For Boris Groys


In the end Guston painted THE STREET
Later,
He left the abstract land

We were beginning to
Always, in the beginning

He began and I too
Wanted to begin

Neither claiming nor calming your pronouns
Or prefixes or portholes or starwells

Or the blue stairwells
Where skinny, it’s always fall

The autumn of beginning brightly
Among the ends of the party

The parrots, the parity, the purity
Of the untouched, that where
God is not cast down

Where the leg and the calve
Begin sleeping
Together

And repeating our distances
The ice star, the well, the parrot

The man who doesn’t love you, the woman who
Wants to rip your face off, the little boy biting your ankle

The demons, the orangish light, the handmade paper lantern
The word lantern, your tiny scars, your tiny hips
All in pink and orange and black

And stupidity and semen
And his superior taste in nudes and beiges

And the time
In which you realized
His nihilism

And your
You
Turned to fiction

To the flesh

A thousand heads rolling
And with them, a thousand eyes
But pay no mind

Every nameless body one could name wanted justice
And if this were to be, then

I the streets
Who is always coming

From some grave something
Some somewhere

Some ancient summer’s
Flowery guts

With the unwanted, the news
Of my violent love

If this were to be then

That street
Where the dead eat their cakes

That street
Become fine through each fire, unread, and misread
And risen and red and dumb and decayed
In orange and black and pink and nude
Pure as hell

That street
Universal weakness

Would have entered
You