The Persistence of This Illusion Is Astonishing
LET THE OCEAN GO
2002
O bed of silk,
lie back on your prairies of blackness
your fields of sunlight
that I may look at you.
I am happy to be home.
— Mary Oliver, “The Return”
If my home is a restless
shore, then my job’s to
turn the page: it’s time I
let the ocean go. I’ve written
its blue marges long
and deep enough,
harrowed in that surge
the way an analysand
emerges from past
badlands reframed
and widened
for the flow. Of late the poems
seem trite, cliche,
their motions too rhythmic
and rhymed, in need of
fresh curvature, voweled day.
Eventually the page is more,
its beach a whitely widened door:
Go on or you’ll get lost
in all the crashing,
a wrinkled old man
a metal detector
scanning the eternities for trash
and pennies, never again
more than beeps
on a once wealthy, fructive shore.
NOTHIN BUT A LOVER
from “A Breviary of Guitars,” 2000
1.
I’ve always been
drawn to women,
fascinated
by their bodies,
their curves
my heart’s
round welcome,
their soft voices
like cat’s fur
or the surf’s
susurration:
I’ve hummed
their tune since
birth: When I was
three or so
the maid in
our Pittsburgh
home would
yell to me
Pretty girls
passing by!
and I would
scamper to the
window to catch
the faintest curve
of departing
wonder: The
maid would say
to my mother,
He ain’t gonna
be nothin’ but
a lover, and
it’s true,
no matter how
many words I
throw into
the smoke,
no matter how
many times
I lose my
way to her:
I have always
been finding then
losing then finding
them again:
Like Paula
who I played
with when
I was three.
Paula was 4
and lived across
the street,
a jolly Jill
who refused to
wear a top
when it got
hot: One day
she led me
far away from
home to search
for worms in
the park: We
ambled on
and on until
I had to
go to the
bathroom: We
crossed a
highway overpass
& knocked
on some row
house door: A
woman whose
knee I faced
let us in &
led me to
the bathroom
& then fed
us cookies &
called the cops:
My parents were
frantic when
we drove up
in the police
care — sure
we had been
lost — But
all their squabble
just faded when
When Paula’s
mom hauled her
home away
from me: O
watch her
walk down the
street taking
with her all
song: When we
moved away
to Illinois
all I had of her
was a wallet
photo that I
carried everywhere
until my brother
ripped it up
in a rage at
me: Somewhere
I’m still
inconsolable,
searching and
searching through
the oldest plumes
of memory
for her in
her wading
pool, smiling
at me:
I am fascinated
with how a
female draws
me to her
on some
current toward
the sweet
prong between
her legs like
a widdershin
dowse: In first
grade Alan Fausel
and I hiked
into the woods
at recess
in search of girls
who walked alone
or in pairs:
We’d spring
up at them
and propose
I’ll Show You
Mine if You Show
Me Yours:
O it was
perilous business:
There were these
two who always
ripped us off,
gettin us to
hike down
our pants
and underwear
and stand there
aflop in the
breeze: They’d
flash their skirts
up then down
& shriek happily
away: But I also
remember this one
Susie cute as a
button with dark
brown eyes and
short brown hair
who would lower
her undies gently
down to her
Buster Browns
& lift her skirt,
& close her eyes
and smile, smile,
smile: At home
I drew a house
to store my
visual coups:
One room stacked
high with large
crossed O’s
for bottoms &
another room
filled with smaller
crossed O’s for
vaginas: I
understand
this now as
the basic song
of male worship
for a female’s
body: It’s not
something that
women reciporcate:
They don’t stare
at men the way
we do at them,
gape-jawed, stunned
into mute
reverence for
nature’s fertile
fuckable founts:
My wife Beth
never ceases
to wow me when
she emerges from
the bathroom
at night dressed
for bed in her
white Calvin Klein
gown: How it
clings to her,
so sinuously
sweet, so richly
awarble: I know
I make her
nervous staring
so at her, but I
can’t help it:
She’s voluptuous
in every way I
have ever dreamed
women could be:
I never tire of
running my hand
gently oh so
gently down her arms,
her legs, her back
and bottom,
her breasts -- softly,
so softly, the
way she loves
being touched:
Then cupping
and squeezing her
breast as if to
fill some
undrenchable
cup: It never ends:
The vault is
never full:
And it’s more
than mere
horniness,
that urge which
stiffens sates
and drains: Rather
my love of
women is a bath
from uterus
to grave:
An eternal river
the dolphin sports
in where the
music of Ariel
drifts like smoke,
my dream of
her heaven between
the waking and
the wake:
HE GETS THE GIRL
2002
As a kid I changed the world
by going into my room
and acting out James Bond:
Killing evil Blofeld
at the crack of worldwide doom
then lounging in lazy billows
with his yeasty girl.
The James Bond theme
would ease my steps
back into the real world,
a little while: Before all
the cold winds conspired
to blow me back to smithereens.
I could turn tin to gold
by placing my face
to a pillow, changing
the channel to David
Gets The Girl. I watched
a pretty girl edge round
a deep pond then fall:
I dove in and hauled
her back, her gratitude
flooding me with this
sweet, presexual warmth,
like milk straight from
gold-knockered Pussy Galore.
When the real leaves you
homeless, there’s always the peel,
the pith and rind of surface cool.
I yearned and learned to
glide there lubed by
cool quaffs of Bond and
my own bouncing balls,
chasing the Laylas of La-La.
—a mystic of moments,
a bra unclasping its double
wealth, the shoosh of
jeans sliding down
their white daughters.
O splendid crucifix,
crying for immortal nails.
—That was the dance, those
Penthouse Letter-moments
where, Dear Reader, I found
what I never thought
I would personally ever
encounter. I dropped out
of the monastic mill
of college to play rock n roll,
hurling the delights
of a few nights with Becky
into the coiffed frenzies
of boogie brawn, each song
another dive in her rocking,
ululate bed— holding my guitar
like a surf-pole, casting
out these chord progressions,
humming a while, then
hauling up a solo that was
at once glittering, fierce, and
wild. At least, that’s what
I sure hoped for, and tried
to live for, amid a howling
ruin of wasted hours,
initiate and annihilate
twinned in a 25-year
old boy. Rightburn, I called it,
that perfect balance
of opiates (booze, pot,
speed or coke) carrying
me out on the coracle of song,
a triangulation of
wish fulfillment, drunkenness
and balls, unsheathing a
bright blade after the
second chorus, tempered
cruel and swift and
eternally sharp. Such moments
came as frequently as
the perfect babes. Dear Reader,
it never happened, some guy
on staff wrote all that crap,
the whole fantasy of sex
and drugs and rocknroll,
knowing exactly what we all
wanted, what we prayed
for each night we walked
into a crowded bar. It
was the entire exception
to the rule that I prized
above all else, thus dooming
me to the quest for a chalice
which in truth proved
the millstone of my years.
