Infanta

Spain is the land of flat red earth.

She points herself at you at dinner after a glass of red wine.

She stinks after love but you can only bathe her with questions.

Ask the darkness, the fur of her brow and wrist, her navel delicately inscribed.

A dream from the land where dreams are written in unholy wine.

With such severity has she parted her hair.

She is afraid of her father.

The sadness of music and drinks.

But the happiness inside that sadness too.

Not much is better than tears cried in happiness. 

Even the idea of tears.

Even the memory of tears.

Even just one drink.

But never just the idea of a drink.

Some things are not that happy.

Conversation

How do I leave?  You go out the front door.

My feet don’t work.  Take the boat,

Water is always moving.  I am afraid

Of drowning.  We all are.  It’s been years

Since I swam, back at the beach 
That summer.  You’ve returned.  Yes,

But I never went out that far again.  But 
You stole something, didn’t you? Yes.

That means you have to leave.

An old thing spoke to me.

Its words had followed it to the end

Faithful beyond death, 

Bound by something I did not understand.  

The old thing was lonely and vain, 

And asked only to be admired 

Now at the end of its time.

I could not oblige and so it died

Dissatisfied and unfulfilled.

I was godlike at that moment, Divine

And deadly insistent in what was mine to give

And who should live and who would not

For Love was in my hands 

A bloody knot that I had tied

Considering those ridiculous wishes 

That were granted at my birth 

And upon living

Subsequently denied.

There there

Real responsibilities replace the eruptive excitement

And it is all downhill from there.

A man carries a bag and suddenly empires fade 

As if they had never been there.

A visit to a familiar place is dissapointing

And you wonder why you ever went there.

You hear a sound and it is your mother calling

And it is all downhill from there.

I am condemned just as you are

And so we find ourselves together

Reading books and drinking wine

Dying of a good time in a city we love.

But there is no city, and no you and I,

Just a set of pictures moving in the mind

To remind us of the lies we offered

A long time ago, when we were blind by choice

Instead of force, like now and like tomorrow.