Hand in Glove

"Hand in Glove" by Dennis Cooper

Lyrics

One word subtracted from ten becomes art in a writer's lofty terms, in this frieze where a poet can hide what he mussed. It should be a guy being fucked on an unmade bed but in fact it's an old phrase by which I'm reporting the cooled interactions that come into focus now that I'm shielding my eyes from a lust that's supposed to be ultimate, imposing more or less on these words without growing monotonous, godlike. "I lie in a bed post-drugged-sex," starts whatever I'm trying to write. It's "great" to restate this. Though I'm blind, it is in my hand, yes? Meaning a work that's supposed to be filled up with lust, but couldn't. I grow too bored, am restrained if I think about who's lying outside my grasp... I can't finish. But I've made up my mind about art, its lasting effect. It's polished, having once in the dark been poured gradually into my body of work from an impossible height.

Lyrics: Dennis Cooper

Music: David Grubbs and Stephen Prina

Chronology

• Push Comes to Love

Interpretations

• Adapted from a poem by Dennis Cooper published in his collection The Dream Police: Selected Poems, 1969-1993