kagablog

Every night, I think of your betrayal
And the bitterness floods my bag
to form a heavy shelter
That protects me from my enemies
That warms me in dead desire

And every morning, I tear my shelter down
I think only of the warmth of your body
So that I might freeze in the desert sun
I carve your name into the flesh of murderers
To share with them the freshness of my wounds

what knowledge
in this box of Doritos and religion
what is it you try to remember

having never tasted the infinite
why are you waiting
for eternity to resume?

on your fingers
i finally catch the scent
of your new lover’s ass

i’ve been sniffing for it
you’ve kept clean for so long
it’s not what i expected

but then, you never were

i leave my own scent in reply
a little camaraderie, a little malice
a little bit of comfort in knowing
that dogs don’t always fight

Her corpses pile like friendships, newspapers,
a stack of obituaries falling over as you try to use the toilet.
Her own rage hidden, she takes up yours for sport

She says, “where there is life, there is hope.”
She trembles with hatred when I point out she lies.
She does not believe I have earned certainty.

And if they say our youth made us tragic
Ask them what the aged have we should want
And if they dare to call us beautiful
Ask them why they’re not

and still i dream of connection
a calendar of hickeys on my chest
a Messianic Age of every pubis

and now i’m trapped at this party
listening to your idiotic drone
i’m drunk
of frail body
arguing Bergman
smelling your cunt from across the room

One day I decided to climb up a mountain and think about you

I wanted to go to a quiet place, so
I found a pretty spot on the side of the mountain
but all I could think about was that old
boyfriend of yours
and how he threatened to kill you

Over the quail and the water
all I could hear was his voice over and over

I’ll just fucking kill you, fucking kill you, fucking kill you.

I didn’t want to think about him
and I didn’t want to think about killing anyone
least of all you

So I climbed higher until I couldn’t hear the quail anymore
but I could still hear his voice

So I climbed higher until I couldn’t hear the streams anymore
but he was still there

I’ll just fucking kill you, fucking kill you, fucking kill you.

I had to climb higher

I kept climbing long past the heights that it was safe to climb
which wasn’t so bad except I had no way to get back down

I climbed to the top of the
mountain where all I could hear was his voice

I’ll just fucking kill you, fucking kill you, fucking kill you.

The cloud cover broke today
I have no friends, but
the sun at least wants to say goodbye

Shhh! Baby Jesus
is sleeping. He can love you
at a later time.

Oh, I remember you
Though I can’t quite get a handle on where or when
But I remember steam and blindness
Menstrual blood on the sauna floor

I remember truth as a gun
Fantasy as a bomb
And lies for every possible purpose
I remember the alcohol that couldn’t help me forget

I remember which details can be abandoned
And which memories can’t be lost

I had a guardian angel once
though he was never cut out for the job
After several years and a number
of fuck-ups, he was demoted
sent to take care of an Illinois McDonald’s
where he mostly helps the grill chef keep up with the customers
and occasionally rescues the fry cook from fire

I was given new angels, one after
the other, but I never warmed to them,
no reason why. I was imprinted
I guess. Once you’ve had
a burger-flipping guardian angel
it’s hard to relate to the more successful sort

Often, during rough spots, I find myself craving
undercooked low-grade meat.
Twice I’ve awoken outside Tasti-Freezes
in towns I’ve never seen. I hear the angel
has rough spots. Nobody will tell me where he wakes up.

What holy rite
can halt this fast decay?
What ancient herb
could help us sleep at night?
Is there a magic drug that can endure our pain?
an acronym to make
a crib death less dead?
Some pagan festival that can make peace with the past?
What
sort of revolution
could give my father back his childhood
my mother, her husband
or my children what they needed

Give an Indian his land
or a slave his dignity
Restore eleven million West Europeans
nine million Russians
twenty million Chinese
nine million medieval women

What bold new painting
can reflect this slow despair?
And if one should
what could it do
for anyone?

Is there some poem
stronger than the past
and our present vanities?
Stronger in its order than our instabilities?
Can it purge me of this rage?
Can it cleanse me of these memories?

What
gift from the divine
What
Orphean tune
could restore your touch to me?

Is there nowhere I can turn?
Is there no ancient quest
stronger than inevitability?

She asks me what she can do to help
I tell her that any problem worth solving
is beyond the human capacity to solve

I am wrong. She gives me love, love gives me sleep, and sleep gives me dreams
Dreams give me a few hours with the dead

It’s not much, but it’s as much as I got while they lived

“I’ve been listening to classical music,” she tells me
“I find it very soothing.
I need more relaxation in my life.”

