zz

 
If I were a great astronaut
sailing celestial seas
Or a tall and sinewed Tarzan,
or even Hercules,
You could simply waltz back in,
Doing as you please -
And I, at your mercy again,
Would fall down to my knees.
 

 

Long days of drought
until I had your absence bottled

and now I shiver
in my crooning majesty

inescapably alive to its scent.

Aware in the darker times
of your brutal hands

and my infant mouth
slurping, gagged, erased -

your absence remains,
beast-like, humming, there.

 

viut vut

I prize the late night crackle
of your voice on the telephone
without truly wanting you
but needing your speech at midnight.

I imagine you. My logic impeached
by the rattles of my heart
which flutters young, restless,
I have swam your shallow waters.

*

Somebody is upset. Reckless,
as a wrecking ball I hover
against the vanity cabinet
ready to spit my sympathies.

Yet I draw back, timid.
I am aware of my arrogance
in comparing my miserable trials
to her magnificent break-up.

££

 

There's no romance in his
logic. I've little time for
dialogue with bubbling hormones.
I barely have the patience
for empty rooms, for red cars
hungry in the night.

Science blinds him, he is
not an architect. I am
the anonymous champion in his
atheist arms.

In the absence of any faith
he has found me sucking
on my cigarettes, and thought,
"Yes, this'll do."

Resistant to any compass,
I explode under his geography.
My architecture is based
in his palms: empty rooms,
thieves, vandals, arson,
the struggle of a kiss.

Science blinds him, he is
not a sculptor. I remain
anonymous, championed in his
discoveries, his words.

My brain is immobile, scowls:
eight years old, I was a bucket.
Postcards flicker in the breeze,
he shuts the window.

"Poetry is desire, is a secret
tied up with adverbs," he says,
lighting my seventh cigarette.
"A eulogy, a smell, a glimpse."
Smoking and silent, I wait,
and bend to taste his thigh.

I have blinded him, he is
not a scientist. Held here
between my legs, unmoving,
his body is already a skeleton.

I exit the scene,
unable to talk in tongues,
unable to tie my shoelaces.
He remains, laced up in his logic.