It seems I’m always
investing in fictions
and pay dearly for them all.
Has much really changed?
Here I labor away
on this overlong, overly
autobiographical lyric
meditation, earnest as ever
to ink a gleaming fish
on white pages, the mirror
of a life deemed greater
than what it can only refract.
I’m entertaining at best
a troop of ghosts in my
own head, bandmates,
lovers, all the guys
who played James Bond,
the solemn poets. Having
written this far it’s a struggle
to shift back to the day slowly
waking outside, now washes
of blue warbling along
with scattered birds.
My face always felt strange
lifting from the heavy warmth
of that pillow-TV, protesting
the effort of returns to the real.
What can you say of a life
spent voyaging the top feet of the sea?
What have I learned
but to ink obliquity?
No matter: I’m hard wired
to the James Bond theme,
walking round that deep pool
whose waters shake only what’s stirred.
THE THRILL OF IT ALL
From “A Breviary of Guitars,” 2000
spring 1978:
The music of
what followed
had a harder
beat: The
season was
overtaken by
Roxy Music,
those stylin’
rock romantics
trolling at
the ragged edge
of disco,
a cocktail shaken
(not stirred)
from to
the urgent beat
of savior faire:
The time has come
It’s getting late
It’s now or never
Don’t hesitate or stall
When I call
Don’t spoil
The Thrill of It All
That’s from
“The Thrill of
It All, Roxy anthem
off “Country Living,”
their fourth album:
the import version
shows two
Eurobabes in
panties caught
in the flash
by some bushes
(The domestic
cover was purged
of titillation’s
angels: just
nocturnal bush.
Which still
sufficed, if
you knew
what it troped.)
My buddy Dave
was back on
spring break
raw in his
erotic angst,
eager to fly
again: We
spun that song
like a prayer
to open us:
a driving
rhythm of
doublebass drum
and mantic bass
like hooves
at full gallop:
it’s fusillade
of romantic angst
not so much
marshalled
as hurled against
the night,
desire tempered
to the keenest
edge by rage
and fear that
our precious
small chance
for love will be
forever lost:
Opportunity
is that second’s
gap in the
enemy’s defense
through which
we must loose
our arrows NOW:
The opening
is that small
forgotten air
vent in the Death
Star through which
Luke Skywalker
in the first
Star Wars
launched his bomb,
not with the
aid of any
computer
but a
triangulation of
desire and
necessity in Heart:
Dave and I
would hear
that song,
look at each
other, then
head to our
rooms to
change into
the finest
somewhat
clean rags we
could find:
We’d down
a round or
two of Blue Jesuses
then climb
in Dave’s Mustang
(which started
up like the
sportscar in
“Love Is The Drug”)
to drive not
to the rock club
filled with luckless
rock zombies
but to the disco
at the Sheraton
where girls were
dancing to
a jaded Top 40
touring band
within the red
sugary whorls
of glitterlight
and Long
Island Iced Teas:
The band
confected
local coke-snoots
of Average White Band
& Bee Gees,
& Donna Summer
wearing white leisure
suits with shirts
opened wide:
Dave & I
downed one
tequila-challenged
marguerita
and asked every
girl in the club
to dance till
closing time.
Always luckless,
we’d climb back
in Dave’s Mustang
hearing that
distant surge and
haul of the river,
the night
streets glistening
with spring rain
promising all
and empty of
sweet Becky:
Everywhere I look
I see your face
I hear your name
It’s all over the place
Hey girl
Thou you’ve gone
Still I recall
The Thrill of It All
We never scored
at that club,
but that never
seemed the point:
The kick was
in hearing “The
Thrill of It All”
and responding
to its thrown
gauntlet,
heading out
heedless of
the hour or
budget (none)
or any other
of the superego's
sober duties,
feeling only
possibility,
our hungers
fuelled like those
Blue Jesuses
with desire’s
holy flame:
We became
Astarte’s temple
jackals with
tuxes rented
from the moon:
And I swore
I would find
Becky again
no matter what
the cost, no matter
where I would
go, no matter how
far I must fall:
I can’t see
I can’t speak
I couldn’t take more than another week
Without you -- oh no
So I will drink my fill
Till the Thrill Is You
PENTHOUSE LETTER
From “A Breviary of Guitars,” 2000
spring 1985:
So much youth
falls prey to
masturbation:
that “vex’d
corrosion so
pensive and
so painful,
the torment, the
irritable tide
that will not
rest” (Whitman);
For boys that
is: Our destinies
are trapped in
our grip and
yank of dreams
of white bottoms
bared like the
teeth of the
moon amid the
roar of pumped
up cars and
wailing guitars:
I read somewhere
that Prince (as
he was formerly
known and
is once again)
lived in the
fertile &
febrile belief
that those
Penthouse letters
were all true:
Believed that
women unpetal
for us with the
same zeal and
greed men in
their bottomless
hunger bring
to women: Dear
forum, I never
thought I would
find myself
writing to you,
but last night
I had an
encounter that
eclipsed my
wildest dreams:
Her name was
Kim and she
stood at the
bar of my
favorite rock
n roll dive just
off her shift
at the nude
dance club
across the street:
5’2”, blonde,
questionably large
boobs, all curve
and curl, her
brown eyes
atwinkle with
cock she must
have zipped
in the loo:
She eyed me
at the far
end of the bar
& just walked
over & asked
me to buy her
a drink: Sure
I spluttered, caught
off guard by
her brazen
approach: She
eyed me as
she zipped her
Southern Comfort:
You play in
a band? she asked:
Well I’m between
gigs now but
I’m looking for
a touring band
who don’t mind
that I haven’t
any equipment
money time
youth or skill
& that I’m
trapped inside
a drinking thinking
problem with
love: Great! she
gushed, her
eyes widening
a bit and a
hand straying
from the bar
to brush the
front of my
jeans: And then
leaned over to
me brushing those
melon boobs
across my arm
& sighing would
ya like to
come over to
my place and
party for a while?
