Lines Written on a Key Largo Bridge

Your shirt shone moon-white
on a night without moon
(we’d seen the stars rise instead)
and the gray in your hair fluttered
like fishing lines hooking the wind.

I hummed a song you didn’t know
as we ran our feet through the surf,
and even for the time of year,
the warmth of the waves surprised us.

But you didn’t touch me until later,
when we sat on the bridge,
and only then to point out a distant freighter.

“We would have missed it,” you whispered,
“had there been brighter lights in the sky.”

I looked, and felt self-conscious –
the ship shining
its obviousness so vainly
on the horizon.

You wouldn’t let me hold you.

I drifted then, buoyed through the night and stars,
everything departing and you
becoming a distant shore.
Only the smell of the sea grass
reminded me that I, not the ship,
was the land-bound, fixed point.

We stayed until sunrise
and drove the car home slowly.
You were afraid we’d crush crabs
blinded by the morning.

Border patrol

He raps his nail against her rooted tooth

Wipes the slime that gleams along her gums.

Bloody lace surrounding lacy blue

Where the eye rebounds against his thumb.

Quit, she says, you're making all the scenery shift–

But could there really be another dream,

Besides a woman-wearing thought in his?

Its own incoming light and faulty wings

Close-behinds and, buried under oceans

Evils held in place with incantations:

Certain words there are which can't be spoken,

And he is clumsy, clueless, lousy with impatience.

But oh if she could know the dream he draws her skin across:

His unhopelessness is a pessimist, her sighs like fragrant songs. 

On Feeling Tired

I’ve grown tired.

Veins, and cartilage, and unknown cells
quivering with the fatigue I’ve taken
upon myself.

Even the days grow tired with me -
birds singing carelessly for neither
pleasure nor doom … but for silence, and a moment’s rest.


Picture by Sarah Folkman

Evening at Applebee's

"And this," you said, "long beach at Haat Plaa Muk,"

Blond of your brown right hand becoming that damp

And trash-dappled sand in the air above your mug.

"And this home I," pointing at a callous on the puff

Beneath your little finger, probably a place

With nervous chickens and broad fluorescent blossoms

Bobbing in the yard. The light surrounding your face

Is the alien green of the grass on the screen the TV

Looks through to the bar, and about a nautical mile

From the curve of your hand you are carving a double-u reef

Where the cuttlefish teem and the scattering moonflashes pile.

I swam in that water, renewed my interior flesh

Which mixed with that air and that cool and that slippery food

And reverted to gray in the blown static spray of home I had left.

Memories

Quivering fire

Mirrored in a pool of wax

Glows devoid its heat

Despues del adios

Es dura la noche y larga

sin tí,

como vías ancianas de un ferrocarríl.

Y es como un grito vivir la tarde

(algunas con nubes,

algunas rociadas

de sangre);

y al levantarme - mañanas frías,

sol de madrugada -

escucho quejar la espiga,

llorar la guitarra.

Refinery

Evening Anagram

-To A.B.

Another day goes by;

useless, all that I have said and done,

standing near you when you looked away.

The light – and the light looks brighter on you

in the evening, just when you begin to mind.

No - but the light begins to fade when I walk by.

Life flows, though, as the Greeks and Donne once said.

Another sunset, another moon without you (I’ve seen so many),

never to see one (as though that would happen) again.

Could you understand, then, if I told you?

Everything would fall upon me, then, and everything would fall

because you couldn’t understand.

Unless the skies would breathe it,

tenderly, as though they didn’t care,

leaving room enough for the merest escape,

everything (I guess), then everything - tenderly -

returns to you beneath the night-light, and your hair.

Twenty, II

They were two men and they fell in love for one night.

A secret romance. Neither gave the other his real name or age. They traded false histories as they would business cards – the older man claimed to be a doctor and the blond boy said he was writing a novel.

But their hours were scarce. From the bar’s dance floor, to the fumbling for apartment keys, to the bed covers tossed aside, to the towels where they scattered the refuse of their love, the men could feel the minutes pricking them like careless fingers.

They saved their words for last, when the dawn came, and even then it wasn’t enough.

So instead they spent the last hour of their passion sliding hands over each others' thighs, microscopic hairs swirling round the mazes of their fingerprints.

They parted ways when the sun peeked in through closed curtains and demanded to be let in.

Later that day, the blond boy would say – when asked about the dime-sized bruises on his neck – that a chick he’d met at the skate park couldn’t leave him alone. In perfect detail, he’d describe breasts he’d never touched.

Being Sunday, the older man would pay penance in church: twenty dollars slipped into the wooden coffer.

He’d then leave, quietly, awkwardly, as if he were slinking away from a former lover’s house.

(Photo by Sooreh Hera)

Spring

Water falls in syrup strings

From icy roofs that were.

A jacket sleeve hangs from a crate:

The hobo bares his shirt.

