23 Today

-- I.

 Happy Birthday!

 

She is 23 years old today.

 She wakes with a start from her American dream.
The Holy Ghost in the corner is tugging on her toes.

– II.

The oven door shattered, and she cut her foot, those

Foyers she ran her childfingers down, stretched out: the paintings she bought when she was abroad
Were sobbing dust from their corners.

Inventory:
Iphone, guest room,

Tchotchke,

Silverware,

In-ground pool,

Going-out clothes and billiard room,

Dorito, Ikea, Target

Market Street, Wall, and Easy.

–

-- III.

She said earnestly,

               I love you, you know that right?

–

-- IV.

Get up!

SHE shouted,

It's Eleven O'clock!

And the child groans

Into their Daffy-Duck pillow case.

There's doing to do! HE said seriously in the dining room with pride,

Move Move Move.
And preened HIS waxy-'stache corners with a flick.

-- V.

Has anyone ever been quite so well equipped to choose what you will choose?

Are you conscious? Hey!

Hey!

Listen!

To whom will you entrust your detritus

When you are as dead as you expect to be?

What conveyer carries you heedlessly thence?

And Yo! Who built this ride? 
 

The boppy preteen, in the seat next to you,

With mushrooms for eyes, says

            You're totally safe.

But I don't believe him.

–

-- VI.

In what abject corner of the globe are you so satisfied not to dwell

That you happily shudder here?

Who will help you?

No one.

Who will call?

–

-- VII.
 

Beat beat beat beat fathers!

This dream is not mine

But you've made me dream it.

--VII.

Who dreams tonight

better than the evening news?

–

--VIII

Now is only preparation time.

Don't burden your consciousness with affect and trifles.

You are a serious person.

Work. Indeed,

Be employed.

Take not a single frivolous moment for observation;

Trust,

in short,

Your American gut.

– Ding.

When you are matured; indeed when you are done,

                [As a Lean Cuisine is done]

When you are ripened from toil and feebled soft;

Then!

          and not a moment sooner, 

Will you slink from task.

And, Oh! The Sitting Things you'll see!

The Sitting Things you'll have earned!

Sitting. Wheezing, sitting! Sunsets, you'll see, wheeze-hack, sitting! Hack-wheeze

Sunsets, sitting, sitting, sunsets, hack, hack-hack! 

And you'll let it all go then, 

At long last, you'll wake, ah! at last;

At long arduous last, you'll wake

from your Dream

–

--Then

Now

A simple dusty fifty years are passed.

Fret not

For your obedient, well-gendered,

2.5 children,

As ignorant as you are righteous,

Will seek no further solace than you have sought.

And the House!

           Oh! The house is paid!

What a brave brave life you have bought with hardship and grit!

Go peacefully now, valiant American, go!

Your time's been well spent; Rest assured now, friend,

 

Your Life has been well fought.

Now sleep, sleep!

    Others yet

are restless here.






-JV

Something Was Stuck, Rotting Between Your Morning Teeth

 OR                          

Falling Asleep In Work-Clothes

...







[It was 5 AM and
The crickets were still spooning on my window sill.]

Your cell phone alarm was a song we sung whenever we could.
But not this time.

I had slept for hours with my ring finger in the loop of your pants before, but
In my twilit grog, I recall thinking that this time was the best.


You had to leave in seven minutes or
Miss your train, But,  
This crusty-eyed morning,
At ungodly 5 o'clock - 
Before Work sharpened its pang - you
Languidly preached
That Under the comforter is nothing short of Heaven and that

Outside,
Is the vast kingdom of Hell; and so

You stayed softly Under with me
Until your living breath rattled at the neck
And jangled me warmly back
To sleep.


–


The crickets spooned still
Precisely as they do, on the sill, and 

When you returned greasy-beat and ready for rest again
From work,
You relayed this morning's events:

O, how I drooled! you said,
How our song thwacked and insisted and insisted itself into your ears.
How sleep honed itself into breakfast,
How you salvaged a work-shirt from the floor-pile, and how
You replaced my finger in your belt loop

With a rag

Used for wiping tables.


-JV

Withoutside

 "You know," he said,
"Sometimes, folks just don't got."



--

There is a silent house
On the street with the church
With
The Songs in it.

The silent windows of the house, I'm sure you'd remember
If you'd seen them:

      The windows with the “X”s in tape, you'd recall, I'm sure,
      On each of six window panes, an “X” in packing-tape.

Well,

Just under the planters of that house, under
The windows,

Peter
         “Subway” Burgoo scratches himself.

