Piano Sonata No. 26, Les Adieux

Jackson Pollock’s studio floor (CC BY-SA 4.0).

For Taylor
 
 ‘Rancid night of the skin when you passed over me,
 Not knowing this disguise held all my sanctity,
 This rouge drowned in the glacial waters of perfidy.’
    –Mallarmé, The Clown Chastised
 
 

Music. Cantankerous. All of the erotica left in a past life. This midnight knows my name, sure. This cigarette has kissed my lips, this old harlot down this old dirt road, this gravel beneath my tires. What does it matter? Music. Music along the insides. Her soft pants smoking brisket, cherry wood and cedar, sifting through the sands of my hair and doing her best buddha. God is watching. She winks like a diamond ring. A piano plays a pink horizon on her lips. Soft faces. Androgyny. Who’s coming. Who’s going. She’s prying at my ribs, trying to get a look inside my heart, whether it beats for her or the act. So far so good. Pulling triggers- tapping keys between breaths, sonatas played on pink clitori. This is irreverent. People like this. Between the hour I’ve become a virtuoso. Somewhere the little nerves are dancing. I’m awake. I’m tired. Our shuttered eyes turn off these cities one by one.
 
And as i quit this ashen ghost
       And propose a latté to the rain
              [the streetlights looking somewhat
       naked in the sunshine-] i say,
If a figure were
       To strike a match within your heart
              I would have this heads up overnighted
       Over the great valleys of my sorrows surge
Rather than face this silence rapping at my door.
 
But deary
       [hlf jkngly]
       Our heads weren’t alway so bald
[as we massage our thinking wrinkles, dulling each crease]
 
live wires   course rubber coats our outside  a tempest hides between handshakes    peeps like a cupidon.     vernal rain erupts  tails the avenue    slithers down our lashes  beads- scorches sought out lips. lovers walk the streets  blur between glances we lend  and i see them offer   suffer   and i people myself to them.    cars hurry along the avenue    the storm drain-   cigarette butts in cheap lingerie     silk and mire    breast stroking through the streets.      we approach this puddle    you take my hand    as if below this heedless surface   you’ve watched us drown 
 
fortunes fall like petals  she loves me   she loves me not  a bobby pin  pulled  erupts  a  shih tzu spell     we laugh   atlas couldn't  bear to hold your bangs    like  crash course metaphysics  you make me doubt the ascension    whether poetry  is written in mascara or ink 
 
 i stop   
 
your eyes draw me into this sentence
 
you’re as silent as you are beautiful   and that is art
 
Spearmint of a lover still on your lips. Radio. Fine. We aren’t chatty anymore. We used to be chatty. It's merely a touch. A certain look. Where's the apple? Are we sinning? Your cunt dribbles morning dew. It wheels between my lips and tastes sweetly on my tongue. Its viscous chants. Like cider. You made small talk before. Only now do I listen. Morphine. Lily lips. I’m too high to cum, although you ride vigorously, as if trying to buy me through the kiosk of your cunt. I see the orchids in your eyes, the way they swell and quiver. I feel you tighten your hips. I cradle your throat like a child. Rapture? Not this time. It's something sinister. Something that destroys us both. We revel in its frail epoxy. Laze within its cuffs. Metal chains hooked on heavy boards, veiled in dead muppets.
 
And now the sheath of night
       Derails the avenues of slumber
To pretty thoughts of kisses
       Analytical, Psychosexual
Dripping with smooth malice
       Like water based- blah
Those masochistic nights
       One can't wash away
                     with dove
                            or dial
The scent of spring
       Weaves a web between
Those lips, every word
       Becoming gossamer
With a sharp exhale. that boy-
       Caesar’s dagger
Unsheathed, undrawn, caged
       Within his boxer shorts, cucked
And crimson coiled    im laughing
            While I soothe your skin with sharp
Knives, senators swell my fingertips
            Leave the carcass for the pigeons
And the runts, as Rome
            Cannot run this brute out of his own bed-
Though it can send you
            Back across town into the arms
Of that boy, inquiring about the florid
       Handprint across your ass-
Your lips still tasting of disregarded life
            Still regarding my mild simper
At the whole ordeal
 
And the earth has stopped chatting. Quiet now. Only the polite roar of an airplane. Frilled orchids. Geraniums. And flesh. Damp. Quivering. Pavement prairie rising, swooping, steaming in light rain. Visions. Percocet. These memories running through my fingers like sand. You decide to mumble this affair. Sure. We were trees with tangled roots. You grab at the base of my cock and spit, jerking up and down- playing a trombone. I’m hard as granite. You lead me like an oxen into the hearth of your cunt. We disappear.
 
God cut a slit
       In your soul      
Baptists say
       It's the gateway to hell
              [Im cnvincd] its some vague opposite
some blackstar defiling my rigid ,     ,
                     I just cant get enough
                     Of your sick puppy pants
                            The fever of it all
                            The endless river of sweat
                                   And tar
                                      Christ shields his eyes
 
                                          [fate] couldnt f.ck better
 
Love. Sure. If it was. It used to be. Buds of passion blooming to amorous lilies. Innocent. Concise. If eternity could exist within a single hour, I would have said my vows. Instead I woke the next morning, your head erected on my chest. Bed head. Morning breath. Stolid features glistened white, marble veined and sorrowful, knowing we’d spoiled our fun too soon. There was one road beyond the river. One sharp ascent from ruin. It brought us to your mother's grave. Sweating through my wedding clothes. Ruffled remnants of a suit. Flaccid tie.
 
And I still hear it
 
The way she said it
 
With her girlish rasp
             Like she’d say it over and over again
             Each June as we visited together
 
Passing through the iron fences
 
The obsidian arches
 
Sweeping over dunes of gray stone
                                   And fabric flowers
 
Growing old in our imagined eternity
 
Sprawled Beneath the summer sun
 
Its warmth over Amish fields
Tilled by oxen, great bearded men
Like statues
A brave water tower the only mention
 
Of her hometown-
 
And beneath it all
            We’d find some sort of life
                                    Within this ruin
 
It all seems so silly now-
 
[ahem] as she said
 
‘You dressed so nicely to meet my mom’`             
                         The words falling into her lap
            Like great drops of rain
                    
 
And I still regret
            The way her heart resounded through the daisies.