latin bonus est

in your fist
the crumpled can. when i was
home i could never
escape the hum of intangible
wires it was my sister's
bedspread there is
nothing left of me
here a porcelain doll, rectangle
of glass i was
forgotten on checkered
linoleum i
was the pushpinned
poster the battle
before the gate clutched
in the rain a knife
in hand a rivulet down
the forearm you see
the uninviting home from
uninviting rain i
will say it
baldly i sat
stalking in
the rain a black
knife held killstrike
in my
hand i rode
the bus i thought
how fucking beautiful
if it must be your
memory it must be all that for
us all

I fell asleep last night under the big white broom mustache of an old man driving through the intersection of church and market. gravity unchaperoned on those milky bristles, we went around seeing things I’d like to tell you about, but the old man deserves his privacy.

here,

this is where my voice cracks with emotion.

and here,

much later,

is the next morning.

he waters his lawn, although he never notices the lawn. he tilts his propaganda up towards the horizon, which looks all the more infinite at my size. a new creation. or the morning I woke up in the smokey mountains not knowing how to say it, with no one to say it to.

and here,

here comes belief. the ice cream man. the boys and girls.

"only a few days before that, couple of days before at the most, really, I'd been reading in my new testatment. my little girl gave it to me. I've got it right now in my kit." The colonel half rose, sat back down. "but I'll spare you. the point is -- aha! yes! the bastard has a point and isn't too damn drunk to bring it home -- this is the point, will." nobody else ever called him will. "st. paul says there is one god, he confirms that, but he says, 'there is one god, and many administrations.' I understand that to mean you can wander out of one universe and into another just by pointing your feet and forward march. I mean you can come to a land where the fate of human beings is completely different from what you understood it to be. and this utterly different universe is administered through the earth itself. up through the dirt, goddam it."

from tree of smoke by denis johnson