Heroin // Jim Carroll

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

Sat for three days in a white room
a tiny truck of flowers
was driving through the empty window
to warn off your neighbors
and their miniature flashlights.

by afternoon
across the lake
a blind sportsman had lost his canoe.
he swam
by evening
toward the paper cup in my hand.

At dawn,
clever housewives tow my Dutch kitchen
across the lawn.
and in the mail a tiny circus
filled with ponies
has arrived.

You,
a woman with feathers
have come so often lately
under my rubber veranda
that I’m tearing apart all those tactless warnings
embroidered across your forehead.

Marc,
I’m beginning to see those sounds
that I never even thought
I would hear.

Over there is a door knocking
for example
with someone you hate.

and here I beg to another to possess somehow
the warmth of these wooden eyes

so beside me
a lightbulb is revolving
wall to wall,
a reminder of the great sun
which had otherwise completely collapsed
down to the sore toe of the white universe.

it’s chalky light
rings
like a garden of tiny vegetables
to gather the quiet of these wet feelings
together

once again

like the sound of a watch
on your cold white wrist
which is reaching for a particular moment
to reoccur…

which is here…now.

Agha Shahid Ali, from 'Notes on the Sea's Existence'

[smithkingsley.livejournal.com]

(on the occasion of his eighth death anniversary today)

It pulls me to itself,
the reflection, no, not mine:
I know the water's fidelity,

its utter transparence. The sea
becomes me like nothing
else: I wear it like skin.

Who pulls me with such
ease? A dead ancestor,
a lost friend, or

the shell's hollow cry?
The weeds wrap me, like arms.
I'm pulled down, down, to the tip of the sky.

I hold the world as I drown.