Black Kells (Jan 2003)

A page torn from the
night’s black book
of Kells, drunk at some
music club a lifetime ago
& chasing a fattish
Icelandic gal, whose
eyes were blue as blindness:
Pawned angels dance
to phat jazz, their huge
black wings scraping
the backs of deacons
who stand at the bar
pounding back their
wasted genius, work and lust
in tiny shots of Jaegermeister.
Down down down
burns the the
black fuse of white
thirst no poured
heaven can allay
or alloy, minting
balled fists of
desire unclinched
nowhere, not even
in the grave.
Even the eventual
bed is a fraud,
apportioned from
a business-class
hotel close to
downtown, adrift
in the deep a.m.’s
of blackout, TV,
and sex, cold and nearly
sick, the slick inches
narrowed & grit
& flubbed then
jawed whole. Cho Ri
page of my demon
gospel, face of the
Savior inverted,
limed, or drowned,
the glow too far
to swim safely to,
too faintly red
to matter,
the last bubbles
drifting up past her
ice blue eyes
fixed over my
shoulder at what
passed back then
for day, out toward
the esplanade where
children riffle
crack vials & a
wind blows
your last dream away.
Not all pages
of Kells were saved:
Two gospel title
pages are hidden
still, or lost,
evangels of a night
there is no ink
dark enough to
write & jaws
the copyist entire.