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.

Love Song

I want a flower

That is a part time dog

I’ll crack your skull

And share my dirt with you

We’ll stink together

We’ll eat off the floor

My nose where it oughtn’t

Hair in my teeth

Taste me when you’re dying

Die for me

I’ll pick up your bones

I’ll hold your hand while you sleep

Morning Glory (waking from a restless dream)

I am 

Leg and cock

Am hair

And snot

And teary eye

And

Weary heart

Left weary

By lie

And helpless want.

My breath

Is sour

From 

Mornings in your  wetted wood.

Who will 

Let Me

Re-draw

The dream

Reclaim

The good?

I have heard 

There’s a man like that

With word for face

And wish for hat

He stands by

The corner

Waiting

And unsure

While in the harbor

Dark craft 

Blow warnings 

Of their departure.

The day will be

A sunny one

Already the dream 

Is burned away.

Another day then

To discover

The man

And if he is my brother.

you live in me more than you live

such is the cost of loving

to never really know a thing

to know a thing too well, then nothing

I’m only awake in your dream 

at your mercy, nothing at all

Heaven is the hole I live in

your heart the hand of my Fall

I saw it down south

No first I saw it reflected north

I saw it down south

A single strike to the ground

Then I noticed for the first time the F-train

At its highest point

Down south at Ninth Street

From here, the ninth floor

Lightning lighting up the window

Reflected in the dirty window

Of the apartment where my brother died 

Then I sat in bed

More reflections looking north

Buildings in the way

Then it came

The rain

Like a train

From the south.

The pages are gray dreary dreamy.

My ideas not there at all.

Forgive me for not forgetting

            Shoes should be left in the hall.

The dream forgets its pages.

Ideally we are forgiven.

Dreary doll gray and all.

            Shoe is good to be living.

Every goddamn day

The same thing

Or else I go crazy:

Sit and eat

And think and drink

And try to remember what love is

Then

When it gets too hot

Sleep

And dream of love

Wake up hungry

For love

Work towards love

Until the sun sets

Then sup on love

Then wash my face

Turn out the light

And listen for love in the dark

I come to you fully formed

Not with word but with sword

Fully drawn

            In the image of a song

Ready-made

Free of wrong

Sum total of accepted law

Engorged

           

            With virtue and virtuosity

Witness: Precocity

And precious specimens of

Luminous love and atrocity

Fully aware

And fully present

Peasant

            And proud to smell of it.

The poet is a beautiful man

And appears in the mirror enthusiastically

But nothing changes

The image of a rotten inside

Perhaps it is a condition of Hope

To lack faith in the evident

           

Perhaps seeing damages the eye

Just as love breaks the heart

He is beautiful

Upon reflection

            But knows not to trust a second-hand light

image: John Dugdale

Ghost

Stubborn, but still a shadow

So still cold.

Face, self, shade, breath –

Fade with my delirious dream

But never gone

            For good.

Better to be misunderstood

Than stand

One foot

In a grave

            Mistake.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Define: Equal.

The fatigue that follows transgression?

The hunger after rage?

Humiliation and honesty?

And a poem,

            What law does it obey?

What follows

The opening created by a patient heart or mind

Whose only aim is stillness

And its own disappearance?

Left with nothing

I did,

Barefoot

Against the crashing edge of the world.

What is there that is not against my skin

Or in my eyes that I need?

The wind is confirmation

For the way of things:

Be nothing

That can’t be blown away.

The sand is strewn

With what was once wanted.

The gull

Is graceful scavenger,

The beach ours,

Together walking, bearing nothing.

She is hungry,

I am weightless,

On the edge of things,

            Collecting stones.

Beach Muse

Brown and ready to split you,

To fit you over

            My willful sunburn tickle

And to instill you with a trickle

            Of the vinegary sinful issue.

I know you are hungry and coy

But I like being a boy and you will learn

To play along.  After all it’s you

Who wrote this song - I only sing.

I only hammer out the ring of your design

And pour the wine that makes us both

            Go mad and dream,

Another potent stream to which we are both

Inclined, to love.

So drink and doze

While I  remove your clothes and gather close

            Your skin and hair and shine,

Bend and turn and learn your lines,

Both of us afraid and whisper -

            You are mine.

I write my letters in the sand

And right away they disappear

As expected

In a world

Where everything’s in working order.

Birds again in their insistent assertions

Unflagging advocates of facts

Hungry!  Terror!  I am!

What lesson then for the poet

Who doesn’t cotton to such naked squawks?

Retrain the ear perhaps and know

There’s nothing true or beautiful

That isn’t a matter of life and death.