White Paintings I

My lips are zippered shut.
I need distracting.
I've changed my mind: my face
Is boarded up like a house.
I'm nailed shut, it's got to be
"Like" something. Like life
Is happening and not happening--
Is happening too slowly
And too fast, because you can't
Stop it. You see your hands
Coming off the wheel, trying
To put something in between
Your face and your fate and
You hear yourself screaming.
What was it you heard yourself
Singing? How did "I" get here?
The force of the impact
Slammed us together. In school
We had a little song, we lined up
Neatly. In the open mouths
Someone dropped a coin.
Some coins. Breaking my fists
On this glass and then asphalt there is no
History, I said, meaning I don't want
To be touched. Now you've closed
The eye-flaps, you must want
Forgiveness: you must want
Forgiveness and silence and me
To die or maybe forget. These layers
Are great: this white, off-white
And off-off-white in a dense
Application, but I think the latex
Is tearing. I hear the sirens--
Please don't try to move me--
I'm tasting the metal teeth: admitting
Everything's finished between us,
Or nearly, singing it over the rim
Of the lifted glass (mouth full of belated
Apologies); a clear fluid--spilling back out
Through the seams (Completely, you said,
Untranslatable)--escaping.

White Paintings II
(in parenthesis)

So what if I scar?
I got my skin to yield up its secrets.
I know how everything is
Inside: suspended, contingent.
I take the knowledgeable risk.
I follow the loop to the final
Destination. I come again
To the part
Where I'm making the first
Cut, where I'm breaking
And entering,
Where I'm walking in
And taking the gloves off.
I watch it like a film.
Quiet in the audience.
I like these marks. Each time
Could be the first, if only
I didn't keep track, if only
There wasn't always more
Resistance in the surface
Where the badly healed
Silence twists in broken
Lines, livid and thick.
It seems that everything
Depends on something else:
It seems that everything
Wants out. It's a system.
So it hurts. I'm not surprised
I try to escape. Room
To move is room
To flee in, or
All movement is flight.
It's a system. It just takes time
To get used to it, I like to watch
The thing in action. Lights.
Camera. That first cut, I love it
When I squirm like that--
I'm all over these sheets--
But I'm disappointed,
Too. What can I say?
I expected more of myself.
All movement is attempted
Flight, and useless.
This is what happens, I say,
Trying to shove it all back
In some kind of order, trying
To remember how everything
Went before--positioned
In reference--looking for some
Epiphany to liberate, to take
Away on parole, at least:
This is what happens to you
When you don't cooperate;
This is what happens to you
When you refuse to talk.

White Paintings III

Another funeral.
The glare from the open
Coffin throwing the mourners'
Shadows onto that shifting wall
Of insects so we are
Embroidered on the night.
They seethe, we seethe.
You no longer move at all
Insofar as we understand
Movement. Light
Seeping out like milk: the light
At least, escaping. To begin
With guilt. The faces of the other
Mourners tense--past
And present "relationships,"
Lips moving, voices lost,
Wondering just how long...--
Reflecting my own face?
To start over again, sorry.
This summer-weight
Black wool soaked through,
The sour river-scented
Air sluggishly swaying
These broken off
Green threads the sick weeping
Willow's hanging onto
"For dear life?"
It isn't so late as all that,
Though we're, most of us,
By now, more than half
Memory, scrambled and
Unquiet (buzz, buzz, buzz)
Trying to weave you--
Stiff and unworkable--
Back in or at least mend
The tear in the fabric.
We know there isn't
Going to be enough
Time to finish it.
The wavering drone
Of these voices not
The music you wanted,
That doesn't exist yet.

White Paintings IV
(Independence Day)

1.
Above the banks of fog the muffled thud
Of rockets--I remember--never seen
(But we stood there for awhile, en famille, looking up
At nothing). Intermittently brightening
And dimming, the blank blanket above an airport
Built to test the instruments and abilities
Of those attempting to take off, or land, sightless.
Thud. Thud. Like something dead
Still being kicked, I don't need to add
What I add: hollow, meaningless. We piled
back into the car and probably
Our father drove us home again--
If he wasn't already blind drunk.

2.
The unbroken wall of our silence, behind which:
Ghosts and shadows, thin shapes in constant flight.
The most intense of intimacies and then complete
Absence.... Unable to tell you even the first thing about it:
How I was out in the garden of ashes, the garden I painted
Completely white in the middle of summer, the garden of doors
Going nowhere, brought out of doors to be painted
And taken back into the house untouched because I never
Got around to it, not in time for the celebration; how I found myself
Out of doors in the sticky heat, one of the "grown ups,"
In the green depths of a garden I'd only imagined
Painting white, I'd named "of ashes," drinking blanc de blancs
Until there were two of each guest I tried to make
Merge when they were speaking, carefully shutting one painted
Eyelid: how the voices seemed to come from far away
And stay there--I have no memory of what we talked about.

White Paintings V

I put my hands through your head.
But you never offered me
Any resistance. I put my arms
Through your body. I end up
Holding myself. I say Somebody
Please get me through this
Part--as though it were only a part. You
Disperse. You always disperse.
I walk through You like a doorway
In a structure made entirely of fog,
Set out on the edge of a cliff. "Falling
In love again...?" I walk in and out
Of us both. The letters I start
Break off, start over (Somebody,
Please...), accumulate, becoming a body
Of work, aborted: fetus and corpse.
I try to read everything I possibly can
Into the silences: to see--
For "next time"--how it's my fault.
Where was the railing? The warning
Sign? The flimsy excuse? This stuff
Can't be grasped, I'm trying to tell you
Exactly what it's like to be this
Lonely and frightened. I put my face
Through your face. On this side
It seems our eyes are wet--
But that doesn't change anything.
Our "grief?" Even that will get
Taken apart. The walls of the building
Are covered with advertisements
For everything I ever thought
I wanted: in the shredded white
Skin sloughing off I still make out
The stuttered remains of wild
Suggestions and pleas--desperate
Ideas about happiness. I try
To re-imagine myself, free at last
Of your interpretations. I put
My hand out into the empty
Space it seems your hand could be,
If only I were somebody else; it fits
"Like a glove," like it was made for me.
I put my fist through the glass.