Stuart Listens

Stuart Listens
(Icarus Rising)


.

Stuart listens to the voices of his soul saying
no man is an island but only I am
and it is only fitting that
on this glistening summer night
caught somewhere between the city and the sea
I am blinded by his eyes.


They remind me of all the still things this Saturday night and
and of every promise I have made that has been broken
by these the neon-colored people
sleeping awake into their pink drinks the
frozen margaritas of the city awake their
eyes wide open while the rest of the city sleeps their
lids pasted open their no exit eyes. And


it is these the zombies who most am I.


I press my face to the lights outside like a
moth caught between the window and the
screen, flapping fluttering I
seek the flashing lights.
But


Stuart listens to the voices of his island that
come in waves in the deep of the night and
and it only fitting that on this
most hideous of every nights
something of him rises in me like the tide.


Stuart listens but I on the other hand a driven by
the city and the bedrock and its ghosts who sleep beneath but
he-scorpio rising-always hears the dead speak in a
constant trickle of water and it
hits you below the belt and
it's a hard on but
it's hard on me.


I took you to the river that is closest to the sea.


This is the empty sea I said this is the only sea I know. We
witnessed


garbage hookers piles of abandoned cars hospitals
spewing their dead to the wind all
the things of the swamp which lie just below the
neon signs they slop on burritos the
lavender hair spray fluorescent green eyes the
apples that shine from the traffic
lights red green golden delicious the
lidless incandescent shimmers and
all the pink drinks that stink of the living's craving to
be alive, to


walk sleepwalking
incessant among the living who
hum like machinery zap like transformers sapping
the life out of themselves as the
snake swallows its tail in


droves
of rock 'n roll
of pick up bars
guitars
of food lines waiting in tompkins square park for
hare krishna's pink drinks and robes, who


glisten, who
shriek who
seem to say well
wherever we're going we're going gaily but


Stuart listens to the echo of the trickle of the deep dark things that
come eroding into the night
ground water
dribbling slowly
its
way through the
soul and its
crevices but I on the
other
hand am driven by th city and its desperate quest to be among the living I
try to listen but who am I
kidding? I
press my face to the lights outside,
flapping, fluttering, mesmerized
but


Stuart they tell me once he chased a butterfly
Crossed the sea on a giant bird with a golden net he
wove of his dreams. And that
butterfly fluttered with the gayest of colors that
butterfly laughed in the merriest way that
butterfly sang him the songs of the neon and they
told him not to go but

he wouldn't listen oh no not
Stuart he was
driven


because Stuart is a fool.



He leaves me every night on avenue c. I buy
brightly colored fruit spit the
pits and off to bed. Bolt the
window close the screen the
cat litter stinks but it's
nothing I hear in the
sanctuary of my room. I
listen. I can't stop. But it's nothing I hear.


Brown like the moth I scrounge the closets.
Bright like the moth I flutter by.
Blind like the moth I seek the lightbulb. It
sizzling burns and like the moth I die.


Icarus, Icarus

rising