Sundays, you know

 

During the seventh day dawn

I aim, crave, I fancy–

During listless smudgy Sunday mornings

For your hands to

languidly, with some olympic purpose

let the riostat run high and sling some heart fodder

(petulant, posey, tigers and frost)

on my softer shoulder,

but only a little- as Sundays you know, go more slow

 

I have no big words for the want.

It’s a warmth somewhere between the lower back and the cliff

Sleepy boy clothes

Some ray, some sun-shot, some record scratch and a bottle top promise

to hold the ribs, teeth, and thighs with certainty

on Sundays

to with patience observe

the way we become

the way we are

(for historical and scientific purposes)

as we observe the learning of

the unfurling of

the dots we connect as

hands grasp the meatier parts

books slide in shelves

and gasps become language

in the watchful aurora glare.

 

Smart Plum

triple beats

grasping stolen stillness

in quiet, I study your hand:

considerable, grand- with spacious reach

seizing language like lunch

curly, coltish, sublime and saporous,

in quiet, I study your jaw

the sideways eye that follows

the forehead forward, fallen,

quenched, and satisfied

by a subtle sonnet.

In quiet, I study your spirit.

Gordian and elaborate, made of sea water and a daughter’s nose

a balance over a tall height,

a mosaic motley of ambrosial sentiments

you, a modern Daedalus,

me, a smart Plum,

smattered with freckles, replete with

elemental fascination, soft pining

wishing for some touch,

wanting more time, or just

another day to write you a poem

another like this

a simple message

from a smart plum.

 

Pearls and All

It was thirty days

and the bludgeoning tide took them

soldiers of all heights, weights

varying degrees of manhood

some completely buried

some with gentle wives

Some with ghosts walking door to door

talking of love, light, gentler things

 

It was all strange

 

The way they decayed in the bare light stripped them of all humor, memory

those mouths in frozen fear forever

thinking the thoughts that would

categorize them for all days.

 

I knew one, one day.

He listened to Joy Division and talked

of how Morrissey was a depressed fuck.

How he probably never enjoyed a thing. Even touching a girl in privat-er parts.

We watched a fiber optic flower for the night,

 

sneaking in

stolen corridors of forlorn

Florida Houses, not yet sold.

(This would determine our juvenile record, you see)

We would forever be remembered by these rebellious acts.

By this fire,

and that theft. We fucking loved

being us.

 

But now sweet- we remember you by the heat and decay

the way you smelled after three days

mouth wider than the Joker,

showing teeth for the enemy

as you both stare into the dark rooms.

The dark rooms We never arrived at simultaneously-

The ones that called your name on any Winter day.

You shouted, dear one.

You shouted without audience.

Funny that,

we dressed for the occasion, you and I.

 

Pearls and all.

 

Dress Up

There are a lists of requests

which might sway the unseasoned–

the tireless cautionary ones– from

quick approach

the thought of dress up, the tick of a impatient dream clock

caesarean  ambition, jazz records, the evening wake and walk.

surges of disquisitive early-morning play.

 

perhaps it would be the penumbras

that lovingly sit in the most hazel portions

of each eye that would glance in each several moment.

 

Each has a story one must be willing to weather.

 

(Caveat: I’m far more enticed by being quieted by yours.)

Tell me your stories when I wear your clothes

and call you pretty

and take tasteless pictures of sunsets

while we swim in Gin.

Tell me on a Sunday, and don’t wish me any paler.

Wish me sunk in the sight of you.

 

There is room.

Of that, now, I am sure.

 

 

Tue 222

This morning I gave up bewilderment.

Took new snow in bare hands, wiped clean.

Skyward gazing, seeing the brown of morning eyes.

 

It has been four hundred years.

Since in the histrionic ante meridiem

You, compunctious , penitent, shame faced

Sold me the snake oil

that gave salve for the emboldened heart

acclimatized my expectation

resurgence of disquiet

I held my heart in my hand and ate of it

(creature in a desert, naked, bestial)

 

One can’t help but remember, though

On a sweet January day

that concave part

beside the basket of ribs–the alabaster crevasse

(You showed it me)

perhaps where you kept your wishes and desires

Your conjecture

Your bliss

Your ecstatic posturing, feral

your violence and ignominy,

the sound of your voice in deep midnights.

 

Or better yet, the names and numbers of the snowflakes that would fall

in eulogy

the day you walked away.

 

It’s all so dramatic, she said.

The Whole lot.

Something comes of nothing and then, bother, bother

the whole place erupts in glamour. Clamour

erupts in the sunshine, the moonshine, the deep seated egress

-the bible of those two.

Oh, those volumes spoken in glances were so very tiresome

for two as timid as trees, windless.

 

It’s all so ecstatic, she said

The sole shot

Something comes of nothing and then, Farther, farther

The whole grace disrupts in armor, stammer

disrupts sin, confine, consign, maligning sleep cheated confession

-the bible of those two

No, shows volumes long broken in chances were so very dire, mums

the word, for two as livid as leaves, flightless

 

It’s all so climactic, she said

The blood clot.

That effortless bruise, the reminder of all that was, is– holy.

The prayer in tongues older than sound

more revealing than sight,

larger than the space a girl occupies

achromic, melancholy,

 

naming the planets, each for a sigh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

447

Buffeted by the roar

they run sidelong to the raw spot

the ice under Sunday feet tempts the fall

but holding steady they

look the anti-hero in the eyes

each.              several.            pore.

They know the smell of the forearm, the navel, the mouth

an inch is not given

but a subtle sigh

reminds them

of the field

they hold in protest

between lovers bodies

the magnetic one, the mine one, the playing one–

(the history older than light or sound, where language began, where heat was discovered and gills grew. Where breath was sucked first)

–that binds the space they occupy.

Jaws hold tight, fists secure in woolen pockets, they are WINNING. Holding tight. Not an inch. Not one.

The crafty wind bellows too hard, though.

It pushes, cracks the moment, shoves

headlong, laughs in the wash of  tired

restraint.

They fall suddenly, with clamorous equivocation, gravid with stones

(the rain, a comedic metronome)

the inevitable rejoinder

into the puzzle pieces they unwillingly are, laggard

as they close ferocious,

and with premeditated lamentation

masticating mouths the substance of fire.

the slightest silk,

the most meager of archangels,

they return to that.

A parley, they knew. They’ve known.

But the comfort was all,

that Sunday.

 

 

Saturday, 2:07

Sometimes in drifts

Battalions, then other times

(What DOES it mean to PERCH in the soul?)

Tying that knot twenty times

(each fifth grader knew exactly the nature of hope)

I counted.

Sadness is the great mathematician.

after door’s click my eyes closed

the cliche in me wanted to remember the night past when

we tight in rose hip fist of limbs pining exhausted ending ate the rest of us alive,

then some eggs.

To will breath is

too overwhelming, now.

Hum of refrigerator, deafening

So sadness and I, we count the white lights

circling the tree

covered in feathers (sings the tune without)

backs of cut up greeting cards

(the words)

I do not think I will,

(she said)

I think, perhaps, (she said)

I am too tired to do this more.

But (she said)

The curve of your waist is so lovely, more petite and paint-worthy

Than that of the soldier, the scholar.

Perhaps,(she warned)

I never should have learned the line of it.

Perhaps (she recanted) it is best a part

of the sweetness you showed me once

On a boat,

on a small journey

To some island

or some other where (she laughed)

most likely in my wildest fancies.

The ragged white of the back of her hand shivered, slight

she drew from memory the relief of the familiar

what is was to be sure of herself

closed her book

and

took one step.

One.