I
Spiders swarm the gutted melon,
spurned seeds roulette the popadom tiles,
thousand-tongued, insect-eyed goddess.
Exploratory roses shore the neckline
plump with promise, the tattle
of flirtlight repeating in her eyes.
It could be anything (barber’s, dentist’s,
violin repair shop, whorehouse).
The plaque simply states its age.
II
Stagger the nine by twenty zocalo
to the navel of the world.
The day assembles its fresh blue heartaches,
bundled with birthday’s quim-red ribbons.
Tower thumbed from the vantage point
of a face in the crowd, big when invisible
then big when ghost takes flesh,
extravagant as sun.
Bewildered raptor wheels over the city,
screaming above the morning’s traffic.
III
Sun this bright makes even angels clumsy,
stumbling censers to an accidental music.
Such gaiety is bait to sprites who would hive,
honeykissed in the haze.
Harlequin sleeves a surfeit of riddles
for just such a morning of drunken regret.
River spills rust-red armadas
back into the all-admission sea.
Some windblown hawk looks down
on burning lozenges.
Gold, then fire, then black.
IV
The cafes, airy and bright,
dispute the gloss of insults
remembered from the night before.
The sheets, smoothed and soothing,
await the latest, the white drench
of endless unforgiving surrender.
The leashed boy scrambles
through spider webs with a fearless
expression, Chinese lanterns promising more.
To ache the extravagant chance
of sunstroked girls, half-dressed in humid
dormrooms, rising golden, unaware.
V
Remember her hilarious god and jimmy the lock.
Why is she, was she, gasping for air?
You insult with your accusation of design.
I admit I lay down in a furious drunk,
the furnace-bred light filtered by I know not what,
the tiles so cold, as cold as snow.
Stones hard as iron, the waiting dream
as soft as lovesick flesh.
I am indebted to you, more scum than pox,
less handsome than hellbent.
Your secret is safe, and it is precisely
what is not seen at all.
VI
The dream has a plot of its own:
pilot’s robe hanging on the wheel,
a mark like a compass on the victim’s skin.
Tapers cut a swath across the tiger seas.
The dead ship dallies in the surf, then noses in,
launches to a soft explosion of clods and gravel.
Lavishing the calculus of orgasm
on luck’s expectant stranger, practicing the mathematics
of a landlubber’s lovemaking,
Half-knowing the steps lead down to his
final undoing the child clutches his gift with one hand,
shields his eyes with the other.
VII
On the platform,
a thin patina of fresh vomit,
quicksilvered into a dustpan
by the vigilant staff.
In the bloodstream’s
gonorrheal season,
heretics crawl like primitive
Easter idols.
Gardens white with
knickered heaven,
the lost legion of Mary
lies down in milky clover.
Imprisoned in a locket,
a brittle-shelled beetle,
quickening to the color
of moonstone.
VIII
Three tall pages of dramatis personae
and not a one without blood on their hands.
Succumbing to the hypnosis of rival flesh
and no one there to claim the winner’s garland.
Sheathed in anesthesia, Thetis floats nude
through foam, bearing to her son his one of a kind shield.
Beauty from brow to knees, eyes
devoid of guilt, shame, or sense.
For the sake of staying warm …
what were the options again?
Which do I choose to tame?
An excess of impudent detail?
The empty parallel, allusion without emotion?
Choose them all, discovering art on its knees,
plaintive, whipped on a first name basis,
mascot pinned with dominatrix’ heel.
IX
Yes, probably, perhaps.
Enough, but not yet.
Kiss each scar then,
probe each gaping wound.
So far from the fields
of tiresome slaughter,
the chambers of treason,
the darkened, melancholy bedroom.
Despite the harsh wind
birds search for the unknown grove,
the shelter between ‘here’ and ‘there’.
Ice on a dead hunter’s stubble.
Snow builds on tree branches,
cascades heavy and sudden from
the evergreens’ stinging shingles,
falling in a grievous indifferent hush.
In the middle of nowhere
bells sound in settled warning.
The sky passes over the conquerors,
tempts them with a rainslurred kiss.
X
In tears, at the base of a sloping colonnade.
She names the wounded animals,
tasting the cruelty in her questions,
savoring the answers with a moist eye.
As though a goddess spied upon.
The shadows of levitating talons,
the wink of moon on fangs.
And of the answers guttered or peeped,
she selects her favorites.
As though against her will.
Dragged from one incinerating love
to the next, she recomposes her
nudity like a nymph left to waver
in the tiger’s pluming breath.
As though transported convict-like.
No unkindness spoils the ruins.
No malice that might louse her ruff,
lead her to set aside her crossbow,
take each word so softly back.
As though the language were itself to blame.