I couldn’t believe
my ears dear
Penthouse, There
I was at the
the bottom of
my porpoise purpose,
sure of the
folly and futility
of the whole
enterprise when
its angel rose
from hell to
give me better
reasons to fall:
Back at her
place (this sorry
ass trailer in
some evil weed
near Bithlo) we
settled on a
ratty couch &
cracked open
beers & talked
about bands we
liked till she
set her beer
down and leaned
in close with
this red sigh: She
kissed me and
pulled my hand
to her breast:
That was all
the encouragement
I needed &
soon I had
her dress off
and red silk
bra unclasped
& mouthing those
huge mounts
sucking on nipples
big as thumbs:
Not to be
outdone she yanked
down my jeans
& boxers &
commenced to
gobble and
suck on my
hardening hammer:
O this was rare!
Too good to
be true! Before
I knew it
we were in her
bed fucking every
which way our
bodies oiled with
sweat and pussy
juice and sperm:
Doggy, missionary,
cowgirl, 69:
Kim was a
fuck goddess who
worshipped my
cock,begging for
it in every
orifice & canal
and I gave it
to her til there
wasn’t one drop
of fire left
in my balls: I”m
getting hard as
I write these lines,
Dear Forum, it
was so perfect
and also so true:
How many years
had I dreamed of
such a night as
I masturbate
to your pictures:
I close my eyes
and disappear
into “the
mystic, amorphous
night, the strange
half-welcome
pangs, visions,
sweats, the pulse
pounding through
pounds and trembling
encircling fingers,
all color’d red,
ashamed, angry;
the souse upon
me of my lover
the sea, as I lie
willing and
naked” (Whitman
again, “Spontaneous
Me”): And there
I was! On the
other side of
your glossy pages
abed with one
of your Pets,
this marvelously
curved & oiled
fuckbunny who
had taken me
every which way
and then some
with a greed
almost greater than
my own: Around
dawn we collapsed
to sleep a few
hours: Surely
the angels heard
the shout and
shriek of that
music — but
are they doomed
to just be
readers of your
pages, our lives?
We woke close
to noon in a
room hot with
sunlight and
smelling from all
the fish we’d
gutted in our
rutting: I got
up to pee
and call in
sick to work
& when I got
back in bed she
said I thought
you were a
musician? Well
I am honey well
sort of: Trying
to be at least:
Hmpf she said
into her
pillow trying to
get back to
sleep: The room
was brilliant
with sun — no
shades — erasing
all the shadows
I prayed were
real, at least
until my balls
finally emptied:
What’s that scar?
I asked: It
ran all the
way round her
neck like a
puckered seam:
She said some
ex-boyfriend
crashed through
the window of
an apartment
she was hiding
in and cut her
up with a
Bowie knife:
gashed her hands
bad in the
struggle & then
got one good
rip at her throat
but not good
enough: He was
too drunk to
finish the job:
She lost 4 pints
of blood and died
a while on
the operating
table but came
back eventually
for this: I’ll get
you good he hissed
as they carted
him out of the
courtroom: Now
there’s desire,
dear Forum! A
lust which consumes
even the shards:
The best part
though of all
came when she
fell back asleep
and I snuck on
outta there, fucked
silly & free to
go home & shower
good & then plug
in my blue
Phantom, caressing
its neck & playing
the notes like
I was tickling
ten thousand
clitties, a
god almost,
surely ready
to rock, or
as Whitman
exults, “The
oath of
procreation I
have sworn,
my Adamic and
fresh daughters, /
The greed that
eats me day
and night with
hungry gnaw,
till I satiate what
shall produce
boys to fill my
place when I
am through, / The
wholesome relief,
repose, content, /
And this bunch
pluckt at random
from myself / It has
done its work —
I toss it carelessly
to fall where it
may”: That night
was 15 years
ago and is a
pearl on my
string of raw
plunders: Nothing
I could do or
live now but
I’m richer and
ripened in the
retelling: Still
scented with the
heave of her sex
& its welcome,
for whatever
bad reasons bade
her cleft for me:
POLKA DOT SOIREE
2004
Alchemical work had to hurt
(boil, sever , skin, dessicate,
putrefy, suffocate, drown, etc.)
natural nature in order to
free animated nature. As soon
as psyche enter into consideration,
the only-natural is not enough.
-- James Hillman,
Dream and Underworld
Fall 1986: A bad season of
collapsing walls. My last band
had folded wings that summer.
My guitar was frozen in
its case, a stone thing
falling through blue plush
into a well of banshee
booze, hauling me down
a tide with those fingers
of big night music gripped,
like stone, around round
my ankle. I had tried
swearing off the alchol
but going it alone I hadn’t
a clue what to mend or
forgive or give back. And so
I found myself out again
in that old the zombie zone,
suited up with a
a lunar-cold vengeance.
Real things fell from
angelic aeries, like
the massive oak
I discovered
on top of my garage
apartment after work
one day, the walls of
my tiny cheap room
buckled out. I retrieved
journals and guitar
and natty slax and got
the hell on outta there,
setting up in a tiny
room in my mother’s
house. That was when
I started writing down
the malaise, even
as I headed full force into
it. I made a weak
(inept, too wounded)
attempt to love a German
exchange student
named Magritte but
the clearer motions it
demanded -- stability,
fidelity, sacrifice --
kept getting lost in
the murk of tequila.
One night I called
her to make plans
for dinner and a
Pat Matheny concert,
and found myself
after ringing off
walking right out
the door, engorged
with that cactus gestalt.
Long hours later screwed
to a barstool in
my favorite water
hole, the blackout man
crept from his
grave, that barking
hell-bent satyr equal
parts fang and cock.
Followed a woman
back to a house
where someone had
died recently --
there were piles of
bills on a table, ashtrays
of a ghost
overflowing like
sewers, the smell
of oatmeal cookies
and piss. In my journal
the next day, I wrote
“heights of sex around
2:30 and 6 a.m., yes,
but the falloff was
meteoric” -- the blisses
of that season seemed
carved not from waves
but their riptide. The
next night -- the one
before my date
with Magritte -- I
ended up at Fern Park
Station drinking the
night away to the
sound of a bad big
hair metal band
& Kim the topless
dancer invited me
back to her apartment
for more of the same
though blacker in in
is blare. Bare overhead
bulb & Van Halen
squealing on a table
radio as we did shots
& drank beer. After
I fucked her on the couch
(from behind, hard,
like a wolf), she sighed
and said “I have always
hated you” softly
in my ear. The next
day I called in sick
and shook Kim awake
to drive me back to my car,
the late morning
overheated and
shriekingly bright,
all knife and no ocean.
I was 29 and falling
down the oubliette of
my old dream of
love’s billowy perfection,
refusing to let go
down those gripless walls.
