The Rien Ghazals (with thanks to Frank) FOR X “Rien.” “Nothing.” Louis XVI diary entry for 7.14.1879, the day of the storming of the Bastille negative ten Ghazal For 4th Avenue A perforated tear screaming on the cheek of an artic dream—I was wondering What you meant when you said it was colder than licking blackness on that wagon. An infection spreading deepways; my alembic protrudes, extruding filthiest liquids, from Distilled to still striated with the pus of the wind on 4th Avenue—howling his name. I just have to move through the door jamb(which is all that is left of the door) with Paint-eyes; hoping no one sees us, & thinks we are here together. (we are here together) Twisty sharp & silver scissors lie on the table; I’m cutting off my breast-long Hair with my chewed cuticle fingers. The truth—the dust has been eating for years. Hurling zeros into the galaxy, I see no difference between that & puerile bones Snapping into hilarity; the swallowing of the dead, the dilatation of their fists. 7.6.-8.17.2005 negative nine Ghazal for a Fricative Life A fricative life, plotted by the king of bones; he planted the needle in his arm through A fishnet of years, trying not to look smug when I found him, his saggy eyes, mouth. A thin, contracting threshold called “NEVER”, which was trying to change its name to “NEVER / MIND” slapped me vertical & shrugged, then padded gauze on me like snow. An illusion rekindled the conjunction between an imperishable turn-back & a ha[l]ting of hands with the power of fists…runs to the wings…am I….I am…. Always before (so flush me then) had (down that deep, vast toilet) of Autumn’s outer space, a field of perforations (whose hands folded may know) A simple (a + b =) in the silence flushes the dust motes down the throat of old horror & layered lies, the transparent membrane that THIS WOULD BE “all we had” 7.28-8.17.2005 negative eight Ghazal for Nailing the Plicature to My Face Rubbing two stars together to make numbers, it is important to me. It is important to me That you know my laughter is no better than my being mute. Or impersonating an ocean. Chance pummels the fire which rakes the (instantaneous) abyss. The neutral (abyss.) Nothing will have taken a face before I am gone. Not mine not mine not mine. Please. Oh, he said. As if this hadn’t been a firerun. But a firerun for one Person is not a firerun for another. Shame, he said. (For trying.) The shepherd, without his flock, is no longer a positive symbol, but a shepherd without His flock, a failed religious symbol. Clearly I’d found something: the perimeter of spittle. A picture of me in 1999: tits bitten & bruised, half-stripped; & all those intersections we Drove through, all those parallels we cut across. Nailing the plicature to my face. 7.28-8.17.2005 negative seven Ghazal for What Cooled in My Belly For him I cut—my face—dispersion of—little growing old Pieces of—No, big tomorrow! By then he will be gone! Don’t say westward not westward—even as he lies quiet as a roar Beneath the sheets. For as we are hurtling, dust. Dust zero gravity dust. Flickering in the forested depths of my eyes, this and/or not this; nothing Tore—still my belly cooled. I felt something pool, more viscous than glass. Shall I die, you say, let some fool lick up the blood with her left Tongue. A barbarian is due here today. They say this is our voyage. An indefatigable sorting of seed’s psyches. The Kingdom, the Empire, The Celestial face of the moon slitting her wrists in the great galactic bathtub. 7.28.-29.2005 negative six Ghazal for Free Swim O, plashing sounds in the void; sidewidest says I should say what I mean when I am Meant to say it but I do not. I do not say what I meant to. I mean to. But I don’t. The rapebaby dug down my cervix—so I say which I chose last time not To say this time, I finally see it stripped of all metaphor…dimensions eroding. In the desert, I hear the turbination. I’m trying to give numbers faces, but I hate to swim I hate swimming. (get those hands away) Free Swim Free Swim To never again want to hear the sound of one hand slapping. When they (they) say, Never ever enjoy a snowless winter; this is the way you are. Isn’t it. Say it. Say it. Keep the elegy in the death sac so they can’t find it—Mayday : Mayday—it was a rather Hot noon, May 12, 2005, but tempting were those haunted hands, full of sacrificial sand. 7.29-8.24.2005 negative five Ghazal for the Ronald Regan Turnpike If I tear the relationship if I tear this relationship this one this only this only one a wrist Will wrest with supposition across a razor. I will camber him, I think; I like curves. He did not have an answer. I saw it in your mouth. The summer may have been Exquisite but years—shall we say years? of this rips. Dictation never concerned him. I know that (only if perfectly tunneled through him) I will perhaps find myself sitting With myself on a dark spot (then) so much sediment lithified into stone. So? So? They can all be pleased. No, they cannot. All I want is just one beer looking at thousands of split bricks each a day a day of my life. One beer one beer one beer Each time on the highway I pulled off to the side, mile marker #72 of the Ronald Regan Turnpike. Vomited, there. So no would see. Lingering elastic landscape glacier lines. 