Post with 1 note
While lovers sleep, I dig my nails into the earth,
holding up traffic. Just now a cloud has pulled up
while I was talking to the Emptiness
of the Universe and my voice plugged into the waves
at the bottom of the ocean.
My heart is taped up like a child’s drawing
of the moon over the broken window of the sky
where the wind always comes back to fill my lungs.
I will dance on my shadow. I will open my mouth
with the air inside my mother’s coffin.
I will be the arrow breaking apart in the body
of the blackbird, which appears at my window, singing.
Post with 1 note
That was the summer I fell asleep in German
and woke up in French. I lay down on the earth,
stared up through a three-dimensional labyrinth
of dark branches stretching toward sky.
Curves are so much more caressing than
straight lines, n’est-ce pas? Who has time
to look at parabolas? Could I express only
a parade of diversionary questions? Nein, nein,
the German inside demanded, Gib mir Antworten!
I went to a party and tried only to ask questions
and answer none. I was a spy, intimidating
to at least two persons. Questions are curves,
without closure. Could one spend a whole evening
on a stroll through someone else’s mind? How
refreshing to encounter unfamiliar corridors.
No one is throwing up skeet and asking me
to shoot. The parade massed and snapped
to attention, goose-stepped away. Replaced by
tendrils, drifting pine needles. When I awoke, I was
la belle étrangère, omnipotent in my voluptuous
listening. I could coax even the waves to speak.
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not losing to the rain
not losing to the wind
not losing to the snow nor to summer’s heat
with a strong body
unfettered by desire
never losing temper
cultivating a quiet joy
every day four bowls of brown rice
miso and some vegetables to eat
in everything
count yourself last and put others before you
watching and listening, and understanding
and never forgetting
in the shade of the woods of the pines of the fields
being in a little thatched hut
if there is a sick child to the east
going and nursing over them
if there is a tired mother to the west
going and shouldering her sheaf of rice
if there is someone near death to the south
going and saying there’s no need to be afraid
if there is a quarrel or a suit to the north
telling them to leave off with such waste
when there’s drought, shedding tears of sympathy
when the summer’s cold, wandering upset
called a blockhead by everyone
without being praised
without being blamed
such a person
I want to become
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I don’t imagine you
saran-wrapped in black latex
or seeping out the edges
of something tight and red
I don’t close my eyes
to dream of your back
arched at the impossible angle
of a bow pulled tight
encouraging your shoulder blades
to drip the blood
of stockpiled broken hearts
but I hope the sound
of you not shielding your eyes
from my blinding humility
will one day top the charts
it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard
and you’re the charlie chaplin of your beautifuls
because you make me believe it
when you say it all without saying a word
looking at you it occurred to me
I could sit around all day
wearing nothing but your kiss
you make mirrors
want to grind themselves
back down into sand
because they can’t do your reflection justice
and this just in
I am done with those
who in life would have made me fight
an army of imperfections
a battalion of flaws
tonight we’re going to keep this city up
when they hear our bodies
slap together like applause.
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At night,
with my wife
sitting on the bed,
I turn from her
to unbuckle
my belt
so she won’t see
her father
unbuckling
his belt
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[one]
dehumanized
reduced to a sexuality
a preference
a passage from Leviticus
like my existence begins and ends
with who is in my bed
[two]
father
forgive me
for i have sinned
with choir boys and preacher’s sons
and teen-aged fathers
and felons
and professors
and revolutionaries
and poets
and porn directors
and porn stars
and married men
and go go boys
and i have loved not one single time
father forgive me
for not being the son you wanted
and i will forgive you
for not being man enough to be my father
i will forgive myself…
[three]
….for being too small to stop him
….for letting him hit me
….for needing his attention
….for blaming myself
….for taking those pills
….for not eating
….for coughing up blood
….for wanting to die all those times
[four]
today
after asking around the office
he is certain that i am not attracted to him
and he can tell the other straight boys
in the mailroom
that i am cool to hang out with
because i won’t try anything
his manhood is intact
he can grab his dick with pride
and know that i am not looking
today
i wonder if he will notice
that i no longer speak his name
today
i am certain
we are not brothers
[five]
i will marry
in jamaica
on a beach
i will wear white linen that matches the sand
and no shoes
my best friend will sing Overjoyed by stevie wonder
and i will recite a poem
the man i love will speak
about the first time he saw me
the first time we met
the days he thought we wouldn’t make it
and the moment he was certain that we would
he will tell the people he loves me as he was meant to
and i will not cry
because i will believe him
no one will decapitate us for holding hands
or burn us for kissing in public
or bury us alive because i appear too feminine
though it is jamaica and that’s what they do
to “chi chi man” and “batti boys” in jamaica
the day will be perfect
ignorance and murder
ignorance and fear
ignorance and bigotry
ignorance and self-hatred
will pause
just long enough for me to fall in love
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As though darkness were a hand,
a tactile memory
like playing the piano.
