I say that poetry is flesh. —Édouard Glissant
l a z a r e t t e
the texture a measure in / conclusive protrusions
our gag reflex en-point fast as that putrid beauty
laid us here. marvel, honey, how money makes scum look
chummy, I hear a hooded figure mutter chewing thru bloody
gums. larva scrim,
smoke that fuckin screen wd’ya, bud?
puff goes the dream into a gallon-a-kerosene-mixed
-mud bludgeons you know how the sleep of a thousand
wooded houses dulls astral visions while the earth goes “up”
in viral smog. i want to find a song for that sickness to
make vivid our timidity for deep cavernous darks
spark maligned maleficent magnificence set
& bet us such kindling wdn’t utter a single fucking
sound—
l a z a r e t t e
in pharisees freedom
once kept in margins of false
largess, indentured servitude called at
odds, one against an other.
40 dawns at lazarette
sounds sirens’ paralysis of
breath, beneath the weathered deck
‘s not yet buried but barricaded
facade. a stowaway’s death
cult ritual in reverse:
the nurse-marine laid in
subcavity’s raw contagion awe.
l a z a r e t t e
for ian dreiblatt
el-azar cries out to no human in sight
careful to coax a god from the dark:
‘cross korach’s abyss a ship’s mast amiss sat shelling pis
tachios, lazily combing his pharisee-‘stache
while guarding the “sacrificial” weed stash. master of water
master of air, show me: who will be spared passed over (who cares?)
& who the pascal gull? on the altar of death what life
awaits the wicked our rich & what suffering promised our poor & sick?
l a z a r e t t e
der minyan iz avoyde zore,*
its minions, a quorum
now glowing half-prostrate
quick growing sicker,
their rabbis are dead
weight tossed
over, “the ship, the ship
it shall not sink”
they sing sodden
w/o classifying
the storm, a fri
-ling night un-
hinged delicate equilibri
voci croaks
four syllabic
chords: sta morrendo! but for what?
to prep the stewing
world to come
makes this world, in a word
expendable?
martyrs’ logic & imaginary gills—
the ship fills at recesses
as bodies contract
in sickness
foregone the dawn’s arrival & salt
‘s dense sinking
effluvium.
________________________________
*Yiddish: “the prayer quorum is idol worship”
l a z a r e t t e
a seedling’s
forsaken carrion
maneuvers finitie's
gastoral corrective
measures at
every misstep.
shore birds
cemented veins’
bloodless mercurial
mercy unused,
a- symptom
atic slum
lords fein
forth vampirial
trajectories feed
ing toilet
seat’s bottoms
tracing circles
thru sanity’s
placid rain.
not breath
pipes fentanyl
death gripes
seared lung
kaddish fodder
kiddush ha
shem spun
round punn
ing pebbles’
beachy bonfiring
mollusk suckers
sandy pseudo
unhomely clams.
clairvoyant hannah
sought (ir)rational
living fears
years before
ship’s borrowed
sick beds.
5781 bears
btwn our
double chin
phylacteries ill
usions undone
seedless sleet
& carceral
mirrors chant
& encant
“I can’t
& won’t
& wdn’t
give up.”
phantoms rupt
cysts twist
ing fiscal
friling winds
beauty’s full
day’s give
way-ward
sermons but
no mount,
no fount
-ain no
ranting press
briefing vitriolic
skewering lewd
connective faux
tissue, no
steerage bottom
ing out,
no cover
nor nation
nor mother
nor father
bore such
ageless contagions
raging horror.
l a z a r e t t e
fewer still knew who to follow— screw you! you fuckin wiggle
muppet, slave-driving pharaonic moron : you scratch the moon
& call it light, whistle tinsel genocide hollow & claim it
on yr corporate taxes, so whose moolah’s whose huh? may be crass (a compliment in my circles) too fast to judge or classless slob but my guild is nebakh complicit in yr guilt, it haunts my dreams.
now let me letchu in on a chewish subrosy joke: dis
satisfaction it self forms a sort of un-consumable pyre,
w/o smoke, our abandoned nation of nationalist narcises burns our livelihoods on wings of an avian acidic endo
some, pirating our homes, kith, kin & common sense of all political pretense.
l a z a r e t t e
and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him
—Leonard Cohen
serenading circadian swill,
rationing krill spillage—
o, planktonic crustaceans
yr larva nidus
still, baleen dreaming
sailors, el-azar’s nightmarish
bonesharp coral chorus
corrals petrified baitfish
two-by-two
into razornet arms.
sleep seeps in
sweat drooling spools
shedding viral curls
discrediting every wave
every shake, damp
mistaken gestus frets
franconian guttural jowls
mouthing holy curses:
dear, merciful circe
lucid amnesiac escapee
“let it not
be like hogs”
lungs waterlogged pawing
stalled penitentiary walls.
swallowing careful tomorrow’s
self-styled brackish taste,
phasing lazily marine
machines play fate
on skip-skid repeat.
teeter btwn serene
green spring days
w/ no trees
in sight. asking
least & fast
our pasts shaken
fallow shells smash
paths open deep
motion freaks, where
jacktar preachers screech :
ether, ether every
where, nor any
drip to breathe!
x
the mekhitarist
mystics sitting
shiva on the slip, grieving
brittle imitation visages,
screen-shot & crimped wit
ness it in half-lit,
synaptic fractal máscaras
day-old favors un
kempt & dreamt the lesion
-heir’s disastrous contempt:
to keep aboard only toff corpses
for earthly burial despite the
carousel threat of such infective
attempt—dear, leper
brothers of jebus, no charism en-
cantation shall spare this con
tagion, but to hide in the holes
of the deck, burrowing lives
as moles, holding holy
murine domohabitus.