I really think its getting to be that time,
she says, cleaning up the dust and grime
that lingers beneath the kitchen table,
while cigarette smoke, shapeless and unstable,
pipes from her mouth like steam from snow,
so in her nightgown at night she seems half doe,
half woman, deep-eyed, mood subjunctive,
saying but, and if, and what I wouldn’ t give,
while the road nearby, through the window,
flickers with the credits of the late late show,
Some people might describe this room as spare:
a bedside table and an ashtray and an antique
chair; a mattress and a coffee mug;
an unwashed cotton blanket and a rug
my mother used to own. I used to have
a phone. I used to have another
room, a bigger broom, a wetter sponge.
I used to water my bouquet
of paper clips and empty pens, of things
I thought I’ d want to say if given chance;
but now, to live, to sit somehow, to watch
a particle of thought dote on the dust
In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky.
Love, in you, went passing by,
Penetrative, remote, and rare,
Like a bird in the wide air,
And, as the bird, it left no trace
In the heaven of your face.
In your stupidity I found
The sweet hush after a sweet sound.
All about you was the light
That dims the greying end of night;
Desire was the unrisen sun,
XII
once again I look out your window
and the world looks oddly different,
maybe the fields have blossomed,
or perhaps more stars have been born
delirious waves caress my feet,
something new, unknown,
sunsets whisper in my ear as well,
everywhere I find your odor, your shape
you are among old-growth pines,
in the fog along the coastal rocks,
around the most somber of afternoons
impossible to wipe away your job
from my eyes, from my sad mouth —
you are the universe made flesh
on the ground can spook a horse who won’ t flinch when faced
with a backhoe or a pack of Harleys. I call it “horse
ophthalmology,” because it is a different kind of system —
not celestial, necessarily, but vision in which the small,
the wispy, the lightly lifted or stirring threads of existence
excite more fear than louder and larger bodies do. It’ s Matthew
who said that the light of the body is the eye, and that if
the eye is healthy the whole body will be full of light. Maybe
God’ s blood beads on the tarmac and something rough is boiling up
just this side of the vanishing point, so it’ s probably time to get
off this stretch of blacktop and into the wayside bar, where every cup
runneth over and you breast a thickening fret
of stogie smoke to get to the dank back room where a high stakes game
turns against you despite your trey of jacks, and soon enough
you’ re in way over your head with nothing and no one to blame
but the luck you’ ve been getting since first you threw your stuff
I can’ t go to the east village anymore
because it is like going on a tour
of my worst dates. I get older, my heart
leaps at the sight of children
who don’ t belong to me, I pronounce
everything like an Italian opera title.
I used to listen to songs and have someone
in mind for the you parts, now I just want
to be where the light is intense, I want
the kind of heat that kills you
if you drive into it unprepared. This
isn’ t a metaphor for anything else.
At the gym, they told me I would not die,
I would only get sexier, and I believed them.
I spent my nights wondering if this was going to turn
into something long-term, if this was what is meant by casual,
or if this was just my annual catastrophic disappointment
because if it wasn’ t, then I would have to brace
myself. I took my medication and looked at pictures
of people who were not in love with me. I deleted
their names from my cache, said hello to my cat
over the phone, took more medication. Days
Let us tunnel
Through the rubble,
Through the thrum.
Let us rut through the sum
Of who we were,
Or are,
Or will be in the years to come:
A couple
Of someones
Who used to be in love.
Used to be in love.
Ho. Hum.
These days: Seem to be in hate.
Gypsum, marble, pyrite, slate.
See here. A pit of snakes.
Look there. The rock of your rages.
And I’ m in a cable-cage, slinking down your shaft.
You fondle that hefty What if...? as if
All my undone actions wander
naked across the calendar,
a band of skinny hunter-gatherers,
blown snow scattered here and there,
stumbling toward a future
folded in the New Year I secure
with a pushpin: January’ s picture
a painting from the 17th century,
a still life: Skull and mirror,
spilled coin purse and a flower.