I think of Wagner’s screams and Sousa’s marches
Prussians drunk on war and power—

—Beethoven’s unfinished concerto for the man he loathed
replaced by that crashing, maddening ode to the most unrelaxed passion of all—

Disturbed, I cultivate friendships with my elders,
and a middle-aged man tells me that he listens to classical
music to decrease his libido

I think of
thin-lipped Germans and
bastard Russians

Nannerl touching Johann’s penis in the music room
as Leopold narrows his resolve and
Napoleon prepares for war

—I think of Austrian celebrities dressed like women and the cuckolds who loved them—

I tire of such intricacies.
I retreat to my childhood world of rock ‘n’ roll
childish, transparent, Oedipal—
boy meets girl, boy fucks girl,
boy bashes father-in-law’s head with a baseball bat
Simple, pounding rhythms,
brainless ballads of loss

The sort of thing I can relate to.

I seek simpler sexualities.

I turn my back on majestic music and briefly wonder
what other people hear

all i want
is for you to grab hold

of my sin

from the inside

surely
from that vantage

you can squash it forever

leaving me free

to truly love

all the
women who aren’t you

If you crave violence
and I crave violence
is it then cheating to stab you in your sleep?

Thank you, Leo, for showing us America
A place where the occasional child must be sacrificed
not to the altar
not to the Auto-de-Fe
not to the Cossacks
but to the ADL

Waking up early to read
500 distribution newspapers
join certain mailing lists from secret PO Boxes
conjugate the statistics of hate

into poetry

While Judah pretends not to notice

For us, America is the goldene Medina
And what we don’t ask for ourselves
We don’t sincerely seek for others

But we are Judah
and the Pyramids were not the last thing we built!
We raised Madison Avenue,
the great tomb of the AmeriCAN mind

Form over Substance:
the new math
the old gematria

So Gallagher, a fine Irish, portrays you in the
Made for TV Movie of the Week;
Mamet tells us how you felt
And, best of all, Alfred Uhry and Hal Prince
—lacking only the lyrics of Sondheim
put on a Broadway show!

“Hey, my dad has some old anti-Semites in the garage…..”
“And we have a hangin’ tree out in the back 80….”

They hung you, Leo Frank,
like more black men than will ever be counted

and the curse Judah doesn’t refuse our own children’s head
we don’t demand be lifted from others

at a bar no i’m
at a party or i’m
walking down a downtown street and there’s this man
and he’s
my age and he is a
some man and
he’s cry
ing
he is cry and
he
wants to talk to me
because he
needs some one to
talk to
because he
doesn’t have many friends
and i look like
someone he can trust

he is
my age and
he is
an NCO and he just got back

and i
do not want to talk about this
and i do not want
to be here but he is here and i am here
and i am still here and he is
still talking
and he
doesn’t want to hurt anyone

he just wants things to be better he thought he
could make things better but
now he just wants to stop crying all the god damn time

i know
this is not a new thing i
saw Forrest Gump which had veryrealistic
wartime footage and for
counterbalance i saw
Full Metal Jacket
which showed how sexy
men could be

i saw a verywealthy actor portray Lee
surrendering to Grant

and adifferentactor cry at the Treaty of Versailles
and of course there was

the real violence
hatred
madness
but as bad as things got
sooner or later
i could get away
and i always did
eventually but now i’m

in this bar at

this party and
on this downtown Texan street and

he is the first NCO home and
he is the first of many he is
my age but so many,
so many are still gone,
so many are so much younger than me and i say

Johnny, you’d better get used to this, because
this is a big nation and

this is a big war and there will be

many NCOs
and they will have
no place to go
and if they
cannot get away then
neither can you

I was never untrue
To anyone but you

looks at you with those sharp green eyes
and tells you you just don’t look like
anyone she’s ever seen

When she tells you
that it was alright
that you married a shiksa
and you have to tell her
that she’s talking about your older brother

That’s when I want you to come back to me
With your bullshit about eternal love

I know you saw me
doting over her
caring for her

taking all of her psychoses and turning them into something
a little more beautiful
than what was there before

You loved me then
and perhaps I was lovable

I know you saw me an hour later
telling him I’d kill him
if he offended me again

You snickered
thinking you were watching the macho bullshit posturing
of a kind and sensitive soul

Flattering, but I’m warning you now
and I won’t warn you again:

it might have been macho bullshit
but it was not posturing
it was not a game
and I would have felt no guilt
no shame
at leaving his body at my feet
blood on my teeth
satisfaction in my eyes

And I know
and I’d like to forget
But I know
given the right circumstances
I could do it to you

This is how I’ve always defined honesty
I rub in my own face
how thin the walls are
between the man I try to be

and all the wicked things
I know I’ve done
and all the wicked things
I will do in the future

