& kelp, filled with forbearance
& a silent singing bitten in half,
In a holy world of mouths
Speaking watery reprieves
In needful hush, down where
His first breath was an open wound.
INFIDELITY
Zeus always introduces himself
As one who needs stitching
Back together with kisses.
Like a rock star in leather
& sapphires—conflagration
& a trick of silk falling
Between lost chances & never
Again. His disguises are almost
Mathematical, as Io & Europa
Pass from their dreams into his.
This lord of storm clouds
Is also a sun god crooning desire
& dalliance in a garden of nymphs.
Some days, he loves gloxinia,
& others, craves garlic blooms—
Hera, Aegina, & Callisto in the same song.
UKIYO-E
We turn away from the flesh
On paper, but find ourselves
Praising the flow of feudal silk
& rice powder, as a samurai’s gaze
Unfastens a windfall of blossoms
In some house of assignation
The other side of Hiroshige’s forecast
Of slanted black rain. Somehow,
We face Utamaro’s hairy ape
Who brandishes his penis
Like an untutored sword
At a pale maiden against indigo.
The two are brushed into a tussle
Of fire with water, a fury of silk
In a floating world, a season
Of flowered branches breaking.
AMBER
The eyedropper of holy water
Didn’t do the job. Night & day
He’s been hunched over his microscope
After tweezering the extinct beetle
From resin. Holding up the tube
To glassy light that weighs less
Than fear, he knows a sneeze could destroy
His work. He’s sure the millennial wings
Would blink open & stir
If he could find a half teaspoon
Of birth water. He can almost see
The hand that wore the Etruscan
Ring. Beneath the magnified glow
A touch of anger illuminates
A shadow. He tilts it right
& left, & the beetle swells.
ODE TO DUST
It speaks when the anonymous
Tongue of each feather & leaf
Quivers, swearing that nothing’s changed
As we touch tables & lampshades.
We breathe it in as if something
Is always beginning beneath the ruins
& perennials, mending skin under
The surface. Even the slow patina
Of the quietest lesson takes hold
Of Gudea’s Architectural Plans,
Working while we sleep.
As if conjured by regret,
It lives on the imagination
Of all-night ghosts, like the worm
Brought forth from the feminine
Temples of wood & apple.
BODY OF A WOMAN (CADAVERE DI DONNA)
Here you are, still
Reposed behind glass
Like a work of art. Yes,
Body of precious aloneness,
There are times I desire you
In a lover’s arms. Sometimes
I want you making fierce love,
With moans like thought bubbles
Of pleasure forever in Pompeii’s
Lava & ash. Yet, other nights,
As Miles Davis plays ballads
In the background, like tonight,
There’s only irony: I see
You’re gazing out toward
The House of the Faun,
Waiting for someone.
REMUS & ROMULUS
They’re at the eight teats
Of the Capitoline she-wolf,
Their naked adoration
Suspended in a leap
Of faith. Is she stone
Or bronze? If we lie
To ourselves long enough,
Practice works underneath
The pattern of this heft
Till flesh finds a way to rise
To a level of blame. The boys
Face each other, & we can see
Vulnerability, in her tarnished
Stare. Now she’s only primal food
& sex, their first coup d’état.
PAN
Elizabeth, I must say,
Pan wasn’t raising Cain among the reeds.
He had taken off his mask,
& was lying there, puffing ganja,
Blowing Rasta smoke rings
& nibbling on a golden mango,
When he glimpsed three naiads
Prancing beside the lily pond.
He rolled over & watched two ants
Struggle up a Sisyphean incline
With a moth. Silenus’s brother
& father, scapegoat & earthly god,
He felt divided. The nymphs frolicked
As he played love & panic on his flute
Till Arcady drifted out of his head,
& then a whisper opened all the buds.
EPITHALAMIUM
We washed away the live perfume
Of others, removed lush memories
Of their hands, trying to ignore kisses
Burning in our mouths, songs
Left in the inner ear, next
To a flowering bone. The hills
Climbed in the midnight blue distance
Were each other. Paths, detours,
& inclines dazzled us with mirages,
Chanced escapes. The city’s roughhousing
Light-years away; no amount of blood red
Sirens could tear us apart,
Not till the blissful damage
Began to heal. Our beasts, a lion
& bull, slept side by side, as if born
To remove the other’s curse.
