I (far from Arcadia)
Having seen a detail small as a crescent of chipped paint,
or a panel hung slightly higher than the others, faith
wavered, pinched like a moth-flit, fell away like a rock-climber.
The needle strummed steady in the very red middle
and flattened sideways, plug plucked from the wall socket.
First came True Confessions and then and only then
was one allowed into the City of God, there to have His cake
and eat Hers too, god bless and goddess damn.
Stripped before a full-length mirror it took some measure of courage
not to look away from the fist-thick sybaritic heart,
scarred with its stitch of ink.
The staining agent, blanching the edges of the gauze like
weathered flagstones, white with a retreating army’s shame.
He remembered smoke whispering from the pulped scriptures,
vaporous as guilt in a suddenly opened room, and false
memory or not, he remembered.
Nothing left but to fold grief into grieving arms.
No one left to hear the operatic ghosts, the sky
their seashore and garden, the sea their fallen sky.
.
II (the elastic scatter of the erotic imagination)
The draperies gleamed like caramel,
folding like onion, brown on bruin.
Purple with palatial cold, fingers drew
them back, to flood the room with winter
sunlight, the promise of warmth, the
fleshtone of a Balthus girl’s kneecap.
Up the stairwell’s battlefield of boys,
the tarantella of candle flame
on leather, lace, and skin,
and into the red-tiled bathroom,
where a girl revolved her sliding finger
over a steamed-up mirror, smiling
over her shoulder, at you, at the squeak,
at the mist made magic with devil’s horns.
In the blue, nude hallway,
she tugged her yellow tunic down,
tightening the fabric against her abdomen,
belly out, shoulders back, little Cretan
bull-dancer asking you something mundane.
Once beyond forever, she will whisper
a child’s farewell, the colors so loud,
her eyes rimmed with angry knowledge.
It is the grown-ups’ job to provide
the traumas with the correct colors,
otherwise the children will not be believed.
.
III (the tour guide goes to pieces)
Walk inland and watch history disappear.
The paneless wake of demolition.
Quiescent basement peered at through the
ripped sidewalk, albumen welted with mold,
like something not meant to be seen,
a bone exposed and jutting from a living limb.
The museums of the world cathedraled to the same fate.
And who is to say barbarians will swing the chains?
When someone yells ‘Fire!’ we’ll plead for definition.
As lonely as a child casting stones at shadows,
we would prefer a little conversation to relieve
the accepted grandeur of doomed masonry.
.
IV (three strokes in)
Tremble and break, puppet on a rain-swept field.
Small when seen then small till no longer seen,
dissolved in night.
Carefree, in parklands swanned with heavy petting,
nostalgic with occasional minor details, the turn of
pennies in the outlandish sun.
Smug in the savage crush, musclebound in the blue.
Daylight’s revenge, hit list bulleted in lime, the tallyho!
of carnal quotas.
Singing gaily, singing daily, over field, over flower,
the song’s chorus a drunken question regarding love,
regarding love.
.
V (bled out)
In the still heart of the park’s tangle
the rapist is unimpressed with the child’s halo,
nanny’s charm made powerless,
a spangled pendant to stow with the others.
There are neither tears to shed nor time to waste.
The park closes in a little under an hour.
Underneath the bottle, a damp napkin
conspires to erase the private code,
dreams now within reach,
the ransom no one expects to be paid.
.
VI (Kukul’s montage)
A theater-piece where a cardboard keel
beats upon water of false silver,
the kimono’s belt of bloodblack waves.
It’s a new piece, guaranteed to go over well.
At show’s end, save for Val, and Nadya, and Amy,
all the lotteried nymphs find themselves
sunk to the bottom of the sea.
.
VII (just send flowers)
That you skipped the baptism in the pearl-small church.
Surely the proud parents would forgive you,
overcome with the occasion, the many glistening eyes
among which yours would go unnoticed?
You could make it up in God’s good time.
Anything can be made up in that pearl-smooth,
sky-long tunnel of time.
.
VIII (monsoon)
Bronze and shell-light erode the
island’s canopy of acneform stars,
Magellan starlight embroidering
numb bodies, senses bowled in heat.
Naked knees support the thin
pillowbook, Death lotused like
Buddha in the reinforced pagoda.
Stone’s degradation proves illusory
and the torches flare beside the blue
of the now-blackening lake.
Far from here the rain comes down
around the scumgold palace,
tiny in the sulfurous downpour,
lagoon and lake like sudden lovers,
racing to be free of all but one another,
careless of damage, aching for the
confusion of each other’s taste.
.
IX (Tamayo, in threatened rain)
Outside, looking in, to where others see through us.
Tabbies guard the rotting colossus, a mouse
girlfriends the empty shoe.
Stone by stone, thought by thought,
the mind builds a Great Wall along the furthest edges
of its reach. But no further.
Not so much as a patio
for the occasional nap or midnight nip.
Beyond the wall is the land
of dreams, the great Siberia
belted with salt lakes, bitter waters
where memory comes to sip and forget.
.
X (for my next trick)
Neutered with seaside séances,
made dull with rapture,
tamed with passionate abstinence
I returned alone, to find
the unexpected guests sunburned
and disappointed, anxious as
only the bored can be.
They’d been stood up.
And I must usher them out,
with nothing to show for their trouble.
In the white purity of annoyance
I stained the kitchen tile with the
tour guide-cum-dusky sparrow,
squirmed her free of debt, rendered
slippery in sleep’s aftermath.
Such role play cries out for
forgiveness, while the wind blurs
victors and slaves, illuminates a child’s
sacrificial smile.
Priestly mouse, slug-caped,
shivers, pauses, tic tac toe.