Back in that room
in my mother’s house
I slept fitfully for the
afternoon, making coffee
at 4 p.m. and casting
an I Ching oracle. --
The Abysmal Doubled,
like snake-eyes formed
from six faces of two
coins, two hexagrams of
drowning stacked on
each other, auguring
the dangers I swam
without and within.
It offered the image
of a melancholy heart
going down in freezing
brine, a place shared
by the moon, thieves,
wisdom and darkness.
“Surrender is the
only escape,” it whispered
through the hungover
creaks and folds of
the afternoon. Ah
but what to surrender
and how to let it go?
What of the dream
I had in that season
of the purely curved
woman in a black and
white polka dot dress,
walking up to the
stage where I stood
trading licks with ZZ Top.
Her breasts hips and
ass waving like a tide
toward me, her eyes
so hot on mine
the way I thought
every woman I ever
desired looked at me,
a feminine veneer
for a greater ocean
behind, her kiss
which came later
absolving every
abyss I now swam
through. She took
me to her bed of beds
on some island
of sweet delight,
fucking me every
way I came,
sighing up from
that billowy descent
how she loved me
utterly -- udderly,
lutely, resolutely,
undulantly, you
weave all the sounds
of love’s pious assent --
and yet the dream
was striated with
my late and fallen
ennui, and I doubted
her words though
I knew they were true.
And then I sensed
she would be gone
and forever hence
with me: “The eternal
moment” I wrote
in my journal. Such
was my appetite
for her, for you,
my bittersweet
ocean’s absentia,
my dark-blue drawing
wave, my hunger
which all the
bars and beds
could never sate.
The Florida of that
season now
18 years ago was
in every appearance
a nightmare of
overbright streets,
the necropolitic
spookiness of
all that suburbia
just a false front
for the land I
was dying in, eternal
night inside a
brilliance. Reagan
was in his second term,
the Chicago Bears
were mauling the NFL
and rock n roll
was a glitter in the
eye of the pax MTV.
I closed my journal,
cracked a beer and
toasted that bad age
which molted
into this one. Later
with Magritte at the
Pat Matheny concert
I heard the best score
yet for my love --
a long dark pulsing
rendition of the bossa
nova jazz soiree
“Are You Going With
Me,” watching Magritte
pull as far away from
me in her seat to
watch the band. I
loved that music most
when I watched her
face drift off toward
it, the woman lost in
the tide and me trying
to wade in after. After
the concert Margritte
wouldn’t talk to me
and I dumped her
at her car to head
back out into the night
which is like this
wild witch’s smile,
all tongue and razored
teeth, a pink wet
gullet which swallowed
me as I hit the bars
guzzling Buds and
shots of Rumpleminz.
In that darkling
scree the ache delivered
me to Laurie, an
exfuck who I hadn’t
seen in three years,
now fatter and older
and drunker from all
the ways her love of love
had abused her. I
followed her back
to her apartment (in
a complex attached
by the root to the
whole grim archipelago)
& she let me have
my way with her body
every way I wished
though we couldn’t
stand to look each
other in the eye. We
fucked the rest of
the night and half
the morning, our
pudendas jabbering
like unearthed skulls:
that curtained
room was torn from
some inmate’s
page where night
after night sharks
have had their way
with her, tearing
and plunging and feasting
in slow balletic clouds
of blood. She was
the girl I never got to fuck
inside all the ones
I had, a woman inside
my own self-
ravaged psyche.
I got the hell on outta
there late that afternoon,
coming home in a
fucked out hungover
bruise to find a message
to call Magritte. She
apologized for her anger
at me and asked if we
could meet that night
and make up, maybe
proceed. But how could
I even presume to try
playing love by its rules?
I said sure and headed
out to drink. Falling
thus I finally let go
of whatever hold love
had on me, the wounds
I nursed for all those
woman who had left
me for good, shredding
every guise and gout
of purer feeling to
get down to where
the woman in the
polka dotted dress
resides and queens.
In my cups that night
I drank to dregs
like a drowning man
holding on to the
anchor of his farewell,
all the way down
to that ruined city
where she dreams.
And then I lost
the queen herself,
the one so founded
and floundered in
the marketing of
a metaphor -- accepting
at last that the
dream was only
that, pure seem
and puerile gleam.
And then I really
hit the bars, going
three months of
nightly blackout
drinking, lurking
at the bottom of
a sea with the
rest of the drowned
sailors, arms
wrapped tight
around the coral
bones we dreamed.
That was the brine
in which you were
pickled, never
to return to haunt
day worlds again.
The woman in the
polka dot dress
is that booze which
Bryan Ferry sang
about in that old
Roxy Music anthem,
“The Thrill of It All”--
that pure whiskey
poured into a tight
and nippled dress,
an anthem of desire
which I sang with
all my heart marching
out every door.
The death of every
dream is horrible,
a gripless slide down
all the names for hell.
My dreams from that
time are florid
with descriptions
of infernal gloom,
of vampires with my
face who ache
to die but can’t,
vultures preening
on the moon, carnival-
like rides down
sulphur chasms
beneath the blackest
coldest heart.
My love was torn
by desire’s devil
tongs in one long
whiskey draught:
Sundered till only
my lips remained, still
pursed and ejacualate
of her exalt sheen.
Poor fool. That
season crashed
and burned me
me now nearly
15 years ago. It’s
5 a.m. now on
this second day
of writing this
poem, heaping
so many lines
lines on the ache
I still feel recalling
that awful time. I sit
on my pure white
writing chair in
the house I married
and mortgaged
every dream to
remain in: it’s
a coolish morning
in November and
so much outside
is the same --
a second-term
Bush repeating the
arch Reagan chill, the
Steeler whupping
the NFL’s unbeatable
best, and E! Television
parading the
smiles of hotties in tight
dresses, eclipsing
the shine of blood
everywhere on
Iraqi streets. And
me hurling all this
ink in measure to
a feeling that harpoons
me still when I
recall that woman
in the polka dotted
dress whom I
always wanted and
never met. That image
is like an olive
at the bottom of
my worst infernal
drink. And yet,
today it seems I got to
you at last in her,
that curvy ikon
of those nights in
wild absentia: Or,
to scratch deeper,
perhaps I reach
you best recalling
those worst nights,
my lines sliding
down a time most
alien and strange
and wild. Dare I say
I’m more alive now
in the real work
of daily love for
having lost you
utterly on nights
so long ago? Or
is it that by naming them
the demons drop their
tines and go to work
for us, the woman
in the polka dotted dress
sashayed up close
to this banging stage
where I’m still trading
licks with fire,
translating for her
your own blueblack desire.
