Pleased to Meet Me

i.


he sits
translates Rimbaud
cheap desk from Ikea
a dark studio by the lake
he sits

egged on by Spanish red
a semester of French in college
seduced by his TA to guarantee

an easy B, resorts
to search engines to assist
w/the trickier parts, but is surprised

bemused (Breathless)
what he’s retained
perhaps from subtitles
in films from Jeunet & Godard
Breathless (bemused)

I is
the other is not

the author & does
protocol for
meeting oneself

exist
only in dreams
unrequited maybes
riff away on Walter Mitty
exist

Breathless
to the author’s
Masculin Feminine
-cigarettes & idealized selves
breathless






ii.


born
in a barn

on the S. side
of a steeltown

way of thinking
takes to drinking

like his daddy
(his daddy . . .



His old man’s Charger is all stale smoke & sticky old beer. The old man perspires Miller. Exhales Chesterfields. They see each other weekends since the divorce. Stay up late to watch Hee Haw and Benny Hill. As a man the child stays in most weekends. Never marries. Comes to associate sweaty beer aromas with country and western from the ‘70s. Acquires an affinity for tight-clothed redheads with curves. Southern accents. Lowbrow humour. Waylon. Willie. )






iii.



Ridge of his N. Mediterranean
nose the airs put on to his toes tapping
lines into stanza those Bohemian
shades so as not to catch his self napping
the newly-formed crows’ feet & blood-shot eyes
keep the sun away the critics at bay
nobody knows his poker show the yes
he promises & blindly looks away
tweaked on LSD he loses his mind
on too much Nietsche in college a fraud
in Chuck Taylors in the Bowling Green wind
& recalls reading something from Rimbaud:
if you see yourself coming cross the street
anyone else would be better to meet













iv.



I has Johnson’s Love in Vain
I meets ladies on Amtrak, paints

w/his cock in the rain & writes ghazals
to loves lost on trains easy as I finds it & improvs

Sonatas to weather patterns, rhapsodizes galaxies, jungles &
stillframes, all the while

I is me is
sane

is an artist
feels pain is
homeless, orphaned tumbleweeds
on greasemonkey summer pavement joneses

for James Brown loud on headphones is
I’s opiate throat-rush enough &

dirty-fingered & minge-mouthed
Heartbreak Hotel & Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak

unafraid to sleep alone, I whinges
anyway, at the thought of it, but I

is alright
won’t complain
gets tight & recalls something
his old man used to say: even the best
wine stains.