Jason Gordon
Attack of the Nihilist
1.
No one can see the future,
not even people
with owls on their heads; but
I can make lightening
strike the barn.
I can fill a boot
with sawdust and
grab a fistful of
white beetles
from my pocket.
What can you do?
2.
The only cloud —
a big cat. It yawns until
its jaws bend backwards and
it swallows its own head.
We often exchange
yawns on the phone.
The star of sex
fades in your eyes;
the dream lays its black
eggs in your hair.
Dust settles on the furniture
of my life. I look out the window:
a swarm of bees
in the shape of a man
walks a puppy down the sidewalk.
3.
You wake up at midnight; the moths
fluttering around the moon,
the moths of your dream, already
begin to fade. There is nothing you can do.
You close your eyes; there is only
darkness, so cold not even
candles of bone could survive.
You stare at the ceiling
which stares back like
the blank page of a book.
4.
The stars carve circles in the sky
like grooves in a record.
Music makes the clouds sad;
they sink into the earth
like the ghosts of our furniture.
But one of them sneaks into
my room while I sleep,
fogging up the mirror with
its breath, placing stones soaked
in moon blood all around my bed.
In the morning I find blue footprints on the ceiling.
5.
A field with grass so dead
a downpour of angel tears
couldn’t revive it. That’s where
dreams go when we forget them —
tornados searching for
empty wine bottles to sleep in.
The clouds eat the stars.
6.
The mind is a dark ocean of voices.
I hear screams; the pinecones
explode like grenades.
The flying squirrels slowly
glide to earth, then
they explode too.
The chandelier swings wildly in my heart.
I stick a fork in my thigh
and somewhere in India
my pain appears on a map.
So many emaciated cows;
the milkman rings the doorbell but
there is no door, not even
a window to climb through.
The moon drops grand pianos from its eyes.
Oneirology
In the beginning there is only nonsense:
a white bib forgetting its own drastic lullaby,
some shiny butter snails,
a villa sketched by madmen
pounded into a small cube, then
a bright slit appears in the dark
and out spew the stars
followed by pink clouds of dust
followed by the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh…
Everything funnels down the cosmic drain
into a dimension where we are all statues
and our voices are red birds that fly from our mouths.
That’s how dreams behave sometimes —
passing from room to room,
paint peeling off the walls
to expose cave drawings; then
they vanish, returning
underground to dwell amongst lost tornadoes.
*
I sink through hours of darkness,
passing only the occasional neon jellyfish
before my bed lands on the moon.
I open the book of scars
and blow the dust off its heart,
the razorblade wings of your kiss
still fluttering inside.
You are the moth
that swallowed my clothes;
I am the stone
that opened its eyes.
Much deeper in the ocean
a lava whale circles.
*
The mind with stardust in its feathers
never drowns in an ocean of numbers.
A giraffe made of soap costs
nothing in the before-life, but here
gods talk slow, even owls fall from the sky.
That is not to say we’re full of shoelaces,
so many lost prophets, a dream
flying like a book through the ceiling fan.
Today I am happy;
the eye of the storm in my hand
turns blue and
all I see are sacred apples.
Oh bright telescope of death! —
bread becoming hard
on the tips of my fingers,
so difficult to stare
into the static of heaven.
I remember my birth, that blizzard of stars,
snakes dancing in the phone lines,
I remember the fountain of salt
my mother’s heart
offered to the moon.
Author Bio
Jason Gordon lives in Baltimore with his wife, Elizabeth. He teaches English at a high school for emotionally disturbed children. His work has appeared in Abbey, Bathtub Gin, Bear Creek Haiku, Pitchfork and Poetry International.
