LOOKED LIKE LAUGHING

she stepped wet cement off second bus
and hurried down walkways bundled in burberry
trying to wick the wet from her brows and lips
while the soft serve sun dipped and dollopped behind
the skyline matched building to mountains and back

up the stairs in changed blouse and new scarf 
and placed jacket on couches and hoped it’s safe
felt out of place packed into patios to chase smoke
and someone kind, with daggers, whispered at her:
those guys are assholes
is this the line to the bathroom?

down slick steps to wait  taxi cabs
and nod sidewise peacoat couples linked at bows
hard to text her sister after four something-or-others
pressed wrinkled skirt to leather seat exhaling through tears
because the day was watched wasted, slowly
realizing that she knew no one at the party, soirée,
what functions on hops and barely-breaths winked to her corners

whispered wants to her sheets and left notes on her pillows
to find in the morning near her makeup maps, eyeliner tributaries 
and wrote in the fog of her morning shower with a limp, listless pointer:

it sure is hard, being this turned on. 

—

Wesley Carls, 2010

Dearest Silvio,

I’ve received your postcards all at once, there must have been a mix up at the post office. Allow me to reply to one matter of importance from each:

1. Just because something is expensive does not mean it shouldn’t be wasted.
2. I prefer a spiced rum.
3. She never said that.
4. She didn’t wear her lipstick off by keeping secrets, Silvio.
5. I’ve never been to Topeka.
6. About as pointless as remembering the names.

I hope that helps. It is with great joy I tell you that Minkus and I have acquired an RV and we plan on visiting you soon. I hope Algeria taught you something, it taught me about rye and tar but I’m sure you’re aware.

I have only one question regarding Elise:

Had her flower opened slowly
and the chasm narrower than you perceived
would you still make all your marks
or leave the column as it seemed?

She was gorgeous, my friend. But remember this: there is no beauty in war and nothing beautiful can survive it. I see scars everywhere.

I’m amazed I’ve written this long. Minkus is nearly back with more Schlitz and we plan on picking up from Merced within the hour, snow capped mountains; ravaged terrain.

Whole-heartedly,
Wesley 

When I wake
at night

(quietly gasp, look left)

Opened your books
saw my brother’s name

Know nothing anymore
feel the slip

(it all slips past)

Weep into faucets
collect memories

Laugh for no reason
watch her eyelashes

(cold, cold tears)

Thought about my brother
thought about my mother. 

Biological doesn’t mean
anything to me

(words are weak)

But absences mean
pits and voids

and biologically
something is very wrong

(with  me) 

-Wesley Carls

stood over the kitchen sink waiting for something to come to mind
that would distract me from the dark bar corner feeling that
was coming right at me
like a locomotive 
on cocaine
draining brandy for coal like a sweet heart of gold hooker
like they exist like they even walk and where did we go
where did my best friend die
where are my parents
can’t find their graves anywhere, once thought stones were brilliant ideas
now believe they’re heavy reminders of the things you’ll soon forget
and bent over my shoes to make sure i wouldn’t fall
and bent over for you to make sure i wasn’t your road block
but we wept in spoon positions knowing that
both of us blocked both of us
and both of us
weren’t enough 

-

Wesley Carls

lying dismantled in six feet of red round couch
oh god do you remember that robin’s egg blue?! oh, al, do you?
it never leaves me but leaves trails and scents dirtied into
those red couches, those blood red cum stained beer soaked couches
were so beautiful when licked by your hem

anyway
like i said, lying dismantled and flurrying furious thoughts
about bank accounts and how vehicles work rip at the seams
of some fragile delicate and drunk being but, please, but-

let me tell you a ghost story
that is sort of about england but mostly about nothing,
as most ghost stories are

as i was falling into that couch and thinking about
how hard it was to turn off my head and leah’s dress
(it really was the most beautiful blue)
all these numbers appeared and i heard a foreign voice

crawling over the icy water of the atlantic, clawing over
ugly, dark, abysmal throats to tell me that she was
naked and with someone and thought about my words
and how i didn’t seem like i seem or like she dreams

and i paced the hardwood wondering if she was the ghost
something about static and phone lines
or if maybe, it was me

but being too heavy of a thought to balance and feeling
so breathless thinking of dissolving in EVP and thermal imaging
i lied back down on the chunk of blood
feeling so ghostly and flightless

had to erase the cobwebs from this fear so we stared
at the television squawking and concentrated on counting
the frays in that dress that once cascaded over ridges of cushions
and danced on my thighs and made my chest play the trumpet.

