Resurrection Party
I’m not paying
ten whole dollars
for some resurrection party.
I’m reincarnated
from a motherfucker
who isn’t even dead yet!
The skeletons
have overflowed
the closets, and now they’re everywhere—
On the daybed,
in the bean bag,
underneath the piano bench—
And they’re smoking
my best typos
in elaborate pipes of bone.
I’d like to take
the spin again;
a humbler, more valiant creature of habit.
When I say be like god
I mean overladen
with guilt and terribly real in the trenches.
There’s a savage hatchet
for bourgeois certainty
right here, under unbreakable glass.
When I say be like god
I mean renowned
for making stuff with guarded intentions.
We’re not allowed
to tread on grass
but no legal road escapes the city.
When I say be like god
I mean need to be praised
and sung to all the time.
I’ll hack a trench straight down the wheel,
forgiving myself all over the place
this year. Just one of us will have to die.
~~~
Take Me Off
Fucking a robot before dinner is fucking your own ecstatic reflection,
dimly brushed over chrome. Fucking a robot before dinner is very fine.
But why do they weave the grilles of the chest-cages loosely enough
for all these little arms to slip through, curling like ribbons under the water?
Why do they keep all those rusted-out kennels submerged in plain view?
It blanches the heart and stifles the appetite. It’s poor customer service.
We were told this was robot meat! It’s not my fault God gave me beautiful
arms to hoist up a dripping cell. You can’t even get a good look at yourself
in those corroded cages. It’s trying to eat of the shameful parts of animals,
or lolling before dinner with a robot that looks bored. It’s shaking hands
with the emptiest pelt, when it should be pronouncing the name of God:
and every sound you’ve ever heard is just the opening sibilant, just the air
whistling through perfect teeth; the rest only rushing in as your jeweled drill
pierces the robot’s bared clavicle. You forget it as fast as a burst-open cage
after the bill is divided, then paid, or the withering vines of skylight starring
gracefully folded cast-metal arms. When the robot combs its silver hair
with a brush of wire it sounds like suppertime; something shrieking
in a metal cage or a boiling kettle singing pressure, singing take me off.
~~~
Palinode
God flows through me, Josh. He streams down in a fluent wedge and parts me like a hair. Then something alive comes into my face. That is why I do not cotton to your little glamours and vainglories; your spring-broke, bespoke, death-prom blues. Do you know what it feels like to pray on television? Just like always: All those eyes, pillaging the sacristy of your décolletage—the clasped hands, the flared curtains, the foggy little nests of insect husks and ash and hair on the windowsill, beside the bowl of dusty grapes, each with its own private glint. Can you see all right? Be advised, the first few rows get wet. Also, I hate you more than life itself. You are to me a sticky maze of stems with one plump purple grape lodged, perhaps irretrievably, inside. But I aggress. My divine arousal slips easily into wrath, thanks to the delicate engine chained to my wrist whose balanced crystals and intimate wheels condense motion and witness into time, just like when I walk through the cesspool of your mind with my eyes shut tight and my arms up. What else is going on? All blue-eyed cats are blind. There are no snakes in Iceland. I cannot write and my thoughts on not-writing are not beautiful. Michael Jackson was never so loud when he was alive! I prayed fervently until the volume finally dropped, which you’d name fluke, name fate. But that is why I pray for everything, all the time. PS—on websites that host pornographic flash-animation games, the ones featuring violence and humiliation earn outstanding user ratings. I don’t believe in death after life; you want to dream the empire’s dreams. Lacking God and laws to master them, the animals molest each other with tremendous zeal. This is going to heal if I don’t keep picking at it. You are in my prayers, like a foot in a metal trap. So show me your tits, little boy. Let your knees of ash grow down into the floor.
~~~~~
Brian Howe is a freelance arts & entertainment journalist and editor living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His poetry, video, and sound art have appeared in many journals, a few festivals, and a couple chapbooks. He capriciously runs the Wax Wroth Reading Series and maintains the multimedia website Glossolalia. More information can be found at the Wax Wroth blog.