SHATTERED GOLD
2000
Cold and windy and bright
like a shatter of gold
over mute stones. I live here.
My wife stands inside holding
the door yet unable to fathom why
I would leave her there.
Her face stricken and old
but still pausing. Still waiting.
All that I cannot reach
at that moment touching her
soft skin as I once had, so
so gently and protectively.
So patient. The cats inside
like whorls of an intensely
felt love, purring in the rich syrup
of sunlight. Blow, gold winds, in this
neighborhood I can not inhabit.
Blow me hard. Sailing back
into town down a brilliant
river of concrete, passing
impeccably smooth SUVs and
vans with their terrible
suburban freight of love’s
makings. Pass ‘em all,
no one can catch me!
“Take Five” on WUCF,
a jazz for my cruel cool shatter.
Last night we got drunk & drunker
in a country bar with your sister
and your ex-husband. Downing
those shots of Tequila, blossoming
dark gold. You and I danced
and danced like beggars on fire,
our bodies liquid in the yes we
hunger for but cannot reach.
Then you got sloppy drunk,
sitting on your ex’s lap professing
love and careening so wildly
outside that the cops gave me
a DUI test and packed us home
in a van. You thought the younger
cop was so cute. Would not, could
not say a word to me, who envelops
and rapes you just like every other
man who has risen in praise of your
sweet small body. Your indefensible
sex. Your passion which somehow
gilds disaster after disaster.
Home you undressed and curled
naked on the couch with your ex though
he was snoring drunk. And I with no
where else in the world I would
rather be, standing at the doorway
watching you descend from me,
addict of the fire which
breathes inside the worst and most
wayward reaches of the lovers’ other,
jealous of that udder of dark milk
you bear like fate, so greedy for
it I’d murder my own son for it,
fling my gold wide and wildly
for just one more sip, my jazz
the howl of all that in this
day’s cold shatter at
the end of everything I broke.
SILENUS
2004
Just which cocktail pickles
a rumpy young satyr into
horrid old goat?
Our cocksman doesn’t
know, but the nagging
suspicion that he crossed
that line too many years
ago is one he tries to
drown harder every day.
The drill is by now
is so ancient as to be almost
rusted out: drive home from
work with the radio playing
contemporary hits he can’t stand,
crack a cold beer in his trailer,
slam a Swanson’s in the microwave,
watch sitcoms on syndication
as Florida in the window
roughs up Lake Fairview
and the semis whoosh
up and down 441 like
basso deacons. Shower,
second shave of the day,
do the thinning hair but
good, slap on the old Aramis
and dress carefully in the
cracked floor-to-ceiling mirror
& trying to ignore the
wrinkles around his eyes
and the flecks of grey
like whitecaps in his hair.
What the hell -- and he’s
out again by 8 to head
to his warm-up bar, knocking
back shots & beers &
bullshitting Gloria the
barmaid who he’s known
for years; he’s never gotten
her to come home with
him, but he still thinks that
some day she’ll come to
her senses and see what’s
she’s been missing all along
--and man, will there ever
be some serious fucking
that night! Only she
better hurry up and
come to, he thinks
for the ten thousandth
time, knocking back a
shot of Old Granddad
and the refocusing on
his image in the mirror
across the bar. Surely
he’ll be outta this
drab circle of losers soon.
He pays, she pours, they
bullshit as they usually do
about nothing in particular
the way old spouses do
and then he’s off again
on his usual commute
to the standard round of
bars, thinking as he
usually does that tonight,
oh tonight will surely
be different: That the
woman he might meet
(for years now a slowly
thinning possibility, so
slowly but surely that
he cannot see the thread’s
long been cut) who might
go home with him who
upon waking might turn
out otherwise than
all the others and they
will give it that try
that works where
the couple others failed
and they’d make it
to Love, Marriage,
Family, The Works.
He sighs. Why does
he bother? He’s 46
and the bottom that he’s
been ravening on
is near impossible
to hide from anyone,
even himself. He’s
partying this night
on a credit card with
barely enough air in
it to float the evening’s
tab -- there’s maybe one
more night in it, if he
doesn’t pay for anyone
else. The ex-wife is
screaming louder for
child support,
some judgement is
in the works. He
drives a ‘93 Camaro,
no babe car anymore,
it lurches epileptically
through its gears and
is still faintly redolent
of the night he shit
his pants in a blackout.
The last women
he’s scored (two in
the past six weeks)
were real jackals,
horrible, bottle-club
closing-time crackhead
drunks, gals he’d had
to wait til they’d
done all their drugs
& passed out before
roughing down their
jeans & turning ‘em
over to fuck ‘em from
behind, almost flaccid
in their neardry cunts
& trying not to think
of that girl from the
Christmas party
who called to say
she’d tested HIV
positive. Awful.
Yet here he is again,
somehow further
on down that ladder
of diminished prinicples
and expectations,
switching the channel
to the oldies station
where they’re playing
Journey’s “Don’t Stop
(Believing)”, and it’s
just the shot of hope
he needs, and he rows
down the his drivers
side window to let
some of the summer
night air in, post-storm,
wild and humid and
rich with ions, and
he feels all of the
possibilities rising
within him just as
pure and unequivocal
as the touched him
when he was fourteen
years old at his first
high school dance,
the band onstage
playing Grand Funk
Railroad’s “Are You
Ready” and all of him
shouting Yes and the
girl in front of him smiling
Yes. Up ahead he can see the
bar is hopping, lotta babes
heading in, all ripe for
the picking, and surely
among them there is just
the one for him, sultry
and salty and ripe for
the plucking, her heart
made of feathers and
blue gin, spread to receive
his eternal thirst
for someone else’s heat
and heart and motion.
BEAUTY
2004
Let’s say that beauty is an analogue
for the the organs of rebirth. That desire
and its consummations are a homewarding
boat which can -- and will -- cross water.
Like soft piano jazz on a summer afternoon.
Or my wife’s shape turned away from me in sleep.
Our cat staring out at late rain and then
back on me with such blue so naked eyes.
Each encounter with beauty masks the source
with some other, earlier swoon -- my
mother’s voice become the sea’s, the
wash of night storms empurpling in this poem.
You walk the beach at first light, alone in stilled
immensity, and see ahead a washed-up gleaming shell.
Pick it up and hold it in your hand, reading its
curved sweetness like a map to a distant, strangely
aching land where your first love still stands
ankle-deep in a warm tide. To know beauty is to valve
a heart that beats below its name. Ten
thousand beauties harbor in the day, each a chapel
of salt and flame, waiting for you to begin.
