Sunday, January 27, 2019

cigarette and faith

i gave a homeless woman
a cigarette on a street corner
while on a walk yesterday
to say hello to my lover;
it was an idle impulse.
she said i had the most
gorgeous lips, this woman,
whose jamaican nouns were
weighted under the lubrication
of a beer she held in one
hand, the fingers of which
looked liked the thin
horizon of a widowed desert.
she could not light the
cigarette so i offered,
and handed it back and
she said she was saving up
for a trip back home,
which i chose to believe
because i want to use
her in a story some day.
my friends will say i did
this for my ego - the giving
and lighting of a cigarette
to a woman without a home.
and to them i will blush
and smile down the long
tunnel of their knives and
look at my feet.
let us argue, though, for the
sake of it, and say i did do
it for my ego. when i am alone
i don't do well
and can feel the sap of
the tree in my veins and
i become a vagrant dog
at the heels of bitter secrets.
my mineral power goes dim,
you see? - the voltage drains;
the fuses of my inner column
become dry thistle in a gale.
there are naked rooms in my
soul, i suppose, that accept
only trespassers and those from
my past who've been maligned
by the exercise of my ego,
so i let them remain there
to scratch at the walls and
piss on the floor.
when i am alone i pester
the fruit on the branch;
i foil good commerce with
the old suffering of the pale;
i hide behind the smallest
stones, licking away the salt
and whispering to the void
some inane song about loss.
i am weakest when i don't
have in my glass jar the
presence of some other
extremity, as if i am an
unsingular being whose
engine is fueled by the
self-blood of others and the
wayward wind of their eyes.
earth's rumor has it that i am
sick with hope-trembled shades;
that i am at odds with the
contentment of the loved;
that i am in bitter contact with
my less primal and that all i
give is what i am assured will
be taken with both hands.
there is a malignant insistance
that i find who i am in the mouths
of my betters; that i'd rather stay
on the hip of the green-blue coast
than swim out; that i am a threat
to the fabric of my own truth
for the sake of keeping the
balance within my humid air.
so it is my ego, to be sure. the
imperially dressed; the secretary
to my wanton stomach; the vague
harbor master; the immersed scar.
but anyway...
the jamaican woman, who held
her beer can as if it were the crown
of the blessed angel, who could not
look me in the eye for more than a second,
said she loved me as i walked on,
motionless in my steps toward
what i believed were the grand
institutions of happiness and joy
- down a cold sidewalk,
thinking
what of it, my ego...
i am here, my friends are not

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