Sparrows

 

Love bloomed

like the green buds of the wild weeds

under the overpass.

She lost the thread

when her ears filled with dialogue

written by devils and idiots.

Her love, in wool socks and field jacket,

lost his libido in the war

but phantom desire lives in his memory.

It isn't being coy

to hold back what you cannot save

from the black nest of loss.

Is it dusk or is she going blind?

The robot doctor holds no cures,

just needles with tiny mouths, enthroned.

Under the overpass

there is a constant buzz of insects

who live in old yogurt cups

Singing their serene song

like an engine before the crash

lifting lovers into each other's arms

somewhere beyond the wreck, beyond reason, 

at the edges of sodium lights and night frights--

two sparrows sold for a penny

where crows and cats spend all night calling.

_____________

for Word Garden Word List--The Beautiful Bureaucrat.

Music: The Doors Indian Summer

Inner Thoughts & Feelings

 I keep a skull inside my head

like a gravy boat for holidays

stuffed inside a china hutch,

a child sent to its room.

I talk to people at parties,

on the job, riding the bus,

as if I were immortal, the

Eternal Co-Worker, the Passenger Outside of Time.

I act as if there were no skull inside my head.

Is my affectation of skulllessness hideous?

What if I could remove the hidden skull,

would my hideousness become unbearable?

Would this poem float right out of my head?

I keep a skull inside my head

and smile as if I were on stage.

The hidden skull defines my shape,

but will shed me like an old jacket in the end.

Am I unbearable?

Was I unbearable before I said all of this, 

or only after?

So now you know, and I know about you as well.

Let's kiss now, don't be bashful

and don't retch. 

_________

Hiding

I am hiding where you can't see
me, down where the roots find 
winding ways and secret water,
daughter of both silence and 
random lightning strike.

I am hiding where you can't touch,
such a stand-offish lonely sort
aboard a black-winged bird
absurd and glorious in her particular 
vernacular of singular songs and caws
jackdaws and crows
know better than a professor at his books.

I am hiding in the red detritus
I might as soon worship as any
many-strictured deity, and yet,
getting it wrong, being found out--
shouting and giving myself away,
saying yes, I really do reduce to
blues in the afternoon sung by
my own traitor voice on these pages like a kiss.
__________

for Fussy Little Forms: Chained Rhyme.

 

Love Me

Love me.
Do it by post,
semaphore,
or even by foot messenger.
(By the way,
I've moved.)

Poor drowsy tippler,
so sad for so little reason.
There are only a smattering of countries.
Don't you see, we can hardly avoid crashing into one another
at some point
if only we stop looking.

Remember when I read you
the poem about the falconer?
The widening gyre, and all of that?
You'll remember Yeats better for the way I recited it
with my tongue in your ear
and my finger lightly circling with every syllable.

One day, not soon,
I'll be giving myself a manicure with a jack knife,
having forgotten all my softer ways, when your signal will arrive.
Send love, little sparrow.
Send me your heart with a red silk ribbon tied around it.
Time is pitiless, and I need a tangible token
to prove that someone, once, looked for me

Even though I'm the way I am--
just bones and scrimshaw
in a language that whales know, and sing, and go...
to find harpoons that only hit us when we rise.
________

for Get Listed at Real Toads.

Good News / Bad News

The good news: everything has been saved,
locked away for you:

real love, sunny skies, and on and on.

The bad news: you need a key to open the door.
You have to make the key yourself.
The lock is in a foreign language.
No interpreter.

The good news is, the world turns and turns.
Tides come in, then go out.
The equator is a ring on which hangs the key.
Already made, already spoken

by your own hand;
from your own mouth.
_____
  
For Susie's challenge at Real Toads.

Sunflowers

On an afternoon that chose us
like picked blooms from the roadside,
you wore jeans and a purple shirt.

You did this to make me mad as the moon to get them off you,
so that your skin could preach gospel to me
smooth as a Gypsy barker.

Afternoon light came through the sectioned windows,
as you put pasque flowers on the turntable
and I poured last year's red maple leaves from a wine bottle.

The shirt, the jeans, they fell,
swooning angels drunk on honey and sunset.
We were a bowl of sweetness gone caramel, warm as bees.

Outside under the arriving stars,
an owl stood sentinel on a cherry branch;
your laugh made her swivel her head to capture the sound.

That day, into that night,
we made love bold as summer sunflowers,
then wore each other's jewelry under the stars, near the corn rows.

You went home in the morning,
with puffy lips, hickeys and your half-lidded smile,
pungent as new earth, smug as a cat.

How was your visit with your friend? they asked you.
How nice you know a girl like that, a pal like that, they said, 
blind as bats, not even listening for the answer.
_______