Eight
Poems by Gordon Massman Author's Links |
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1158 Sewed two cat heads onto my chest for breasts, black, whiskered, one chartreuse, one amber eyed, mouths fixed in terror-grimace (decapitated them alive, naturally); fixed a pig snout into my crotch for cock, raw, red, jagged, but eternally erect; coconut shell pieces for kneecaps. hairy but tough and sexy; casava skins for butt en- hancement, smooth, pettable, delicious, pale; slivered banana peel for hair, long curvy strips with a lilt like a soccer star; the cat stomachs doubled as moccasins and the pig gut made a fine scrot- um wrapped round two whole hazelnuts, hanging. Needed a new heart and decided the ripe red plum, so pried my cavity with a sur- geon's vise and stuffed it in, veiny, glutted, sugary-sweet, dripping deep red streaks mosquitoes could swill on sweltering moonless af- ternoons; a scooped-out lemon rhind for bladder and blown out egg shell for chin, the kind I smeared Paas over on Easter and called it art, beaming like a watt; bathed in compost to the crown, stuck on pheasant and buzzard feathers to ready myself for she for whom I am cooking shrimp Mozambique with coconut milk, cayenne pep- per, and Rachmaninoff, she whom by my creole-smooth telephone voice accepted my invitation sight unseen--the Personals, you know-- and who I am positive will be wearing for playful aperitif thong pan- ties with the window I've seen in nudy magazines. Decided from ear lobes, to dangle one live goldfish each by needle holes punched through gossamer fins, a touch, an accessory as Paloma Picasso would declare, with a smattering of close-to-surface-blood wrist cologne. I have such a beautiful clean-angled house, roomy, high- ceilinged, everything squared, spacious, shiny, flat, lacquered, and wide, and I inside, part ichthyologically glittering, part vegetatively glammed, mythological, nightmarish, a creature no woman could refuse. 871 Left eye, right eye; left eye, right eye; see the world jump; left eye sees a beautiful man; right eye a man being dragged by the arms; left eye a man with youthful locks; right eye a man with head blown off; left eye a man sitting at a table; right eye a man with ground beef be- tween his shoulders; left eye a man bringing on the soup; right eye gore stringing out a neck; left eye a man backing down the drive; right eye a man swinging between two soldiers; left eye a man choosing a grapefruit; right eye tanks powering through smoke; left eye a coin between two fingers; right eye a hole between two wings; left eye ecstasy; right eye God; left eye two grandparents, a child and a dad; right eye two legs, a torso, and air; left eye capital- ism and fascism mashed together, right eye a man shorn off at the deltoids; left eye a church steeple climbing the sky, right eye a church with its nipples blown out; left eye a wife; right eye a widow; left eye a dog strutting with its master, right eye a dog slurping blood pie, (I imagine it burrowing into my face, swallow- ing the meat). Left eye a smile ceased at the larynx, right eye a smile gaping with sky; left eye, right eye, left eye, right eye, the world jumping across my nose, when I open them together: an alphabet soup of horror and love. 1128 Double double toil and trouble the cow jumped over the moon and up they tumbled down the hill and what a sweet boy am I, oh my, and what a sweet boy am I. What would love be but a bucket of nails if not for a bushel of hammers? he cried, the hankie outflung as if he sung from the corner of the edge of the hive. I love her, I love her, and SuperGlue can glue up the pieces so that I am a pretty round egg, again, so that I am a pretty round egg. So let me pucker and fuck her and fuck her, and paint my lips blueberry blue, for she is a dream and a sofa and chair and several large hook buttons, she is my pantry, my tantra, my dancer, my pater su casa sublime, all blonde and beatific, blue-green-rust-brown eyed, smelling quite frankly of chives. I must not not have her, must not post-dispossess her, must mix her with lettuce and ham, oh my mother, my dyspeptic father, may hell bite you like a fly for I am her I, her eye, and her aye, the better to see you with my girl, the better to smell you up close, the better to eat you, the better to treat you, the better to dissolve you the Host, my God, my Mary, my Nefertiti, my most whom I drape in pearls, and cover in yolk, and bathe in a bathtub of milk, my myrrh, my liverwurst, my frankincense pie who went squealing all the way home with a basket of cherries, with a basket of berries, with a basket of hands, heads, and thighs, who jumped in my lap with my shaft at half mast which rose like a bone through the rye higher and higher to the height of a man eating jam.
