A lonely woman was crossing
a bridge and there was a slight
fog. It was clear from the way
she sat that her heart had been
broken. And if any one of these
three things were never true,
I never would have purchased
the book upon which she rested,
with herself on the cover,
broken hearted.
At the coffee shop, I was marveling at how much the acorn
resembles both the pineapple and the artichoke. So I took a
picture of it and showed it to my friend. He looked at it for
a moment and then he said “You know that’s not an acorn –
that’s Harry Houdini, who was born in Wisconsin.” What
else do you know about Harry Houdini? I asked him, did
he die of a broken heart? Suddenly Harry became very
enigmatic. Perhaps a better word for it would be moist.
It was raining: the acorns had disappeared.
Do not obscure Jude
do not fill mortar with ivy
let the cat hook its tail like walking
with an old man’s cane
through rainy parks named after
famous death,
sit blowing over coffee
like a reverse volcano,
your hand in the grip of the mug
plotting violent escapes.
Busy trombone voices around you
played out over a line of red swivel
stools by the cash,
tears in the fabric and you are thankful
you do not wear a watch,
a single blood poppy over mothy lapels
to remember the lifeless overturned flies
in the window,
the way Hardy sat at Cambridge
as though growing old in a bumper car
of forced intellectualism.
Wet newspaper overhead
you rush to hit the light,
ink running down your hands
the moral poverty of a
personal favela.
Close in.
Be a cow:
cusp of a curve, small
green hill, cuds of clover,
(all you want), beauty in
the soft, the randy fur,
the hard silk of horns.
Beauty too in the brown
guileless eyes. Fit fingers
about the head, its hard square
horns, the kissable nubs,
the whiskered ears
& jaw stronger
than Rushmore’s Washington.
One look, touch, & no harm
could be sought, only, at most,
the mild whip of a tail
flicking at flies.
Hug the neck, arms like garlands
& it’s entering an aviary,
just chatter chirps, intelligent
feathers tapestried in winds
the color of a changing angel.
You as well, pastoral chameleon,
breathe the sensual range between
cool damp & tropic heat,
flesh showing the vulnerable bones
& muscles cloths might hide.
Those aren’t oceans,
Unless as imagined as so,
& intimacy finds others, licks, lives
the inner
while in some rooms buttons are boxes
& we say:
Mr. Executive, keep hands off.
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the universe is murderous,
I’d never died before, so
didn’t know what to expect,
looking up from where I sit
I see the dead tree budding
leaves erupt in a rage of foliage,
in a proliferation of small red berries,
then leaves turn autumnal crisp and die,
a year of seasons pass in a moment,
the beauty of a random time-eddy,
back where reality ends it’s past midnight
moons blaze down over broken rooftops,
ghosts of the dead outnumber the living
in tangles of skewed tachyons,
back when this murderous universe ends
colours pour like perfume and hours do
strange things, running fast then slower,
I forget your name, it no long matters,
looking up from where I sit, I see
you’re caught by the gravity of moonfire,
in the gold of a random temporal eddy
frozen in an eternal time-slow moment,
you are twenty-one and will ever be so,
I’ve aged decades as I still wait for you,
but I’ve died before, I know what to expect