Parallel Obsessions
I first encountered you in
a footnote, in the shadows
of dead angels. Alchemized starlight
solidified to air, crystallized to
atmosphere, making There Here. Rage,
exhaustion, power, serenity, swagger cloaking
you in the coat of
my unrest. The ceiling that
follows me wherever I go
is the limit I project,
what I hit is the
world my own perception of
it hits. Crumpling into the
ball of my palm, you
hold onto scarcity. Always get
a receipt, it’s a good
alibi. Listen to the dark
talk on a mic touched
more by hands than by
voices, page as water, words
as flame, a shelved life
bombed. Jagged and probing. Relic
seller, a real shroud of
tourists making its mark an
unruly force that scorched your
era, you left ash on
everything you touched. Propulsive,
pathetic-poetic,
driven by a beating heart,
god is on no one’s
side. Seeds planted deep in
the underground avant garde up
to teach our mouths what
we always wanted to speak.
Our whore-core riff-rock band, Rosemary’s
Babies/Blonde Poncho a pilgrimage
in vain, carrying pain made
sacred to interrogate the profane
way I so ungratefully waste
my lays playing cruel bridegroom.
Discarding once consumed, lovers whom
I should have told before
falling for me they would
be falling into the trap
of my bedroom which doubles
as their tomb. Beatings thicken
skin, metre and rhythm are
source code; breath, ink, or
pixels are hardware. The weapon
I fight against is the
very weapon I possess: limitless
riches. An arctic archive frozen
in time at Svalbard, playing
with darkness and sound design
in this domus dolorum, house
of sorrows. To be rich
is to surround myself with
people who have a financial
stake in my happiness. Threaten
me with peace, my public
face is on the page.
