is broken only by his Violet, Green and Red, 1951, the vertical longer than the
horizontal, I like its looming presence.
Where has summer gone so heartlessly?
I slept two sleeps, and in between
After we make love and you are asleep,
I try to hear your breath without touch, spilling
out of a closed mouth, or maybe see it
in the stomach’s slow lift or the throat’s
I claim the cracked up
City—high slit skirt
I am happy, I think, then wonder
what happiness is –– a crow
taking dictation or a schooner
He has made a comeback in my bed
like the last act of a lounge set,
perhaps a lover from a past life, reminding me
we once had it all, or nothing at all,
Well, I see it very much as a performance.
Well, yeah, I had to learn publicly through trial and error.
Shutter as the bulls throat is slit I
take photographs of the hydrogen
o throne flare, when I O
It is they who have seen the fleeting side of us, the condom left like a snake run
over by a car. It is they who pick up the empty cans refilled with who knows what
near where wonder
wears inexpensive symptoms
size indicates age more so
Because your days were tethered
to oversized moths, or bleeding aluminum
awnings, we could only go so far
An economy of touches,
your hand, my hand
your hair, my hand
your swallowing throat,
my lips but no further.
Come spring, if we wanted it, there was work
at any one of those farms scattered like lawn darts
beyond the blacktop, sprawling mansions
It happens in a Hong Kong hooker hotel,
off Nathan Road. A round bed under mirrors,
girlie pinups gazing from candy-pink walls:
It was our age finally starting to show.
The airplanes overhead
filled with firecrackers and bone china
The battle is beneath us, internal
& spread all over the lawn, registered
in our nature to be the simplest seed
We were no longer in love. The sky, too, was beginning to show its wear. A silk lining could be seen through every slit in the dark green fabric.
Read MoreYou never claimed that God commissioned you to paint the screams of the animals being slaughtered. Your many persecutors whispered it in the street and outside your window.
Read MoreThe dancer every day striving for perfection but not
wanting to attain, be done, run out; yet wanting, if
the finish is the sun god. Every day, limb warm at bar
Read MoreThere was the car ride back from Arizona
or how the light just played like
a misfiring trombone that was the real stuff.