[He's been SICK on three swanky suits from the church so far]

Pete's groveling,

PLEASE!
to each of the passing trees.

Subway trudges, dumbly

Smoking his last cigarette, backwards,

His unfamiliar feet are oozing

From his scarecrow legs.    A dog is watching him.

SPIT.

And the strand won't break;
It bolas about his ankles and
he
    trips, but;

A bungee about his neck secures Subway Pete to the grid of clouds.

SNAP!

Something cracks open
His skull.

--

Meanwhile,
Through the windows, The Silent
Have watched Pete trudge
Up
and Down the street,

The one with the church
With The Songs in it.

They all know Subway Pete as the One

Whose breath could kill a hamster

          or a subway mouse.


-JV

 

Scene 1

A lit candle

An open laptop

A person

[Person closes laptop, which no longer lights their stupid face. Candle. Person speaks percussively right about the flame to put it out:]

PERSON: Pants. Penis. Porn

[The candle goes out on porn. The wick smokes. Person exits for half a beat, returns, snuffs wick between index finger and thumb.]

PERSON: [direct address] I dream better with no socks on. I

want you to understand. I steal sniffs of my sweaty-person smell and pretend its

your sweaty person;

I'm face in your pits and we're, sure as love is sweet, makin' sweet sweet, baby.

And then the grass gets complicated. And even

sunsets moonlight as undercover snowflakes, lawless as reason... 

And then there's U.

[U enters with swag. They wear a raggedy cap and bottle-cap glasses. U sucks their teeth, scratches crotch, shoves PERSON's head, and steps up, over and onto a plastic-wrapped couch which appears beneath them. They land on the couch and immediately feign impossibly relaxed.]

U: What the great fuck are you blathering about?

PERSON: I will the stars down out of ignorance. [Silence]

Do you believe in fulfillal?

U: [immediately] No. Fulfillment. And no. You have to learn to talk to people, Person. People fill you. If you're full of people, you will be filled by them.

It's my solace, Person; people,

People fill you.

[EYE appears wearing a trench coat and galoshes. They carry a water pistol. They point it as if taking careful aim at whomever they are speaking to.]

EYE: [Splirt of the pistol at U] Tautologous. [Splirt] You can literally say that about anything; If you're full of water, you will be filled by water. [Splirt] If you're full of corn grits, you will be filled by corn grits. If you're full of canker sores, you will be filled by canker sores. [Splirt] If you're full of the Madonna [Splirt], you little Michelangelo you [Splirt], you will be filled by the Madonna. [EYE pretends to take shots of the pistol at U with every new example sending the words like bullets:] Toothpaste, petrol, cat, fork, grace...

PERSON: Sunsets. [Launches a mime hand-grenade at U, after pulling the pin with their teeth.]

EYE: Yes, sunsets. Point is, U, you're reasoning is invalid. Your solace: invalid. Your operating under a system as lawless as -

PERSON: - snowflakes.

EYE: There you have it. [Splirt]

Snowflakes. No law;

Invalid.

[EYE pretends to take 2 shots of the pistol at U , making a splirt sound with each shot.]


-JV

For Charles

I rinsed an apple for
A child who came into the market,  

Thank you,
Sir, they said,
then,

The Apple, turned
Over in their hands revealing a face, which
Winked at me.

The child wasn't wearing shoes.

I wondered where their parents had run off to, smirking.

You're very welcome.

There were three customers behind him,
Irritated, all
wearing
Shoes.

Your feet are really sad, the child warned seriously,

They're sad, ya know? Like

                        Monsters; Monsters
                                          who 
                                   only become
                        Monsters 
                        because they're forced to hide.


The next customer,
Drowsy, and
In a hurry,
coughed a nasty nasty cough,
                                  and

The Apple hid its face again
  in the child's hands.


-JV

The Eolian Harp*

My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, out Cot o'ergrown
With white-flowered Jasmin, and the broad-leaved Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
Snatched from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed!
The stilly murmur of the distant Sea
Tells us of silence.
                   And that simplest Lute,
Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory breeze caressed,
Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
O! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere- 
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

   And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eyelids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquility;
Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute!
   And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?
   But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O beloved Woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallowed dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek Daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said and holily dispraised 
These shapings of the unregenerate mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
Who with his saving mercies healed me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wildered and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honored Maid!

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge  
       1796




* from Aeolus, Greek god of the winds; this was
an instrument of strings stretched across a sound
box; attached to an open window, it produced a 
quasi-music when the wind swept over it...

From: Jail Poems

30

I have never seen a wild poetic loaf of bread,
But if I did, I would eat it, crust and all.

-Bob Kaufman