Poetry Magazine, John Amen, January 2002

Poetry Magazine

John Amen

USA

editor The Pedestal Magazine
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com

forsaken a travelogue

first in the streets of pamplona
dangling on a wild bull’s horn
                                             i wooed her fantasized such 
scenes
                 as dying in the mediterranean sunset
       believing in the notion of "destination"
despite the twenty first century’s
                                             acute loathing of everything 
eschatological
                 throes of monogamy sculpted
       from dead wood found in ravaged
parking lots bullhorns cracked like old engines
                                             hands waving as noon funnels
                 through clouds like burning rope
       we are here tonight for this
the unraveling of the mummy
the unveiling of our bones


verse chapter shatter abacus of lavender
                               and the bathtub ritual hazing
                protracted like flowerbed watering
                           galileo turning ship toward the electric chair
finds william tell’s apple poised on a bathroom sink
                               stopwatch curled in his pocket like a cat
                night hovering unsure like a
                           child stumped in a spelling bee
everywhere in doorways slinking
                               through colonnades appearing like
                dawn at the headstones of stillborn infants
                           bastard behind the prison bars masturbating
to the thought of the demon-meter maid
                              metallic and clanking sledgehammers
                 long after darkness drops like a guillotine
                           zeus with an implacable frown etched
like a cenotaph into his senatorial mug
issuing currency and fate like a butterfly keeper


                         outside everything waxing green
                   spring passing through like a scat worker
                   baby carriages rattling on exchange place
               hustlers ranting on piccadilly dancers weeping 
               in the bowery smoke seeping from the window
                       of a canal street motel the east river
                rising on its haunches licking its great tongue
                  across the fulton street landing brooklyn
                      bridge swaying like a belly dancer
                      stones culled from the garden like
                             sentences from a stupor
                     standing there having thrown the dice
                        truly unattached to the outcome


loyal to the mooring and the arthurian addiction
                              like an inmate with no chance for bail
                    uncertain in the trashcan world
          collapsing on stock market stages like an actor
passing out before a performance oil water
                              gas surging through leaky pipes
                    like a lawyer poking holes in an argument 
          "from macro to micro gentlemen everything is
in essence a fetishist or the product of a fetishist"
                              the auditorium alive with applause flashing 
cameras
                              pagers beeping cell phones echoing "belistio"


mephistopheles is not the scapegoat according to
                              his own analyses and insomniac calculations
                    only models and acronyms that stick like pine sap
          "well take BDSM for instance" her plain
boots traveling like tide inland to her knees
                              where the great pier beckons like a rock star
                    all can be forgotten if it weren’t for these migraines
          it is a matter of evasion now stalking through one’s
own house like a museum-breaker a spy a
high-class fitness guru craving a hamburger
                                                at the after hours joint but 
not tonight 
                                                something bad has happened


with sailors and barmaids it is different liquor
                flows like words from an evangelist flags are
                              subordinate as is the chessboard laundry draped 
like
         eyelids over a mast sorrow comes and goes
like a summer vacation in vases fixations
                live like hornets behind a window screen
                              and with these dishrags tears disappear
         soaked into teddy bears buried like national crime in a history text
clinging only to invisible spaces that
                touch but are not touched triggers looming
                              like "report card day they might as well
         give me a belt along with my grades"
lettuce is unraveling in the garden but america
                is america as vast as the secret in each
                              lingering conspirator’s eye as deep as the
         knife wounds in caesar’s back and so be it
for better or for worse 
god help us momma