Book of Venom
Y no hallé cosa en qué poner los ojos
que no fuese recuerdo de la muerte.
--Quevedo
(And I could not set my eyes on anything
That was not a reminder of death)
Eat the poem from the spit.
Fat still splissing on coals and fragrant smoke. Tear into the instant, your white teeth
flashing. Think of the captive Gorilla
who can gesture signs for Hunger, Sadness, Kitty, but refuses to mate; or the
dendrobatid frog—sapphire-blue and fatal to the touch—now trapped within a
Plexiglas cage. Bereft of such prey as
centipedes, mites, beetles, the frog no longer distills the chemicals for its
venom. A boy could catch it in cupped palms, and crush.
Fitting that jellyfish in Spanish is medusa: tresses of the
Gorgon sister like those tentacles adrift.
Attic women spoke lies as they labored at the loom: men whom she
stalked, forced to gaze into her eyes and carbonized instantly, and villages
burdened with widows and orphans. Moon
medusa, box-shaped medusa, Pacific Sea Nettle or Flower Hat Jelly, your red and
purple afterimage is what I witness in my sleep…venomous carnations of the
sea. Fishermen and adventurers see the
fabled sister arise from the slow drift, and they keep this secret. The sister
is too beautiful to behold and not possess; men have begged for one night in
the torch-lit grotto, even if ecstasy means necrosis.
Brown Recluse, crepuscular spider with dark violin shape on
thorax, your leap and retreat unleash agile pizzicatos. Obsidian-glisten of six eyes as you sear
puss-rose into my sole…creature whose necrotic music vibrates from a strand of
gossamer!
This crackling is not the neon flickering vermilion against
my motel ceiling and walls. This steam
doesn’t rise from the drawn bath, nor is thinned with a couple aspirins and
scald of tequila. I know the source and
ash…this is heat rising, while red fingers of the Santa Ana Winds flip pages,
my book of venom.
Engine churning, I navigate this asphalt steppe. Big rigs, straining with their hoard of
flattened cars for the Pick Your Part.
Sedans for the ambitious to buy on exorbitant interest. Strips from blow-outs…smoke on the
horizon. Puddles of phosphorescent oil
and engine coolant. Myself, in a
Chevrolet, inhaling an artificial temperature of 70 degrees, breathing the
toxins of a lifetime. Lady Venom, is
this another strain of your serotonins?
In Zapotec villages, Bidxáa sorceress transforms into fawn,
heifer, filly…this is the cocoon stage.
Each month she then blossoms: woman with wide hips, breasts pendant and
moonshine hair. She bathes at midnight,
her scent overpowering and narcotic like cinnamon, mezcal, fields after rain.
River water glistens on her limbs while her skin simmers the thirst of
adolescent boys.
Lead-poisoning lit Caravaggio’s sword-blustering and
madness. Like Van Gogh, he ate colors,
and his gaze crackling over the corpse of a Virgin prostitute also flickered as
crow-shadows crossing the wheat-fields of Arles.
Your fangs, Lady Venom, in my jugular, yet you tease. You inflict dry bite; no terminal dusk
courses through my veins. Only
wrinkles…tedium of thinning hair…salve of liquor and pleasure in unbuckling my
belt after steak. But the bite
immaculate is being honed, curved
scythe-bite. When my breath rattles,
will jaws of earth grind on my bones forever? Or will I return spawned from
something neither water, fire, stone or air?
North American male lives to the age of 78; he gluts on
fats, oils and sweets. By 21, he commences a career in charring his liver with
ethanol. Average height: five feet, nine
inches. Average of 144 orgasms per
year. Two children per household. Blood-sugar spikes by the time he is fifty,
and he peaks.
Brazilian Wandering Spider’s lifespan: two years. Hunger distilled, it hunts nocturnal, bent on
envenomating grasshopper, mouse, lizard.
Unlike the stray bullets or disastrous atom bomb of man, spider need
only inject a milligram into human flesh in order for victim to experience loss
of muscle control, edema, death by asphyxiation.
