Realistic & Complicated

What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.

Sing lullaby, as women do,
Wherewith they bring their babes to rest,
And lullaby can I sing too
As womanly as can the best.
With lullaby they still the child,
And if I be not much beguiled,
Full many wanton babes have I
Which must be stilled with lullaby.

When love was a question, the message arrived
in the beak of a wire and plaster bird. The coloratura
was hardly to be believed. For flight,

it took three stagehands: two
on the pulleys and one on the flute. And you
thought fancy rained like grace.

Our fog machine lost in the Parcel Post, we improvised
with smoke. The heroine dies of tuberculosis after all.
Remorse and the raw night air: any plausible tenor

In green water I saw your eye and in it I saw that Arabian palace
filled with birds and broken glass.
I copy an address into my right hand
and fill myself with memories of psalms.
A green fish emerges from seaweed as seaweed from a wave
that rises like the wailing wall.

I try to think of the cup of a hand,
of legs in a tangle, and not the thistle

though even it, purpled, spiking away,
wants to be admired, wants to say, whistle

a little for me. O every little thing wants
to be loved, wants to be marked by the cry

Sleepless
in the cold dark,
I look
through the closed dim
door be-
fore me, which be-
comes an
abyss into
which my
memories have
fallen
past laughter or
horror,
passion or hard
work — my
memories of
our past
laughter, horror,
passion,
hard work. An ache
of be-
ing. An ache of
being,
over love. An
ache of
being over
love. Like
projections on
the screen
of the heavy
window
curtains, flashing

Once I wasn’ t always so plain.
I was strewn feathers on a cross
of dune, an expanse of ocean
at my feet, garlands of gulls.

Sirens and gulls. They couldn’ t tame you.
You know as well as they: to be
a dove is to bear the falcon
at your breast, your nights, your seas.

My fear is simple, heart-faced
above a flare of etchings, a lineage
in letters, my sudden stare. It’ s you.

All that has tamed me I have learned to love
and lost that wildness that was once beloved.

All that was loved I’ ve learned to tame
and lost the beloved that once was wild.

All that is wild is tamed by love —
and the beloved (wildness) that once was loved.

I. Of Choice
Despair is big with friends I love,
Hydrogen and burning jews.
I give them all the grief I have
But I tell them, friends, I choose, I choose,

Don’ t make me say against my glands
Or how the world has treated me.
Though gay and modest give offense
And people grieve pretentiously,

More than I hoped to do, I do
And more than I deserve I get;
What little I attend, I know
And it argues order more than not.

Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I’ m a girl who’ ll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt — sweet Bacchus’ pards —
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm