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.

Reaping and Sowing

And then she said,
"Love me please,
please love me please,
or these lonely days
won't ever leave."

And I replied,
"I love you so!
Oh I love you so!
But this kinda love
from lonely grows!"

My Better Half

Sometimes during the night
When I wake up lost in that limbo
Between cognizance and the purgatory of sleep,
I see out of the corner of my half-closed eyes
My own leering wickedness.

Undulating in some type of rhythmic lurch,
He throbs like some primordial artery
Always in access of
the ancient deposits
of shadows lost in the cold
fractures of consciousness.

Slithering in periphery
He—I—seduces with gnarled
Fingertips of mirror-like obsidian
The Fetus of memory trembles
Inside its dismal shell.

Quick! I feel his head tilt
And the eyes like drunken nebulas
Tumbling gently in the frost of the night
That drapes upon us as he sings:

“Merry lost child! So far from the green path!
How many lives you have trampled upon!
Your happiness the solemn fruit,
The red liquor drenched across
Your arduous trek—how many children
Have you transformed to lonely
Women and men? So quickly
You grabbed her neck and felt the power
Surge through your arm the sabre.
Know this, child—before you squeezed,
She could have sworn in the midst of that
Inferno, that blur of rage and shame,
That hairs sprang up on your coarse neck,
And fangs of venom and white white love
Corrupted your sweet sweet smile.”

And before I turn away from
My manic, leering self,
Before I rid myself of guilt and agony,
Before I dream easy,
My loving wickedness, My
Better Half,
Whispers so sweetly
To the night (our cool sweetheart):

“You love so much child, you
Gon’ be the death of someone!”

Cool Like Blue

To see you beneath the lights and shadows
Dancing slow, dancing low, with a rhythm
Stirring, from the heave of your hard, cool hips
Like water throbbing softly.
Slow and low, your ebb and flow,
your hips in the light
Wet like snow.

And the sax player tilts his head
And sways his hips
And my sweat runs cool like blue.

To see you turn your back into light,
your hair wet and awry, strands of silver
Dancing beneath the haze and twilight,
like wild grass in the wind.
Slow and low, your ebb and flow,
I move to you
under lights that glow.

And the club members whisper,
And your hips quiver,
And my sweat runs cool like blue.

And to see you so close now, to feel you
Urge your cool heat, your flushed lips
Pushing soft, hushed air on my damp neck,
Like the smolder of whispering coals.
Slow and low, your ebb and flow,
I close my eyes
to feel you slow.

And a cool smoke trembles
in the air wet like sweat,
A sweat that runs cool like blue.

Seasick

It was our third date after the first break-up.
A weary crossroad, a painful juncture of
Comfort and awkwardness like re-blooming adolescence.
I wasn’t afraid to kiss you or tell old stories,
Intimate, erotic, silly, all were fair game.
But my skin felt like it was moving all over
And I couldn’t sit still or look too long
At the soft spots on your neck that often
Tasted of sweat and yes, of love.

I was trying to be better in the formal sense,
by going out on a dinner date.
But it’s so hard to be formal when your
skin won’t stand still and the little money you have
Is warm and wet from the sweat on your palms.
And No-one would formally take you to eat
Half-off seafood at the buffet underneath
Those ugly neon-lights shivering in the autumn air.
“No-one! is taking you out to eat. It is I, No-one!”

We sat and ate and talked and ate and I naturally
Ate too much and asked too many questions,
Threatened by greasy silence
(No-one! No-one!)
And the shivering of the neon-lights outside.
Finally, I paid and we left to return home
To return home, ah, so long now!

And out in the parking lot your face turned
Like a green maelstrom
And it would have been funny to see you
Get so sick in public if
I didn’t get sick as well.
Two heads lunging
On an asphalt ocean with crisp air
Kissing the sweat on our skin.

I drove us home and straight into bed
A place of familiarity but now distanced
by the ebb and flow of time and of lurching emotions.
Our mutual sickness overcame it all, however,
And for once, at last, we lied together
On the sweaty pillow next to the bucket.
At times we switched in intervals to vomit
Painfully, childishly, lovingly
Into the bucket next to the bed.

The distance was forfeited briefly
Overtaken by weakness and the need,
For once, to be taken care of.