PASSION
2004
“Passion is no ordinary word,”
sang my hero Graham Parker
on his ‘83 album Squeezing Out Sparks.
How I agreed, belting out the
song on my Gibson Jaguar axe.
We played that wild music
on hot summer afternoons in a
tiny bedroom that served as the
practice room for Norman and I
before we found a drummer
and bass player; before all the
rigor and impurity of the actual
made such passion routine.
Back then it just burned through our hands,
delivered by Florida’s summer
soak.A heat so strong we could
only ride barebacked through our
twenties, holding on for dear life.
Twenty years later I have learned
to forget how that song made days
seem so enraged and personal,
each car in traffic like an archangel
of hot chrome, the women like
vestals who kissed like pyres.
I’ve learned how to corral that hot song
here on (and only on) the page. At
4:45 a.m. it is dark as hell outside,
half-drowned from the first hard
rains of the season in this neighborhood,
the darkness surely knit from
thunder and rains which continued
after dusk, droning our sleep
to satiety. I can almost feel the
roots of the sage and verbena and
African violet swell on that riot,
happy and heavy-belled, waiting
for the sun’s return to hurl
all that moisture back, each stem
like the neck of a guitar, each
blossom a singer’s mouth
stretched wide. But learn to forget
that passionate music? Hardly.
Instead I’ve erased everything
else from the page, burning my
way here like a fuse sure to blow
the whole thing up in a fusillade
of sperm and sea-water and hooves.
Nothing much has changed from
those June-jams so long ago:
Still I nail these words of salt derange
-- or they me -- to a cross of immortaling
desire. A life whose compass is
the fire in the house I was born to,
survived, and now foster, like
the old sailor with so many crossings
of the molten sea in his mouth,
recounting in harbor bars
both terrors and thrills to those
gassed-up young men who crowd
such places, their eyes reflecting
the moon’s walk on darkened waters,
their ears tuned to that manic
frequency which is both flint
and nail, spark and spasm.
I am he who crossed that
Cape a hundred, no, a
thousand times, who,
just by saying so, survives.
WATER BRIDE
2002
The water bride returned
to me in the startled waters
of night: She was weary
of wearing this or that
woman’s face and came
to me blind from the sea.
I was once desperate
to claim her for life
& so kept losing her
in comic motions,
shaping my body for her,
shouting into waves.
None of it worked: She
just lapsed back into surf,
leaving only this bald shore,
even her name erased
in the boneless wash.
But not lost. She curves
every line down this page,
across and down down
down, nothing I’ll kiss
again but deeper, a wave
washed through, forever
afoot in wastes of this heart.
I have been pickled in
her brine: I am that dawn
where she’ll always shine,
that scree of white
slippers dancing where
I pull my every breath.
It’s 5:30 a.m. on Christmas
Eve, the windows open
to a restlessness which
later will pour rain
then turn cold. I am that year
at birth once again:
son and lover of a
uteral gulf which streams
through the day
like the sheets of her
gauze bower, cell and
boudoir, well and tower,
ring to middle finger,
trothed to the wave’s
forever ecstatic smile.
BONING THE GHOUL
2002
An appalling sweetness
slipped into view
when I lost the last
wet curvature of you:
Well, “lost” is landfill
for all tossed verbs,
numens of that last kiss
trucked from dead suburbs.
Atop that dread mound
an eerie twattage glows
as ghoul cockage choirs
in solemn, bony rows.
That chorus sings to me
the beat-to-hell old news
that I’ll not find her again
not even in rear views.
Who knows why forsaking
me was for her so easy,
why she drained the glass;
Or why her sleazy
voidings like a vacuum
in me yet clench,
a vertigo in all makings
with a familiar stench,
deigned to rule a wold
of cold and moony nights
with thorn plecturings of
strings no longer white,
their amperage sucked dry.
What’s horniness if it
douses not in fire
but bone-dry recit,
unbuttoning not blouses
but stone lips of banshee
rue—burning wicker men
because some dame decreed
my hands anon away?
Who wants to fornicate
unnippled sprites of ire?
Let’s banish hope, excoriate
the lust: debone the ghoul
who haunts the ossuary
of every stiffie lost:
let’s remit the actuary
before tits up it tanks.
She rose up from a wave
of breaking blue joy;
and then without a wave
she disappeared, willing me
this stale and sour undertow.
I’ll not find her on this
beach again: It’s time go:
Time to rearrange
into less salty, surer show:
time for bright diurnals
where fresher boners grow
beneath the fertile loam
of an untroubled sleep.
I’ll plunge on alone now
on waters twice as deep,
ghost-captain of a boat
destined for dryer shores,
calmer nights, no matter
how she always gores.
TALK DIRTY TO ME
2004
Talk dirty to me barks the sea
As I amble down the naked
Shoreline of a prayer. Shake it,
Shake it like a horny Pope down
Under. Angelic apes stand in
The wash stroking huge erections
& mouthing every name of God.
When old men enter puberty
It’s a rude uproar: Our lust is
Brown-eye ugly to those oiled girls
Sunning for young kings & hard hooved
Rings of fire. I’ve stopped caring for
Good press -- It’s time now to get down.
Watch me lower my shorts down to
This ankling tide -- I’ve seas to screw!
SIREN
2005
The Liber Monstrorum warns that
the sirens distract ships with their song,
“and they are most like human beings
from the head to the navel, with the body
of a maiden, but have scaly fish’s tails,
with which they lurk in the sea.”
-- Clara Strijbsoch, The Seafaring Saint:
Sources and Analogues of the 12th
Century “Voyage of St. Brendan”
Halving goddess, you are
my dream’s reflection and
depth, the blue-boned nacre
of devil sweetness
inside all song. All my
errors I comment to you,
my pure white sails
furled by the God
stilled and limp
before your risings
oh so dripping with
unknowns. What course
is not foiled by the swell
of breasts inside the
wave which breaks
and pounds on that
shore over there,
the one not found
on any map, in
regions beyond
all Christian maps?
Golds cargo and
more golden ports
are both forgotten
in the pearled silver
of your voice,
your words not
spoken in any day
I’ve live, nor
read in any
text above the wave.
They gleam and
shimmer like gems
set in scales
which flash and
then are gone. Listen
to that singing at
your dry peril
O masthead scout:
doze there and
it’s hair nose &
eyeballs in one
long scream into
the soak & the silent
aria of drifting down
the miles to the bed
that gathers lovers
in a mile-wide embrace,
matressed by a
loam of bones.
