by: McGinn/Irving
is counting his treasures tonight
moving them slowly - in time suspended
and softly - as wind swept thistles
so sensually - surrounded in angora cocoons
and selfishly - he protects his goods.
He is living the feel of her length against his skin
breathing the wind of her sinewy skeins
stroking her strings to a joyful noise,
and near the combustion of touching souls
he warms his hands in the glittering
heat of her reflected light.
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(a pantoum)
for Carolyn
This liquid moment overflows the years
between us, while the air thickens with our mingled breath
the wet salt slides, and combines on close pressed cheeks
bearing silent witness to our love.
Between us, the air thickens with our mingled breath
and rises as a blue light to the sky
bearing silent witness to our love
this gracious moment: so soft and splendid
Rising in a blue light to the sky
this last embrace - remembering our first,
this gracious moment - so soft and splendid
tells stories we cannot, of the years between.
This last embrace - remembering our first,
this final touch - so permanent, and telling
stories we cannot, of the years between
when our swelling rivers craved their blending.
This final touch - so permanent, and telling,
as the wet salt slides, and combines on close pressed cheeks,
our swelling rivers crave the blending, again,
and this liquid moment overflows the years.
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I am not resigned
to the dusty bondage
of here below
like you
like you, I once
bellowed with rage
straining skyward
chained to a rock
you remind me
I have dreams inside
curled and burning
and will never again need trade
my cunt for security
even when the frenzied waves
the eroding water
rusts this riveted pride revealing
the needing spaces
and exposes
the heart loss stones
then, I hear you wail
like a falcon
tethered to the wrist
I remember I can shine
alone
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Freedom is a Hard Bought Thing
This inconspicuous day with its
taut fibers stretch to breaking
a contract signed in blood is broken
freedom is a hard bought thing
I place these memories
in banker boxes
to be stored in a friends garage
and this instrument
with its broken strings
to be attended to
another time
Scuttling on flintlike feet
I move to a damp basement
to my windowless freedom
and sleep below strangers
in my smoky solitude
Remembering
when we were green and growing
loving every little foible
till the brazen whore of familiarity
came between
and six feet of memories
made us strangers
and the day I woke up
loving you no longer
driven to the valor of alone
by the stark violence of our silence
cutting the lines to shore
wresting with the breakers toward the sea
freedom is a hard bought thing
a hard bought thing
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Don't make me so happy
don't smile at me so
you'll poison my poems
you really must go!
I'll start writing couplets
that rhyme - what distress!
Oh where is my angst -
sweet morbid mistress.
Its just not my style
to write "sweet as honey"
and with this sort of garbage
I'll never make money!
I simply can't write
when so full of delight
you really must leave me
but wait - not tonight.
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I'll wonder, later, how it might have all turned out,
had your wit been as quick as your ire.
We might have thrown high-brow
barbs at each other, and laughed about it later.
Instead, those doleful eyes turn red with rage,
when my airborne missives, hit too near the truth.
Like, when I try to help you understand
the lack of logic inherent in your jealousy,
and how it will eventually create what it fears.
Or worse, when I turn some disputation back
upon you, ingeniously using your own
conclusions to distill my assertions
and clarify my supposed contradictions.
You just start breaking things,
and that's no fun.
So I'll say, I'm sorry.
(if my witty little missiles
threaten your status
as superior being, preferably addressed as
your most esteemed highness.)
Yes - I'm a smart ass - what of it?
It's just how I defend myself,
and you don't fight fair.
I believe a worthy wrangle
should be fairly fun,
or best not done.
Like good lovemaking -
it's serious at first,
a searching for answers,
an exploration of dichotomies,
a playful ingeniousness
followed by delicious discoveries,
culminating in a moment of furiousness,
occasionally liquid with laughter,
as we come again to understand
the awkward hilarity of humanness,
and the simple serene fact,
that we all are utterly
perfect.
Though you'll never get that either -
but I digress.
My little witticisms are indubitably
as quick as your fists,
but since this intellect cannot countervail
thy mighty flesh,
when we differ - I'll beg your pardon.
