22.
Body, Body, Body
(after reading Leòn Alberto Serret)
Two men kiss each other hard on the mouth.
No, the sun doesn’t blacken, nor the moon
turn to blood. The seas do not invade the land.
Forests remain calm as microbes clean the sand.
Two men, one older, the other younger, kiss.
They pull themselves together in an effort
to become one whole, to share their being.
These two do not cause husbands to fall out of
love with their wives. Children do not run amuck.
Two men, perhaps two older men, hold hands and
kiss. A kiss is not a gateway drug though it is
addictive. They are romantic in a loose embrace,
more alive together than apart. What has been taught
not to feel becomes sensitive again – lips touch
Two men, perhaps very young men, kiss passionately.
23 .
For the moment they forget the meanness of boyhood,
all the shallow lessons of sports, the platitudes.
It is enough that one runs callused fingers through
the other’s thick hair, and that the damp-warm scent
at the nape is subtle and pleasant.
Two men lead separate lives, strangers except for
this long deep kiss in an open door. Someone turns.
Someone sees them kissing and does not turn to stone.
Delete
"You were told not to say that."
It’s Not A Seed
It’s a peppercorn, small and white.
What did you think it was?
That not an ash – it’s salt.
No, it is an ash.
New Ways
I start off the day listening to the radio.
Everyday I learn about new ways to die.
I used to be easy to get out of bed.
Now I lay here wondering why.
24.
Tauroectomy
Open the bull and let the light out.
Bring me the song of a strong man.,
Bring me the song of a strong woman.
From the rivers of his blood
let the grape vines tangle.
He moves the Zodiac.
We, in massive boats, are trapped
between the shore and the storm.
Mother of the sun,
your sister moon
has me tripping in vacant lots.
Show me the bison.
Show me the buffalo.
25.
Sing & Sayin’s
Of An Ugly Mother
A dead flame
stays dead forever.
Smoke goes up
‘cause there’s no weather.
What’s apart
was never together.
Today’s the same
as any other.
A bad name’s
a mean brother.
A dead flame
hangs like a feather.
It’s just luck
like dry rivers.
sometimes a rain’s
hard as leather.
What’s all wrong
was never better.
O, bitter brain,
how sweet we suffer.
A dead flame
is no lovers.
And this refrain
repeats over, over. . .
Shattering Dishes
Could say it happened over the Milky Way.
There was that much of it
spilling into the lake.
26.
The crowd was mostly old
looking like mere reflections.
Easy to catch someone’s profile
out of the corner of an eye.
Creatures lean against glass bricks,
looking like new guards from the gulag.
Anyone who wants to be known
has adopted a foreign name.
There must be a way to dress.
The time is not too late, but still
is not too early.
How do the dogs know?
What does eighty minutes smell like?
There’s the wilderness out back.
Feet in the forest walk barely audible,
stepping carefully to avoid the snakes.
No mercy for the roly-poly.
As the night progresses
the crowd gets younger.
Looking East
In tree tops
patches of orange
shine through
leaves like autumn,
the last rays of t
he setting sun
from over the hills,
under the clouds,
catch in cicadas song.
Will the white moon rise?
Will it be alive like a pearl?
We look over the fire.
Birth: Variations #1-4
One
An old village woman coughs up yellow blood.
A bump and her face turns completely purple.
Under mountains of black cloud and smoke
the bony dog prowls farther down the water.
Such a mean old woman, she broke her big toe.
She raced the lightening to shelter and tripped.
A bird dies and falls out of the tree behind us.
It falls like a leaf except it lands all feathery.
The wine-water lake reflects a wire-thin moon.
In this place the corners darken first.
One star slants over a distant smoke stack.
We’re on a kind of bus without any tickets.
Mary finds this disturbing. She’s very afraid.
I can’t find the can opener or the candles.
We chew on a couple of bullion cubes and rope.
Mary says maybe we could steal an old car.
I tell her there are things more dangerous
than this war.
Two
I remember the blind man who carried a gun.
I remember an angel shaped like a flame.
Mary tells me she can feel the baby kneel.
We will be famous parents among the dead.
We live as if in an old romantic picture show.
The ghost of a toad nudges my foot.
I’ve got a knife and two good eyes.
I cut open a can of beans and section rope.
We watch as a plane lands on the highway.
Someone shoves out a bale of something.
It rolls into the ditch and brakes open.
The plane taxis a mile or so and takes off.
Mary says she wants to name the baby
"Benny" after the goddess of even Earth.
Three
A beautiful fog rolls up to the hills.
I too am an angel – I have an angel’s ass.
We stop at a burnt house with rust lights.
The cold mud splashes up to our knees.
A pain hits me like pokers in my eyes.
I must dream of hot buttered windows
and a lonely old beer by the estuary.
Oh, there the night was always full.
Mary sits in a broken polyvinyl chair.
Four
First we have sex until our knees bleed.
This is the only weapon we have against fatigue.
Mary looks sweet and older than she says.
She says sex is the only way to mask the pain.
The enemy passes within shouting distance.
We return the wave and talk quietly.
Our money is wrong for this side of the river.
Unusual winter rains and quakes,
a mudslide took our village, all but us.
The old woman looks at her radish
as if it were the answer and she had
forgotten, couldn’t remember the question.
Everyone believes there’s a tunnel.
Some say it leads back to the other side.
There is no way to be sure of his.
No one knows where, or if there’s a path.
I push against a tree and spit on a dead fly.
Mary groans so very softly. She says it all.
The dark taste bad. It tastes like spent shells.
I must save the rest of this pencil.