Logicians In The Sanitarium

Logicians, lit weakly by the skylight,
find each other.
Overtaken by passion, they posit avidly.

"Which," they wheeze to each other, holding bony hands,
"of the following is true, if any?"
1.If infirmity, then writing.
2. If writing, then infirmity.
3. red on the handkerchief reveals the heart's longing to express itself.

Doctors smile at the logicians, but hate them.
How are you feeling? Does the treatment seem to help? 
Who the fuck cares? Move to Arizona and die there, albeit a little more slowly. 

Dizzying excitements exhaust the logicians.
Staff wheel them in chairs out to the verandah, buried in sober wool blankets.
The sun stutters on the horizon.
The world displays its affliction in tones of slant red and crumbling orange.
The logicians gasp, but their minds race with articles
and the heady imaginings of each other's naked admiration.

And so here is what I want to say,
to you, to God, 
to anybody whose conveyance is locked to guard against accident. 
When medicated, 
when not hacking to the point of collapse,
I dream of the most illogical things.
I pretend that my body is not made of disintegrating papier mache,
and that you want to fuck me,
like somebody used to, in some other place, once, that I can't quite remember.
I see you and hope
that you, whittled down to nothing, incontinent and demented,
want the same illogical things.

That's when the logicians recognize it in my face like an obvious error.
They laugh uproariously,
joined by their new friends, the doctors,
who lobotomize me,
wait for me to babble through the froth,
and say, "See there? You're making sense," and walk away on skis
like giant L's held stiff by the wax and starch of correctness and clarity.
______

for "Aspire" at Real Toads

In Character

The actor portraying the character of my significant other walks in.
I have to kiss him,
though I'd really rather beat him to death with a shoe.

My character is mild.
Kind.
Self-effacing.
It's in the script, written by some man.

Lighting and make-up's gonna make me look fetching
despite my bad night.
I had interminable dreams of being stalked by tigers
inside a house contaminated with hostile spirits.
I blame it on the medication
given to me by the character of my quack-ass doctor.

I shovel out some really stupid dialogue.
"Have a nice day.
Thanks for the rose.
I love you."
Who wrote this shit?
Probably some hermit trash novelist from Erie,
wearing a ratty sweater with elbow patches,
head down over his keyboard like a hunchback.

I let the actor portraying the character of my significant other fuck me last time
on a different set,
because at the time I was trying to be normal;
I'm an actress, I sleep with my leading men,
even though they wobble their heads and kiss me like ticks--
I exsanguinate slowly, and look up at them, pale as a blank page.
They fill me in,
in a foreign language,
and in black and white.

Suddenly, I can't stand any of it anymore--
the fat pretentious director in his chair,
the endless re-takes,
the sheer idiocy of the story itself.
My mild,
kind,
self-effacing character breaks a prop dish against a table,
and holds the jagged edge to the throat of the devil who imagined all of this.

Someone calls 911.
Someone else calls the producer.
A rent-a-cop shows up, disturbed from his detective novel,
fumbling for his starter's pistol, mistakenly restraining the continuity editor.
At last, here is the character of my quack-ass doctor,
with his palms out,
trying to calm me.

I make the familiar motion to cut the scene,
and this crew of self-important baboons gasps like they'd never seen that simple gesture before.
I try to tell them all to fuck off,
do not pass Go,
just please, for once and for all, fuck off and leave me alone,
but I can't articulate my lines, because

I've gone off-script,
off the rails,
off my nut,
and the feeling is glorious
for as long as it lasts.
________

 

A Ngorongoro Nativity

If you are a Cape Buffalo,
the first thing you do in life
is fall.

For your mother, there is no hospital bed,
no breathing exercises, no Lamaze,
no idiot husband with a video cam.
Stoic, she stands and gives you to the ground.

This stunned moment of grass and hoof-shadow
is the last rest you will get,
Little Runner.

The only other place to lay your head
for the rest of your life,
will be that final hour of stifled surrender
in the lion's mouth.
_______

For dolls, part 2, at Real Toads. This doll was created by Becca Nenow. I don't think she probably intended it to be a Cape Buffalo, but this is how it spoke to me.

And, from Detroit's own...

 

Gypsy

I'm a Gypsy--
kiss me hard, see if I'm not.

Ain't no peace in the graveyard, babe--
onliest choice is dance or rot.

My scent's like leaves, like rain near dusk--
chase that scent like the wolf pack does.

Squeeze my throat with a soft sure hand--
Gypsy heart at your command.
______