Did I mention I used to write poetry?
Rain Coast
Prelude.
See where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament Bright curtains for a boy to slide down, Great masts to support the world where it has grown a little antique.
I.
The father is out of his mind, And has been thus since the cannons and the thunder, Since Herod returned and set up shop on the communion tray. He believes he has the viridian wings of a parrot And flaps his arms in thick brown sleeves And cries out a scarified song. Perhaps it is insanity; Perhaps it is only putting on a different pair of spectacles, To see the world anew.
Hurricanes come, hurricanes go But the wind always there; It blows bagpipe songs through the skulls of popes And stand-up comedians. The wind kisses your lips and makes them cold, Makes them gray and thick, Makes them part of the ground that the wind carves Like a butcher with the carcass of the bull. It blows on the walls of northern warehouses Where kids shake and move to music pumping Thick and bright as blood through a heart.
The father knows nothing of warehouses, Nothing of electro beats or stimulations. The father knows only that the Thick adobe walls of the mission Have transformed into the gilded sticks Of a birdcage And the rushes of the floor into Newspaper, announcing that the Great business has begun.
II.
There are no angels left in America anymore, Says the song on the college radio station As I pass the steps to the market And the lovely girl with the black glasses And the Prada suit. She smiles at me— I could ascertain a world of meaning in that slight Twitching of facial muscle, But why bother? The universe is a stretched thread made up Of quantum possibilities; I reminded her of her older brother, Or her co-worker, Or she has mistaken me for someone else. She comes from the kingdom of small towns Where everyone smiles at everyone else. She wants to wrap her legs around me And do exciting things to me with her mouth. She has an habitual involuntary muscle spasm That only looks like a smile. She is my unknown sister. All of these things are true, And none of them. The sweet sweat of the Pacific Ocean Mists against my skin and coat; Fetchingly, As I watch her pass along towards Pioneer Square.
III.
I died hung from a tree once. Maybe. I don’t know where, or when— Helena, Montana, after a lifetime of stealing horses Or Padua at the end of a heretic’s uprising Or Szechuan in the beginning of a peasant’s revolt; Or Midgard, before the world was made. I’ve tasted bitter coffee and bitter defeat, I’ve tasted your mouth and the barrel of a gun. I’ve touched Christ’s robe as he stumble through the streets of Los Angeles Or maybe it was Jerusalem—they look so much alike.
I’ve seen Fra Angelico lift the skirts of a courtesan As he painted the Virgin Mary; Seen the world described in projected light At twenty-four frames a second, Felt the wind blow through my hair and through my bones And the rippling feathers of a viridian-green parrot In the wet heat of the Third World. I’ve smelled coal-smoke and flamboyant trees And mangos and the faint perfume of a pretty girl With black glasses and a Prada suit Moving along a sidewalk on the rain coast of the Northwest, On her way to resignations and assignations That don’t have a single goddamned thing To do with me.