Maybe the Saddest Thing (5 page)

A line I took to mean, Mind your business:

Don't spring the fire alarm.

Don't set the joint ablaze.

Don't rush a live mic

pleading to the baggy black shirts,
Stop.

Please. There's a spindly raised hand

with chipped red polish quaking too fast

in this smoke-free bar. And a dainty mom

lugging her son piggyback

leveled a letterman to answer your call.

I'm trying to tell you I've been over this

again and again. What type of man would

let a child in this poem? What type of man

could stand in that building and not know

how to be a normal human being?

Could not glean, exigently, something

of addiction, its manic blood-itch?

Comprehend what can happen

when certain little boys in this poem

can do nothing but stay in their lines?

See, I'm doing it again. Damn this

business of frame and context. Dam

these sorry lines and hear me now.

I don't rightly know who sucked off whom

or what variety of human I've become.

But if you don't close this book; I mean

drop this poem straightaway—you, me,

that boy, his mom, and every drunk dancing

fool in this shattered glass-disco-ball world,

we are all of us, altogether fucked.

I cooked us dinner. Now
,

you can wash the dishes.

This logic's like

a jolly, wide-framed stockbroker

giving an elderly woman the Heimlich

at a bistro then sneering,
Now

pick your dentures off the tile and finish

my plate of Brussels sprouts
. No, it's like

an aardvark snouting a barefoot kid into

a liquor store, saying,
I sniffed the fire ants

from your sandbox.
Now—about that brew.

Do I have a giant purse full of Geritol?

Am I saying my wife's an anteater? No.

She's vegan. Of course, she would want

you to know she's no linebacker either.

And she's not. But one could say Jill

possesses linebacker-esque attributes

when bolting through our studio door

shoulder first, wearing black leather,

walked-in pumps, tackling her man

by his leg with her tongue. Go ahead

scrutinize. But you should hear how

she tears into me. I'll kiss her brow.

She'll suckle my neck. We'll descend

upon the couch, ankles in my lap as I rub

her feet, and she'll go,
Can you take the dog

out. I worked all day.
And I will

absolutely lose it, because I've been writing

this all day, which is harder than her gig

playing with lab rats. Plus, there's the matter

of grammar. A man who can dismantle

and reerect a world with words can certainly

walk Chauncey, our basset hound, down a flight.

Yes, I actually tell her this. Not that it matters.

Jill may as well be shoving me down

the stairwell when she frowns like I'm shorter

than I am, exclaiming,
Thanks for the help, hun!

In the courtyard, I watch a portly man

in a petite blazer work his girth free from

a steering wheel and waddle toward the building,

embracing a pack of toilet paper like a life raft.

Chauncey peers at me droopy eyed, slurs the grass,

and we lap the creaky man on our way upstairs.

Hearing the door swing wide, Jill jumps

off the couch to apologize for what she does

not know. I stop her two sentences in.

I kiss her cracked palm, sliding a finger in

my mouth. We nick the dog

when she yanks it out, shoving me groundward.

And we lie there; until the sun joins, then beats us up,

before I nuzzle her awake saying,
Jill. Something

about what I do has rendered me a bit sensitive:

to transparent reasoning, stockbrokers, people

mixing up ability and desire, competition
,

aardvarks
. Do you get what I'm saying here?

She looks down at my cheek on her chest, smacks

the top of my head with her lips, and mumbles,

If I could, I really would trade you jobs.

I smile—a little nervous. But mostly, relieved.

is a shovel sighing earth—

is what's stirring beneath a well,

where I always go: that suck and push

of air, swelling the chest—its starting

place. That I couldn't end there

is as sad and annoying

as watching a pet mouse collide and

collide with its mirrored-glass quarters:

is any ordinary beast acknowledging himself

with a battering ram—dense stump

that slams through the wrong door

in a smoky hallway, reconstructing

the face of an elderly woman

as dumb gold teeth can do.

It's the slim probability of that and

the swinging arm of death falling

for the woman's granddaughter

at the funeral, who has stems as

if a comet's trail could begin at an ankle

and end in a dark, stockinged thigh.

And just like that, we're back:

in the chamber which regulates all.

If you're locked outside its door

or cannot find this room, I sing:

You are lucky as a virgin.

If you're unsure this place exists—

this saddest thing—

Fine. Don't believe in it

or me. But please believe in this

latched dirt-box of a house

speaker strapped to my back, blasting

everything blue—the same.

 

 

 

It's like this, Anna:

shell banged bare

with a bat, Anna

vat of gunpowder

shed, Anna

famished bird

fed off scraps, Anna

gut-itch flown

south for life, Anna

dropper's stool self-pecked

slow, Anna

wince or stool

dropped again, Anna

bird sifting

through his shit, Anna

slug built by a bird's

beak, Anna

small handgun.

It's like this, Anna.

Like a gun

the bird doesn't grip.

It's like this, Anna.

It's like that.

It's like that

and like this.

for Rashad who said

The difference between bad & good

rap is the difference between

silicone & flesh
. He legit yelled that

shit through a karaoke mic

while arranging end caps

on an overnight shift. & I swore

he wasn't lying. Wasn't dropping

some inverse analysis

about the sad plasticity of pop.

His shopping cart quaked

as he snatched a glittered

jewel case, like

If we stock one more

garbage-ass album, homeboy

I'ma burn Circuit City to the ground.

What happened next began

with a black Bic lighter

sparked & lowered to the corner of

a cardboard box. The corners of

my lips slow-motion switched

from laughter to
Don't do it!

as he drew an aerosol air spray

from his slacks. I knocked

the can from his hand but it was too late—

the box burst into a small campfire

& we stomped out

the wack CDs. It was a long walk

to the restroom. He tented his

left thumb under the drain, said

Niggas be spending they last

on making good records. Then go

hungry cause we won't

stock 'em.
      Normally

ice in the base of a glass, “Big Brother”

Shad had lost his cool. Rifling

through his CD wallet he flipped

each page with a silver box cutter.

I watched him slice open bricks

of blank discs & load up two dozen CPUs.

What was played was circular

braggadocio. Baritone gusto

about being better than every man

breathing, underrated & hated on. Whole

songs saying, I've been feeling this

way for eternity. Been

scribbling rhymes since

my brother passed in '89. &

I spit to box out my rents' chronic

scrapping. & I've suffered more

than most in a short time

alive so my story's realer than yours.

I wanted to tell our manager

I stayed for the music. That

I had to hear what fever-inducing

swagger sounded like.

Needed to watch

Shad line shelves with unkempt

voices. That the store needed it too.

But surveillance cams

saved me the trouble

of punking out.

For ten years, I've kept

Shad's voice tucked

just beneath my tongue. & today

I think he was saying

the important art feels real

talks the talk, and probably

that's enough. Or

are those my words in his mouth?

All I know

is that on any given day

there are two types of people, at least:

One who'd go hungry—get fired

to be heard. & one who'd hide

inside a maze full of lines.

P.

I think I distrust statisticians.

I think this is problematic.

I think the square root of this quote is a question.

I think the question equals at least five answers.

E.

I think history is the base of most things.