Both the young and the old have a tendency to squander their time
on facsimile prints as far as life as a museum is concerned. One gains nothing,
and in fact things may worsen, contribute to fortunate or unfortunate
snowball effects such as regular life is noted to attract. Even nothing
enjoys the syncopation of seasons now and then. I know you’re thinking
people don’t just wake up and start bending things, doing this and that
until it forms a positive or negative chain… as if the world’s attitude were one’s
personal responsibility –– turn that fucking music down –– but you know, then one
just does it, like that, and you’re slipping along the curve of a banana and slowly passing
away from land, from admiration or admonishment; learning to activate charcoal; to open
and close doors with your mind. This is all very
interesting thank you for coming to talk to us. Cue
locking of doors. My friends, I am happy to say that today
is the anniversary of a promise made to a certain Medjool date
whose merciless pit aided me in killing my wife, a leopardess
with whom I’d lived pleasantly enough but in constant fear
her finer feelings would be overwhelmed by rage. Look how
the towels around us are jumping down like cats. Rage belongs
to the feline and the aquatic creature, the Sun & Neptune.
I wrote this speech while driving like shit.
Around the clock, mutual benefit is a fleeting mystery, though it arrives
just as we forget our earlier suffering in the shape of a dissolving name
whispered to deaf ears across the shuffleboard, that it might rise
and spread over us unfettered by recognition and grow dark in the sky
like the supposed dark desires that men have, that might come again,
the name of such a man must be a quorum, a commencement
into the forgiving of people’s hearts, and also because with a face like this,
you’ll be looking back upon a remembered face. Your Ace of Spades
turned to the sun, your Ace of Clubs spinning erratically beneath your hand
gun. It’s time to expand in curlicue fashion per teacher
guidance, causing anxiety with noisemakers and visions. The moon is maroon,
looks like.
*
Despite the years of having long greasy hair, some random man
is already approaching me from the street, mulch spills
from the flowerbed as I step back
upon insurance for missing letters, at the mercy of duplicates and extras.
Something gradual has made its way back to adolescence after
being completely forgotten, as if it were the imagination of its old self
flashing for this moment across a vacuum such as the French
describe mirrors America is still too young to know.
Such distinctions as America could be happening.
Meanwhile here on earth the lining to the lamp is wearing thin.
Winds arise spontaneously on the surface of the lake,
where everyone has gathered to see the Rose of the Lakefront.
These grapes ain’t free. Neither is salting my pussy for the weekend.
I feel so misunderstood! But it’s just not the day anyone expected
jokes languished, no one checked anyone out even when offered: freedom
itself faltered under a malignant glaze. We felt the presence
of cloying atmospheres such as those that hug the underside of other dimensions.
Bound by a silk too fine to be seen and annoyingly wet, the morning approached
our mental space with a feeling like no I don’t think I can cum again tonight.
The floating lamp that glares through me has settled on the face of your bust
or tubs and is blasting me away. So long to renovations or revelations.
Turn my table over, I welcome it –– the delights of reaching home in a casserole
only to find my door is locked. Some puzzles will never be solved
in time, and timeliness is of the essence, otherwise the puzzle
just disappears, though nothing can kill the love of the chase.
Have yourself a nice leathery glass of milk. You have to trust your tastes
but it’s not obvious why. You look into the stars and feel nothing.
This wine doesn’t taste frosty enough.
*
We can get away from the dogs in tandem, press me to your hands
and I’ll explore you with my body. Some think me too vigorous,
but most dominate the experience before I get my chance
insisting on a precise remake of some earlier event
despite even the best of things coming up short.
However, on the other end of one’s personal disappointment
we know there’s pleasure, so it’s tolerable to keep going,
and as for the remake of this so-called poem
I guess you saw the real thing once and I’m picking up on it
or there’s no way we could have received this information.
Tell me now if I can’t eat citrus at night.
In the lack of visibility that dwells beneath the surface of the lake
did you say the bean-light is for me? I should move my crabs?
If the monorail stopped many years ago, how can you explain this stain?
The Merkavah? The hulkster, Hulk Hogan? Trying to bro-down?
One’s questions grow wings and bump through the door, lost in the kvass
and the rolling of the hills.
In the grey paper light sharp toothed families harken to the bird’s junk.
Out here it’s nouns at retail. Fried thumbs. Carpet. Reflections.
You can buy what you please, but it’s mostly made of wood shavings and centrifugal force.
Tell me the difference between a nipple and a hemorrhoid. I eagerly await
the clarifying stage, the vermillion ropes and their silver soaps. The path of guacamole,
of the wasp.
Smoking shoes litter the stage, and one sheds a blue tear that’s never to escape.
Its branches spend the night aloft. Fans spin but no toothpaste comes out.
Big government is stalled over personal rights, mood rings, pleasure retreat,
over Persian rugs, the pleasures above, yellow and white gold,
yellow and white corn, all are willing participants. A sour gatorade without
the glass, please. It’s Wakanda’s night out. A shrimp caught in a shirt cuff, sounds like.
Around here that’s news. Don’t say anything about the origin of the weird air.
You and your book recommendations. Cancel the plans to catch up over bacalao;
let’s link up and have barbacoa. When I’m stuck I drink lemon juice ––
yes, even at night –– like slipping through a crack down the middle of the door.
-
Tamas Panitz is the author of several poetry books, most recently Vesuvio with Joel Newberger and Losarc Raal (New Books: 2023); and The Country Passing By (Model City 2022). Other books include Conversazione, interviews with Peter Lamborn Wilson (Autonomedia: 2022), and The Selected Poems of Charles Tomás; trans. w/Carlos Lara (Schism: 2022). He now co-edits the journal NEW, which he co-founded. He is also the author of a pornographic novella, Mercury in Lemonade (New Smut Series: 2023). His paintings and stray poems can be found on instagram, @tamaspanitz.