Days of the Week

“Tuesday”

this is what I do instead of what I should do
this is Tuesday afternoon

*

“Monday”

turn out
turn out
turn out
this is Monday
morning turn out
the avenue is aching to absorb us
arched as your lover’s back

*

“Sunday”

this is Sunday morning
headed to Magazine after pastry
from the French place and I
hope that pretty girl is working that
always gives me one croissant
free because she likes my overalls

*

“Saturday”

this is Saturday evening in the attic
sitting in the deep green chair
by the windows that face the avenue

cars go too fast and the valets
from the hotel next door squeeze
purchases of a magnitude meaningless to them
into the postage stamps on my street
bumping my truck repeatedly

high above it sipping ice tea and
smoking Andrew’s cigarettes I am
listening to Nina and loving openly

I Loves You Porgy comes on and

this is my imagined slow dance with some
Frankenstein made of the men I have disappointed
I just smile at them all

what did they expect

soon it will be dark entirely and
my needle will waver then point inward

where is my love
there is an echo out there in the street
an echo or a hum or something just beyond hearing
something a dog could hear

there is nothing we can have
that cannot be taken from us

*

“Friday”

this is the second day of March and
this is spring on my bike down St. Charles

sky is clear and sun is bright and consequently my shaved head
burns in this soothing way

this is my warm egg
this is my mother hen
the whole sky is my mother and my head is burning like an eastern deity’s

I can hear the flames clatter to the pavement behind me
when they are cast off

this is what my cast off fire becomes
volcanic glass in the street

and the streets are glowing capillaries or something smaller under the ridiculous
chicken that is the universe today and so also the sky over me

I am burning I am burning I am burning

this is me burning
on St. Charles somewhere between Jefferson and Napoleon
and here in a glittering nest of glittering black glass in the white avenue glaring
this is me born

*

“Monday”

this is my Chris was
my bully in a something delicate shop

where most people
to be fair
are knocking something over

the real problem is the shop
this is the real problem

I love him I love him I love him

I love you my first and last sweetheart
I address you directly assuming you might look at this

this is the direct address
I love you I cannot hold you

he doesn’t know when he is being held
I am too delicate too gentle in my touch and too fragile in my everything else
this is me being too delicate

this is a someone else
with a broom at some point and
this is the end of this wonderful mess

everyone knows I prefer
a clean surface and an empty shelf
this is the empty
the universe poises to fill up again

*

“Friday”

this is my spring
finally, in this city New Orleans

I actually heard kids laughing outside
echoing from some school yard

god in heaven I miss
all the hearts I’ve broken or mended

*

“Thursday”

this is my demand
I demand to know how I am supposed to know what to fight for
how did I get this old and still not know
where is the fight
and what is worth fighting for

*

“Wednesday”

this is ash
or more accurately residue

this is a rainy night and morning and afternoon
washing the urine from my driveway

the party was exactly as it was promised to be
I do not remember the last time I laughed

like that pleased to the bottom of myself
my split split into a broad smile

open and drinking sun

this is my lost voice
this is my found home

this is what I left and
this is what I found

this is my couple of friends

years have passed
and I still have no idea what

I am doing but some things I used to know
were stirred to the surface

this is some reflection in a train window empty of everything
but anticipation and a walk

in dark coastal streets having consumed nothing
but love for days

this is a picture of what is left over
and what stays with me in places I cannot always see

how many more times will this happen
this is the question I am asking

today smiling and exhausted
sad and not sad

close to understanding something that I will never ever understand

*

“Wednesday”

this is the test
my first unmedicated day
with no prospect of more
medication to come.

this is my plumbing
that barely works and is not
working at all today
I got angry then I wondered is

this me
or is this the no medication
me

this is me
watching the parade alone
drinking whiskey and tea from
a coffee mug

dripping with cheap plastic crap
I burnt my lips with the tea
later washing dishes in the tub
this is me filthy with dish water

but clean

*

“Wednesday”

this is my love and my day
when I am supposed to
show my love my love

when my body is divided
this is my body divided in two
when I saw in the water’s
surface a jet split the sky

I looked up and disturbed
the water when I looked
back the ripples covered

the jet and the sky and
my heart’s half in sparks
and sparklers and glare
this is the light that hides

*

“Tuesday”

this is a series of photos
self-portraits, this one
with my eyes
shut. I love taking these
pictures of myself
seeing what others see
those parts the eye cannot
turn to
this is the back of the eye
this is my eyelid
this is my spine when my
head is bowed
this is self-indulgent
this is a stranger and a
stranger’s poem

*

"Monday"

this is my secret twin language
with which I pass secrets:

pissing away my looks and smarts
in these cold nights drowning
away the memory of these cold nights:

I don’t remember names, or faces
or conversations or introductions
or promises or invitations
or streets or bars or taxis or stairs
or keys
or pillows or sheets or the coffee
and the blinking morning that
always seems to be beautiful, taunting me
because there is no way in hell
I leaving my apartment today:

this is a white noise threaded with
golden strands of the familiar
this is a noise that goes on and on
this is a noise
this is a noise
this is a noise
this is a noise
this is a noise that goes on and on:
where did it go? I can’t imagine

ask people younger than me
they are very fast
and born into the street full of secrets

*

“Saturday”

this is the priest shoveling a living heart forth
with an enormous sharpened spoon
lifting it to space
wet hands wet arms
because the easiest debts to incur
are those payable only in blood
there is no other cure
this is what we are capable of this is what we do
show us your hands show us you can have nothing before forgiveness

*

“Saturday”

this is the tiny little smallness
this is the subatomic poem
this is the poem about the edges of the other poems

*

“Friday”

this is a fragment
cast long cast back
growl and finger this point
even after
the surface breaks
because the surface
disappears when you look closely
inside and out
become meaningless
because you can see
they are made of the same thing
feathers turning out
crystals opening to let out light
hearts turning loose
dogs and their keepers
bursting into the night
alert and sniffing

*

“Monday”

How satisfying it is
to rub the petal of a flower
until it tears, and rolls up,
and disappears.

*

“Monday”

This second happiness, came in cold cold weather,
clear skies though, and evening is like black and blue glass.

Feeling so comfortable the last week or so, but I am certainly
aware, this only an easy dream, and thoughts of you

wake me once or twice a day. I find my room is bright, but freezing.

*

“Saturday”

It rained heavy
in such an unnecessarily insistent way all day, but now
it has stopped.

All the houses and balconies
out of my window look clean
and I believe they would smell of nothing, if I could smell them.

The clouds
are moving by low and rapid, heads down, rolling forward into evening.
I am happy.