Jonathan Goldstein
Untitled

                        1

         it has my heart
         become unfetid & slam
         dance thru hoops of magnificent
           snake silent
         to my battle cry
         
         I move thru early morning w/
         streamers that are fire
         of blood & marrow
         it streaks out of my hair
         in wires of blue sun
         
           & I am not eyeballing the moon
                   but your face
           outlandish goyishe punnim
         but to me, it has the animal guts
         of my grandfather's baked apple
         leather kisser so
         it has to be love
         that has flooded my eyes
         so that they are
         rosy muddy windshields of
          Coney Island aquarium dolphin
           tank mist &
         
            my chest is taking wallops from
          glotted smuck
           open handed wet
              fists
         
         & you cannot stop them
         from rolling down your cheeks
         & thighs
         
          they come like
            field mice w/ a purpose
          (it would seem)
            w/ vengeance
               up my nose
               up my pant legs
               up the hollow tubes of
         my fake laughs & shrugs
         
         & like hard sugar rock candy
           they splutter:
         broken roller coaster tractor motors
           they stutter
              rusted out of my eyes
           in tears that are genuine:
            chrystle swan necks all
            twisted in the gutter
            of my lap & laundry

         my dress shirt is all soaked
         in a hunch back woolen cap
         sweat, so ridilulous in your garden
         
           & this dull fog horn in my head
              only I can taste
         
           in the back of my mouth
           it pushes out the ever-
           shrinking ever-
           evolving colours of
                perfect gob-
           stoppers
           like your smile:
         
             it blows toward me
             a parasol spearing
             into the beach
         
         when all I want to do
         is offer you something
         perfect like
         a vanilla biscuit
         or a poem w/ lines of
         10 syllables but
         all I ever come up w/
         is many hinged & wired unmatched
         bloody things:
           watches that won't keep time
            'cause one foot has the gout
          & flowers with sweaty
         pasted on petals--
          dalmation dogs I tried
	 w/ love
         to give measles
          
         my kisses are picked scabs
         my sweet talk is hollered
         from the toilet stall
          
         I tried w/ bony arms &
         lemmox head to thud love
         onto the matress where you lay
         
                       2
         
        I would pull you out of the opera
        promissing tangerines
          of baby toes
        made of real fire & the fire
        is your soul which refused to burn
        refused to die before it was spit
        into your tomatoe guts

         body & left to roam it
         an insomniac
         
                        3
         
         If you got angry
         I would fall to my knees
         they would crack &
         I would burn hoarse staticky unmusical
            my eyes
         just cracked oil paint
              rolling jack
               pot cherries
         toward inside
        where the ashtray landscape houses
        one more bird who squeeps
       out your name because
       it knows how to suck up the sunrise
       onto its feet to sand dance
         in the L.A. summer heat
         for one more day.