al-Gouna (2005)

maybe we've been wrong thomas
about the order
the olive dip handles and
year mouths, washing up to their elbows
in the grease of fuck
the napes of necks on guillotines
thumbs caught in the crooks of green doors
black eels and murder
there are bite marks on my fingers
like the grooves on a machinegun barrel
I'm up to my elbows in machines thomas
there might be a dropping to knees
this floor is awash with screws
and knives, probably
with this bleach spill of a sky I might fall off
into an order of dot and dash pentagrams
if we interpret it right: acid!
the sky is awash with the husks of ice and dust
if we get far enough way, thomas, long far
away from the knives and eels and traffic cops
who have gas caps asleep on their knees
the ruby rug of blood hung on a concrete wall
passenger side door
lane dividers
on your face
on my face
fuck thomas we're tuna in these nets
twisting blue in a net of atomic facts
there's that order, another two bolts for the
nape of your neck
***
the water from this fountain comes from a bolt
a cape of screaming water coming from
this hideous marble dick
this whole courtyard is looking onwards to it
even the bleach sky
it's probably a cape but maybe a net, ya fuck
maybe thomas this marble floor and this palm tree thatch
and the volleyball court, knives and nets and three kinds of tuna
all you can eat...
***
there are mosques with allah spelt in green neon lights
did someone tell them there is another desert long far away
with tits and can-can legs in the same vomit green
the same vomit green I rub in my eyes like that?
let's string up the ninety nine names of allah and flash everyone to

the buffet, is one of this names "the frugal"?
let's beach ourselves on the blade of a knife
so we can fit into our bathing suits
I can lay by the pool and you can do a jack knife
into this soup of a world
tuck your knees in lest you scrape yourself open
all over an onion, a welt or bruise the shape and
color of an eggplant, funny thomas, the order,
that's what they're fixing us for dinner, the entree' to this
holy fucking soup!
the marble dick fountain and that lovely soup ladle
hurredly fucking in the big walk-in freezer
don't close the door behind them ot we'll have
nothing for dessert, dessert, desert
desert
dessert
desert
I'm plucking my eyes out with this order
I'll ladle them up and catapult these windows to my
soul at that asshole who is taking pictures of
everything. there's going to be a dick fountain in
a photo album in dusseldorf or brighton or harrisburg.
I hope his sister shreiks and I can eat all the
horror of this world like an after dinner mint
***
In the future I can get two cigarettes, half smoked
and pointy, and hang them in my eyes like
neat ashy horns, what are they doing in milan,
do you suppose, thomas?
smoking cigarettes and looking through photo albums,
of dicks and vomit and birthday parties
would there be murder if I offered them cigarettes
by blinking, would there be a mint for my pillow if
I lit one on the other and got messy nicotine
stains all over the tears in my eyes?
I'm okay with having two ashtray eyes, you can make
me hold a lamp, tuck a gideon's bible in my mouth,
but for fuck's sake (name 101?) don't screw the
remote control down. the floor is awash with
screws and remote controls and the racy edges
of leviticus. thank god there are still mexican maids
to clean up and believe in all that shit.
they scoop the bleach down from the sky and
clean out toilet bowls with heaven,
yes thomas, believe it, they clean the floors with
heaven and polish all the mirrors with hell.

***
The sun is going to get to me even now that
I've moved to this couch under the arches.
The sun looks for me all day as I shreik
down the hallway and get my cape of water
stuck between doors. Not always green
doors, not always bite marks, but the
sun always finds me, ripping my neck open
with a sun dial blade, or the shadow of
a rooftop. I take a nap in the shade and
with my eyes closed the house shade I'm under
files down until my legs are burnt and
I get sweat all over my collar. A broth
of it pouring down my back, racing to meet up
with the sunlight on the arch over my kidneys.
If they wanted my kidneys why didn't they say so?
kidney bean soup and my two burnt carrot legs,
too perfect for me to refuse really
don't be stubborn with your life thomas, if
a car needs it, if there are hungry eels and
left-over bricks, lie down in traffic so the
cops can fill their knees, your immortal
soul can cruise down the varicose vein highway
of their legs, take your family on vacation
in their over worked goddamn feet
***
a little girl cries on the ashtray her father is carrying
long far away
can you believe it if it's long far away or worse still
if they've put their morning fix on the inky drop
you could have seen it with in the first place?
faith is cursing your hands through second-hand smoke
thinking there is someone smoking in the first place
that was two many words thomas,
faith is fucking in a meat freezer hoping the door
doesn't slam shut before you finish.
Even is you finish, if you
finish in (the) first place, dear young thomas, it'll
all freeze up in an excited orgasm icicle
and the lovely hurries spoon will close
her legs and go back to stirring.
you should have fucked the brisket
the tenderloin
sirloin
madamloin
it's all the same order of grunting

