Tortoises

For all these words have I
                           not spoken,

And for one full summer I let all my hair grow out of my skin;
                              learned to look for things, lost or never had,
                                             to vent stuff you don't vent in poesy,
                                             to grab a bottle by the neck,
                                             to sleep, perchance to dream;

People of the strange cities and stranger skies,
like lightning, crack open my skull. Woe is me:
I've grown a skull around my skull, a heart within my heart,
                                                                      a skin under my skin.

For now I'm too far to be heard, 

                                            I speak,

And yes there were days when all I needed
was a spoon and some hunger
or any excuse to touch your fingers really
                                                          --but that's for another night,
                                                             a completely different story,

Which you only know the half of
Which is why I need to tell you about it.

The Portrait of a Young Man as Himself

And what is Love? -- It is a doll dress'd up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, and so goes on
Yawning and doating a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a pearl tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Till Cleopatra lives at Number Seven,
And Anthony resides in Brunswick Square.
                                                 - John Keats

All the rivers of this world
exist for two reasons: to give back our faces
                                                       in motion
and to cool away the disparity
between what we expect humans to be
and what we are as human beings.
There is no cave. There are no shadow images.
There is no glory of seeing the sun for the first time,
but only pure blindness -- our eyes grew voracious
and schlepped all the sun had to give into
the retina -- the truth is not hidden:
The truth had been with us since the garden,
yet we chose to be so close to it; we chose
to hold Truth a separate entity, and not to eat from it.
We locked ourselves in the soft cages
and gulped down the keys. We are the captors.
We forged Truth into an abstract notion --
an idea impossible to grasp in its entirety;
something that occurs to us whenever
the sun shows itself between two buildings,
or the cards we were dealt with frozen features
echo the inside of our faces --
There is no pursuit of truth. We sit across
the table from It, and that which fixes
us to the other side of the table, that which
we've eaten from, sealed our throats
and our gazes: an omerta of sewn steel.

Listen: can you hear it breathing; that something
about the waves dancing agleam, that
breeze that takes you back to the
cornfields and Spanish moss trees of home,
that hum inherent in everything in motion
in the universe, and the universe itself?

Take my hand, and let us return
to the mountains like the first children of God,
move up up up and bathe
under the Aegean winter sun
while we can still see the birds
flying and wincing above us
like the corners of the storm the come.

Falling In Love, #4

Blue Nude, Henri Matisse, 1952, oil on canvas

The winter slowly melts on the city.

I saw a kingfisher today, maybe for
the first time in my life, and I don't
know which type yet, maybe Alcedo
atthis, but I know it was beautiful,
and trust me I know beautiful when I see it
I know how words are forgotten
                       questions abandoned
                            worlds disregarded
I know how the excitement builds in;

that time you thought you'd pass
the sea all alone, but a friend finds
you out of nowhere, or maybe the
kingfisher, or why not both? And
you think of who's left and what's left
behind, of nights spent thinking on
being thought back, of the mother
that fed first from her stomach and
then fed on. I know how badly I want you
to go to a bakery with me, or to a Pâtisserie
(but do you like French? the stuck up,
the erotic?) or to some other place at the
other end of the world and so on and
so forth. A barbershop would work -- I'd
get a haircut, and you'd wait sitting behind
on sticky leather sofas reading some
magazine, and I'd glance quickly shyly: your face
on a barbershop mirror, and you'd look too,
and our eyes would meet, and then
our smiles, and then your blush, and then
the barber asks how is it? beautiful.

For now, I am content to watch
the cold cracking through the crevices in
frosted windows and through your skin, you
jabbing your chin to the glorious breastbone
and the kingfisher seeking a chimney to
                                                          nestle by.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Her Lips

The Kiss, Edvard Munch, 1897, oil on canvas

The Kiss, Edvard Munch, 1897, oil on canvas

An ode for the infinite space between

"making love and love made"

I

Of all the things that move on Earth,

and of Earth itself, the only two that         

clung

were her lips.

II

As a body leaning

into another is a sin,

and as the sin is an

occasion of celebration,

if the blood flows to her lips.

III

Her lips, too, fall

yet it’s the common

courtesy of muses.

IV

(Except for maybe when

the 21^st century machinery is too tired

to endure the metallic cry

and our souls like sleek industrial cogs

desire to go up & up & up

o how? how would they know?

of heaven’s rosy and timid gates?)

V

The universe revolves nonetheless,

and with it, us, and with us, our gazes,

and our gazes around her lips.

VI

entangled

he says

entangled to the blood

are the lips

and the hands

and entangled must be

the lips and the hands

too

her lips untangle.

VII

I am of many minds,

yet all seem to flee the brain:

her lips like time.

VIII

Dusk in Canaan,

the dust not yet settled,

my heart:

the oracle of a love

that never yet was

but surely will be.

