Jeff Grimshaw

Just a little bit drunk
I left, first, a hand print on the wall
Rusty from tomato sauce
And then, after an argument I can not retrieve
With someone I can not recall,
A flower of blood (?) on the bed sheet;
Mistook it, upon awakening, for another hand
But there were seven fingers,
All too thin for me.
While I was rinsing the taste of
Dirty metal from my mouth
My sweet angel outlined that stain
With a magic marker (black)
I thought you would want to keep this she said
(Me staring at her, the ends of my belt
Dangling stupidly)
It is exactly the shape of your soul.

Would have thrown away
Or certainly washed
The sheet right then and there, soul
Or no soul, but that night
I learned the very sight
Perhaps also the smell
Of it got her going but good
Me and the angel
Banging away like a screen door in a hurricane
On top of my seven-fingered soul

If it is my soul
Frankly it looks more like
Texas to me
With a couple extra
Panhandles.

The street terminates
In ‘The Tapioca Stairs’
25 granite steps dividing
Or connecting two neighborhoods
Tuesday morning pale blue sheets
Rise on the breeze
& French Reggae flavors
The tepid coffee until
It is more than tolerable
I think I can taste
Cinnamon, meanwhile the bird
Droppings promise to change
This dismal cul-de-sac
Into a garden (perhaps
Less dismal) eventually.

The dog at the bottom of the steps
Has worked a distant paw
Under her flea collar
The angle is impossible but
I predict success sometime
Before the first neon letters
Quicken tonight, I predict
So many lovely things, Oh well
There are store fronts and
Cafés with doorways it is
Always a pleasure to loiter
Within, exchanging a quip
Or flared nostril with this
Japanese detective (say) or
That Belgian photographer

’s model & later lounging
On the steps, dim violet light
Spreading across the bricks,
Deciding in which of these possible
Cities we will spend the night,
Deciding whether our window
Will open on the emerging sun or
The sun-kissed reservoir, and
What music will be streaming
Through the walls when
We kick off the blue sheets. Once
I thought I would wake
Every morning in a world where
The doors dilate and red shifts drop
Coyly to the bedroom floor

But most of the time
I wake up
In this one.

Half the world we hauled into the sky,
Rocks rising in fishing nets,
Dirt & stone ramps spiraling up,
Carts jammed with ash and
Black maple to frame the windows

We broke for lunch
Pointing with our sandwiches
At a cracked window frame
Well, that won’t do at—

For a second the windows framed a flying boy

A trick of the light! We laughed
And barked, warm beer shot
Out of someone’s nostrils,
All right, enough, we need to plane the door again
So let’s get back to—

Then burning feathers,
Burning wax, the far-off scream,
We filled the windows
And watched him pump and flail
All the way down
To the diamond hard water

The world stopped making sense
And so did we. All words failed.

We cobbled our own alphabets together,
New letters no one could read.

I thought I was the king of the garbage cans
But now I know I am a fabulous invention!

The fly strip over the kitchen sink drain
Is a choral symphony with a nutty fugue in the last movement!

I want to turn on the faucet and see a silent movie with Buster Keaton,
A new one! & I want a picture of a monkey on the label

Of my soda bottle! I want more blue everything,
Please! I used to be a strawberry,

But then I got hip to the whole strawberry thing
& now I am full of moons and half moons

Right up to the eyeballs. My light is reflected light
But it is still sweet as butterscotch,

& the witches on roller skates slow down
To say nice things about my lizard tattoo.

