Clouds. (Source).

Another original piece from the old notebook, spruced up a bit. As I mentioned in my earlier poem, at this point I don’t really plan on putting too much of my own stuff here. But in lieu of some other posts that are taking longer to finish than I had hoped, here you go.  

He is the ghost that fogs the mirror
before you rise to greet your Sunday face,
beer-swilling face with stubble like termites
tumbling through your grandmother’s antique chair
as she sings half-bred hymns to you in a
Gypsy tongue she learned off a carnival
barker. He stands before the black bookshelf,
pondering the glass veil between Word
and Man, wondering if sand or stone would
feel better in an old shoe, or like a
paper Mephistopheles, he leaps now
into the street, wild, un-tame and unkempt,
with matted hair drawn into a loose bun
or some pin-stuck old Indian style.
He offers you his body for consolation.
He offers you his tongue in lieu of words,
they are all tied up in leather behind
the shimmering partition like a
coquette calling from her Japanese screen.
And he dances lugubriously,
inebriate on the sound of
jazz funerals winding their way down dirt
roads to the noose-cackle of strings and the
lantern-glow of heat-lightning.