Because of Kent Johnson
because of Kent Johnson
i wrote this poem
He listens to the life inside life for the life outside life.
He knows how to wear the doubt cape.
He has a wolf of a reputation.
He has all the symptoms of lullaby.
Revolving in his skull is the world with one name.
Detained in his wound everything becomes observable.
It is the gouge of literature. The aching cave forever open.
A book read in desire-time. The heart-display.
Amidst so much misreckoning, tricksters and funded crapola,
turning in the spokes, his voice: “What can be bought on installments
for a trail of rats leading to another trail.” (And he doesn’t
dislike rats.)
He pins you to the day. Imagines you to death. Little vegetable
in love with vegetables, none of his words are for fun.
All the little flags and followers of you he has drowned
in a tiny basin.
He splashes his face with your souls.
Hieronymous Bosch, The Temptations of Saint Anthony Abbot, 1515 (detail), Museo Del Prado
In the burning whiteness his ritual grammar
whispers its translation to you.
Its terrible invisible warmth on your tongue tastes like the earth
from which they built The Tower of Babel.
Scandal with every word and that peace that comes
with estrangement from the self.
He loves me for you.
He is a long holiday spent in God…
He was once tortured by a gang of gangsters.
He watches you count your handful of etceteras.
He listens to you babbling the lies of your sanity.
Your corpse-mottled cheeks he slaps.
Your hill alone, wall alone, he slops into agitprop.
If you must live against a door, he will slam it.
He properly thieves.
No bridges to burn.
In the grate of non-existence he is the guardian raking ash.
He knows everyone’s missing, everyone.
He blesses us in the evenings and frightens us in the mornings.
He is the warning spoken of.
He has ruined failure.
He wrote a real poem.
Bosch, The Last Judgment triptych, 1482 (detail), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