My desire is a little light

In a house of ice and snow.

I feed it New York spectacle,

The fire for to grow.

Yes, one more thing ...

I feel like riding a balloon.

I've never done that.

I should put it on my list of things to do.

When I start that list, I'll put it on there.

I'll never make a list.

I'll never ride a balloon.

Warm are the still and lucky miles

You have a camera

You have a camera you point at the screen on which I've distorted the things that I've seen. It takes what it finds and scrambles the lines and routes to a screen that I point to with mine. When my camera's bent all the light that you've sent you capture what's left with your misshapen lens. When the sequence repeats to the hundredth degree we have authored the movie I'm living to see.

Malinowski

A name remembered or unremembered through student halls,
it may be that his portrait still hangs in some collegiate junction.
Somewhere, his voice remains, perhaps behind book-littered walls,
muttering the complicated elements of origins and functions.

I read him now, as though I would read the accounts of some explorer,
Remembering his life because it will show up on an exam.
Because the times demand it, I shall forget it all tomorrow,
Like the scholar’s footprints on Polynesian sand.

He’s gone. Used up, his esophagus closed some time ago.
I look at the sunset — part of him remains in the book between my hands.
Who else would hold it? The sunset makes me wonder, though:
is his savage-sounding name still remembered in far-off Trobriand?

Lorca

Solo luciérnagas
soplan en la noche Cordobesa.

Dejadme aquí muerto!

El sabor de naranjas
en los dientes
y de tierra en la lengua.

Dejadme aqui muerto!

Y el suspiro de las aguas
mimando mis
cabellos

Ay! Ya os es dicho que me dejen aqui muerto!

The Lighthouse

Behold the strength of the lighthouse —
a savior of men, of their industries, of foreign wares,
perched on cliffs that long have stood the swell.
The insecurities of night have never touched it —
a guiding light, an angel to the water-blind,
the lighthouse stands — the sailor’s hope,
beckoning the tide-wearied home.

But imagine —
over countless days (how many?) the workers toiled
to secure at first the beacon’s monstrous base.
Bones, marrow, human waste all sprinkled
in the chaos of those endless days.
No guiding lights had they;
the sun, the moon, the stars, the elements —
to these the workers clung and prayed.
In the distance, darkness and the rattling of the sea foam —
by their side, not even the comfort of fire and home.

So did the lighthouse come to be,
standing sternly now over the seas —
in darkness finding its own light,
now stands in darkness to give others peace.

Complaint, against a dull day

I’ve had happier days than these.
Seen better sunsets, better seas —
tasted better wine in better places,
have grown accustomed to more pleasant faces.

And bad days? I’ve known worst —
have cried into the earth, and cursed.
Walked endless deserts, endless miles
to see Misery come my way — and smile.

So who are you, TODAY, to try to change my life?
What do you think you bring, what joy, what strife?
No, you come to neither hurt or please —
I’ve had much greater days than these.

On all sides

He wasn’t a hermit, like the Ancient Fathers,
to be written of and admired,
not building houses of redemption under mossy caves
or crawling naked for salvation through the desert sand.
Like them, though, he could attest
to a moment of great importance,
when the heavens blasted on him all their loves
to reveal the smiling countenance of the Great Name —
but only once.

Since then, the revelations had grown less.
Afterward, the business of the moment was carried on as always,
with the same asked-for smile and occasional frown.
His glasses bore the steamy burden of rainy days
while his legs continued to display the glories of athletic scars.
It would have been impossible, they say,
to have known the tremendous weight
he carried inside.
Even those made close to him
by an unwavering connection of genetic strands
could not identify his agony —

how, after the most astonishing ecstasy
of his meek-lived life,
he was clawed at and desired
by desert demons on all sides.

Twenty

After thirty years with the company, they told me attrition and these hard times had forced them to make tragic but necessary cuts.

I was the only one from my department they fired.

For the next two weeks I lived on nothing but a diet of alcohol and grief.

But a different hunger brought me here. No one talked to me in the bars, where the bright lights make it obvious I reek of cowardice and discontent.

Here, the others are too busy staring at the women on the stage. I ignore the others as well. I wait until the girls walk by and then I look at my face, reflected on the grease that pools around their breasts. Some of them talk back; others just run their fingers down the swellings of my spine.

I ask the prettiest one how much for ten minutes in the curtained room. Her dark hair flows in ribbons from the edges of a tilted trucker’s hat. Her body radiates softness.

She tells me it’s forty-five.

I reply that last night it was twenty.

She winks, unsympathetic, and tells me tonight is a special night. I only have twenty left.

I don’t watch her leave. I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll buy food and eat a real meal.

But should I have pasta, or celery, or carrot cake? Or pickled strawberries and pumpernickel jam?

I buy two more shots to help me decide.

Arse Poetica

"I don't know about poetry,"
dad would mumble when
books of verses stumbled
somehow into his house.

