....From The Tree Of...............Seeing Beauty
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_______________________________________________________ Snow Comfort Snow is heavy, muffles everything- helps me think. Movement stops save flakes, squirrels, snowgeese flap the gun metal skies to let me know that nature, at least knows what she's doing. Her creatures slip easily through seasons without fuss, doing what they must and I can learn. Hearts Like Water Beauty comes disguised: old men with worn out shoes, whiskers like elephant hide- and whores healing nonetheless the hurts: too beautiful to view them tended kissed away by whores. Old men elephants with bristled hair -where does it come from, knowing where the deepest beauty is eyeful and mutable and hearts like water. Camera Work Mapplethorpe knew the bold, hard sex of the flower. Coaxed it's truth with lens like finger pads. Touched each stem, produced a dew, gave us every secret of the garden. I blush, a slave to stamens cocked to me. Aware how vulvar ............orchid looks like longing. Another Dead Blonde Fat, happy jazz lady, cool as mint with hot tamale sauce the woman with the engine idle voice died today. Taffy pulled warm, pliant, wrapped around the groin big Peggy Lee bathed the pelvis like a warm/hot bath, then tickled- pink lipped lady cooed true, then cut you with her crooked smile; her hurt, sweet voice a blend apart like bourban and burnt sugar- we sure miss you. Heavy And Light Winter morning smoke break; cigarette and cold breath both puff out. The office in the brick block squats behind. Break to escape the doldrum hum of voices, fax and foolish talk of football scores while up above the snowgeese vee, varoom their way to somewhere else so out of gra vi...............ty- .....they lift my hair. The Art Of Love In light, unkind, her doughy weight withstood gravity's meanest truth; knowing that while she was self-repellant, he grew hard for her. She, absurdly wet, felt both her chins pulled up by cheeks gone high with smile. Leaned over, nipples first- going for the lick. She was a thing that Goya- painter of mis shapen fantasy, before this night would call in all its coarseness: Art. The lover waiting on the bed had used his brush, ridden the saddle of wide, soft hips- her bucking would be beautiful. Before he'd ever touched her, he'd dreamed the rocking blur of her on a canvas that he'd painted many times. Still I want you to know even through the broken glass, cut wires, miles of bitter batting- I hear your voice. It is the scream on top the storm. It is the lower than human speech way the elephants find their boneyards; hundreds of miles they plod, believing. It is the threaded sugar through my brain too sweet to ever eat, but undissolving. The End Of Summers Charcot Street was the route I walked to school, and I'm sure the name is French, pronounced shar'koh, though we said Charkot; even now I feel the clench I had in math class after lunch. Smart in the stomach. Bother like vinegar on an open cut, and I think of the way the tar was softer in September, and I remember the smell of creosote and something black and dark. It was an uphill trek in heat, petticoats whispering round knees and under plaid, the serious scholar's look. Arms empty, waiting for books with book perfume, sharp enough to make me believe that I could somehow master fractions, but I never did. For a while, there was a heart inscribed with names I didn't gouge, yet blushed first time I saw it at my feet; one name is writing this, and one is in the ground. I carry the memories for each: a long black alley, heat rising from the heart, rising like the street itself is narrowing into sky and one September, I too will reach the top and walk right off the very last ........................edge of finally everything in that last, hot breath of summers. Instrument It started happening in sixth grade; each day, humiliation. Standing up as a group right after recess and reciting memorized poems. We hated it and red-faced stood and sing-songed Hiawatha, or The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner or Masefield, good old 'must go down to the sea again', but what is strange I had a fearsome storage for it. Threw my voice loud enough for others to tack onto, so they hated me as well. Secretly, I was thrilled by cadence. Memorized on my own. Used those sounds to take me somewhere else; some where, the words are shivers. Vowels caress, and consonants sharp as walking on crushed shells keep all of it crisp and clean- bigger than any ordinary day. Make life heroic. Blasted through a trumpet, so even ugly notes are better sung than silent; we may be grains of sand on a beach as vast as the span of time, but I want it clear what place was mine the while I held it. And how the sea rubbed on me, and the way that I sang back to it the whole way through. Fibers We pollinate one another's minds, days with pieces of ourselves- dreams, dust, confettied bits of unabashed happi ness- and dollops of pain. A snip: fuzz from your Aunt Lillian's old, green sweater may end up in little Agnes' baby frizz: a matron's somber olive, looks much brighter there. The way your smile will slide across my mouth when I'm trying so to keep me glum- we velcro, textured souls who wear each other's hearts on sleeves that have commingled yarn of varigated skein- a little me a little you, a little pain a little glue we might call plain and simple fate or luck or faith- .......that's what the fibers are. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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