O WIFE UNMASKED

Claustrophobia! Bullshit! Air! Air! Give us air! Is there an antidote to this mustard gas of domestic spiritism?

Can we ever recover that beach at Molivos when

the wave sank back

the head rolled on the beach

I lifted it and let it down

on my torn neck

I looked at the sea and the night

out of the eyes

of one who gave himself

to the knives of drunken love

so calm to know I was at last

YOUR COMPLETED MONSTER, LORD

or the deep-throated birds in the small courtyard, the camp bed, the freedom of the suede-soft White Notebook of 1971

there he goes

with his fear of death

there he goes

with his pot belly

past the small cafés

on the 21st of April Street

there he goes

accompanied by music

from the movie

and don’t describe the trees

don’t bother to mention the stars

there he goes

his own man at last

past the pebble beach

past the ones he did not speak to

the ones he did not sleep with

you remember him perhaps

as an admirer of cats

a vessel of monstrous longing

an elegiac connoisseur of islands

there he goes

with his mind on cunt

on cunt only

heart money attention talent art

tuned entirely to cunt

and that’s where he’s going

exactly where he’s going

a beautiful spectacle

a man who knows where he’s going

Can we put down that wedding ring from Jerusalem, the one with the heavy little silver house built on it? Can we recover

the course that jerks her upward

seized prisoner of the stars

her buttocks relax in my hands

like meat freshly killed