THE BUSINESS OF ANGELS
I don’t know, can’t say when they first
Shook hips like rock stars
& uprooted. Maybe they stole
Flight from Nike of Samothrace
& the altar of Zeus at Pergamum,
Or modeled after the winged god
On a silver coin from Peparethus.
Do you think an angel is nothing
But an idea grafted to a shadow
As monsters sprout from foreheads,
Feathered to muffle sacred blows?
I don’t remember weighing a stone
With a blackbird’s broken wing,
But I know when the question flew
Into my head I was standing here
At the kitchen window drying dishes.
EROS
He’s on a hammock in Bangkok,
Eating succulent prawns & squid
Spiced with red pepper & lemongrass.
Hesiod’s “Fairest of the deathless
Gods” can feel the fatigue syndrome
Loosen its grip in this archipelago
Of pleasures. He reads a pirated
Edition of The Plague. At twilight,
He’ll go to the corner shop
& buy a jade brooch for Muriel
Back in Boise. He’ll return
To Club Limbo. A new counterfeit
Gift dipped in fire. Eros throws
A kiss to the teenage prostitute,
& touches the wad of greenbacks
Nestled against his groin.
MAY
The maypole glistens with pig fat.
Thousands of mayflies (I call them
Lovebugs) died the first hours
Against windshields, headlights,
Hoods, or su
cked into the grillwork’s
Wide grin. In humid dusk,
A sheet of sex hangs & bulbous bees
Nudge mayflowers till pain runs
Into pleasure. A bounty of failures
Swells with timorous maydew & mayblob,
As if something is loved beyond mercy.
Maybirds frolic in shambles of dawn
& ignite mayweed. Sweetheart,
Can I, may I? Should I stop
Undoing these seven bone-colored
Buttons too pretty to look at?
LUST
If only he could touch her,
Her name like an old wish
In the stopped weather of salt
On a snail. He longs to be
Words, juicy as passion fruit
On her tongue. He’d do anything,
Dance three days & nights
To make the most terrible gods
Rise out of ashes of the yew,
To step from the naked
Fray, to be as tender
As meat imagined off
The bluegill’s pearlish
Bones. He longs to be
An orange, to feel fingernails
Run a seam through him.
WHEN DUSK WEIGHS DAYBREAK
I want Catullus
In every line, a barb
The sun plays for good
Luck. I need to know if iron
Tastes like laudanum
Or a woman. I already sense
What sleeps in the same flesh,
Ariadne & her half brother
Caught in the other’s dream.
I want each question to fit me
Like a shiny hook, a lure
In the gullet. What it is
To look & know how much muscle
It takes to lift a green slab.
I need a Son House blues
To wear out my tongue.
SHIVA
He wandered nude out of Eden
Smiling at spellbound women in trees
& doorways. A breeze shook
Incense from leaves. They tore off
Their clothes, blocked his path,
& fell in the writhing dust.
They never knew so many kisses
Were stored inside their bodies.
His thick hair smelled of cedar.
He’d once worn a garland of skulls,
Dusted himself with funeral ashes,
& stood beside a river. A sacred tree,
Dark-skinned, almost African, Supreme
Lord in person. The wives followed
This beggar with the erect penis,
A trembling left in the lilies.
A SMALL SYSTEM
The Galápagos finch
Clutches a cactus thorn
In her beak. She works
Fast as a fencing master,
& we can almost see the brain
Grow. In a sky of orchids
Below, she spots a viper
Tonguing petals—the first
Desire. Once, what the worm
Taught us was sacred,
Serene as the beetle
Grub the bird now jabs
With her spear. Finely tuned
As a red-capped woodpecker,
She prances like God’s little
Torquemada on the highest rotten branch.
HOMUNCULUS
Van Gogh’s sunflowers blot out
My sky, while each cat’s-eye burns
A vigil. The chief alchemist
Squeezes a dropper of love
To jump-start my heart. A voice so small
Only the watchdog hears my magnanimous
Prayer to carved intaglios. Outside
This chemical window, salamanders
& geckos are monsters. A mosquito hawk
Magnifies into a hang glider.
A honey-locust thorn
Sir Lancelot’s javelin.
My ego, if crystallized, would fit
Into the eye socket of a hummingbird.
I may be less than your last thought, but,
Look, here’s my thimble of gin.
ECSTATIC
Joy, use me like a whore.
Turn me inside out like Donne
Desired God to do with him.
Show me some muscle,
Sunlight on black stone.
Coldcock me about the head
Till I moan like a bell, low
As the one Goya could hear
Through the walls of
Quinta del Sordo.
