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.
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