I. Synaesthetic Servant

                               I am the tsar, I am a
                               slave, I am a worm, I am God.
                                                   – Derzhavin

Hear bells, hear brutal tolling, hear broken bronze
gongs that reverberate decay. Hear mirrors. Hear trickling
gin, hear slick shining headshots slapped flat
into envelopes to be mailed
                      By the bale.
                      Get bailed out. Kiss the bondsman.
Seek relief from bondage. Hear quick breaths
(try to beat your own best time), hear grinding teeth yes
bruxism, hear aural parallax (a Doppler effect
on your crotch). Hear your past. An incident scripted as scene.
An incident a moment of dialogue. An incident
written, bitten, bitter,
biting. The dental plaster cast
with molar incisor canine array. An attendant humming with buzzing bits and
spritzing flouride. Bite. Now rinse. They claimed the amalgam no mercury contained.
An aluminum ladder and escaping youth dangles his ankles above
the storm drain. Hear the question when every minute hand
minutely ticks. Hear koto strings plucked like a ritual blade unfurled. Hear infant bleats.
Hear hymns for her, hear honk means stop or go.
Hear everything that we didn't say in the solar plexus-wrenching weight of silence.
Now, here, this -
Hear me out.


II. Steel Pole

                               Give me a place to stand and rest my
                       lever on, and I can move the world.
                                                        – Archimedes

Taste sweat, taste salt, taste fresh metal
chilled by winter's bum. Taste blood. Taste
vodka, taste the tin the flask the glass that you bit or
dropped or lost
          shattered to a thousand
          shards then used to divine your future in random pattern jagged.
                                 Taste sudden plummets
(the bile in the back of your throat), taste narrow
passages, taste shoddy halls (cathedral of this sick
spirit its crippling existential malaise.) Taste your origin. Consider original sin.
Consider the orgone-generating device. Consider
organs, organza, oranges, orgasms,
Oregon. A merry-go-round and
gazebo. A ticket-taker then grabs
the handle. A short line through the turnstile
and all the chumps get strapped down and the cars clack
up the slope. Taste the question in their
eyes. Taste golden plum flesh unsealed from beneath a purple rind. Taste reward.
Taste Faith, Hope, Charity and Chastity ripe like unwashed whores.
Taste salty sour bitter dotted line semicircles on the topography of a tongue
sweet sweet
life.


III. Sorting Seeds

                                                        So much to do today:
                                                        kill memory, kill pain,
                                                        turn heart into a stone,
                                                        and yet prepare to live again.
                                                                     – Anna Akhmatova

Please now, please long odds, please antique ivory
cubes rolled again and again. Please, sheets. Please sweet
ginger tea from root nub, please a forbidden treat
melting knot on the tongue
                     crumbs on lips
                     sugar lingers
scalds and burns and stains. Please remembered scent
(the last of them was Madeleine), please brick
yellowed road, please profound cliche' (keep it coming
back simple stupid.) Please happen again. Please let it be better. (Things are going to be
different this time.) Become golden, honey, wheat chaff. Become golden
Pollen, pollination, Pollyanna, Polynesian,
Polonaise. The crying lot and
mercy seat. A woman gathering humble spuds
into her canvas lap. A broad river and mute barge
unrolled on earth toting its loaded mother lode
of silent ingots. Please the promise of a nervous
system. Symptom. Cistern. Please the echo in a cave. Please crevasse.
Please X marks the spot, please buried treasure, unfold this map.
Please surprise prize from a pack of Cracker Jack.
Pleasure. Plaissure. Leisure. Release her.
Please me.