But not for long.
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Why I Sometimes Sleep Till Noon
with much straining and grating
the World awakes, shakes itself
in the red draped dawn
breaking from the soft night sheets
it sits in the chair of ceremony
delicately considering options
(but not motives)
drinks the steaming refuse of the earth
black and satisfying
sniffs the wind from a decaying
ocean, and a smoggy shrub
then selects
and slices the softening apple
of stifling summer
breakfasts on
the bags of sickness
the limitless violent news
the hostile divisions
the trifles that strangle
the contrived ignorance
the purposefully casual averted glances
and seemingly unremediable inequities
taking nourishment from
the diligent indigent
the rapacious prosperous
the despondent women
the confined malcontents
the confirmed melancholics
and their private afflictions
it assumes a satisfied posture
picking its teeth
with the only bones of those
who dare to walk forth
and challenge
while I
hide desperately in the jailed light
restlessly sleeping in my own
tangled sheets
riding dappled ponies
bareback, on a shimmering beach
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I am a political decision
an inappropriate metaphor
looped into his consonants
constantly thinking in run-on sentences
Regarding the face of a divided man
whose kisses once stippled these cheeks
the facade of one that I have come
to appreciate and condemn
a little more with each clock tick
Once, I even dared
ask the sky
if he were falling
or simply tied to a tree
golden eyed and looking elsewhere
for what is missing
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My sisters,
Through these tangled hours
do not weep for me
or ceaselessly walk the dark morning distances
I have done so long enough already.
Like a great storm
I have shaken the tree of life
and in my perfumed wake
have left for you
a cascade of fragrant stars.
Here I am
still, and always
portrayed in lively colors
illustrious, willful and vivid
bedecked in bright flowers
and laughter.
I do not regret the character
of my living
I have always taken my time
and know you forgive me
as you know I will watch over you
still, and always.
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a woman with a guitar
watches from a window
stroking the neck with her fingers
and softly caressing the shuddering strings
with acute perception
which contrary to prevalent opinion
does not make you crazy
but it can drive you crazy
she waits inside her sanctuary
playing only to her heart
not the first to fall in love
with the sorrow of another
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In the mad spring moonlight
mouth open to the sky
like a thirsty flower
drinking the ascendant ocean
and in a moment of transcendent pleasure
spills his seed on the slippery earth
it slides into the stream
rides the yellow leaves
follows the river
which caresses and reflects
the filament in its depths
clear to a measureless ocean
he sleeps a while
and dreams of his children
who sail on many waters
stroking the various surfaces
of long twisting rivers and seas
beneath myriad separate skies
then when he wakes
to that capacious empty place
he pauses by the swaying trees
stirred by a rain heavy wind
straining and pregnant with fruit
and hearing the unfettered laughter of children
in the moist leaves
he dances again
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Imagining Perfection at the Crossroads of Security and Desire
My closed eyes and hands
observe and suffer
the marks left by your fingers
on the soft carpets of my body
your hard stones on my fecund fields
and your fleeing feet
on the street corners of my teaming cities.
I sense your soft sea lashes
the darkness of your eyes
your star freckled back
and feel the smoothness of your songs
turning a sharp key in my oiled lock
delightedly gnawing at these closures
so many women have bought
with the enormous nails of need
that have sealed the delicate windows to my heart
and smother desire with hours that slowly pass.
I scrape my hands raw on the sides of your perfect form
you, whom I have invented so many nights
your bones sheltering me from the breakers of fate
I burrow in the warmth of your mountainsides
your fervent sands, and drink your acrid waters.
The sun burns in my mouth
while the hours that lie ahead of me
urge me to forgetfulness
near the crossroads of security and desire
the wind drives my earth before it
swept forward by the wide dilemmas of choice.
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By virtue of imagining you
superimposed on these daily journeys
the focus of my vision changes
and I am no longer able
to serenely exist
in this place where I am living out my life.
This place inside
hermetic and safe
I've circled around and around within the same bars
wearing them away, unable now to find anchor
in untroubled waters.
