E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 66
My journal, 2006:
Dervishes gyrated, turned, twisted,
Bumped into each other,
A new century commenced.
All day Sunday no one hired
Empirical facts, and empirical
Facts went unemployed, starved.
Not even philosophers became
Exceptions in the non-hiring,
Only, the stillborn in a gynecocratic country.
Intensities became oppressed emotions,
For consolation
Wore dresses or suits decorated with Chinese writing.
Down in the valley, brakes squeak.
A helmeted man
Lifted up his visor
To display his scars
In the shape of stars.
This popular conquistador
On a prime time quiz show
Lost his spurs
And become unpopular.
He was replaced
By a crippled explosion
Who crawled on all fours
To a stand up ovation.
E MAIL FOR DAMNISO LOPEZ 67
My journal, 2006:
The breakfast scrambled illusions justified
The desert life style of standing
For months on one foot atop a sharp rock,
Only coming down to scribble
Cryptic semiotics on the side of bee hives.
The awareness of death inevitability
Permeates every lip kissed
Even if the lip
Is pursed in an erotic twist, or
Relates in its wrinkled coral
A corkscrew occultist narrative.
Red-crowned parrot on parlor lamp,
Blue-bowled incense on orange-legged table,
Scent of Tennyson’s decaying apples,
A curvaceous soprano singing coloratura
In plaster on the slab of the dead piano
Continued the proof the rent was paid.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 68
My journal, 2006
Cypress winter red circled around
My kissed wrist,
A red icicle,
Its coldness that froze my flesh
Resisted the sun’s logic and logistics,
Refused to thaw,
Quoted the small print
In the scrolls of the old law,
So I, distraught, hammered
A nail
Into atmosphere of air,
But the nail
Bent
Before was made a deep rent
In the scents blowing insvible
Through the Heraclitean air.
The nail could not be driven in
Far enough to stick in the air,
So the bent nail
Fell to the ground.
Straightened back into a straight shape
To sing
A dirge
About
My post-midnight tossing
About the loss of possibilities.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 69
Turn right
At the spot of time
Where the heavy stone
Was moved a half-mile by a storm.
This place
Is a magic space
Where one can go into a trance
And write history backwards,
Starting with a time
When wild iris grew in a black bog
Where now
Is a counter in a shopping center
Selling
Commentaries
On the exchange of aporias
Between Derrida and Stiegler
Printed calligraphically
On Chinese rice paper.
In this magic space
Made magic by the buried bones
Of ten-story high dinosaurs
Will be found a stone statue
Of the patch of a one-eyed Pirate.
Although the rest of his face is absent
Remainder of his body missing.
The statue has been photographed
Many times by book readers,
Especially the readers of Herman Melville.
The statue is also watched
Through binoculars from a distant balcony
Where girls in bikinis suntan
At five o’clock in the afternoon.
Clips of the patch are stolen
And smoked by people in the Ghetto.
E MAIL TO DAMNISO LOPEZ 70
I prayed to a pupil for a strawberry of my own.
In my prayer, I left out the word berry. My prayer
Was answered. I received three truckloads of
Straw along with instructions on how to duct tape
My windows to protect from the particles planted
In the atmosphere by terrorists. This is why I burned
My pajamas. I forgot that in my pajama pocket
Was the only mirror destiny, fate, or the gods
Would allow me to have. Now, I cannot see my image
And have no identity. I depend on gravity
To keep me from floating upwards to a space station
I met a strawberry blonde in Plant City on Friday.