As awkward as an adolescent
he'd amble by and catch me
reading, at night, while dangling
from living room couch ledges.

"Sentimental trash," he'd say,
or, "Mostly for fairies and pansies."
He'd wince and, unasked for,
gift me with disapproving glances.

"Be careful," he began.
"You read too much of that
and turn out queer." And as he left
I know he meant to ask:

"Are you going to stop reading?
Are you going to turn queer?"

And I didn't.
And I did.
And I keep it secret that verses
now stumble out of me.

Nervous Merv

Merv sat fervently on the couch

and plopped a lot of pills into his mouth.

Life stayed the same within but changed without. 

His wife popped rapidly in and out

while ghosts of roaches fat and stout

flashed across the kitchen grout.

The slanting glinty dusty gout

that told the sun's descending route

blew through the hues of rainbow trout.

Cried the wife, 'Get up, get up, you lazy lout!

or I'll call Dr. Oosterhaut.'

But Merv could not discern her twittered shout

as she tried and tried to flex her clout.

Merv thought, 'What's this speeding up about?

The world's escaping me, no doubt.

It's raining all around my drought.

Over and over.' Over-and-out.

The greatest love of all

Calm down, you tell yourself, take it easy. You're doin' fine. Just relax and go to sleep. If nothing else, you'll always have me, your self. Really? Well what are you doing tonight? Tonight I'm busy. Tonight I've got to rest up, I have a big day tomorrow. I do too, but I'd rather sleep with you, baby. Look, I've got to go. Why? I'll talk to you later. When?

motion sustained

the park's covered in fallen blankness

and winter trees radiate

like struck mirrors

unannounced, the picture begins to move

an airliner eases in
you can see its windows, and 

out of desire you project yourself through one of them

between an Indian woman speaking quietly to her baby

and her mustachioed husband, who reads on his BlackBerry

how divine to live at the end of one's gaze

as though it were the tip of an antenna

down here, the body stands for the past

which, rest its soul and all, is fetid and festering

after a short while, right, you sicken of anything

and so you go for walks

or you pace, give chase

to yourself

i'm not much for travel someone says

and you see me i'm dumbfounded

i say that's what separates us from the trees

and i return to my poem

trees are incapable of loving

because they don't feel this pain at their own presence

er their leaves are alive, maybe those do

but it's they who shake as though harnessed

Morning

Wake up at three p.m. Feel the departure of all sorts -- killers, waitresses, presidents and children. A grey-haired man with an earring makes eye contact as he leaves. They've all spent the night in there, hanging out, poking around. You want them to tell you that they approve, that you'd make a fine leader of men, that you won't be subject to any of their terrible inquisitions, but they leave without a word.

Moment or minute

'How can any particular compare,'

said a saint who had loved you

and moved on,

'to the great Everything? I close my eyes and I feel it.'

Once, at our old apartment, 

you hit me in the balls without explanation. 

We both cried privately, absurdly. 

Years later I've found you where you're living in Lancaster.

We take places on your bare,

altar-like mattress. I kneel over you, exalting

in the inevitable

Moon-blue glow from tiny nightlight, window's

shape sliding over your belly as car

passes, your burning

skin. Divisions

in the sum of all things.

A penguin alone looks over the ice shelf and thinks about going for a swim

A light glows. It begins to flash. Explosion-implosion. It slows exploding, and in the void, a rock grows trees. Three historical eras -- Blue, Yellow, and Red -- go by, green and orange in between. Six years pass, ten seconds. An alarm rings. You move a muscle on your cheek. Someone gets up to leave. Time wants to stop but can't. It whimpers, allows itself a whimper, knowing it's hopeless. All feel a moment of déjà vu before time is whipped again and staggers on and the sun is hoisted up the sky.

Nature poem

The Santa Mannabo wind
that slams the leafy sidewalk like a big invisible boot;
the airborne seeds of silvermoss;
the Cassian candelabra trees in the wintry park,
upswept, like the fine hairs of a love triangle;
the lark-a-doo,
coming to rest outside my window;
the scarlet fritillary that shivers in the San Bonobo wind;
the lazy turtleduck;
the slizzgrass and autobush and upsoil;
the California reefer bug
strolling with the Hackensack rockworm --
folding coasts;
the still-green blubberfruit, slam-dancing in the iridescent light
of March;
the electro-leaf;
the racktard stophopper;
the Saint Bonerowner wind
tripping accidentally over a stump;
the underwear beetle waking from a nap;
the wrinklerat shaking his head slowly;
the swamp-man
and his four beautiful children;
Mother Nature humping a hill like a pillow;
the clown-faced ant baby;
Eutamias minimus biting the head off of Allocricetulus curtatus --
watching this through an X-ray machine;
the partybird and skeeptile;
the smug-ass loggers
flung into space by Stove Bonecus the Wind.