I have occasionally imagined you swimming
effortlessly in them
and wondered what virtue I might find in the free fall
of your body suspended over mine.
Adapted from "The Three Marias"
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One of us has already
allowed hair to be stroked by fingers, an indulgence
deliberately fostered by necessity
while the other catalogs
the pieces of furniture
one by one
silently, like a prayer
The fragile hearth flames
in a diligent exercise of passion
rediscover a path for the body to follow
wearing feelings as garments
surface and thin, exposed
in the warm air of quiet composure
Trapped by a myth since grown pale
like a wound suffered
the dulling eyes
and feigned pleasure
or a good imitation
are delicate paper roses in many colors
It would be much better
to slip outside in the rain
leaving it stretched out
full length on the couch
like some strange creature in pain
an animal that hunts, but is nevertheless tame
Naked
a position chosen
through tenderness
yet you still manage to avoid touching
this glassy flesh
translucent and vulnerable
and feeling yourself exiled
vanquish it to the storm
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Contumacious skeins of time invent
beautiful emergencies
as the onset of grief becomes
a careless tendency
intoning the prisoner of conscience
it dips into the greedy day, leaning
toward the ineluctable future
and endless diurnal duties
always confined always
wanting to the other side.
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His body twined in air, I had known
his whispered words, I had known
his loving lines
Beneath his inviolable eyes
sheltered by his coveted skin
disguised in darkest night
I craved his countenance
To see the ephemeral skin
to meet a tender gaze
I yearned, and I
destroyed a delicate trust
gazed on beauty's face
and penetrated paradise
even as he winged away
Now why should I
be punished for this
to look upon the lips I kissed
so many nights in ascendant dreams
beneath the pregnant moon
Hurled from heaven
I cry to it's gates
from this awkward, worrying place
bereft, beneath this smoldering sun
amidst assertions of jealous sisters
again, a child of sin
Razed and raving
listening to the stars
for echoes of his soft speech
I graze, drunken and dazed
on the sides of memories
My homeless heart
ravaged, shall I seek him in the sky?
I find his footsteps, tracing everywhere
my bright fable
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addled by visions
of budded nut trees
hungrily grasping
for the illusive
fleshy satisfaction
the delicious
transcendent
constancy of skin
in skin
a collusive mouth
tastes the straining stalks
reaches the ready acorns
and relishes bewhiskered berries
the insistent tongue tickles
dusky prickled pine tree cones
while burrowing roots
urge the earth
to contented
pleasured moans
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picture perfect
pillbox hat
white shoulders
buttoned below
golden, garden green eyes
egg speckled with sadness
a woman perfecting
the graceful silence
of a broken heart
swallowed in a smile
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Spring creeps back on her knees
lovely with raiment of death
cold and bloody
jangling with fetishes
The ice, now broken
the ballast stones leave red impressions
amidst the anguish of cessation.
Who has not committed
a cruel act in the line of duty?
Unfair has been there a long time already
sitting, with a distant and untouchable expression
with intelligible muttering
improbably mulling possibilities of redemption.
I wait for spring to climb the mountain
rise, healed, and stretch toward a scorching summer.
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She means to compose
an disparate essence
dwelling presumably out of doors
absorbed into stained loam
dipped in dull black lacquer
in a insolent attempt to conquer
a dissatisfactory existence.
She is intersected by a hundred bubbling watercourses
hedged by dark blossoms
tree sounds, and the scent of dripping willows
and round the bend, the cathedral's transparent skeleton
is a charming creature
topped by an inaccessible sky.
She will dwell on brilliant connections
distinguish and identify
a loss less dear
a keener pleasure
and a satisfactory sense
of extension and destruction.
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Careful
don't fall
into
a moody, substitute
life.
Be alone
be condemned to self love
grin at wind blown leaves
and relish the rain.
Keep breathing romance
chew the delicious
earth and sky
avoid venomous teacups
and the clinging loss
of lived in yesterdays.
It's a habit, you see
it in the eyes of children
who know how to cry, but
not to suffer.
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