Robert F. Gross- Three Poems

In Order of Appearance

morning happens somewhere inside you

don’t configure the adjacent night at all

morning happens you are not fully wrested

you are not pressed or washed or caffeinated

morning takes shape as an unintended bright

you pull the blinds to keep the darkness in

morning catches you un-breathed and un-stretched

you are not dressed or deft or delegated

morning happens as a staggered headache

you pull the sheets and expose your shadow

morning wobbles you on naked feet upright

toward the hallway the razor the enemy outside

Renfield

How we have felt left in an alley from what we know

and do not know since coming here

we therefore seem to be plunked down

seem perturbed from know and do not know

what in this bourgeois figure blandly watching

one another in this neighborhood where names

of flowers and serenades are unknown to us clouds burn

off before lunch and the blandly watching begins

I cannot believe me in any vampire’s arms

limp and scrawny liminal and unshaven

cannot believe me surrendered off the pavement

swept off my unbelief and waxen stance

Into the post-midnight of this ishmael city

spidered and sucked into burned-out veins

infused with insectivorous impulses me

impersonal unassigned and vacant lusts

Ascending the fire escape into belief

in the small things that sustain us always

houseflies and fireflies memory fragments

no bigger than fleas stuck between my teeth

Strip

Got to admit it: your cloak of invisibility is wearing thin.

Wearing from inside out, musty with stale renunciations.

A moth-eaten intermittent flea-market spectacle of yourself,

A wannabe bargain-basement vampire, shredded into recognition.

Everyone glimpses: obscene filaments of you wavering and gaping

Between broken threads like you still know how to want familiar things:

The caress of a lit cigar, penetration by somebody else’s lack or

Lackluster ambitions, the routine kisses of approval and habitual need.

Time to pack your bags and head out to where it’s carved from bone-tired.

Cliffs made of abandoned earrings, autographs, and siren’s cauls.

Transparent with sea sounds and dolphin do-wop cast in glassy pitch.

Glowing with pure indifference. Antiseptic. Astringent. Beside the point.

You can let your hapless robe drop to your ankles in visible exhaustion.

No one will take notice of your aged nakedness, your grey exhalations.

Step into the tidal pool, Aphrodite in reverse—sag, dissolve, cut loose.

You’ll work out the details later. ‘Cause that’s what later’s for.

Bio: As 2015 begins, Robert F. Gross, writer, director, and performer, is still unsettled, in every sense of the word. He is preparing for the premiere of Extinction Thoughts in Philadelphia with Julius Ferraro in February. Recently, some of poems of his have appeared in The Birds We Piled Loosely, Carcinogenic Poetry, and The Camel Saloon.