7.29-8.18.2005 negative four Ghazal for My Hand I am hiding—you see? my hand which goes right through you. You want to ask, Where did all the bodies go? That is my question, too. All that dieresis (solution of continuity) Ask the grinning god holding The cheese grater against my cheek. A lullaby under the moon. Mother O Mother why did I turn against the ocean that great salt wave Slapping me in the face. Decomposition ate me where my head was & is. I will use electronics to transform the meaning of what you have said into The meaning of what you meant, butchering wires. I hate circuitry. At the heel of the margin of the cliff, bending to the shadow, is it you that (Posthumously) asks, Who is it that goes there? An melted ice chip answers. 7.30-8.18.2005 negative three A Ghazal for Allen Street The water that formed that one day in the skinny light while the fermata Of hyaline odors & filaments of whirlpooled immanence cut the pamphlet. Mother I how crazy I was when I cried that encumbrance that rain-dark single scar, that Dumb flower, that jagged mud; I pled, I pled. Why did the answer have no question? Look: a x b = why?—consider O this (ad lib)____(plus) when you do it, you make me Squirm with skyhorror vision naked an accident. His flesh split like the spine of a book, Take for example this: I could walk all night & find you & find you & find you yet you would still be lost in lift-me-from-this. No surprise. Buried in the floor. Vomit. Breath. At Allen Street, (God, was it) my fault, I wander into an ally to find a big man, big gun. Take this absence, says my love. Take it & be happy. I reach for the nothing of powder. 8.1-18.2005 negative two Ghazal for the Supply of Horses I’m not stupid about the supply of horses. They’re stuffed into trucks. Overnight my tri- Eyeball area has risen with me. US-1 intersects with a nosebleed. I repent. I repent. I heard his scorched spider web being shat out, his warm spittle dripping down my face. Dagger in the forehead. This is a semaphore, of course. My arms are flapping like flags. Phonemes are ripped, being told, go away, by something much smaller than they. (Do it again she said he did it again.) Abishag goes into his room & he emerges a king. I didn’t say much; the leaves were already off the trees. I was listening to the gestures the motion made when they gestured on K. St. I scratch the melioration out of my hair. I never (dear Mother) thought I could be forced by someone to change into a Hissing nothing; this representation of my self as a half-cracked mirror & (&) [&] 7.20-8.18.2005 negative one Ghazal Because I Remind Me of Her Learning how to forget, that same year, how I was fucked by a truck Full of decoys & would realize but not understand my small-headed wishes. I could not say I remind me of her so could not stop that magmatic Differentiation in my head so I did not speak no I did not speak. Then Nothing came into the room, speaking of venipuncture but not the kind I like God I said God. Urgent liquid feeling. Feasance of impossibility. Intermittent half-gleaming, half-dulled deadsleep. But what about all the windows? I breathe in chalk. The old blackboard—you know this—said it to me before. (The baroque sepulchre sprouts) Life! she (the dead one) cries Does not mean You can open your mouth & speak. Does not mean you can open your mouth & speak! 8.2.2005 zero Ghazal for Mathematics Presence (as you read,) not absence as you write back (from a blackened eggshell Melon in a vineyard dashing to the drinker holding a box of Coricidin Cough & Cold.) The main character is naked with a wicked powder wiped under her nose. She scratches At it & says, help me I am dissolving. All it takes is a little liquid. He smiles. There is the sound of a porthole being struck against a window, a nail Pounded into the round O, the strange crowded room a sketch. I’m lying,… A spatter of blood in the bucket. Even now anything could happen: A mirror in the trees, rhythm to rhythm, 4:17 a.m. on a Wednesday. I’ve assembled a crowd to watch. With or without. no matter what flat mathematics—“Rien.” wrote Louis XVI, the day of the storming of Bastille. “N’est pas? ,” I wrote back 126 years later. 8.3-18.2005 TOP  Michelle Greenblatt is 23 & lives near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Her work can be found in AUGHT, xStream (present & upcoming), Frank's Home, Jim Leftwich's site for textimagepoetry, & upcoming in word for/word and Big Bridge. Michelle's first book, brain:storm, is being published by Thomas Lowe Taylor's anabasis press, set to go to press by the end of 2005. You can always drop her a line at coldermoon. Frank's Home |