1140 And from floor gas jets flames rise and lick her ass, spontaneously, without warning, like a demon seed in control, scorching flesh whim- sically, tittering I suspect in chambers below, her ass and body parts charred, blistered, black, in various stages of disregard, the devil in her floorboards, car chassis, concrete grocery store cellar, shooting through tubes, by adjusting dials flicking up flames making her jump. From nowhere tongues; skin sizzles such that she runs, stumbles, and gets up with grains pressed to face while fire races along endless flutes blown by Him, Oz-like, Beelzebub-esque; she yelps like a psy- chotic at tortures none perceive, husband, father, son, friends, none but God clenched within, and so she weeps at the twittering bird-rich sun knowing the soles of feet will burn like fire crawling struck match sticks, and so she constricts--sucks in bulk, exhales big, tucks knees --attempting to occupy the tiniest space, to disappear, but old St. Luci- fer's got laser crosshairs and pulses napalm through fiber optic sheets like a booster vaccine, and, a kid, she screams, arm limp, sulphur in brain, incomprehensible to all, such suffering, who command her with opulent white house, good husband, and positive intent, to shut her psychosomatic mouth and open her blood to the one who slaves for the pantry and fence worshiping the very stains on her underpants. And from gas jets they lick fusing her disks, petrifying her joints, searing her face into a hive of white heads pin-point size; and walls of fire no one observes block her retreat like a Hollywood set herding her left, right like successive blades of a guillotine cutting her off into a smaller and smaller disempowering, insurmountable, authoritarian box known as middle-age, unexplored, shame-sickened sexuality in the suburbs. 1143 He wanted to seduce her; she was ready as a Gobi. She could no more drop her ocean of love, suck and lick, than eat potting soil. He wanted her panting and she'd rather curl foetally in a mental ward. Exasperation overtook him, floodlike, leaving bitter- ness at existence; she refused his advances, repulsed by what all males want, furious at vivid images of future lovemaking fueled by past experiences-- but smiled deceptively (she performing fellatio, he cunnilingus; she lashed to posters, he teasing; she playing sado-masochism, presenting herself--all men are sleaze). He was ravenous and she so ripe he could taste her plum, but she flinched to her basal ganglia, rage-imprinted. He perceived the futility though her beauty stunned; the ostracism though she electrified. The wrapping does not reveal the prize, he mused; she is barely alive, yet he who is burning appears almost dead, what irony. But then he grasped the key to love's mystery: something about powerlessness, something about iron, it all coalesced into clarity, like a night sky of stars after putting on glasses. Tragic that she can not release, he thought, masturbating, crashing against her storm wall like surf. Finally months later after cracking the door less than a sliver and she worsening and probably permanently clotted, he backed off, resigned to failure--primitive failure and animal frustration--slowly shutting off the spigot of ropy desire. Now, the ball hemato-blasting a new day, he is out there again, alone, nicked and blotchy furred looking for action on Neurosis Boulevard. 1176 When the bullets zinged off institutional walls into the con queso pot or hotdog bin; when the plastics exploded in the parking garage sending truck pieces whizzing like satellites, when the size 38D breast swallowed a .9mm slug down the back of its eso- phogus and out the other side wide as an elephant's trunk; when the teeter totter, the tether ball, and concrete box sprung mangled pomegranates of human blood matted with hair and rainbow entrails; when the wife's face stuck to the pillow with the smok- ing black hole and the bedsheet underneath; when 8 ft. up every faux drywall dripped ruby red struggle marks, and below one such edifice slumped two soaked bundles, father and son, with sticky notes straightpinned to each: "revenge"; when among the copper and turquoise river-rush and blunt nosed fish in white-gold sun-needles and moon-dark threads, current-rolled like a broken Ken, the environmentalist's head; when howitzers inside the wild horses' chests blew them into hamburger in a New Mexican field, banquet for birds; when a shovel discovered