My watch said two o'clock.

Just fifteen minutes since I'd lapsed
and thought of you, splinter of you
stabbing
somewhere
just behind my spine
so that I'm paralyzed by what
you left behind. It's not enough.
There is not enough
of me
to Alpha
wave
goodby.

'Hello', I smile, hello.
'I'll have have the special', as I
fold my soul
and frame your face again.





Statistics

How many lovelies
have looked your way
for help or hearth or holding,
do you know? How many times
has lightning struck so close
you drove your nails
into your palms? How many nails
would it take for crucifixion if the crucified
kept moving?- and how many lies have you told to buy just
one more day
before the jig was up?





Stuck In Sexual Addiction

Like rummies chasing gin,
addicts tap licentiousness,
take long and lustful
laps around this pool.

All the while,
life waits
like taxis at the curb
for fares
too drunk
to want
to really go

any
where

E
L
S
E.





Telegram To The Fair And Tender Maidens

I have a life stop
it swings so high stop
it's like a scythe stop
it's like a door stop

I have a wife stop
so cold so hard stop
she breaks my balls stop
I like her back stop

I'll send my love stop
if I am brave stop
if I beguile stop
I'll stay a while stop

You're very cute stop
and not a mute stop
you bring me song stop
now what is wrong stop

I see you there stop
I cannot stop stop
I'm on a road stop
I am a bus
stop
bus station
whore
stop
you want it here stop
I'll make you pay stop
you'll rue the day stop
I made you feel
stop
that we were real
Stop

that

stop it
now
I'll give
you
something to cry about

mister,

can I breathe now?





Wake Up Call

Just so
we're straight about this:
I anger on and on
not because of some
bent sentiment
that signals softness
underneath
no,
not at all-

I cannot
leave alone
the shock of finding such a store of
misplaced
love and admiration-
like a sleepwalker
at a cesspool,
crooning
at the turds like pretty fishes
I'd been swimming with; feeling
slimy wriggling like some
giggling
goodnight kisses.





Watcher At The Edge

In a world of warbled birdsong
with yellow down of bees
like honey drops
that animate my windowbox,
in backyard patch of
snap-dragoned,
flagstoned beauty,
in that world beyond the yard,
an alley lays dead-ended,
rusted,
tin-garaged and sad.
And somewhere hidden
in that closed in lake
of scraps and flaking paint
there lives a dog
of such profoundly ugly form
he stands deformed
perhaps
or made of cast off parts.

Hyena-like,
dark gray and black
with bat-like ears
that furl
to catch the sound
of all approach.
A roach of hound,
a mongrel standing
bandylegged and thin.
A touch of wolf half-starved,
he looks-a bit of mad.
With just a hint of forward step,
his tail tucks down,
he shakes and turns and trots off
trembling to that darker space
where he can hide
and watch the beauty
beating underneath the sun.

First time I encountered him,
my heart fell to my feet
until he turned, and made off
into shadows all alone.
I imagined that a whimper
went before him
as he slunk away. I never
felt a fear of him again.
His presence-
being there
beyond my vision
brought despair I can't explain.

For sometimes, he will venture out
and stand there, staring at the sun.
A hungry look, a haunted look
that dares the day to shine on him.
This pitiful canine miscreant,
I've seen him at the edge of things;
I feel him by his pain.
I know I've seen
more breed of him
on buses
staring out
into the rain.





O Babylon

There are no sirens.
There are no bombs bursting
in air
in Pennsylvania,
but, as though
I had a body elastic enough
to stretch my foot in bed
into
the lit, exploding skies of Baghdad,
my left toes feel
burnt and bleeding; there is an
exodus of feeling
after too much feeling -that is all.
I am a stone
woman.
Turned
to salt.

My tears do nothing
to stop the eerie whistling overhead, a half a world
away; they melt the outside, leaving the jelly
roiling round the heart, exposed to air, without
God
or reason
in it. It feels different
in this silent world
of cars and people moving quietly as ants
at a wake will find their industry in
new-turned soil.





Left

I think I knew
when you were renaming it
for the object,
not the theme. I knew you were kicking heels
and scrambling over stiles, that you
had left me
with an object in my lap, but nary
a feeling in sight, skipping
toward delight, in love with sun
and sound

-that I had pain,
and nowhere to put the pain
but down.





Traces

After he was gone,
the hat on the bed
spoke
for him.
His smell was in the felt, though
grandmother would say
it is a sign, like the
rocking chair, rocking all alone. There are
omens. There are signs
that are precursors of the sudden
wind through bones. I have his sweat, here
on the band. I keep it close. It is a
revenent, the only one
that's left. The laughter's
faded.





Comfortless

I am dark.
I have a heart
of pitch, no itch
to draw the sun
into the room, let in
the warmth. While there is
death and death and death,
there are no
flowers
worth smelling. Corruption has sweetened
every nostril for so long,
that I suspect the hyacinths bloom
to cover some great wrong
we are participant in,
sniffing roses so we may not nose it out. I am among those
suspicious of the hedgerows, and in a springtime
in the midst of smoke and dying sons,
I find they blaspheme
who rejoice.





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