Quarantined like a cat in a window,

Pedestrians scurry like ancient adversaries;

Rummaging through twitter feeds and litterboxes

I sit, and wait, and hope for any number of fixes.

Not the great outdoors, or some great adventure— 

Perhaps a tree to climb, to lay like larva upon a branch

And so suspend above an endless expanse of leafiness

To crunch and munch on chlorophyll until I’m full.

Quarantined like a mannequin in some boutique,

Passersby seem to love window shopping;

So outfitted I stand quite still and fit to my profession,

But even mannequins start to feel the oppression

And I’m tempted to put myself on sale, to shout—

Everything must go! —so long as I go with it.

I don’t need no Champs d’Elysees or promenade upon which to parade—

I’ll take an alleyway if you let me stay outside all day.

Quarantined like pigs in a pen [if they could fly, they surely would?] 

Quarantined like fish in a barrel [swim in circles and hope for the best?]

Quarantined like Soviet cosmonauts [finally severed from the capitalist

earth?]

Quarantined like a book you wish you’d put down [better just finish it?]

Quarantined like fake news on Fox [no news is good news?] 

Quarantined like the diaries of a Madman [Октября 3. 分隔多年，消息漸闕?]

Quarantined, Quarantined, Quarantined;

Quarantined! Quarantined? Quarantined. 

The sun it rises, according to Hegel,

In that ancient Orient before the flood

Till the ships sailed toward Byzantium

And time itself came hanging over Europe.

It’s absolutely not accidental, says Hegel,

That the great Geist wind blew West—

It is and was the Occident

Where History itself would be won.

 

And so a cardinal direction claimed itself to be

A civilization of peerless superiority

Gathering evidence of its own supremacy

Through cosmological inquiries into its own destiny.

Dissecting and inspecting with great glee

From Descartes to Demolins they all did decree

Encomia of an all-knowing rationality

Defying and defiling any remaining mystery.

 

Imperial sails flew flags of progress

Adding entire continents to their shelves

And emissaries with instruments came

To put the world itself to work.

Through cogito came a cogent capitalist system

Ergo the sum of its parts was a globalized vision

Of labs like corporate pyramids—

That’s how the atomic bomb came to be

That crystallization of Western energy.

 

O Geist, thou breath of Adam’s being—

Winter lingers on, and Spring will never come

Until they’re all gone, the injustices that were done!

So be thou me, impetuous atom bomb,

And blow away the vast blue sea;

Billow up your messianic gales

And sing in menacing maelstroms;

Let the blaze ooze out from the abyss

Lighting every wave leaf and cloud;

Let threnodies rip and roar in every direction

Making the very earth bleed upon its thorns;

Write with me a savage decree

To blast out missiles made of enmity;

Let all wonder be burst asunder

And every repose be deposed;

Send me crying havoc in the night

And with Jupiter’s arrows smite the starlight;

So that it may all begin anew

So that we all may begin again.

Coming into consciousness cold and slow,
Shaking off bedsheets, lifting up limbs,
We exhume ourselves from the ether
In procedures that need no appointment.

Cups arrayed in stark anticipation,
Water boiling, caffeine grinding, waiting
To chase away the embers of evening,
To excise the would-be’s and were-they’s? of dreams.

So awakened, a desk full of commitments—
Analyses that need analyzing,
Texts that seem to want to need dissection—
The species-being of an academic is in making things specious.

But the room stays quiet, quiet like night
Quiet like Christmas Eve when you were eight
Quiet like the sands of the Taklamakan
Quiet like the fog of the Tianshan
Quiet like the sound of distant oceans
Quiet like all memories in motion
Quiet like the fate of precious green jade
Quiet like it once was and will be remade.

The days are growing longer
And I’m stuck without a clue;
My love for you grows stronger
I just don’t know what to do.

So come a little closer
Sweet mantis in the dew;
Please be my mantis lover
Please tell me what to do.

These buzzing insects bore me:
They’re crunchy, full of goo;
In youth, I found them tasty
Now old, I must eschew.

The nights they bring me sorrow
The days are all so blue;
What’s the point of more tomorrows
When all I want is you?

So come a little closer
Sweet mantis in the dew;
For me there is no other
Let’s make a love stew.

As we approach the altar
You need make no pretense;
I promise I won’t falter
When you with my head dispense.

You grab me with your pincers
And grip me tight like glue;
My heart’s all helter-skelter
Will you say the words ‘I do’?

So come a little closer
Sweet mantis in the dew;
For me there’s nothing better
Than being beheaded by you.
 
Oh kiss me on the neck
And bite me till I burst;
In this mantis lovenest
I know I’m not your first.

My life is almost over
Herein our grassy room;
But my soul it stays forever
Kissing as you consume.

Her impending death trickled in
By way of her friend through a telephone,
Bringing shock to the afternoon.
And yet at once more shocking
Is the sheer pace of transition
From lament to consolation—
From ‘does it have to be?’
To ‘it is and it will be.’

Somehow I accept its arrival as immanent.
The facticity of the thing;
The ceasing of a dear friend;
The ceasing of conversations;
Of chuckling over coffee, of—
Stop pouring the coffee.
Live on only in memory.
Converse only in hindsight.

In the place of your breath—
In the place of your footfalls
Leading into the cafe
The key into the ignition
The food you consumed for breakfast
The chair you would sit on, an antique—
Only your memory.

In the place of your breath, imagined footfalls;
Imagined keys churning inside a now second-hand automobile;
An imagined car pulling into a driveway that is no longer yours;
An imagined hot breakfast that is in fact long-since cold;
An imagined repose on a chair that has been brought somewhere else,
For some other, for a time.

My memory of you, detached from you,
Is brought to finality.
Now my memory has the last word.
Now my memory must talk to itself.
My memory of you it lives alone!
Severed from the memories of others of you,
Somehow my memory of you is accepted as enough:
It will have to do.

03/20/17

Measured footsteps echo across the grand hall

As polite patrons whisper interpretations

Standing at delicate distance from oil-stained canvases.

In the restroom, urine stains the slate floor,

And somebody forgot to lift the seat.

Today’s the day I killed my love for you

Took the feeling out back and shot it

Let it fall into a ditch with its hands tied back

A ravine of corrugated granite 

And lots of little sharp things

My love for you it hit them all

And blood began to fall

Out of its tender loving corpse

The blood not meaningful in any way

Because my love for you was already dead

The impact of the bullet ricocheted 

Through that dead love’s brain

A cold artifact now struck with metal

And no blood exhumed itself

Because those wounds were so old

My love for you I come to watch it

Every now and again

I look down that ravine and stare at its corpse

Fresh drops of blood collect like beads of sweat

This dead love of mine, it’s a part of who I am

When I killed it I killed a part of me

And those drops of blood that collect like dew

Each morning when I think of you

They’re draining me of myself

In this dying death of my love for you.