a pretty Herzegovinian mound to be a fresh blister of skulls; when a razor sharp stretch of Jasper, Texas, asphalt tore off chunks of blue-black skin and apocalyptic gore dragged by rope be- hind a confederate truck, like hanging living spitwads on a rural classroom ceiling, or plastering storm-strewn newspaper on a chain link fence; when what terrified the crows from a Wyoming corn field banquet was a bludgeoned and naked homosexual; and finally, when in the janitor's bathroom the cackling police officers plunged the toilet of a Haitian prisoner's anus with the handle of a plumber's helper I slid into her slippery flesh and she arched up to deepen the thrust and we both tore out heavy clay scoops of air with our sharp cry and moaning throat simultaneously as if two Earths collided, spewed upward and intermixed forming a new harmonious planet. 1179 First I prepare the face with a warm wash rag by soaping off every grain of make-up, not one speck of lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, pancake base; then Witch Hazel-saturated cotton balls deep in eye creases, ear canals, folds and seams until they blacken like baseballs; I have already washed the hair, squeezed it free, toweled it dry, blown it with air, brushed it to sheen (I prefer raven black), and tied it off to expose the neck. Here vulnerability drips like rose petal tears and my tongue pulls to lick the white alabaster and gold tones, but I restrain my animal lust, treat her with utmost dignity. Next, I wash fingers free of Revlon, soil, and earthly dust till soft pouches of blood under cuticles shine like plums oozing yet contained in transparent skin. I swab between the fingers, brush the nails, and delicately rub in circular fashion along the grooves of print whorls. I have already slipped off in suds the wedding ring and placed it like a crown upon a pure linen towel alongside her gold Seiko and heir- loom hair brush. Similarly, I have cleansed her teeth, submerging the floss under the gum, flicking free food bits and plaque such that blood strives to ooze small red pearls which with tissue I swipe from inside her soft crevasse until like sap they shut off at the insignificant irritation tap. Then I remove blouse and bra and employ alcohol to swab the aure- olas, each individual hair round the lunar flow, under the globes where salt lines appear pushing them up and over with hands guaranteeing ster- ility, and again I repress the centrifugally pulling suck of my open lips in exchange for the parabola of decency which few human males pos- sess in the presence of inert nude femininity. Then I pull down the pant- ies as if popping from the oven a done cherry tart, slip them past ankles folding them acceptably like some kind of soft crab, but this time I trade the fire of alcohol for soapy terrycloth, running it up carefully after folding it round with a gentle release her coarse springy hair, like oiling the blueblack steel of a Remington gunbarrel, then pat it dry till all beads dissolve and the engorged red vulva glows like cataract covered with fern. Slowly with spatula palms under buttocks I turn her and in- to her pores push impregnated frankincense, ambergris, and myrrh un- til the globes resemble moonlit isinglass, almost platinum, almost gold. And now, omitting here detail of the few remaining ceremonials, she is ready: pure nakedness, pure the aforementioned vulnerability, pure mag- nificence, every arm hair sparkling, every vein standing, every plate and shield saddle-soap softened. Efficiently, I take exactly what I need from the tray--nothing more, nothing less--having already, between the bath and the instruments switched on a CD (I have always enjoyed the passion of Rachmaninoff), and in the gray, her body still posteriorly positioned, with a votive candle haloing her head facing northeast, I begin to partake. 731 I put the cat on my head, belly down, rump forward, legs and tail dangling, like hair. Now I am young again, black- maned; thick wavy locks parting in the wind; a pink-tummied baby delivered on my head. I stand, walk, the cat still there purring and riding my shiny, chrome dome. If you see a man on the street with a cat on his head know that he is not insane but resurrected in the Jesus of his days, a sharp, shrewd face on the other side of lunacy as the stock market, capitalism, gluttony, lies, the whole American empire crumbles. |
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