A quiet night at home
Struggling to unwrap
Her phantom alphabet
‘This is a rare remake
That is better than the original’
She insists, we are talking about
Black-eyed peas & collard greens as
Someone slides a telegram under
The door as if it were 1943 & a
Black & white world, it is a note

On crisp music paper
Requesting us to lower the volume
Of the hi-fi. We do not have
A hi-fi. Do we know anyone
Who composes music? She rubs
The flat of the pencil across the words
& a grocery list emerges
Also a doodle which might be
A turtle or might not. ‘Every vegetable
Is a palimpsest for a vegetable

Now defunct,’ she says. Someone
Knocks on the door. ‘It says so on
The okra can.’ That was a whisper.
‘It does not say that
On the okra can’ (also a whisper)
(Even quieter)
& then no sound at all
Except the pounding on the door
& the man shrieking at us
To turn down the hi-fi.

editors note: Over written to right over and request to turn it down. Really! Revisionists all. – mh clay

Homeward under the railroad bridge
The crab nebula foams like a spilled beer
She’s watching from her window
The snow is sulfur the snow is rubber
The plume of Con Edison steam
Cocks its top hat like Marlene Dietrich

My pupil will never recover
From her lightning bolt t-shirt
From her carbonated beverage
Or her eyebrow
Wrenched into a square root sign
By her indelible stink eye

White bright world spins around random radio tower
Cadmium yellow or Wreck of the Hesperus red
My brain is saturated with terrible light
My sink is full of Woolite
Everything looks like an album cover
Everything sounds like bubbles.

Today when I cut through the alley
The alley did not cut through
It flowered into a labyrinth
And I didn’t find my way to the center
And I didn’t find my way to the end
And I could not find my way back to the start
I could hear the broken radios buzzing
And the frantic dog who could not answer the phone
And the young couple arguing about whether
The toilet paper should roll from the outside
Or the inside
And in the far distance
Slices of toast popping out of the toaster slots
Like corpses
Sitting up in their coffins
In a John Carradine movie.

But why be morbid?
I know you will find me eventually

I sat with my back to the coiling wall
And sharpened my horns.

This was an asylum
For the criminally
Insane (The innocently insane
Had been collected
Elsewhere) and when we first
Broke in, the last
Mad man was still chained
To the back wall;
Well, not the last mad man
Per se, but his pajama-clad bones,
Some of them.

We put up
Drywall, we built
Shelves, we hosed down the
Concrete floors and advertised
Incredible sales with
Handmade posters taped
To the cinderblock façade
We waited in our bright aprons
For the eager shoppers
Who in the end could not
Find their way to our
Fabulous bargains through the
Tractless swamp. Only the
Ghosts of the long dead lunatics
Drifted down the aisles and
(Perhaps out of pity)
Purchased a can of black
Eyed peas or a box of
Bisquick before returning
To wander out back
By the dumpster, which
Was already sinking
Slowly into the bog a week
After we’d paid the waste
Removal company to slide it
Into place. Now we are only open
For an hour a week, otherwise
The doors are chained &
We sit here in the dark
Waiting for someone in search
Of supplies to stop by.

On the landing.
A hand painted neck tie
wrapped around my knuckles.
Somebody doing the dishes and singing
a song about summertime.

My mind needs more colors
only softer.
She gotta wash the sheets.
One of her toe nails looks funky and
I don’t like it. She doesn’t
like it either.
Painting it bright red isn’t the answer
to anything. I like the light
around the edge of the door,
It makes me think about
a party happening in there.

So now I’m on the subway
dreaming about carrots.
Now I’m on the subway
thinking somebody here didn’t change his socks today.
Now I’m on the subway
wondering if the end of the line is somewhere
nobody is allowed to talk about,
someplace a thousand miles away and
You have to get on the right car
at the right time. Someplace with ice.

It hurts to make a fist.
It hurts to make a decent pot roast.
It hurts to make a moon pie do the things
a moon pie don’t wanna do. I think that’s a song.

When you remember to water the plants
everything is better, even the things
that have nothing to do with the plants.

So now I’m tying the tie around my neck.
It has the Chrysler Building painted on it.
It made me happy when I bought it,
I dug into my pocket for ten bucks
and thought, ‘wait a minute, how do I wash the thing?’
and that made me happy, too.

Just pick the bugs off, I said, walking down the street
on the balls of my feet like a boxer, like a dancer,
Pick off the bugs and watch the fork
when you’re eating pasta. You’ll be fine.