Is that the measure
of your wild beyond,
a waist of song
between one kiss
and all abyss? Or
is such praise too
unsalted for your tongue
for which music
is blue labia, the
slick quench of
sucking cunt harrowing
my ears into wilder
dreadful rooms below?
What is that sound aft
of this daily jaunt
across the verbal blue,
a sound which can’t
be bedded here but
only flung in mist?
A swell of milky nipples,
the smile which melts
down to alloyed hell?
Who knows; the song
has sounded where I
swore it belled,
silent as an
otherworldly buoy.
Thank God (I think)
I sail on. But now
what surf do I hear
crashing ahead? And
that voice -- almost a girl’s --
FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE
2005
Beyond the center shore of my dread sea
there is a dark grove, supple and hoary
in the maenad desire which I will
write over. It compasses my song
with the drowsy mewl of deep-thighed lust,
and though it is a certain death
to peek I must, head turned back
upon the sea which salts my gaze
in saucy blue infinity. I dare not
but I must; I am commanded
by a supernal and subversive thrall;
I am scrotummed by the will,
my face its muzzle to those cheeks.
Thus my creator compensates
for corpse he coprophiliously devours
down the gullet of his bourne.
Always a whiff of death inside that
savage view, as if the curvature of all delight
crashed upon an olfact shore
and every peek is pure olibanum
wafted to the dream which shelves
my words for good.
Almost. So dare I must, ere
all words fail, and peer I do,
upon that dancing muse inside
the grove astride the house where
all books pour their reams,
like spermactetti gobs on lactate
orbs, the eyes of God’s own lust
staring back at me. Surely
the view has frozen me here
and the book I fill is like a pillar
of salt, witness to the awe
and awfulness of dread origin,
two shots of whiskey and a fifth
of sin, pure malt friskiness
I’ll never fully say much less swim in,
though here I try. Dare I say the
words which smash on through?
Will I ever thence return? Does
that even matter now, when
every sea and moon doth burn
blue and lucent and bewitched
like congealing cables in a mind
which now builds a bridgelike abbey
back and down inside the soul?
The hour’s late: soon light will blue
the noctal frieze which cheeks
my song: my task today’s at end:
soon I must go feed the cats
and wake the wife apsalm across
her feet. Soon I must cap this
pen and toss this book to that
last unsounded wave so
so my day thus dark-grounded,
may begin. Will I burn in hell
for such outrageous peeks at
pantyankled truth, or do horned
angels fan their wings in wild
applause for this next sum
of burning pages? And can
the work ever be quite done
when the butter’s always on the bun
& steaming her desire my way,
tickling my sense for one
last view before the curtains
lower and clump for good?
PANTS ON FIRE
2006
A book in the hand
should be a ball of fire.
-- Emerson
My reading magicked
the booze abyss into
descending bliss, the old
jones for reckless dives
toward paps of no avail
become an inside job of
metaphorical descents.
I found my lost God’s
exalts in the brinous salts
of archetype and dream
and verse, wandering
from Jung to Campbell
and Hillman and from
Homer through Rilke
on a fertile promontory
of pure Shakespeare.
A book-to-book assay built
this downward tower into
dark divines, and strung
a eustachian tube of surf
from an angel’s ear to mine.
My feast of saints are shelved
in a burning aviary of books,
a vault of diving boards all
squealing Yippee down the
leagues I follow as I write across
and down the page. Image here
the hungry lover’s pants
collapsing at his feet
and you read the sense I sing,
the urgency of the burning
sun for seas, my words
enflamed, engorged by my
texts’ sea-smelling lacunae,
so consumed by thoughts of blue
that only romping to the
depths of them will do,
each line so hastily wrought
the ladder’s burning too,
chasing the poem down
to its smoking end.
If a heart can think,
so the mind full aches,
its high harrumphings
hooved by a libido
schooled in humping
every naiad numen
to crest the foam
proferring pink deliria.
My book’s too hot to hold,
much less full savor
unless you’re deep at sea
down under any sooth
or certainty that
fills those joyous canyons
a singing voice gestalt,
carving heaven in basaltic
floors of stone. All tides
are margined here, my
sources shared by the
moon and wombs alike,
the cry of first beginnings
in which I shouted full awake
and which no blue assay
can slake, though I’ll ever
try, astride these waves
of ink no angel dares to drink
the fullest measure of.
Oh my pants are on fire
and there’s never page enough
to drop them all the way
before I’m mounted full
upon the fishlike diving one,
plunging in salt exult.
Just like this poem, that
book will never end, the
seas it dreams so nude,
so bottomless, I must
content myself with shelves,
these daily islands like
library wings which harbor
me for just one poem
before the next conflagration
of arcane lyric swings
me further out and down
toward the ankles of delight
and I am fused again
in heaven’s deepest fire
where its words at last suspire
in choiring exalt Amen.
SELKIE LOVE
2006
Little did I know she was a selkie
on that shore, dazzling my
eye with morning surf and salt
after a long tumulting night.
She stepped into my eye
from a sealksin thousands
of miles and years from where
we stood, across that soft blue
ocean behind her, on a train
of glittery sunlight fresh
upon the waters which travelled
as far out as down my eye
and brain and heart and
balls and feet to soul
to a memory as old as the
love of all my fathers
for all the women they had
dreamed and once or
twice believed. I knew none
of that back then: The
moment of her standing
there in a loosely fitting
bikini (a remainder
of other summers,
other lovers)
was pure, perfect, and
sublimely actual, as if
to reach a shore at last
of love’s most inward
baptism. To see her
standing there it
seemed I was in
my heart at last, or
her’s, or our’s. My
dream was in the
way she tilted her
head and smiled
with a voltage equal
to the sun rising behind
her on the dazzling sea;
some molten fire
gilded her curves
and curly hair, grounded
in blue waters at
her feet which foamed
soft and warm toward me.
Nothing had prepared me
for that moment, nor
had I any alm or balm
for all that followed
as we drove inland
& futilely tried to live that
day, selkie wife and
mortal man condemned
to reach for the other
where no sea, no
inland air endured.
Blindly and stupidly
I tried to nail her to
that beach as she
surely ebbed back
into the crashing sea
which was not
meant for me, not
actually, nor ever.
She soon became
a lovely disappeared
thing the tide now
sings on sands
far down my ear.
Only much later
in the slow salve
of aging years did
I come to read how
that scene has been
enacted as long as
men have dreamed of
women from the sea,
telling those old tales
to each other at
seaside taverns and
on midnight decks of
boats where stars
burned so bright above
that eyes stared up
from the folds and
crests of waves, up
from the heart of hearts.
