God said I tasted that low wind again.
Like the cork taint and ladybirds of a poor man's bordeaux.
Or the musk of a girl fucking herself on rue d'Aboukir.
That's how my bouquet tastes I'm a bachelor.
When I'm starching my collar.
Or I'm blacking my boots.
Or I'm trimming my bale for my birthday.
God says I taste that low wind again like a breath of disgrace.
•
God said a few words about the woman I want to wife.
She tastes like my wife but she isn't.
She's fromage and baguette and ham in her mouth.
And she wears her black négligée and bouffant.
Proud like the Croix de guerre's a brooch in her breast.
She's a minx on gin she's a gin sling isn't she.
She's liberty leading nobody.
And she tastes (when she talks) like she fucks (like my wife).
Like a nom de plume on my tongue that means you're disgrace.
God says her hands on the headboard tonight like she's beating down Sainte-Chapelle's door.
God says I dick her and pluck the strays from her scalp.
Saying she wifes me.
She wifes me not.
•
Well I'm rifling through trash for my royalty check when I tasted that low wind again.
The sun look at the sun it's fucking my face.
My pocketfuls of sweat and my magnum.
God says I'm a poor man's Meursault.
God said I wrote a line in which two gray hairs from the woman I want to wife's scalp.
They glinted in the false dawn like chain stitch.
And New York god said look at New York they bought every word.
And the editors mailed me my poor man's paycheck.
A crisp bill in god we trust on its haunch.
And god said I chucked it.
Along with the fingernails shoelaces rubbers snot dead skin and q-tips into the trash.
God said this is how you'll remember me.
Your husband du jour rooting through trash like he's royalty.
Rifling through coffee grounds to buy his wife flowers and he tasted that low wind again.
•
God said a few words about the man you want to husband.
I look like myself but I'm not.
I'm blouse crumbs and clingstones and pits in the shape of a man.
And I taste (when I talk) like I look (like I fuck) like myself.
Like disgrace.
I'm cat piss and flint corn and chalk nobody can breathe.
And when I shower with god.
Who dictates my thoughts.
I think of my wives and tug at my garbage like I'm trying to dismember a hay bale.
This too is a prayer I ask god is it not.
And god takes my face in god's hands and third knuckles deep.
Digs god's pinkies into each of my sockets.
Like god's trying to scoop out the oyster meat.
What you want is to return to the track with your magnum.
My magnum of bordeaux and a bouquet of gladiolas god tells me I'm thinking.
I want to chase god's women into miles.
All the wives.
I want to taste the low wind that bays when they shudder their god-fearing thighs.
And think of God's red faces.
And think of God's tits.
And think of God's every wife.
I want to chase them and pluck her and rifle through her musk.
And god says I belong here like coffee grounds in the trash.
Chasing the women.
That's not dogging around god says.
That's your vocation.
And nobody believes no matter what god tells her.
That I taste that low wind again and I'm not her husband.
Ulitskaya
Not far
if you leave
my city there's forest.
A man fat
scarf
ushanka
stub of
pencil
in his teeth.
In the snow stamps his boots studies blueprints.
It's his beard
what betrays
he's the news.
We want roads & roads
will be
built you can
wager
your life
on that crust
he writes.
Next police.
Police in the snow sip their tea tell jokes about women in night clothes.
The thick
hairs with his
herringbone
beard comb
the whiskered
one brushes
down flat
next bludgeons
the news man
like weeding
his garden
six knocks
on his skull's
white clacker
guess what.
Write story that's we want roads & roads will be built that's a bludgeoning.
Beat so
well for life
he won't
piss nor
inhale burnt
coffee's
the story she's telling New York while you funnel your paycheck
into my savings
the man
with his shoes
blacked nice says & worms
his two
fingers
& ink
in his nails
& into
the slit
in my night clothes.