I stroked your hair while you shivered
And I shivered from stroking your hair.
At times I thought no time had passed
(I, No-one!)
And at other times, it felt like years.
Years that I had struggled through this story
And that story, this bed and that one,
One island to the next, wandering,
Wondering if you were still looking to sea.
And in our mutual sickness, we have found each other.
All it took was bad-seafood to see you
Here again, next to someone,
No-one.

A Ghost

Those who don’t believe in ghosts must not have dreams. Ghosts visit us with stories beyond the horizon where the light cuts abruptly to dark. That axis is the land of dreams, and ghosts await us there. Last night I saw a ghost. My dog returned to me and to home. In my dream, he stood there in the garage with dirt caked over his white and shivering body. He stood there like he always did when he was ready to come inside and be warmed and loved. Our love was the hearth to his little heart, and I’m sure it was beating still and rapidly in my dream when he found it fitting to finally pay me a visit. The soil caked over his shivering legs. His eyes looking at mine as if to say, I am home again. His head turned in that quizzical canine way, as if to say, I have returned from where you buried me beneath the dirt and the soil and the twilight and the shadows. And in my dream I saw his shivering body quiver to be loved again, to come inside from the dirt and the earth and return into the beating hearth of the home. His shivering legs quaking in the quietness of the air and the dust. Not cold. No, he was not cold. Only relieved to return home. Back inside and away from the musty soil and the lingering darkness and the stillness of my dream’s periphery. He wanted inside to be warmed by the beating of hearts. Hearts that missed his presence, that could only warm themselves by replacing his absence with soil and flowers beneath the shadows of trees in the dark. And I was scared to let him in, not because of his presence or the soil (which could never get inside anyways, because to get inside it would have to first reach the heart and that is always protected by the threshold of warmth and the hearth) but because I knew my father would shiver there beneath the trees and the shadows. But here, in the softness of my dream my dog had tried to come home again. And I don’t know how long or how far he wandered in the shadowlands of other dreams to return here. Despite the warmth of the collective hearts beating beneath the trees, I shivered and with this shiver I heard the trees whispering to the shadows and the children behind the trees making these shadows. I shivered thinking him wandering softly underneath the horizon where the darkness coalesces with the soil and the shadows. I only know that he followed the timbre of our hearts beating against the twilight. He followed the rippling dust as it shivered in the air, all from the pulse of our hearts there in the shadows. And I am ashamed that I was scared to let him in I only wanted to clean the soil off so that it could not come closer to the heart. Clean the soil and the dust and the silk of the shadows. I wanted to say that I’m sorry he had to travel so far just to find me beneath the shivering trees in my dream. . I wanted to say that I’m sorry that I was scared to go out there in the shadows and search for you. I’m sorry that I cannot explain the shivering or the loss or the twilight. I miss you, and I’m sorry I cannot retrieve from the soil and the dusk.

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.

For When You Wake Up Screaming

Dreams! How oddly you clot in my soft mind.
Midnight gypsies travelling bed to bed
And spinning silk and singing soft soft songs.
Lay me down to sleep, if you pretty please
And tell me tales of men who once were boys
Who harbored their anchors in foreign ports
And cowered from wolves In swarthy forests.

Dreams! How you gleam
Like moonlight over water.

Well?

Well the sun came out today
and a young couple in love got married.
A family sat in the park
and blew bubbles across the sweet grass.

What I'm trying to say is
Sometimes happiness can seem so so sad.

and we may

When I think how little
I've seen the sun rise
I feel ashamed.

and we may remember

A gift is given every morning
when colors remember the
possibilities of color.

and we may remember

There is something ghostly
in watching a blue dawn melt
into spring flush into tomorrow.

and we may remember
why morning doves mourn

Wouldn't it ease your day
To start one day
watching the sun rise
Today?

A Night Out

What thoughts does she have
as she's carried off by
her clan, her head
drooping and and tears falling
silently onto the shattered pavement?

What thoughts does she have
as her hair falls out of fashion
And clots chaotically like a broken halo
Around her fallen forehead?

Does she fear the wolves
that gather on the hillside?
That gather round her bedroom door?

Slobbering, pawing the light beneath the door,
The wolves that wait for the moon to give up
And die in shame at the way the world is.