Alphabet draft #5 H,I,J,K,L

Armadillo

If we begin at the beginning death could be an armadillo.
A rolled hard case: ridged, dark
There will never be light in your thoracic cage.
None ever to reflect upon the keratin body (that which waits there).

Avenue

The next death, an avenue,
lit grey with the passing of some inchoate palm that benevolence is building
slowly.
The sidewalk muted and blocks categorical ephemera
rowed by dark houses and graves for sparrowed leaves
who have left their limbs for the sensual pleasure of decomposition.

Quietus as avenue held by perpetual autumn, like Sylvie's dance with:
foxes, the milkweed, the election.
When lovers fuck they walk down this drive.
There only long enough to pick up a penny from the asphalt,
and then to slip the cold copper into each other's mouths.

Backyard

I live with the lovers, an address on the street parallel to september.
Night fall brings the city dwellers to my back yard to watch films on a large projection screen hung beneath a chestnut tree.
I care not for this.
I care not for this,
no.
Only my white roses.

Bloody Love

He married at the Royal Botanical Gardens on a cold day.
The clouds hung low with the weight of the word "husbandry".

His best man, a medicated schizophrenic, a young monarchist
(who I fantasized about having in the back of the tea house)
with dark eyes like oil spots, like barn owl's waste.

To dumb it I drank and prayed to Aphrodite for the bloody sport of love;
Punks naked in the Arizona desert who's tattoos bleed sea water
and who dance something wicked to the cat headed sun.
A tabernacle of bodies spastically worship bound
to
slam Arizona down.
Punks building a canyon for St. Vitus
where I will be married to the ground.

Black Book

Then to see a book in the arched belly of a colonial house
where you are carried sleeping by cloaked things, robed in thief's black.
There in vaulted brick untouched at the edge of the interstate
They lay me down
you say
so that I might become a longitude
of the spine.

Canopic Jars

1. Jackyll
2. Falcon
3. Animus
4. Simian

The stomach, the liver, the brain, the lungs.

Carthage

The story goes that he came and killed the father to sleep in his bed and raise us.
She groaned, long and gutteral, I imagine,
while you stood and held the citadel of Rome in the hollow of your left hand.

"What could I think drowning with 80,000 men?"

Divorce

When your new Mathematic Father finally left the house
he was drunk, screaming at the dog and calling your mother "that bitch who wears a Nixon mask".
She didn't say anything and just stared at the walls until she became
the plaster moulding.
You knew he'd be back, probably with daffodils: a narcissistic apology note.
Thinking of two possible ways to waste the time left at home, you moved out to the street with only your boyfriend and a want for a steady diet of penny candy.

Earhart

Amelia follows.
And tells how she played with little Pidge in Atchison, Kansas.
Rough, she was rough.
Fashioned roller coasters off roofs,
splitting lips, and spilling soon browned blood stains on her dresses.
We caught worms, moths, katydids, and one tree toad.
Who?
She did,
she did.

You will find her, not young or un- , but looking just like she does
in photographs you've seen.

Falling

From my bedroom window I looked and saw that projection screen hanging
in the yard from the dream where your mother died of cancer.
Rocks in the belly, the breast, the brain
too heavy to swim with.
But they gently helped my fall,
down along the trellis where I could see
that behind me there were roses,
the white roses.
And they did blind me,
and the white it was amaranthine
dear and sweet with the sense
of no ground.

Farmer

He always feels the harvest before it comes.
The callous cannot dull that, because
it is spoken by the wheat and not the hands.

Grandpa

He was in his room surrounded by all 5 of his children,
in the small hours of the morning
and he was already half gone.

They say it was hard to understand what he was saying, but all agree that he must have been talking to his dead sister and brother in law
at an old family hunting lodge in the country.
My only hope for heaven rests on his last words:

"Is there beer night up here?"

Grain

The hops, the barley.
Our souls all rain down on the prairies,
but his clothes, his room, his bed are all empty.

Hair

Like a tree ring,
a concentric measurement of your history.
I heard it keeps growing in the place
where no one cares if your roots show.

But though I can't see you here
if I could, I believe I would say:
such a long beard you have grown Papa.
A coffin filled with your white hair.
It's turned fishing line now,
and filling the space around
all the bone.

Hollow Oak Tree

Made a dream catcher, aged 9, and prayed
to a blue jay.
Made a rosary when I was 18 and then prayed
to a deck of cards and rye whiskey.
The only church I ever set foot in was the
rot carved trunk of an oak tree.
The only cross I kneel before is the paw of a bear.
Me and my friend, the old lady Venus.

I lost my inner peace last New Years

The old acquaintance be forgot.
The old champagne be not a drop.
He kiss me once and I fall down.
He kiss me twice, I'm underground.
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup of kindness yet
for auld lang syne.

Ink

We read the document over drinks, my lawyer and I.
And upon reaching the end we decided that the clause which allowed me to remain asleep, with full access to impossible instruments and sheet music, was the best deal we could expect from our cooperators.
With a shockingly minimal amount of trepidation I picked up a pen
and read once again the disclaimer: We, the undersigned,  hereby consent to the use of our home by the parties associated with the nature of decomposition and diamond jewelry.
It was easy to sign and I felt immediate gratification for the permanence of ink, so I signed again.
And then again.

Jane

I met her for the 369th time before she recognized me, but as soon as she did I think she knew she liked me.
The conversation that followed was pleasantly one sided.
Jane:
After living in the Tanzanian forests for years,
sometimes when alone I feel like there is nothing here.
My distant relatives are all brown eyed with brows heavy set
and like it when I whisper to them about tailored shirts.
No, Greybeard could not feel the same way.
"There is nothing here."
That is the piecemeal of a human face:
as complicated as Goliath's hands and as common as
my sister Judy.

Jerusalem

And so now O, Yerushalaim!
At the Western wall we prayed and instead of amen, all I could do was let out a cry that sounded like black currants and the soft grey feeling of brain damage.
You took a picture because you regretted not being there when I was born,
and being here made you feel like you had a second chance and hadn't missed out on anything.
Mom said you were too busy making day and night to get to the hospital on time,
but I think you were lying awake and trying to forget the 7 days of hell before her.
She always said your ex wife was a void snake, not a woman.
Immediately after that photograph was taken I rolled into a crack of the temple's stone.
Turning around briefly I saw your other child arrive in a hunter's snare.
Smiling you untied it and put it around your neck,
wearing the snare like a fox skin or prized medallion.
And I was glad you saved my brothers and sisters,
and I was glad you saved me.

Krill, Jonah's Song

"The whale is the best place to fall asleep.
The ribs are a good and tight sky.
The fat is good too, not adipose, but a warm fire.

The krill, we sing the whale song.
The song is very simple and very long.
It is circular and played on the harp like teeth.
The whale is the best place to fall asleep."

Kim Jong-Il

Dear Leader!
Birth at Baedeku
Mountain was foretold by: a
swallow, rainbow, star.

Dear Leader!
Your brother drowned
in your old home's swimming pool
a double rainbow

Leader

Dear Leader:
an alarm clock, an atom bomb,
a hard cock and a strong arm,
a pocket watch and a pig farm,
a swallow, double rainbow, star.

The story of a somnambulist,
who led a Russian radical to see the country side
in the crisp autumn outside Moscow.
The train ride through the night
and Ms. Ok in her striped pyjamas with
a typewriter and cigarettes
dreaming of Elizabeth Taylor.
She woke up married to North Korea.
She woke up with silver chopsticks
and lobster in her mouth.