“The picture changes in a way that I find less than comprehensible” (198), these words uttered by K., the central character of Kafka’s The Castle, speak for the succession of encumbrances and obstacles, delays and roundabouts that make up what might best, at least at first glance, be described as a muddled fairy tale; a muddled fairy tale wherein K.’s quest as land surveyor to be ‘officially received’ by the Castle, or Klamm (the Castle personified) is repeatedly denied. It is a fiction of sheer terror in which identity itself is turned inside out then hanged, drawn, quartered; where time appears to stop until it suddenly rushes forward. Through tenebrous stages of despair, hope, paradox; general outbursts of mix-up and confusion, Kafka portrays how completely life can be rendered senseless by an authoritarian state that administers through the semblance of ferment and disarray.

​

The...

I’m bored.
Like Lucifer of the pitfall.
Haha. Ha. Haha. Ha-ha

The rooftop groans
Beneath the grievance
Of your footsteps
Above the sleep
Of one thousand ears
Where, like Lorca,
You wrestle
With the moon’s
Sharpened cutlass
Feeling your life
For some beastly dream
Captured by the blinking lens
Of a dying city bird
Who, unearthly, labors
Beating its hopeless wing
Against the stitched seams
Of my heart–like us
Torn and aching, my Dove,
To be somewhere else.

I had a son named John.
Yes. I had a son.
On a Friday. Gone. Faded.
Beneath the amplifications,
Day of the Dead.
He was lost in the arches.
I watched him dancing his jig
On the final broken steps
Of the Mass, lowering
A bucket of tin deep
Into the Gideon’s heart.
I beat on the coffins,
On the catafalques.
My boy, my boy, my boy!–
Now wrapped and wound
Like a Man of the Cloth.
I pulled a wishbone from the dark
And prayed to Thoth.

Once I had a little girl.
Once I had a dead doll
Of ashes.
Once I had a dead sea.
Of what? Of my Totems,
Of my Fathers!–
I prayed to Thoth,
Climbing up the ladders
To receive the moon’s
Blue pencil. I saw
The luminous flesh
Of the Ibis holding
The principles of ma'at
That keep the balance,
That weigh the hearts.
I saw the priests
Of He who is like the Ibis,
Spilling the mule, the ox.

Once I had a son who was a Spartan.
Once I had a son. My God!–my God!
...

I became sick of life as a man sick and bent over from reading–
instead of warmly putting his book to rest and, for next evening,
saving the final chapters in store–coolly strikes match after match,
reducing the pages of what might have possibly unfolded to a pile
of ash which, by now, has quite plausibly blown through your own
cellar window, basement door. Either way, no matter how one
attempts to look at the soot, this changes the whole story al-
together. And, for some reason, this time, even I am a little curious.

My poetry?
It’s like Big Bird
walking into
a bar

and (after a few successful strides
towards the water fountain)
tripping over a canoe
that just happened to be there

before brushing himself off
catching your eye
at which point

you’ll both become quite speechless
though after a few seconds
it is only you to (so suddenly) feel
out of breath.

Some stories burn
on forever, page
after page–

little picture books
that royally stick
to the same nasty
progress, capturing

the same gentle wisps
of smoke peeling off
the same coated cigarette,

which (like our one
matching claim
as to God)
never quite ex-

tinguishes
while x
marks
the spots

where we perhaps
during the match
might retire too soon–
that or keep at it,

more and more fragilely,
traveling the cheap
wicks of our existence.
As it’s here today

on our own rotting span(s)
of plank until we’ve been
handed a red balloon,
black umbrella with which

it’s kerplunk!–off
the same fucking
diving board,

which some manage to grade
down to the splintery shiver
of a toothpick, preaching
from the sad gospel of their errors.

Perhaps, shaking their crystal balls,
just like so, so that it amounts
to the same deaf ear of getting

nothing in return but 8th-grade algebra
which then always...

A few confused sketches of tomorrow’s disaster
is all we got: brief dark shadow of a chainsaw
followed by a General’s stumped toe as it drifts
likely as a bloody cloud of massacre (the best,
most regal course) over a couple lousy matches
of smoke. But it’s a long way (this disaster?)
from where we are now in the checkout line,
only wearing a pair of suspenders while bearing
a tuba, dropping an egg, sniffing a doughnut.
And that’s how I feel: turning to a fine powder,
hunched over in the cabinet of time, collecting
a fine coat of dust. Like a useless medicine,
whose only boon fills my head with the passing
chatter of pushcarts, one which just happens to be
(quite absurdly) spilling over with all the cigarette butts
I’ve ever coolly dropped off a Brooklyn rooftop
in a cooing type of isolation. As patient as a child
or a worm beneath a rock. And with my hand
reaching out, just waiting...

Where’s your tambourine, O bear that just stands there?

So I have come to you without knowing
Listless and reduced of mind
Beyond the street corners of reality
Against the tallest hours of sleep

I live then without personality
Dragging the broken necks
Of my fantasies out of which
The same tongue labors:

I ended up here for no reason
For no reason at all
And now must find a lap
in which to weep.

And today against everything the dry well at the bottom of the heart
An incomplete deck of playing cards sleeps in the clenched jaws
Of a monk’s severed hand: I mean … . Oh well … . My Love … .
The bruise will stop by later as I walk in the real world but (again)
Into its deserts, its absurdities