I’ve been sweating again, a symptom
so far only of itself just as those stray
explosions belong to no holiday,
no larger sequence of battle. Years ago
in another house, I’d wake like this
and stalk the other rooms, naked and
monstrously alive as if a thousand ears
had sprung from my skin. Sometimes
back in bed, a woman would be sobbing hard,
hiccuping, so I’d get a glass of water
that would harp the walls, get the pills
from her purse, stroke her until they worked.
Other nights she’d be waiting,
wetting herself with her hand and rapidly
we’d fuck, panting like harnessed dogs
who didn’t know miles ago their master
had frozen in the sled. Stop? No one
can stop. It starts out Wednesday then
it’s Tuesday and you’re sitting with A
in a café under some ornamental masks.
She’s disturbed. You’re disturbed.
A whole cloudburst of disturbance.
Inside the purple mask, there’re more feathers,
each with a quill directed inward, against
the face. Awful to be in it as well as
outside of it, hooting with fear. Will A
stay with B and is B’s cancer-ruddled mother
choosing this moment to die, can anyone
actually choose a moment to die, choose
to die at all and what is a moment anyway
but a thing made entirely of its own vanishing?
It all gets complex fast. You’re just
sitting there, nodding, then BOOM, the temple’s
in ruins and the emperor has you up at dawn
beating the ocean with chains. I wonder
if C will ever forgive me and will D ever
pick up his phone? Then the dream of the sun.
Then the dream of the black dogs and
saying yes in the desert. There were those
masks on the terrified wall. Maybe she should go.
Maybe I should explain. When the fire next door
is out, the firemen loiter and smoke in the rain.
Who hasn’t wanted to be a fireman
in a rubber raincoat, everything ash and hissing?
In the rain she decided to leave him
and in the rain she decided to go back.
Such friendships and fires. Such lies
and masks and love. I’ve only myself to blame.
In the rain we were singing. In the rain
I am empty, I am stuck. In the rain
I am pilfering and wanton and struck.