SusanLustig

The twilight arrives and no one knows. No one, no one,
No one knows.
From above, they pay a visit—bipeds
on their way to decorate their palates in rooms they dine,
on Turkish or Thai, paying to be converted into
    connoisseurs.

The twilight arrives, no one knows. No one, no one,
No one knows.
There is an Indian man selling Swank Magazine,
and he’s bitching about a kid who ran off with a copy
of Big Butt, and a blind woman’s lost her grip
on her seeing-eye-dog’s short leash,
   but the dog is no threat to us.

Death is a bubble-gum trap. Fuck you! Fuck you!
We cling to the tracks where conductors are gods.
We become a moist path for the wheels to oblige,
or we’re spared and salute the impatient
    faces.

But there is no end, nothing solved:
what can be felt, the splash from a puddle
of “filthy” thoughts, co-mingling, a drop at a time;
like the whiter than white bread, ex-cheerleader
from Alabama who’s a slave to black cock,
or the Hasidic man who wants nothing more
   than to squeeze her freshly baked ass,

or the closet, high-school homo
whose lust causes him pain to the bone,
or the smiling teen, reliving her stepfather’s
quiet touch—
and those who deny they are made of rich dirt
   settle for their supply of infertile debris.
            .
At some point
the water bugs will have the last laugh
and the entire population of homo sapiens—
men, women, and hermaphrodites alike—
will panic under the non-sky dome,
    claustrophobic.

At some other point,
we’ll ride upon the Weedy Sea-dragon
and take back the sea
and people will come to us rats with
their questions.
We’ll act as the Pythia, speaking the oracle.
    We’ll be conduits of prophecy.

Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!
It rips the fur right off your back when no one tells you
about the mind-shafts, those built-in tunnels for dilation of thought,
or what it feels like when poison
    seeps into that slot—

The twilight arrives, no one knows. No one, no one,
You are well aware.
No one down here has got a clue
   about the goings on up there.

But even if their stance or gait is questionable,
still let them tell you their story
about that eve the starlight struck through
at just the right moment, transferring it’s bright mind
    into their dark, dark matter.

Vortex

That pretty thing bounces into this pub
and tells you “Dude—I’ve got

the health issue.” You think
she’s talking about a fitness magazine.

In walks the husband of your tiny girl.
Your fist clenches, shoulder socket

rotates, arm pulls back gathering up
the space behind you…then deflates

in the shadow of your conscience.
Beck walks in and whispers

into your hooded sweatshirt,
“Everybody’s gotta learn sometime.”

I wipe my ass with a Lotus leaf,
in this churning factory of night, and release

such indelible, sunless fumes. Andre Breton
arrives to bleed me through the stubborn fabric,

the state line between “awake”
and “asleep.” And, finally, I can see:

I am the pretty, deranged coke-whore
with gonorrhea. I am my betrayed

husband. I am you, the angst-ridden
boyfriend. And I am Beck with his subtle,

pop-wisdom. I’m the potential momentum
of the space behind you and I am the threatened

object in front. A glass is breaking behind the bar.
Not to worry, it’s only me.

Bio: Suzan Lustig has a taste for the relative, the simultaneous, the darkly comic and the ironic. She has a low tolerance for pretentiousness and fully admits that, in her world, Dylan Thomas came way after Bob Dylan.
email: Suzkitty@aol.com

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