IX

There are earthlier things

like the stuff that moves

in the hunter’s hands

and breathes warmly;

her lips the beast stripped

of the fur and the fury,

her hips alike.

X

We fall

amidst the leaves of fall,

and cling together: Sun

lights up her lips, the color

that fall leaves have.

XI

Her lips were childbirth,

mortality, endless veins,

the circle of life, the inverted

pyramid of priorities, and

among many other things

herald of something eternal

like the bird that sings the spring.

XII

The spring blooms, and with it

terrible lovers! Terrible lovers

everywhere! Under the trees!

In reflections! Between minds!

Terrible lovers! Her lips alive

through the seasons, except for

maybe the harsh winter that

cracks it open. In those cracks,

terrible lovers! What good

is a lover not terrified?

XIII

And on the eighth day,

they created the dimples,

the smile, the red and the white

and the everything in between

the cheeks, and fields of rye

the color of her hair and the sea

and everything else.

Alternative Perspectives on Blackbirds

XIV

The road curling into
a rosy pastel horizon;
blackbird above,
quest forever strayed.

XV

As a man leaning out
from another is a sin,
and as the sin is an
occasion of celebration,
if blackbird's by the windowsill.

XVI

A wind broke out
from morn to eve,
from eve to morn;
yet with the leaves torn
I heard only flaps.

XVII

Giraffes jumped onto one another,
monkeys with fuss and panthers with
a massacre -- lions were cannibals,
yet the blackbird needed not the ark.

XVIII

For those of us who still read:
Beyond the twenty mountains
which did not move today
moved a blackbird.

XIX

As she decides for the third time,
As the clocks point to the voyage,
As the road is still worn at places,
As the occult still emancipates fear:
She refuses to pick partners --
for there'll always be the blackbird.

XXI

When the day is cold and the night gets colder,
When you know that you'd rather silently grow older,
Toots the blackbird: The words you always hear
"Grass grows green.": a moment away from the bier.

XXII

Blackbird, too, falls
yet 'tis the common
courtesy of muses.

XXIII

Your hair and eyes are
better off not existing,
for it allures all the gaze away
from the blackbird.

And the blackbird is jealous.

XXIV

To crown the perception with thought:
Human acuity.
To tread into dewy winter air, unspotted:
Blackbird promiscuity.

XXV

A universe of him is still a universe.
A universe of her is still a universe.
A universe of them is still a universe.

A universe with them and the blackbird:
that just might lie somewhere farther.

XXVI

entangled
he says
entangled to the blood
are the lips
and the hands

and entangled must be
the lips and the hands
too

falls a blackbird
unentangled.

XXVII

A sound far away
amid two oceans:
Asks of the daily routine --

what good are routines
when the blackbird sings
whenever he wishes?

XXVIII

Here's a problem
blackbird never had:

what would
adam and eve do
if genitals didn't fit?

XXXIX

For we still rejoice
a good story under the sycamores,
dozed off by the midday sun;
and for the song of the blackbird
is still a story worth hearing

we live.

XXX

A busy spring afternoon
by the sea -- no glare,
no fire and no flare:

blackbird winds by the city:
oracle of a love that
never yet was
but sure will be.

The Delicate Interior of the Everyman's Mind

like clocks that need readjustment
yet are too good to drop off
into a trash bin right outside a mall
where the wrappers of yesterday's burgers lie

like clocks that wait until the night is heavy
heavier than your eyelids
and acts at the deepest point of your dream
to not show the correct time anymore

or like that one clock
whose second hand stops on the 57th twice

the boy now wants to be a poet
but oh lord cannot put two words three words together

you should have seen him
swirling on grass
as if tomorrow was granted
and today already past

you should have seen him
dreaming of talking over coffee and cigarettes
wondering if she also dreams
the tale everyone is so fond of telling

the one that where you were supposed to be together
into and after death
like stars that refuse to fall from the ever-growing space

or that one tale that they keep to themselves
hushed mute like a stopped clock
that men, like wrappers end up
with stubs of cigarettes, the thought of smoke
and the cold remains in the cup

you should have seen her
translucent like a greasy wrapper
slowly planning her fall

What the Telegram Said

Now when the days pass around

the corners of stars behind clouds

and the sun levels outs its corners

to make the message more clear

I remember that I've forgotten names

Memory is lucid: faces without names

names without faces, enemies, loves

and what I really meant when I swore

to Edna that her infatuations were

safe enough to hold on while crossing

to death. Prayers are feeble under light

whether the light of Hell or the light of

the levelled-out Sun, and disappointments

are easier with every lonely second in bed. 

But are resurrected ambitions vivid as were

the hopes of salvation of love and do

we forget what we've sworn or prayed

for every time we look into the sun

as does Edna with hers?