Someone Else's Place

It's four in the morning.
I'm losing my footing,
but wanting your core,
and your eye boogers,
cervix,
pulse.

The needle pricks,
the metallic air
coursing around the room
like a lottery.

And you,
unlatched,
unhooked,
zen.

Churning Zen,
which I don't think is.

Is zen an ocean or a lake?

I am the cables which hold the Brooklyn Bridge up,
the fingernails clawing the rot of the pond dock.

As if something lived there,
as if someone needed
my watchtower lamp,
by which to sail,
my call of the hour.

The families of fishmongers
all sit to pudding,
while I, in the crow's nest,
on the cold metal table,
am scrambling for footing...

Would that I had fins.
Would that I had wings.

You. With your photos,
of Things That Happened To You -
a very nice thing to have been said,
a very nice thing to have been done,
you were six vestal virgins,
maligning the seventh.

You. And your lovers,
all pixel and light.
Not the boy-guts they've punched at,
or man-hands they've shaken,
but the photograph paper
you print them all out on.

Now what can you give me?
Your tin can of moonlight?
Your dragonfly whispers?
Your leaning-on-God's-wall diplomacy?

I revert to you, contact you,
dial your SideKick,
slip into the skin of it,
to remind myself
that the questions they asked me as a child
are the same...

I went to the doctor's
and opened my mouth,
and opened my anus,
and accepted all probing of body and mind.

I held my mother's hand on the paper,

let them know me,
and take my breath,
and take their answers.
And I wonder what was left,
with only my blood and no breathing?

A me?
An I?
Who's asking?

You, my pretend friend, are your own answer.

Good 4 U

I sometimes toss my questions out to sea.