Jamie Townsend

Pyramids

knowledge builds up
with physical
experience & ‘to touch
the earth’ is
time impressed
on us like
a totem stuffed
in his jock
‘Nature is operating
in ways that, at least
to our conception,
are unchanged’ but
when naïve dreams
we switch bodies
& I lose my self
consciousness I
fall in love with
the young
dead shape
shifters
who provide
possibility for
a future I
couldn’t possibly
imagine
each new form
bound together in
the brilliant
seclusion of
a stellar nursery
I fall asleep
in the belly of
a fiberglass creature
on the outskirts
of Knokke &
feel the beams lift
from my body
radiant
as a drag
on class war
an inversion of
Patrick Bateman’s
urgent exemplar
having been split
apart by the terror
of serial monogamy
washed in the refrain
of HOW DEEP
IS YOUR LOVE
a well of fraternity
to contain the dream
& shore up
barricades
against parasitic
doubt & this morning
on the Metro
the apparition of a thin
furred hand latched
to the grab bar
appears
assailed by the workaday
my blush ripens
into fever wherein
a magic or
as Genet sez ‘deliberate
predisposition’
might register—‘I could not
take lightly the idea
that people made love
without me’
& I place an outline
there as reminder
I do it for the city tho
most often I doubt
its real feelings

Pyramids

it was strange at the time
to believe so strongly in
what we wanted
naïve dreams an effigy spitting
fire as tall as the sky
that was heaven seen everywhere
in cartoon
on the tiny screen
I pulled in close to me
a ladder to the moon
illuminated scene
for all mankind each night
Frank Ocean’s BAD
RELIGION wanting to win
freedom
from prescribed borders
& brought back to earth
again by the constant failure
of those dearest
a complicity
played out in rigid acrobatics
still frames stacked into
the flipbook of the dream
we shared so animated
by touch that at rest something
of its grace breaks apart
the suggestive life of a gif
broken in my chest
his outline for
our pure joy
drawn as if magnified
where even the clearest
desire transforms
nebulous
then unidentifiable
& the hint of ecstatic
movement emerges from some
unknown association
like the way they posed
together
in the Pyramid
crouched in profile
one vaulting another
pair curled on the floor
spinning
limbs locked or vertically
stacked descending row after
row Tetris blocks
in fleshtone
transferring the current
frieze of
real love
naïve reveled in the raw spirit
it called down
in the club & later reading
Thek’s SACRAMENTS
‘to be innocent of corruption’
I finally see the integrity
of this vision & feel
pulled apart
each seemingly solid
piece of me
vaporized
drifting lazily to the furthest corners
of the web
yet still want
this impression to condense
into a list of sustainability
for the day to day
that builds & builds like Jay’s
ALL I NEED
like the want
to be sublimated
beneath his 8th Wonder
of the World
want
to simplify our needs
the rock on my shirt
want to extend
the club beyond the anthem
the blurred party
snapshot to break open
in a flood to meet us
at some peak of revelry
even if legendary want
might mean constant hustle
Poppington
a solo Damon
Dash startup joint
struggle heroically
profiled in Details just
for the love
of the game
Jay selling leather
humidors our once
invisible society magnified
his shine buried
beneath the banner
ad crossed out MAGNA
CARTA
crossed out
HOLY GRAIL
the want
even beneath
the want
to know for certain
that personal failure
might be a kind of universal
hallelujah
young money
that could carry us
into the air
far above the clouds
where we all would join
hands together to form
one warm imperfect
diamond