Panopticon
where the indian credit card man
tells me that I am good
and I am so ready to believe him
I could touch the oily ringlets
that frame his face
I could put my head on that
space between his neck and shoulder
and kiss that muscle
taste the kindness
the camphor, the educated London
that lives there
so ready for the sale
when I put the phone to bed
I recollect that
there is no place to go forward to!
And if I stop trying,
you've left me this pull out the window
this drag on
my belly
where if I stop trying,
I'll fly back and down
I'll go to Virginia's river and with
you in my pocket
learn cold
the history between us
I am on the crumble of the brink
clutching dust, particles, spaces
between each
ten thousand years, a broken
pangaea later
you still make me desire
feel wet, overwhelmed, lost
an earthworm on the sidewalk
drawn up and smashed by
the force of hope
I want to dispense
with all this
and have you drink it and
dress it and put it your box of shadows
If it is, like I think,
all about presentation-preservation
An offer: you could have secrets
I needn't know.
You could take any letter in the alphabet, and I'll still be Leonard,
with the awkwardness of a carousel
always another time, ever a chance to rise.
A fact: Your hair has grown. It curls and tendrils and Greeks your face, brushes that soft triangle where you must keep something good, if only just the word.
Even now, even falling, (there's ever a gulch, a splishy-splashy crick, a divot in the earth that'd do)
these are things I think.
Jesus, why won't you leave me alone?
Why do you come up again? Why does your shadow keep on? A soursick carousel horse, and I see your name on billboards, backpacks, announcements of thrill and panic, on the currency, on the maps, on scars and marks my body came to life with.
A Question: If the man on the telephone could tell
from his New Delhi cubicle, if he could be torn
from his pitch and his speech and his
metal-fisted grip to tell me so...
if I could decipher his mellifluous accent and agree -
you were not in braille
why couldn't I have heard your
perfect english, your heart noise, and
made a single stupid
sound?
