Cold Cash

O howls of crystal, milky souvenirs, desire piercing its own

	unsleeping eyeball with desire, glimpse of the ephemeral soul,

	bed where we talk and unfold and confess the impossibility of

	autobiography,

What else is there to our lives except your head raging with

	snakes and echoing skies, walls brushed gold by centuries of

	light, leisures of pure design, dreams of a relaxed god who

	serves and saves and provides whatever next wish blossoms

	into the faceless smile of mortality.

O birth of an endless self, imagine us without you, poor

	scavenging guests condemned to work, poor burgeoning

	weeds singing like poets without words,

Possibly value, possibly the last murder, possibly gray, possibly

	nothing less than a blind fuck in an alley, possibly tradition

	and belief, possibly even the wild god of hope inspiring the

	suicide of wishes, preventing our failure.

But imagine someone dying and you wake up and 18 million is

	yours, left by this unknown uncle from Davenport, Iowa, and

	there you are in the real world for once, not art, the world of

	having and owning and never having to die, of being better

	than, above, the world of gilded snot and full-fed lips and

	sleep unbroken by loss, pigskin, peach silk cushions, cupolas,

	Louis XIV Roman chairs, the clear sweet light of complacency

	flowing in from Sardinia.

Who knows what it would mean, the central Chinese figure for

	this might be some wizened bald guy in robes sitting on a

	cushion chanting while I hum to myself ``As Time Goes By,''

	who knows what it is we really hope to achieve when one of

	those stark moments of truth overtakes us and we feel

	absolutely free, calm, happy even, and can choose anything

	instead of being held in suspense by all we know we can have,

Which is nothing according to Medusa's wailing mouth in the

	statue I saw reproduced in House and Garden, and tore out, and

	study right now as I am writing, thick gray slit of a mouth,

	huge voluptuous lips, blank eyes with a residue of carving

	where the pupils were done in relief, and of course snakes for

	hair.

And yet we think of love, and the failures and the relentless

	calling to us we hear from its pale villas and graves, war

	heroes, that's what lovers are, I can see us, the deepest glance

	into the soul, the gaze not even a high Mexican valley can

	equal.

The point is what can money do for us but remind our

	vulnerability to act and awaken to itself and become the new

	shield through which the army of nature with its loving

	unknown deaths may enter us and restore our souls to the

	laughter of revolving doors taking us from the inside weather

	of a lobby to the outside street of lighted buildings, skies,

	gusts of intense stupidity and fun.

So I was told by my real mother, whom I cannot remember,

	what could be crazier than to marry oneself but that's what

	money is, a broken egg at the bottom of a torn pocket, a

	tabletop in which we see our hungry faces, but there isn't a

	dish of anything on it for us to eat.

Very funny, someone cackles inside, I was only 5 when someone

	handed me a book with ten red white and blue stamps in it

	which would someday become a bond which would someday

	become cash if I bought more stamps and waited long

	enough, what was wrong with me? I just found that very

	book in my dead mother's panty drawer, (I was collecting her

	things), I guess I never cashed it in.

That's me, in my never-ending attempt to be a husband, not to

	mention son, father, fisherman, gardener, runner, great lover,

	just a normal American citizen, not Mayakovski, not a guy

	who believes he can face death without a tear or a little shit in

	his pants,

And yet among these helpless ruminations there's another thing,

	what does the earth want from us, if anything? what are we

	supposed to do for the sake of it all as emissaries to an

	unknown kingdom?

I thought this was funny once, but not now, not even the

	weirdness of Mallarm‰ or a pheasant dinner can distract me

	from asking how and why it was done, instead of answering

	by picking out a Jaguar, Baum et Mercier, or a beachfront

	condo to console my enviable loins.

O even my own ordinary tables and chairs are laughing at me

	for having them so close, so deep in my mind that when I

	come home nights I almost greet them with a word of praise

	and relief, who belongs to whom? what a rich question, since

	no more stories of the past are possible on this yacht of

	material possibility.

Sometimes in the bathroom I'll be standing there cock naked

	loving every minute of it, maybe even liking that place and

	time better than anything, the cozy steam of the hot water

	turned on full, the mirror clouding up, readying myself with a

	shave, then adjusting the shower water just right for the day

	so I can step in under the stream and not decide how long to

	take, feel I have hours, then begin to regret the necessary exit

	I'll be making before long into the dry commercial world of

	dog-eat-dog, of schedules and tasks, of making success better

	than that opposite term, which is, after all, the nature of the

	universe.

But will we ever know it, will the shower ever be our home? on

	certain days a feeling overtakes me, sits like a happy dog in

	my belly, of being poor, of having nothing but friends and

	poetry and a warm place to sleep, and it occurs to me that

	intelligence of this sort is denied to those who cannot hear the

	crystal howling or see the milky souvenirs or experience the

	despair of desire's baleful stare or know the soul's unyielding

	misery as it lies back letting its voice unfold the nonfactual

	snakes of light, of a destitute prompt unmotherly hammer

	driving in the nail, in the dirty unpainted wall of truth is

	beauty, beauty is truth, you know it and it's enough,

O which is why Let me touch you, Touch me, lie like two

	transparent knives willing to be picked up inside each of us,

	for no particular use, on no table, in no man's silver sheath,

	sparkling as the light at any time plays through their blades in

	the eternally joyful hands, ridiculous as Tolstoi, that cannot

	pick them up.