Monday, March 29, 2010

Muse, two thousand and seven


pictures of you again, and they call back your animal
smell, the softness of the flannel you wore, the softness
of your voice, I always had to lean so close to hear
that your soft hair tickled my face. Jason's wool.
Your paint-stained hands, great thumbs, the stink of your

great white feet, beached whales. the celebration
when we came to an elevator, when we came to the
ice-cream-vending-machine
(that deserves its very own line); fantastic; your manic eyes
like animals, like animals, but somehow

each day you were in clothes, buttoned right. it was like
a miracle, or maybe like a sin. You and your clumsy limbs,
the gawk of your height, golden-haired giant, monster, muse, me
moving always closer to you, me drawn always closer--
phoenix, phantasm, there's something miraculous

about the fact that your long eyelashes and mine
collided, July, our shyest sleeves kissing,
about the fact that I ate your radishes: you taught me
that anyone's learnable, even a prophet,
even the least earthly prophet.



Saturday, March 20, 2010

Union Square


All trampled in
footsteps, chess boards, agonized
phone calls, cigarettes, harassed by

Greenpeace, cornrows, dreadlocks,
little children singing these are a few of
my favorite things: sunglasses and high heels,

iced coffees, marketing, we're going marketing here,
plastic flash shopping bags cash flow,
man on a horse peering over us, me and you,

new bride bursting in strawberries
and cream, shotgun wedding,
ravished Union Square.


Monday, March 15, 2010

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE


After the earthquake I think that Orion
readjusted his belt; it seemed to hang lower
on his waist. I mean, it might have been the change
of seasons, an adolescence. But

the tropics seemed nearer, warmer, and
my tongue wanted to unhook his stars,
and I wanted to see the world unbuckle.
I wanted to see the sky exposed

and shaking. I wanted his bow and his arrows,
unslung, vulnerable. I wanted the tides
to tug him down, down, until
he would topple and fall.



Wednesday, March 03, 2010

John the Baptist


Unknowing, unknowable boy,
and me with my wheelchair clairvoyance,

I try sometimes to penetrate
the seven veils that separate

us. Your eyes are the color of something inedible.
You play the teeth, torque the locks with your

knuckles, big and precise and white;
you are a shadow preaching

within tobacco fog again. Your eyes
are the color of something inedible.

If I licked them they would taste like chlorine.
You are covered, too, in a blue tarp

that has been collecting leaves since September.
You have been collecting leaves since September.