fell, still there was no baseball near either. Duplicity has killed more black men than gin. In a southpaw, what they appreciate most is this sort of "live arm." From his mouth words rushed like richly fed rapids, leaving him ever vulnerable to ascription.

Desire, among other things, derives its force from repetition, or so your general pattern of behavior would lead you to believe.  Neither parent had expected such a fragmented character, though they hid their disappointment beneath a flurry of activity. Ut natura poesis: autumn arrived to our wonderment, introduced by the river's murmur. Stands of birches, poplars, shuddered with delight, as the park glimmered with the embers of Indian summer. Carondelet.

Trundling through the pass of bald maples across the valley of ice, he felt bound irrevocably to the outside world and to some inner, aspiring self. Schneeblick, so blink now. Daylight, reflecting off the soundless frostscape of the nursery, transformed his hands into two bars of franklinite. The early, wintry sunsets arrived, and then, although they waited, nothing. O soul, sublime subject of bodily subtraction, which the sky has entombed in all this whiteness. He cowered in fear of the implications of such thoughts, yet brazenly continued to think them.

When I say my wives are cages, I don’t mean I’m a bird.

Collapsible shelves, they hide their usefulness when not

in use. All my wives contain terrariums: terrible and fetid

atmospheres in which their salamander selves linger atop

damp rocks. Their hands are damp as the tissues they ball

in their hands, though none of my wives could make a fist,

not even if I asked, no, not even if I commanded them to,

an amusing idea I must someday revisit. My wives are like

the Small Mammal House at the zoo, their rooms kept dark

so visitors may view their nocturnal truths, that anonymous

wakefulness we sleepers do not care to know. None of my

wives are like lanterns, nor do their ribs sing with canaries...

Burning its furniture, memorizing lighthouses, applauding the riots, looting

storefronts, reversing its baptism, losing its grammar, adoring its cell phone,

entering its gates of heaven, taste-testing toothpaste, flirting with its cavities,

taking a lungful, divining its weather, recalling its vote, shopping for oranges,

singing off-key, polishing its karma, dealing its cards, leaving the casino after

dawn, gargling Lysol, reading the Classics, charging a light bulb, eschewing

materialism, arresting its fellow citizens, avoiding the newspaper, creating its

binary, joining the opposition and—when it had a spare moment—weeping.

Behold your head, a hive the bear’s pawed down

from its bough, smashes to ground for sweetness,

honey leaking a yellow jasper. Its furious center

dispelled, now all of you is leaving. This is how

the self turns on self, goes vagabond, this is how

you are repaid for your industry. Their domicile

dismantled, thoughts now roam the air like aimless

troops, seeking recompense in the sticky jewels

of an empty soda can, crawl into its lip’s sweet

keyhole, cannot make their way back out the dark.

I would have made for them a freedom song, if

the teller of this story had only a slave’s loyalty.