Tie me up to the stocks those Puritans
Handled so well in Boston streets.
Don’t let me down. I beg
You to use all your know-how
In one throttle. Please, good God,
Put everything into your swing.
SPEED BALL
Didn’t Chet Baker know
They’d make a great white hope
Jump hoops of fire on the edge
Of midnight gigs that never happened?
Miles hipped him at the Lighthouse
About horse, said not to feel guilty
About DownBeat in ’53. Chet stole
Gasoline to sniff, doctored with Beiderbecke’s
Chicago style. But it wasn’t long
Before he was a toothless lion
Gazing up at his face like a stranger’s
Caught by tinted lens & brass. Steel
Blue stare from Oklahoma whispering for
“A kind of high that scares everyone
To death.” Maybe a bop angel, Slim
Greer, pulled him from that hotel window.
A FAMOUS GHOST
I thought happiness my birthright
& married the bone structure
In Mother’s dreams, his English
Impeccable. Though they sift
My ashes & swear I fought
The shadows of his lovers,
I am not Propertius’s Cynthia.
Where I stand, it is still ’63
& the flags are at half-mast.
I never wanted to be famous,
But couldn’t lift my head off
The oven door. My last breath
Stole from his. Fumes slipped
Down like a prayer to the Cubist
In the basement. No, I’m not Hostia,
Though I unlaced a corset of stardust.
AVARICE
At six, she chewed off
The seven porcelain buttons
From her sister’s christening gown
& hid them in a Prince Albert can
On a sill crisscrossing the house
In the spidery crawl space.
She’d weigh a peach in her hands
Till it rotted. At sixteen,
She gazed at her little brother’s
June bugs pinned to a sheet of cork.
Assaying their glimmer, till she
Buried them beneath a fig tree’s wide,
Green skirt. Now, twenty-six,
Locked in the beauty of her bones,
She counts eight engagement rings
At least twelve times each day.
ROLLERBLADES
Knucklehead spins on a wish & lucky
Star, dividing the city into hellbent
Circles, one improvisation to the next
Double-or-nothing dare. He grabs the bumper
Of a yellow cab & traverses Central Park,
Skirring & looping through rings, plugged
Into the Delfonics & Beastie Boys.
Zip, skid, & bone spindle …
Knucklehead hangs inside the bottom half
Of Odysseus’s dreamt map to a country
Of lotus-eaters, e-mail, & goof-off.
Hugging curves beside the thieves of his image,
He ducks into a labyrinth of close
Calls. Their eyes collide. Knucklehead
Pivots, as if the four wheels of each blade
Could guillotine an appariti
on’s last effigy.
MONKEY WRENCH
Balled into a cocked fist, sure
As a hammerlock, the pipe’s cracked sleeve
Is sealed in corrosion. Elbow
Grease, leverage, anger, & oil,
Nothing works. The vise grip
Opens an icy mouth, dribbling
Rusty sighs. I almost give up, before
I see the wrench propped near a blowtorch
Beside the washing machine, inside my head
Like an abused blessing, awaiting the promise
& caress of an oily rag. I lie on my back
Beneath the house, among broken Nehi bottles,
Dog hair, & insect wings, as if the forces
Have been hard at work on a piecemeal angel.
Full of Christmas cake & eggnog, I squint up
At clandestine eyes in a loom of spiderwebs.
MEDITATIONS ON A FILE
I weigh you, a minute in each hand,
With the sun & a woman’s perfume
In my senses, a need to smooth
Everything down. You belong
To a dead man, made to fit
A keyhole of metal to search
For light, to rasp burrs off
In slivers thin as hair, true
Only to slanted grooves cut
Across your tempered spine.
I’d laugh when my father said
Rat-tail. Now, slim as hope
& solid as remorse
In your red mausoleum,
Whenever I touch you
I crave something hard.
THE GOD OF LAND MINES
He sits on a royal purple cushion
Like a titanic egg. Dogs whimper
& drag themselves on all fours through dirt
When a breeze stirs his sweet perfume.
He looks like a legless, armless
Humpty-Dumpty, & if someone waves
A photo of an amputee outside the Imperial
Palace in Hue, he’d never blink.
When he thinks doors, they swing open.
When dust gushes on the horizon
His face is a mouthless smile.
He can’t stop loving steel.
He’s oblong & smooth as a watermelon.
The contracts arrive already signed.
Lately, he feels like seeds in a jar,
Swollen with something missing.