You touch lost things:
The texture of green walls
in the living room where you lived.
Walls green as a forest at midnight
of the new moon. How a stain
on the ceiling was a bird’s wing
in the shadows of the table lamp. You
and your sister on the floor playing jacks,
comfortable as animals in each other’s
smell. The iron radiator hissing
steam, warming
the room while winter
scored its breath on the window
pane. In the kitchen, voices
of mother and father. Out of nowhere
the notion they could die. Later
the broiler’s red
hot wire. How the blue veins
of the lamb on your plate looked
just like the veins in your wrist.
Post with 7 notes
Tell me it’s wrong the scarlet nails my son sports or the toy
store rings he clusters four jewels to each finger.
He’s bedecked. I see the other mothers looking at the star
choker, the rhinestone strand he fastens over a sock.
Sometimes I help him find sparkle clip-ons when he says
sticker earrings look too fake.
Tell me I should teach him it’s wrong to love the glitter that a
boy’s only a boy who’d love a truck with a remote that revs,
battery slamming into corners or Hot Wheels loop-de-looping
off tracks into the tub.
Then tell me it’s fine - really - maybe even a good thing - a boy
who’s got some girl to him,
and I’m right for the days he wears a pink shirt on the seesaw in
the park.
Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son
who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means -
this way or that - but for the way facets set off prisms and
prisms spin up everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows - made every
shining true color.
Now try to tell me - man or woman - your heart was ever once
that brave.
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I leave the number and a short
message on every green Volvo
in town
Is anything wrong?
I miss you.
574-7423
The phone rings constantly.
One says, Are you bald?
Another, How tall are you in
your stocking feet?
Most just reply, Nothing’s wrong.
I miss you, too.
Come quick.
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I fell out of love: that’s our story’s dull ending,
as flat as life is, as dull as the grave.
Excuse me—I’ll break off the string of this love song
and smash the guitar. We have nothing to save.
The puppy is puzzled. Our furry small monster
can’t decide why we complicate simple things so—
he whines at your door and I let him enter,
when he scratches at my door, you always go.
Dog, sentimental dog, you’ll surely go crazy,
running from one to the other like this—
too young to conceive of an ancient idea:
it’s ended, done with, over, kaput. Finis.
Get sentimental and we end up by playing
the old melodrama, “Salvation of Love.”
“Forgiveness,” we whisper, and hope for an echo;
but nothing returns from the silence above.
Better save love at the very beginning,
avoiding all passionate “nevers,” “forevers;”
we ought to have heard what the train wheels were shouting,
“Do not make promises!” Promises are levers.
We should have made note of the broken branches,
we should have looked up at the smoky sky,
warning the witless pretensions of lovers—
the greater the hope is, the greater the lie.
True kindness in love means staying quite sober,
weighing each link of the chain you must bear.
Don’t promise her heaven—suggest half an acre;
not “unto death,” but at least to next year.
And don’t keep declaring, “I love you, I love you.”
That little phrase leads a durable life—
when remembered again in some loveless hereafter,
it can sting like a hornet or stab like a knife.
So—our little dog in all his confusion
turns and returns from door to door.
I won’t say “forgive me” because I have left you;
I ask pardon for one thing: I loved you before.
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