inspired by the character of the same name from the wallace stevens’ poem “the man with the blue guitar”
your love is like sniffing glue in a playground at midnight
your love is like running thru hell
with naked feet
your love is solving quantum math with broken fingers
and broken toes
400 million trillion blackholes in this universe
all of them in denver
all your accidents end in denver
you’ve got lilacs and postcards in your pocket
you’ve got asphalt in your hair
your love is playing with snakes
you burn your bridges while you cross them
you burn your candle like you hate candles
your love is like a puddle of gasoline
and a dry well of tomorrow
you can swallow your heart and start over
all your bullet holes are filled with black static
you can play a blue guitar with blue fingernails
a heartbeat and a bruise, a heartbeat and a bruise
you can play a mean tambourine
you can play a lost goddess searching
for the one-of-a-kind rainbow in a special raindrop in a random storm
you can play dumb
your love is like the blue guitar you drag around by the neck
heartbeat and a bruise, heartbeat and a bruise
400 million trillion broken hearts in denver
all of them yours
you play dirty pool and you’ve got dice up your sleeve
your laughter is clattering and witchy itching all the right spots
but your soup is cold
no one knows where you came from
your star name is paper-mache angel
your earth name is downward spiral
your eyes are haunted gloomy kamikazes
you drink kamikazes
you throw kamikazes at everything that gives you pain
your love is throwing side-eye at the world
your love is a one-eyed horse walking backwards in a blizzard
your love is like rust eating a truck parked in a ditch
adjacent to a junkyard
your love is like looking for a black cat in a dark room that
ran away years ago chasing blackbirds into blackholes in the
darkness of denver
your love is something
unspeakable
mythological
whisper and rumor
non-sequitur
more than
and less than
and other than
true
notes: not sure if this is publishable anywhere today. where are all the wild child journals of my youth? my search for publications i really like and might print this kind of thing is way, way too short (actually, blank). any suggestions? why does art today have to be so fucking civilized? definitely going in the next chapbook though.
jalopy dreams 