monday august 30th 2010

you asked me how the horses fomenting on ground apples
I said grass-sick gorging on ground apples
she said sleep I said
before the late moon rises

the melodies were too saccharine last night
anemic in the fog rose the voices of lateness
hard binging twang folks riding chiffon fog
harpooning it with fire licks and nails

ricochet. St. peter’s chain mail on display
live on webcam, though it hardly moves
on its days off. What feast can honor the
chains of a saint? murcurial lamb, hard iron wine?

I am alone like the way I think about Cuba
like a rare species of lily pad floating
fomenting, bee-less in a comb of speeches
so thick you need a field guide to Castro’s uniform, thick.

Trickle of Missed Honey

I started a fire from posters ripped from telephone poles:
Lost puppy(call him Cerberus), Jesus Saves, small barbaric child for sale,
8X11 sheets rumpling into flame like the final image of Eurydice
sucked and tunneling back down into Hell.

I set mouse traps by the sink, the oven, in the empty cupboards.
What could they possibly want from this empty place?
A trickle of missed honey, a grain of cocoa, one caraway seed.

Yellow beech leaves dance horribly outside in the smokey rain.
Dancing as if to laugh and torture the cedar boughs who stoically
accept them into their long-fingered webs, aromatic and soft.

You didn’t look back for me. I had already made it up the mine shaft.
But maybe that is our tragedy, you knew I would come.
You could feel the electric breath on your spine,
you played the tambourine beat the drum of a happy war.

Cowering, covered in soot, believing in anything bigger than me,
I wrapped a finger around your hungry talisman that bustled
And wagged in the wind that was always in your favor.

All these holes. Even failure fades out,
is eaten by the romance of time, turns to dust,
slips from your hands in strong gales.

The cadence of breath on flames makes a hollow song in the morning.
Some things are making me sick: heat, wood smoke creeping by
an open window, blighted tomatoes, torn bellows,
a pair of cracked leather gloves.

My regret is never having made you something beautiful.
Something to impress the unimpressible.
A grove of engraved trilithons laden with hand-woven silk tapestries
shouldered in by great women who offer rosehips,
cocoa, tobacco, orchids, peacocks, saffron.

My coffee is thick with grit and I remember how
I would wake up to your mouth on my ear.
Wishing now that I could spin that roving
breath into a fine warp, weave us a fine new sheet,
one we’d never get out of,
not even for coffee.

INSOMNIA by Bei Dao

you see yourself outside your window
a lifetime's gleam in flux

gone blind out of jealousy
stars sail against the wind
beyond death's metaphor
and unfold ethical landscapes

in what is called a place of wellsprings
night finally catches up to you
that army of insomnia
salutes the flag of solitude

a nightwatchman tossing and turning
lights up that terror-blossom
a cat leaps into endless night
the dream's tail flashing once

Making Love to A Wolf

He came quietly, unexpectedly, without a howl.
There was hardly a moon. I offered him coffee.
He said he wouldn’t sleep. I offered him wine.
He licked his long white teeth. He lapped at it
from a small white porcelain dish painted
with Chinese characters.

It wasn’t the swaggering of his long coat, black-tipped and shimmering,
Or its silver tassels that made me swoon.
It was his casual approach, his diamond shaped eyes,
the monologues about the austerity of loneliness, the smell
of three-thousand nights spent nuzzling the hard brown earth.

In the morning he tussled and bayed but refused to get up.
I made eggs. I stared at the Christmas cactus until it bloomed.
I called to him but he was gone. Only a warm iridescence remained
In the sheets like abalone seen through gauze
or emerging from a heavy fog.

The eggs were bland. I drank the remaining wine
from the small porcelain dish,
Choking on the few silver hairs that floated on top.

It began to hail and I noticed all my books lay open on the floor,
some weighted with stones or jars of lemon preserves,
anything to make sure they would remain open.

On each page the word “destroy” highlighted in red.

It has been three weeks. I haven’t moved the books.
I study the pages for meaning.
I sit, stir the fire, rub my eyes, wait for a noise,
a rustling in the leaves outside.
A slow dumb ant stuck to the side of a honey jar.