-Wesley Carls

sometimes i can’t believe other countries exist.
that miles chop away into the night.
there is that house in orange, now hidden,
where i explored the spare room and spent
different lifetimes reading the spines in your
bookshelf and tracing comets down the stories
of your backside.
slits of sun ribbing the room and dancing
the particles of dust while you lisped something
about anna karina and now these things
no longer exist.
your boy friend thought i was his eye and
fell in love with me for one night and the next
spring morning in a warm living room
tasting citrus and gripping your ankles like pistols
i exhaled and it escaped out the sunroof.  
so you recut stones and forge new coughs
in india and static interference interference static
crackles over the radio in my car as i am
forever driving home. 

-Wesley Carls

“Nobody has ever measured
not even poets
how much
the heart
can

hold.”

but
we’ve
tried. 

“drop everything now
meet me in the pouring rain
kiss me on the sidewalk
take away the pain

cuz

i see sparks fly whenever you smile”

and I see
roads end at the sight
of my bile.

-Wesley Carls 

vrmmmm vrmmmm vrmmmm
bum bum, bum bum, bum bum,
vrmmmm vrmmmm vrmmmm
buh-bleep
bum bum, bum bum, bum bum,
vrmmmm vrmmmm
click

bum bum. 

something about her face
felt like craters
Not in the way that her eyes
sunk into deep depressions
or how her cheeks
rose like apparitions
but how something was lost
in the dark spots
hiding between her expressions

something about how she spoke
mostly in the spaces
between her words
sweetly saying things
i thought were unable to be heard
and the mysteries and maps
scribbled on her shedding skin
spurred fever-fed exploration
of her craters absurd.

i got all the stuff out i got all of the stuff out i got the garbage out to the curb to wait for
bored city employees to scoop up and throw into their bellys, bloated with displacement and complacence, to sit shrouded in black and be crushed and digested and compacted until we could watch them like tv shows
in clean formats that fit in halves of hours
with breaks stabbed neatly in the skeleton of something that once cut forests like mad rivers and horny place-mats to rest any amplification of stage fright and consequence and the fears become pasta thrown to the tile.

let me tell you about the day when i realized
that everyone is a ghost of someone else
and how just like in horror films or- wait,
something about escaping the haunt of
fingerprints before you: 

swans was on full volume and to shield my eyes from
the lights i stared into my phone and remembered
i deleted these names for a reason
and who could want a blanket like this
i was embarrassed by every way i was
how i reached for my keys and how i tried to make that joke
and how much saliva left my mouth when i laughed too
hard at her choice of words
like why do i care she didn’t know what that word meant?
i know shit!
like why do i care about anything like that if she’s soft and beautiful
and knows how to smile in that wrap-around style we studied so long
but but honks welped along the street bursting at us
i knew i wasn’t impressive and so many shells were
just like me before and i loved how the sidewalk was
so perfect how a group of men made these squares and
carved these curbs 

and she screamed ‘wes, aren’t you fucking SICK of run-on sentences?’
and i yelled back ‘do you get sick of days?’ but no
i didn’t actually say that because you never say
what you wanted to say you just swallow hard
and think about the taste of your spit
and whether or not you can safely jaywalk to your car
or if you should walk a block south and cross at lucille. 

i might be too dumb to say this
in a way that makes sense to
anyone else
But you know how some people have those
faces that have been drawn in your skin
for all of time?
those faces that exist in your DNA
and how you recognized that person
before you ever met?
it always breaks my heart when i
see photos of these people
and i think
Where do I know you from?
but it just turns out to be
that i know them
from them.

I saw your ghost in a window at The Kitchen.
The image swept away in dirty lights and sparkling
like a glass of champagne she eased her gaze
lazily in my direction. 

That ghoul.

Beaming and bound by thin whispers
someone commanded her lawn
and kicked his wiry legs at her lap
and tiny music like emeralds giggled 
out of her mouth.

That motherfucker.

Reflected pins of light scraped along the
curb and T pushed on the gas pedal
leaving bindles of miniature explosions
hanging behind where we were.

That wreckage.

Head cocked to the right and coasting
through sagging neighborhoods
possessed and unsettled by the faintest 
nod of some ghost.

You fucking fuck. 

I’m going out west tonight.

I’m digging out my spurs and digging into my
animal I’m going out west about
two city blocks to the watering hole.

I woke up in a fit and some desert dog
came scratching at my back all day long
barking and frothing at the mouth
just begging me to crawl out.

And into the corner of that watering hole
making a camp and lighting fires
oh well I’ve got stories and I’ve got
nightmares to remember.

Want to be a cowboy want to be a six shooter
surfing tumbleweeds in and out of saloons
in and out of me and you living
by the bullets and the living.

I made up my mind and went to the general store
and got all the bullets they had, gun metal grey and cold
and from Colorado to prepare myself
for the watering hole.

Found my stetson yeah it had my father’s name
stitched into the brim and I’m going to think of 
my mother and him while I sink cowboy drinks
all night long.