It Doesn’t Make a Difference Where
You’re At or What You Et
“Listen, there’s a hell of a world next door—let’s
get
A shake at the drive-thru on the way.”
On the wet shaven street one hell of a boy
Eating trash in paper trash shouts half eaten
Shit: “Listen, there’s a bell next day—let’s
get it.”
But the rain. But there is no rain, but there
Was rain. There’s a hell of a boy next, no
Next to the door next door. He’s eating grapes
That look like earwax with teeth like egg yokes.
Next that—listen—eggs he says next door,”
KNOCKING EGG TO THE—CRACK—CONCRETE
Bird chirp. “Listen—there’s a hell of a
hell
Across the street, dancing bitches you put
A dollar in her crotch she cracks open like birdsong.
Cycle
Only when my hands touch over
& over your face do my hands
Turn into these leper’s hands, the sky
Falling from midnight into orange
Flakes that set fire to winter
Fields, which had anyway only
Offered handfuls of snow: the spring
Only offers over & over handfuls of
Flowers, leper’s flowers the flakes
Burn flowers of absence in the snow-like
Sores on the leper’s face: sleeping
Below star-flowers flaking through
The air’s thirsty throat, my throat as I kiss
You & you burst into flames again
& again my throat flakes into flames.
Arrive Alive
The crew cut boy opens his robin’s egg
Eyes & says, “But I don’t have a way to
Ride or fly,” not knowing he’d already
Gone out the door with us & barefoot
Crossed the lawn in robin’s egg light,
October cool even in August. It was
That way in June. “I have a bike,”
Not knowing he says it, pulling out
His robin’s egg eyes, & sees the show
Is over. Cigarettes punched around
The jukebox, old man’s monkey
Pinned under a folding table.
Or she’s a dancer, gone with the eyes
Stuffed inside. The table pins our boy’s
Foot to a floor that’s full of quarters.
Love Songs & Sperm
Orange muffins & green tea, toaster on burn,
Sap in veins, Roger rips Mia’s nightshirt…
Marionettes dance to the radio…
Whales stitch the waves (television’s photons
Needle-stick & stain the room, cries blubbering,
Blurring & melting, nothing to stick to,
No silence for sound & no space for light,
The fire & scream of the toaster snaps
In their throats, sea spray drying on their backs)…
Roger & Mia’s fingers like fishnets
Across the table set for breakfast, into
Another day to pass through and snag on
Another naked shore, tomorrow leftover burnt
& sticky, that glass sizzling off the highway.
Mitch Taylor is a Resistential philosopher
and drinker who works in the slummiest office building in
Manhattan and lives, by the grace of a love he cannot posses,
in a rent-controlled flat near the tranquil banks of the Hudson.