and slicing and quartering and
it takes a quarter of an hour
so there's your order thomas, as long
as the door doesn't slam shut behind you.
***
that poor little crying girl, split her eyes open
on the broken bottle that washed up on
this beach, now she can't read the goddamn note
so she'll have to take your word for it, suck on the
fumes of faith, read the torn out pages from
the book in my mouth and probably die.
everyone dies thomas, I think so, but
with these puffy goddamn nicotine eyes
I can't see into the future, and I
can't perform miracles with these
bitten up pencil hands.
***
I swam in a lagoon with this
pretty girl yesterday. It was a man-made lagoon
for dying europeans and bread crumb
orchestrations. all it was missing was
it's own marble dick fountain. It was
a fucking toilet bowl really, but
the girl was pretty and she cleaned
it as she swam around, with heaven.
***
the world is a couch I want to be
shaken out of like loose change. And,
would the utopians be so egalitarian,
thomas, if everyone showed up to
heaven wearing bathing suits. With
rotunda bellies and varicose vein
highways, the caved-in concrete
shit palaces, columns strewn over the
streets, I hate them already
thomas, cum icicles the lot of them.
my body is like el-paso, just waiting to collapse
onto the interstate, thee will be a mangy cat living
in the shell of a fast-food restaurant sign, burnt
florescent light tubes I used to smile through.
my heart will stink on the shoulder like a rusty
coke can, because I'm not stubborn with my life like
you thomas, making the pretty girls cry and enjoying
fruit. Keep it up thomas and you'll be like brighton,
masterbating your way through a photo album.
***

still no clouds in this murder sky, there is fruit
softening in this sun. Cut it open soon,
with whatever rooftop you can borrow, and suck
the meat before the buckets of milk spill out
and you change your mind. You will always choose
the milk (like I said, I swat blindly at the future
with the nubs of my pencil hands) because you love
the maidgirl who carries it on her shoulders. Fuck!
maybe I'm just jealous of you thomas, that's all.
I'm just nibbling on violence so they'll lift
me from the crib. They really do all look fine out there
swimming, you and the girls and the fish and God.
Do they have lunch for you all, have you sworn off
the soup of how things are and now sit with the
girls chewing on celery sticks and tucking the lovely
additions of dreams under your arms? don't let anyone cut
their feet on the glass thomas, look at me,
take a soft breath
the fruit starts to soften and I imagine travel
and not dying under bricks and cars.
***
my inky eyes can't look down my periscope spinal cord
and see my heart pumping blood back up my throat.
now the sun is too far burnt off and I can't
grab some sunlight and slice open my belly and
toss my liver out and have my heart plop out red wet
in my hand. Goddamnitall thomas, the order, it's
been switched under three spinning magician cups.
Where is the teeth of horrible speed, the swelling
fist of burnt out cigarettes?
why do my guts feel like soft fruit?
***
There is eroding husks of el paso clip clopping
in my feet, I roll out a ruby rug of blood
behind me with these feet, I kick out goose steps
of blood stars and glass.
these over worked goddamn feet
it hurts you know? how do we do this thomas?
Why can't I swim and drink milk with the pretty
girls, is it blindness and forgetting? is it ten tons
of pictures and a landslide that awashes the floor
in soft sand we choose not to pick up? there are knives
and eels under the sand but you don't have to dig for them.
***
It's even quieter now
the sun will erupt it's glass and angles

again and we will, where will you be thomas?
sing about fists ans the plants without flowers
or fruit
the froth of evening lathers up my growing neck
when the moon shines I will be shorn.
I can't run my veins along rooftop shade
heaven is soft and soapy on my angry skin.
the sea moves along by like a blue record
there would be music if I still chose to drown.
are you getting ready for supper thomas?
will the candles be soft on your face?
will love clean the smoke stains from your pupils?
will peace wash your feet clean of glass?
I only think about you now thomas.
I massage the fruit between my ribs and
sing three notes for you
they roll up and down my throat and I
celebrate your stubborn goddamn life.
I'd open up the meat freezer for you
because your mouth is beautiful and
I can believe you would clean my floors for me
It's faith, it's claws of smoke in my eyes,
but the sky is soft and it sings in my hair.
***
Just three notes I sing now
rolling around like magician cups in my mouth
I'm too happy to arrange them thomas and
besides, maybe we were wrong about the order.