Print This PostPissing
What part of life is in the weirdness
spreading illimitably around
what fits? At face level, as he
stood there, glaucous light was caught
in the clear plastic shower curtain.
This light came from the sun
by an obscure but direct path
through the airshaft. Look at it!
The body of the slender man slouched
forward like a bow. And his hand
pinched his cock over the trouser notch.
He hadn’t turned the light on, because, of course, he knew
where the gleam-smudge of the commode cupped its shadowed pool.
What a limp arrow and what an idle, slouching cupid!
Whom does he hope to transpierce? He touched
the plummeting fireflies of urine with his gaze and with thought.
Would he ever choose to pass this moment
if this were heaven where every action flows
in simple purposefulness from desire? However absurd and embarrassing,
he thought of love. All right…I did. The cloudy light
got into the curtain so slyly
it looked inherent, and it made the acid drippings
of penis gleam. A pelting or dropping of mad flies
against the flimsy shanty of purpose. Plains, weird vistas
ran from every wall of that shanty of thought,
and the crazed plastic over the windows crepitated.
What part of life retires into the ghostly regions around
each thing we think and do? I loved him, no doubt of it,
but something couldn’t be resolved. I’ll never forget
the way, when teased, I reddened and blew up:
“Shut up! Leave me alone! How can you be so cruel?
You’re playing with me. Are you? Playing with me?”
But I felt a sort of strength like, in olden days,
entrails strung on a line to cure. Weird, weird, the silence between us
ran out like plains. And his expression was as fathomable
as plastic alit. Would it now
be worth anything merely to pretend
to see his cloudy face in the blur of light
the plastic shower curtain caught?
What part of life have they hit on when they say
the rules of understanding sparsen and break off at the edges?
That the weirdness of the light might as well be his
ghost, because it may be too awful to speak of
if not called that? This is too much. I came to “do my duty”
and found “Shanty,” “Cupid,” penis. In the kitchen
I left stolid life behind. I left water on the stove top.
No boyfriend, teasing or otherwise, rattles the kettle,
though I hear its tinseled, pre-boil popping.
Mere crepitation? Or the sound from across vast plains of a love spell being cast
in a hail of mad, glinting darts?
Damn. Now I don’t want more coffee. That was a false start.
How scary that your actions will only approximate your desires!
It means your whole life history could be more shallow than you meant: coffee
when you also feel like something else, you’re not sure what.
In heaven it’s not that way. There, everything is wanted,
known and done in a bold stroke. No weird plains isolate
purpose. He will not be there. Nor love. All right and I?
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David McConnell is the author of the novels The Silver Hearted (2010) and The Firebrat (2003). His short fiction and journalism have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. He lives in New York City.
