FOR DAVID


 

Christopher Longoria

 

Per Son
         To David



Under
Under
by David Meltzer
Rhinoceros Books, 1995

The problem in form of a question;
The music in word?

Standing by in a summer drawl I lose recognition of letting go.
The body felt funny this time. It knew it was being watched. Used to be more than a ritual. We've talked about that like that.

I wanted more than the normal muttered clop of a washy tongue, roaming to recover a molested inspiration. The blah blah blah that becomes the muzzled shoptalk stammer. There's a music I'm after now, as before, a play, the floating sheet of haze I hover over, the curtain drawn from,
the burgundy séance over hundreds of dead murmur inside me, you hear that music too, no?

Day came this morning. No longer needing to dream. Only drawing from the root up. Start the song and be flow until the music dries, no?

I mistake my instincts as a duty to be honest.
A coat;
the way
I wore that mind like sound on my tongue ... and it swallowed me. Sharpened me,
until the numbness of not knowing how to talk new left my pattern flat, patterning over, flatter.

When I thought the question was done, the needs came, no warning,
was shot through the turnstiles,
found a rhythm to fly with
lost it
in the concentration it took to not look back. And in the space.less place
the threat of ambiguity haunts dropped flints, poems sparking like electric fish heaving for an ocean in the air.
Does luck kick the spark up, easier to remember the feeling? The shiver that whips through your skin, firing off soft grunted utters, before the morning, before the music rushes into siren.
Siren.

Feelings and names,
these questions, this flame,
this hope is just part of the game,
the lies that twist in, the meanings they mean, the faces that defy the song, the confession
is done, the gun; shot, the thought flow swallows whole you, if gotten get lost,
the starving self
nibbling and crunching
like dog's teeth at ticks sucking dry what's left on my skeleton,
this carving of meat, to give something better away through the puppet I am. Puppet say no.
We are instruments, sounding off each minute,
spirits per son spent on
splitting, on splintering
spiraling high spilling
low, riding slow a harmony.

The question gave hint to a path, to a history, to an obedience, hinted a dedication, to a ritual. But I lost the go of music in pondering.
I want most to not stop praying but everyone is covered in marshmallows.
Humming I warm the american sugar to mud.
The sludge of manufactured mannequins skinned to last fibers, twining character and action.

Without the music of it I'm unprotected, lonely,
a different kind of sticky than what the sun gives.

Peroxide howl tunneling in flue before the pink warm dusk -- the forward pour before the release.

With a head full of meat to mold.
I'm making a thicker noise now, more gravel, comes from the ground up,
and when I release, it is with a mouthful
of the firm breasted wallop of the big "O" sound.

 

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