A Woman In Love

I sit at this coffee table like a ghost.
Listening in on strangers' sincere insights.
A child screams somewhere, but the constant clanks
Of porcelain mugs calms my silent self.

There are two women near me, who appear
from the corner of my eye, attractive.
One is in a new relationship,
fresh from a decade of a dead marriage.

She seems happy, truly, with that
sweet sickness of adoration.
Like this seems too good for her,
like she suspects that happiness will
one day eventually fold up and head to
the next carnival town.

Her ex-husband hit her once.
And she speaks of it almost with
affection. Love, it seems,
Love is a clenched fist.

Not Looking Good for Tess

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ‘Here!’ to body’s cry of ‘Where?’ till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a closer interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.


By chapter 5 of Tess, the noose is beginning to tighten around the precious neck. Falling In Love, not to be mistaken with Love, perhaps is only coincidental, only ironic and temperamental. We meet and disjoin, the tiny rivulets of our daily lives diverge, but how often we reflect upon these brief meetings and their possible contingency within our little schemes. How are we to know of our own possible Saviors? She has been fed the crimson fruit, her electric blood and crimson lips polluted by the "narcotic blue-haze" of Alec the tempter. Where is Nature to help her out? Why can Nature devise so many cruel twists of fate to lead her to his house all alone? So many intricacies, yet no help to fend off the wolves.

A Eulogy to Jude

Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can.

Well, the world isn't like the storybooks,
growing up is a slow-setting poison.
And in this dark kitchen the shelves never
Hold the room for what I need. Or want.

I keep the TV on because, like any child,
I'm scared of the dark. And silence. And loss.

I'm trying to be a good, little boy,
But the world demands I become a man.
Man who tries to carry pieces of home,
a blanket, a pillow, a wife, a love.

Loneliness is an aphrodisiac
That attracts only the lonely.

Here is my new home, I stand by the door.
I stake out my life, but darkly, obscure.

Her Little Hands

When I'm lonely sometimes,
Or when I feel scared,
I think of the little girl in love.

Sitting at her little schooldesk
With her mind fluttering over
Her life's little images.

A hand upon her hand,
His whisper in her ear,
His hot breath like a puppy dog's
Makes her hands sweat and the black asphalt spin.

She hunkers over her little desk
Reliving over and over her playground wedding.
She writes again, her first name, his last name,
Living out her tiny, precious future.

"I do" she says, "I do-do!"
The children laugh, and her husband-to-be
Stiffens his wet collar and leans closer.
She sees the dirt on his soft cheeks.
She dreams of kittens and soft, white linens.

And meanwhile the clouds darken in the sky,
the playground empties, the paper wedding dies,
And the children are nowhere to be found.
I'm still looking for the children out there.

His last name after her first name,
over and over,
her little hands in love.