I like to remind myself
when I’m reading stories to my son

or comforting a friend

or caring for my mother

of the time I popped open a man’s eyes with my thumbs

and when I tell myself that I’m checking myself
I like to remember
how much pride I felt

when the tissue gave way

how much pride I feel today

You have smaller demons
Today, you were passive-aggressive
Tomorrow, you might be vain
You need flattery
crave attention
and have been known to snap
during a particularly ugly bout with PMS

I once held a knife up to my brother’s throat
applying
just the tiniest bit of pressure…

I don’t know
if the difference between us
is the thickness of our veneers

or if you really would be incapable of hurting me
no matter how much I hurt you

I don’t know
if everyone has such a need to kill

though I know many more do
than you would care to admit

I only know how much I love you right now
and how much I hate
the people I once loved most

Here we are
in no particular space-time location
mourning corpses with cunts

the stuff legends are made of
because you talk and talk, Bill
and we’ll never know why you did it
although it’s pretty easy to see why she let you

We have theories, treatises, easy explanations
We say it’s easier to be dumped with finality

big fucking deal

Smartest poet of the 20th Century, you are, Bill
and the standard, the easy, explanation
seems dumb enough for you

And as for why I did it, well
Despite the deep desire for drama they shared
my woman wasn’t much like Joanie

who stubbornly took care of you

mine, ah
mine wanted me to take care of her
a burdensome pleasure, that
as you would know by proxy

So you killed Joanie and I let the
human in Sandra die

Well, hell, no big deal for me
By the time this is published, my tiny literary clique will have entirely lost interest in my personal little mess

You made yours into a career
bloom where you’re planted, and all that jazz

Your wickedness
ran deeper than mine
and offered you more inspiration
a better vocabulary of hatred

a richer way to spread pain

and call it art

Forgive me, Bill, I’m babbling again.
Cut it up if it bores you, I already have.
What we know is this:
You shot a woman and became a god

Was it worth it, Bill?

To you, I mean.
We both know it was to her.
But was it worth it to you, Bill?

And I know you’ve tried to write the answer to that many times
and we know it cannot be done

Is it worthwhile
to push oneself past one’s limits
to experience horror, cruelty and hatred
just to learn how to write?
Could you save us the trouble of research?

Ah, but Bill
we both know

anyone who asks
is destined to find out on their own

Sometimes we wait for nightfall
Sometimes we wait for romance
Sometimes we wait for our enemies to die
Sometimes we hold back our orgasm, watching our enemies under our hips, waiting for them to come
All of these things are easy

My father is waiting for forgiveness
He doesn’t remember the first time he gave me a black eye
He doesn’t remember the first time he hit me with a chair
He doesn’t remember the time in Oklahoma
the time in Texas
the time in Georgia
the time in Mexico
But he knows he has sinned, and he waits and he waits
for the day when I can call him and tell him I can trust him again
He knows that one of two things will happen
I’ll forgive him, or he will die

I am learning about my father
I am learning about him when I see the love in your eyes
mixed with the fact
that you can never trust me again

Now
after the parties
and after the Seders
a few scant hours before the POWs come home

(and home is here, this is their home, and this is my home, far from my friends and family and far from their friends and family and the things that any of us would call home)

Now, on a quiet Saturday, I ponder art for art’s sake
and art for society’s sake
and art which by its nature could never last
because it is too specific
too focused in its condemnations
and not at all metaphorical

Today I ponder the role of an artist
at the close of a war
and the dawn of an empire
And what it means
to believe in something
anything
in a time of blind faith
in blind and stupid leaders

Today I am an artist and a businessman

so I look over my projects

what is due, what is due me, what will be due soon
what must be achieved today so that
other artists will still consider me important

so they will come to my rallies
and come to my readings
and thank me for my politics
and thank me for my energy

Today at home
I think of the best way to relieve the burden
of living, writing, and voting in the country
destined to conquer the world

Today I think of stacks of burning bodies

dictatorships established in the name of democracy

and the motherless sons who will come back to America
and do everything they can to bring it down

and what does that mean to anyone,
anyway?

the POWs come home
tortured beaten terrorized
and I will celebrate
with my city and with my country
and I know
that this is the last day we can call ourselves
a Republic of Laws

today
I fear for myself
I fear for my son
I fear for the Arabs
I fear for the Israelis
I fear for the Persians
I fear for the Americans
and I fear for every artist
who makes art for art’s sake
who won’t speak out
at the end of our world

I swear to g-d, this is the very last time
The last hysterical telephone call
The last warrant issued
The last burned-out Chevrolet

I swear to g-d, this is the last wild woman
My Bonnie and Clyde days are over!
But you must understand
The opportunity I have here:

Past indiscretions don’t come close to this
One more, and I’m done
Please send a small cheque.
I can pay you back in the very near future.