The New Self

Are you of or not of brain, matter’s boss

              or its crevasse, are you the body itself,

or more than that, immortal you, crouched

             in flesh, like a vampire packed into a bat?

Are you housed in me or not? The tenant

             or the landlord of my skin? Am I your

avatar? Are you my East Berlin? Are we an I

             or each other’s synonym? Last night,

the train I was on dimmed then re-electrified,

             and I thought again that we are conscious

a lot less often than we suppose, that half the time

             in us you’re half reposed. I was in

South Orange again, city of my former self’s last

             stand. Do you remember him, your swallowed

twin, the child king whom you deposed? Oh,

             I know: you think you’re the buried light,

the jeweled glow, the sunlight falling through

             the falling snow. But I’ve seen the uranium

laced through your walls: you’re an equation only

             destruction solves. Who else but you

starts each day with masturbation and ends

             each night with gin? And so how

should I begin? Four years ago, you rose

             in me like a fin. It started as an overflow,

a drop of go, some royal beast in me, all gasoline

             and yeast, unhinging its own jaw

to accelerate the feast, the rails of thought so greased

             that the outer world began to skew,

as in that moment on a train when the view

             becomes a wash of hues. There were clues.

Phantom music in the air. At times, I’d look down

             at my body and think, “How’d you get there?”

One day, I de-napped to find myself entrapped

             within the tangled logic of a subway

map. All day, I’d refrain, I’d double-track.

             I’d talk to myself and myself talked back.

Was it you? That tick I felt within the trick

             of thought? That wick that curled itself

around me, not exploding, just making a constant

             tick-tick-tick that finally convinced me

that I was sick, that there was a cascade of toxins

             in the air, that there

was something queer about the neighbor’s

             stare, that charade of signals everywhere,

an air raid in the brain, something in me

             left unpaid, a cosmic debt in arrears.

Some nights, I’d hear the voices of my parents coming

             near, like waves that overlapped—

she’d slap him, he’d slap her back—their rage

             a single note that climbed its staff for years,

my siblings and I in the closet with our fingers

             in our ears, though still I heard one night

the knife drawer heaved back, as if they really

             might slice each other or the house in half,

and then my thoughts unweaved and I began

             to laugh. And it is funny, isn’t it,

             us whole. Again, I feel that treble in the skin,

something at the edge of sight but closing in,

             the world a picture that won’t hang on the wall

quite right. Again, the double agent of the heart

             tries to take the past apart, but now I sense

that the investigation is the crime, that it may be time

             to give up on this which-is-which,

this who-is-who, this endless voodoo in which the self

             I am keeps evading the curses of the self

I mean to be, or to admit at least that the lyric cracks

             its voice trying to sing what’s ugly into praise,

and this language is the jeweler’s bluff, a diamond

             that scuffs between the teeth, a perfume misting

foul air. Admit, admit, that what you craved

             to build a drama around your sin,

             on a coup, on a malignant growth, or on you,

my patsy, my herring, my phantom non grata, my ghoul,

             you who I insist must exist, because, if not,

who else was it that could have been so cruel?