English Poems

You have a beautiful mouth,
Luigi, the man-boy says.

The rubber raft
has floated far
from shore.

The choice
is this:

medusa sea,

a boil
of   jellied lashes,

or

face
the kiss.

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 will die in Paris with a rainstorm,
on a day I already remember,
I will die in Paris — and I don't shy away —
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is, in autumn.

It will be Thursday, because today, Thursday, as I prose
these lines, I've put on my humeri in a bad mood,
and, today like never before, I've turned back,
with all of my road, to see myself alone.

It's how she spreads, without a sound, her scent
of orange blossom on the dark of me,
it is the way she shrouds in mourning black
her mother-of-pearl and ivory, the way
she wears the lace ruff at her throat, and how
she turns her face, quite voiceless, self-possessed,
because she takes the language straight to heart,
is thrifty with the words she speaks.

You have lived six decades and you have lived none
You have loved many and you have loved no one
You wedded three wives but you lie in your cold bed alone
You sired four children but they cannot forgive you

My shadow followed me to San Diego
silently, she never complained.
No green card, no identity pass,
she is wedded to my fate.

The moon is a drunk and anorectic,
constantly reeling, changing weight.
My shadow dances grotesquely,
resentful she can't leave me.

The moon mourns his unwritten novels,
cries naked into the trees and fades.
Tomorrow, he'll return to beat me
blue — again, again and again.

for my love, Charles (1938-2000)

Say: 言

❖

A hundred red fire ants scouring, scouring the white peony

❖

Fallen plum blossoms return to the branch, you sleep, then
harden again

❖

Cuttlefish in my palm stiffens with rigor mortis, boy toys can't
love
❖

Neighbor's barn: grass mat, crickets, Blue Boy, trowel handle,
dress soaked in mud

❖

Iron-headed mace; double-studded halberd slice into emptiness

❖

An inch from the curse and pearled
by the evening heat I shake
my polo neck and a cool draught
buffs my chest. What rises is
my animal aroma the scent
of blue-ribbon stockthe sort
a starred chef would ladle from
a zinc-bottomed pan to soften
and savor the hock he has sawn
and roasted for the diners out front

I am the man
Whose name is mud
But what’ s in a name
To shame one who knows
Mud does not stain
Clay he’ s made of
Dust Adam became —
The dust he was —
Was he his name