The wisdom of the
ages is that selkies
are no wives, her
heat not meant
for hearths, a song
to keep offshore.
Such beloveds stay
only as long as a
man connives to hide
their water-gowns;
but at night while
mortals sleep,
the selkies swim deep
down our ears,
rummaging through
every vault and locker
there til at last salt
gossamer is found and
the spell of landlocked
love unbound.
Once she learned
how desperate I was
she flipped her tail
and was gone, a blue echo
in a door which still
washes with the sea,
cold and empty and
heartbreakingly beautiful
as the moonlight which
hangs heavy over
our garden this early
morning. The wife I found
after that selkie swam
away sleeps deep upstairs,
my lovely, despairing,
aging and menopausal
wife, difficult in all the
ways that selkie seemed
to easy, free, and young
before she disappeared.
Did I have to learn the
story of the seal-wife
to loose her from
within, as if to
name an archetype
was like hauling free
the anchor
of a wreck far undersea
which stayed hooked
through my heart
for years, allowing
me to come ashore
and work the
inland life that’s mine?
And though I’m not fully
freed from the surflike sound
of how she disappeared
I’m free to whistle
and croon it here
where once I drowned.
The selkie wife is
a tale now in my creel,
still wonderful and
sleek and darkly blue,
a shape of words
which I offer you,
son of my long lost
reader, to make of it
as you will and sooth
and do as you soak
in your own history’s
blue brine. Oh she
was so lovely standing
there, Venus off the
wave, the dream of that
immortal love which no
ring can troth
nor by keeping save.
Be well, o one who
was all and could
never be: Bewitch
the swells and
rouse the tale.
DARK DANCER
2006
Easily written loose-fingered words!
I feel the thrum of their climax and close.
-- Walt Whitman
Why is it, dark god, that when
The hour is so grim and sad
That You are most tumescent,
Ruddy and slick and laughing?
Does the sickleman walk
Closest to you on the parade
To darkest doors, the one
Who closes them innate within
Your clasping cry? And why
Is the song so male? My wife
Receives your smile only
When the hour’s perfect
Once or twice in the life.
While I find at the worst of
Times you’re dancing with
The Master around a greedy pole,
Ecstatic to mount and die
Exactly where no wings can fly.
THE MOON
OVER HER SHOULDER
2006
First, from Keats “Lamia” I.237-260:
Lamia bid him come near, more near --
Close to her passing, in indifference drear,
His silent sandals swept the mossy green;
So neighbored to him, and yet so unseen
She stood; he passed, shut up in mysteries,
His mind wrapped like his mantle, while her eyes
Followed his steps, and her neck regal white
Turned -- syllabling thus. “Ah, Lycius bright,
And will you leave me on the hills alone?
Lycius look back! and be some pity shown!”
He did -- not with cold wonder fearingly,
But Orpheus-like at Eurydice --
For so delicious were the words she sung,
It seemed he had loved them a whole summer long.
And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up,
Leaning no drop in the bewildering cup,
And still the cup was full -- while he, afraid
Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid
Due adoration, thus began to adore
(Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure):
“Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, Goddess, see
Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee!
For pity do not this sad heart belie --
Even as thou vanished so I shall die.”
***
Up at 4:30 a.m. this Sunday
for reasons I can’t understand,
ever. Now the moon
is full and feral in the
westward windows, blasting
a pale, whalish organum,
its soaring sails wafted by the
darkest breezes in the world,
those deep-sea waves the
moon recalls and beckons
in a tide-wild thrall. That
moon is over my shoulder
as I write of it over hers,
behind shores and beds I
thought I found her forever
on, where every sound
and seem of her cathedralled
in a luxuriantly dying ebb.
Who’s seeking who, I wonder
at this humming too-warm
hour: Me for she as I for
Thou; or that sea for me
which is its sidhe, a
teeming womb of dead
laments, choiring emptily
the sum of these tidal lines’
hard hammerings?
She’s that moon, you know,
Euryidce of the backward
glance that lingers
over my shoulder in
the aura of lost presence,
milking the waters
I behold her through
with a dazzling trail of seem.
Forward and back
my story gazes,
up and down a well
where history and mystery
spill through each other
and over, as if what
I first saw in those
pretty girls passing by
my childhood’s eastern
windows has followed
me all the way to here,
sleek up-from-surfish
constellations of a fate
whose ache and thrust
I am. I have come
to think that moonlight
hides the truth
so greater myths
can fly; every
time she ebbed away
my mouth was bid
to fling the deepest
water songs, spouting
up across the starry
sky fresh meters of
their metier, receiving
syllables of tone
like seed into a womb
where all my sights
and songs are vaulted.
As necessity is the
mother of invention --
my wounds have all
been slowly and surely
balmed in this verbal
susurration of a swoon
-- So the reverse
is just as true, albeit
more ferally so.
Each jot of crashing
blue here makes her
welcome seem all the
more dearly drear,
as if to find her
shadowed gazes between
these lines (or just off
their margins or beneath
the last one), like the
prioress of the age I
reach for. So the past
welcomes its future
in every man’s slack-jawed
view of his lover nude
the first time and forever.
Her curves were shaped
so long ago to as to merge
at fonts across the sea,
coming at me from ports
drowned some fifty thousand
years ago, when it dawned
on me that she was shaped
like a heaven winged all the
way hell. That wild waking
knowledge bid me ring this
bell again and again and
again, all the way to here.
And to think I found that
moon far after it found me,
a lover rapt and foolish enough
to ankle her first warm tide
forever on an empty shore
of long-crashed waves.
To think she watched
me standing there
so long that song itself
became a sea, rapt and
ravished not by her
but by the sound she
made in me. Lost sons
become losers, the prize of
every floozy to bid
drunks chase them home
through the darkest folds
of night: The game
is older than the ones
who first played it out, too
old for me to reckon. But
who cares? Suffice I’m not
alone in rapturing the bone
which halves and joins
to a breast she shares
and equally adores. All
this flinging just makes
the diving down our
separate billows more wild.
That full moon’s falling
behind a mons of dark-
thatched trees, failing
in first light: another
hot one’s in store for
us -- upper 90’s in
clear skies -- and there’s
a heavy scent of wildfires
drifting through the
screen amid a paler
scent of something in bloom
out there or here.
A tropical storm is said
to be heading our way,
promising a riot of rain.
I pray it also brings
fresh water for
this pen where I’ll say it
for sure next time, name
her for once and truly
yet again, just the way
she desires, we being
mutual and mothered
by the same black tide
of Neptune’s choiring fire.
posted by Brendan MacOdrum at 7:12 AM
