A Disagreement

And oh, he said, what would tonight be without moon,
he said, with the sway and the step of winter's wind.
And oh, he said, moonbaby wouldn't shine like music,
he said, without moon melody to carry her through.

But oh oh, she said, ain't no moon worth its sweet shine,
she said, without the volume and purr of wet oil night.
Oh oh, she said, the moons in my eyes wouldn't shine like music,
she said, without midnight and mascara to carry us through.

The Rake's Lament

Remember the passion of the ankle,
Blanched and supple like glistening wet milk
Left shimmering, under morning sweetlight,
While the pasture girls sing under hay lofts.

How the rake’s impetuous mouth must have
Watered, tantalized by the odor and
fleshy rind of that white pear’s sashay as
it hummed upon the wooden portico.

There is something yet erotic about
Waiting at front doors, beneath snow and rain.

The carnivorous rapture of ankles
has dissipated across bodies of
young pasture girls who have forgotten the
dance because they have forgotten the song.

Just what could her moonskin say about love?
See it engender the genuflection.
Her feet the altar and the cross, the praise
To you—my sweet!—to you I kneel.

Midnight Snack

grandaddy’s tummy
would rumble
when i sat
on his lap

he and i
i think on it
were just too
big for that
brown recliner

his tummy would
rumble when
grandma made french
toast before bed

bed i got
with grandma and
granddaddy
one night when
i could not sleep.

i saw in
the night
her shining
white bra strap

the night
when grandaddy
woke
to my tummy
rumbling

A Storm at Night

That night the young man opened the window
as the storm slid across the velvet mountains.
The sweat of summer air flushed his turbid face
Like women's breath at a drunken party,
warm and sour, the violet effluvia
leaving him regretful, uxorious.

June’s solstice lingered in his home with some
clandestine odor of verdancy—gleaned
from the crepuscular whispers of trees;
Silly ladies gossiping languidly.
The light of June hyper-ventilated
Around his dingy lamp, moth-like, love-like.

The young man gazed into the buxom air,
Seduced by some already-begun dream.
Silver raindrops shimmered softly in the
husky honeyed drip of Virginian air.
While storm-haze perfumed across the mountains,
A cascade like dreams on blue-dark mountains.

And there in the darkness while the twilight
shivered beneath trees that held the secret,
The young man caroused within the fecund air
and pooled the water and the haze against him.
Sweat of storm like fragile adultery,
the roiling night kissed him, and was soon gone.

The Lycanthrope

Then the wild child spoke, always
In an eager ambush, the proselyte!
The voice that shrugs shoulders and
Galvanizes the stagnant air past
Redemption or prophecy, past
Any reduction to time; no, just the desperate
Will to create the desultory bliss of (now!)
Tonight, here, (now!) again, always (now!).

The wild child who bristled on the neck
When the moon turned full, bristled with
Urgency and fever and the furious will
To exhume the evanescence of tonight
(now!) with those that longed to jazz and howl
Beneath the fragrant creamy moonlight.
The wild child! May he never know
The inert yet ceaseless accumulation of
These wild nights.

Two Horizons

In a summer of ennui and youth
One glimpse remains, a lingering still-frame
Murky in the haze of its own languor.

In that strange hour of husky sweet dawn
When the sunlight and starlight entangle,
Quietly I watched you under bed sheets.

Your hips the white mountains of cool satin
Your silver sensation like snow soothed me.
In summer sweat I let myself shiver.

Your wet hair blossomed like some strange flower
Upon the still shores of our crisp pillow.
I buried my eyes against your wet neck.

When you turned the horizon unfolded
Briefly, into milky pools of white sighs.
But the hills slowly tumbled back again.

Could I leave you there in the blushing dawn?
The morning air blanketing you, melting
Your rolling curves? In another day I will.

But as sunlight licked the blue hills outside
I traced my finger on your quiet peaks.
The two horizons blurred in starry sleep.

What the Water Sang

Your hands the calm hands of some tribal Chief,
leathery with faint fumes of violet smoke.
Carved from the old stories of aspen trees.
Your hands, somehow so soft in their coarseness.

Your hands submerged me into the current,
My tears enflamed the vigorous pool.
You let the water cleanse me in your hands.
There in the water you taught me to sing.

There in the current’s hush you laced into
my mute volition the dreams of water—
murmurs among the rocks, the sweet pool!—
“Coalesce to the mermaid’s elegy.”

In water we bore our love together,
Your hands trembled like the kingfisher’s wings.