Our protagonist awakes at 6:00 a.m. and showers. Mirror fogged, he wipes it and shaves,
avoiding the gaze of his own eyes. Slaps aftershave on his neck and cheeks,
winces from the astringent’s sting. In the
kitchen, he peels an orange and sips bitter coffee. An innocuous ache at the base of his
spine. Dressed in suit and tie, he
boards a trolley car and stares out the moving window: school boys dragging
satchels, proprietors opening cafés and kiosks, the pointed breasts and heels
of a young woman clicking hurriedly across the Reforma. Once at his desk, he looks over the documents
awaiting him, signs off on funds for used textbooks to be distributed to rural
schools. Yawning, he hears the clacking
of typewriters. Doors slam or dryly
shut. He opens the top desk drawer,
takes out a file and, with red pencil, makes corrections…crosses out an entire
page…chuckles…it’s the first time he has emitted a sound this morning. He inserts crisp sheet of paper in his
Underwood, and his thoughts glow, catching fire. The ache subsiding, he works
from 8:52 until noon: hendecasyllables, glistening clarity of water. Working title: Death
Without End.
Unable to fall asleep, I study Blake’s Ghost of a Flea which shone before him: stalwart and strutting,
eye-balls peeled, black tongue like rattlesnake’s sniffing heat. Hours later, I
awaken drenched in nightmare; this phantom flea which hosted Y. pestis and
gluttonous Death will curse the viewer across ten generations.
Encroaching on our fondest purlieus, a medieval dusk
spreads. Fleas swarm our sofa and
carpeted dens where children drool Looney Tunes. Florence, Cologne, Los Angeles…emaciated
corpses outside are piled and torched.
The pathogen is ravenous; the fever has yet to peak.
Fitting that serotonin is produced in the gastrointestinal
tract: strict pleasure derived from sopping up onion gravy and steak with a
tortilla; a mug of dark beer, drops running down the glass, and the sudden
tingle when drunkenness commences.
Serotonin also impels man to leave the dinner table. Delectable sleep after making love and the
brine-like odor a woman leaves on the pillow. Snake and insect venoms contain
the chemical, and without medical treatment, a high dosage leads to lack of
muscle control and death. Such a
teetering between one extreme and the other…like the pause, distinguishing what
freezes from what scalds.
Infestation of cimicidae, every blanket sown with
needles. Braille of rashes on a boy’s
chest, constellation of scabs. Lovely
creature, hematophagous bud, you outwitted the pesticides and now the tenants
are jettisoning their linens. Like making love, drunkenness, childbirth and
bread, this is something we share with the ancients: scripture of scabby
phonemes pocking our skin.
Andre Masson’s lightning: blackness crackling on white fire,
whirlpools and raptors, arteries hemorrhaging, ant-swarms bursting into flowers
and barracudas; an automatic topography of thirst, meat puppets peering from
gapping hyena jaws, sharks, prowling wolf packs and spiders. Ivy spreading at velocity of lust. Venom.
Less is more; venom of ctenidae spiders induce excruciating
marathon erections. Neurotoxins causing
such extreme priapism can be refined, aid those suffering erectile dysfunction.
No glory. Crackle of
loose asphalt under my soles. No fame. Horizon of brushfires from the
foothills. Am done with the Homeric
clichés. I need ash on my lips, texture of meat torn by my teeth. Then She visits me when thirsty. Her skin sizzles when touched. No tenderness, yet the pleasure She delivers
cuts genuine. She leaves when sated, no
vows, no promises. Only the sharpness of
her teeth.
Poem’s a wet-bite, a pustule.
**
Sweet Lady Venom, this asbestos tunnel where you entrap me
after the gas station, laundry and
dark bottle of beer. Then a fitful
dozing on my bed: a plateau where weeds sap soil. Murky rills I dream, and miles of tar,
smokestacks. No fangs jut from ceiling,
no legs open, no descent from self-shat thread.
Only the rustle of your urticating hairs wafting upon me as I snore…a
slow rain of barbed follicles…and I inhale our pact of mesothelioma….
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