-
he looked too cooked up
a mound of sawdust and cadmium wax
transposed for razor wire and flesh
upon the buoyant, bentley–incisioned steps
of the tangiers
ascending, plexiglas palisades
over a bludgeoned dorado
tapeworms of overcoat wool and denim
grating dandruff and rivulets of acidic bile
into the centerfold ridges
of a little nemo necktie
“you’re dying” you whisper
——rashly
———bas-relief
sandbars skinned, flayed with gulfs—
inlets—shoreline beams
house’s differential covered by penalty
—benzene—zinc—ddt—dimethyl—alive
by dusk’s ektachrome lined vacancies that barreled, magnified
—prostrated
boreholes, all-you-can-glut—threads
lighter fluid
through bakelite gums
swimming in knotted directories—as the cadillac eddies—knotted back
trust-fund parasites fitted with cubic
meter plants amphibious
like the seamed fabric of a milkweed life preserver
over thermobaric streaks
a premature summer
saffron and lace and oxide caravan motels
decades snuffed
like a blood clot, gorged up in the disc of a stethoscope
dishpans of ten-cent refrigerated hamburgers and country fried aspirin
longing for the company of poisoned tylenol
crushing capsules and nautical turpentine
before they were projected themselves
to thread aspirin shoelace
through a aggregated
punch card, a fantail wake of
guttered aces, kings, clubs
secondhand flushes made so slick, vinylike
plinthed beneath a sleeve
soldering a capsule of fertilizer and eroding flesh
barring shut salvation army shoeboxes lined with
refrigerated dinners listing, entombed
in the ashen sands
a limbic wurlitzer cul-de-sac
begins to spark
palpitate, like the kneecaps of a hydrofoil
between the chromatic grooves
of his montgomery ward
diver’s watch
—when the evinrude cerebellum—
ruptures…
-
“no…it’s just economics.” he murmurs—as you position a bottle of chloroform jim beam—so ferrous, cerulean—upon extinguished lips
—“hypertension sold by the room, the runabout? isn’t that–what it is–
to shear the nylon moorings? to splurge, cross
examine–paper gulls and teletype printouts, gawk with a protractor
across scale models of a spliced havana,
a islamorada
fishing pier…one half— the floodgates southeast of soledad, dean martin, neapolitan castro sundaes,
waxed, linkaged matchsticks, the next—
—last—
…
"tar.”