Category: English

She hovers,
held in her mother’s arms.
Airborne; dainty little bird.
Not yet terrestrial and no longer marine.
Not yet realized and no longer a vision.
She is future promise and obscure past,
fading memories and keen sensations, she is
billowing shadows from a submarine world.

She is here now, real now. Now
she is a creature of light and air and sound.
But for the remainder of her life she will dream
of silvery fishes,
of algae and slime,
of the dusky silence
whence she’s emerged.

To Lovisa

So many years I wondered why I was,
And blind I erred upon this barren land,
And numb I played my part by heart because
Without belief or faith one cannot stand.
So deep the secret hollows in my mind,
So cold and dark the tomb in which I lay,
Too dense the haze for light of any kind
To reach my eyes and help me find my way.
So bleak the morrow was until you came,
And brought with you the scent of summer rain.
And after that the world was not the same,
But new; forever new and without stain.
The day is young and spring will never end
And love’s too great a grace to comprehend.

Come hither love; give me your hand,
let’s wipe those tears off your cheek.
Let’s scold the ground for being rough,
then do something about your knee.

Do not give up your play for fear
of falling down or getting hurt.
For life is all about the leap,
and being familiar with the dirt.

There now, my love, your knee is clean,
soon it will heal and be like new.
We grow and change, we break and mend,
and thrive so long as we brave the bend.

That notion succumbed and sought
sheltered grave inside my thoughts.
Resin ran, lush, noxious
fragrance; the one thing that might make sense.

Sense! Dearest, lie close
by my fretful frame!
Sense and that scent, noxious,
noxious and lush. Dearest, hush!
And lie by me! Science explains
things such as these. Chemistry!
Synapses, neurotransmitters, enzymes—gravity!
Things that ruin the nerves, sometimes irreversibly.

Sense: Such a quixotic notion. A prehistoric fetish, buried
deep beneath a shaman’s shrine. Long lost and forgotten. Long
lost and forgotten.
Dearest! Lie close by my mind! Lie!

Mankind shudders at the sheer thought.
Ancient legends whispered by the side
of the crackling bonfire. Myths, terrifying tales;
hopeful incredulity.
But these things happen every day, dearest.
Here they happen daily.

Till F.

He is, in truth, a prince: from the Latin princeps,
Meaning first man, ruler, chief.
He is the man who comes before all others,
The one who rules my heart,
The chief object of my desire.
A word from him and I am ablaze.
A glance from him and I am on fire.

First I knew your mother,
before you even were.
I met her as she was crossing the lawn, I met her
as she was resting in the shade of the lilac shrub.
Every time I saw her, she was a bit larger,
a bit heavier, approaching the end of term.
And then, one day, your mother went away,
and hasn’t been seen since.
But what does it matter? You came,
a tiny, spiny, darling little creature,
with your moist black speck of a snout,
twitching,
your diminutive mouth, your teeny teeth,
chewing, chewing,
your little feet, your whiskers, your soft, furry belly.
I gave you a name.
I spoke of you—widely.
I captured you on film.
             I gave you a name!

To Paola, August 1988

Let me spread the rug before the crackling fire
So that we may sit side by side, as before,
And gaze at the flames straining ever higher
As they sketch our silhouettes upon the floor.

Your cheeks are glowing; your eyes are brighter still,
And so are mine, unless I’m much mistaken.
Without, a raging storm; the dark; the autumn chill;
Within, an orb of heat and light that we partake in.

Let the fire be the only one to speak.
Leave the shadows skulking at the corners of the room.
It is not the silence that will make us weak,
But words that venture past our lips too soon.

When last we met, our faces were so smooth,
Few roads were yet engraved upon that map.
Now that we’ve labored away from our youth,
I hope we’ll find a way to bridge the gap.

My desire is a fruit
That fell from the tree
And burst on the ground.
My love is all around,
Succulent and free,
Sacred and sound:
Come give me a kiss!
 
Why, if I spend my days
Dreaming of your scent
And fondling the very air
Every second I spend and however I fare—
Take pity on me! A mere mortal I am,
And the flesh being weak—
Come give me a kiss!

Here's the Moon, in love with the Sea,
Her silvery tongue all over his face,
Deliriously covering his rugged face,
As she covets his depths and matches his pace.
With ardent, argent-y kisses she declares her hardened intent
But for tonight, and tonight only. For she means to leave no evidence
Of her boundless and shameless ardor
Lest her Lord, the Sun, King of the heavens,
Upon rising again on the morrow
To give birth to yet a new day may know
Either bitterness or sorrow.

Happy birthday, You. Congratulations
On a new year of needless fretting and trepidation,
On twelve new months brimming over
With conflicting desires and gratuitous agitation,
On three hundred sixty-five days
Of industrious navel-gazing and faulty penetration,
And eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours of continuous brooding
And those recurrent fits of quasi-revelations.

You will never grow up, never ever. Happy birthday, Me. Congratulations.

I am a honeycomb and, too, a time machine:
I’m rows of chambers mired in an earlier age,		
Where every single chamber opens to a stage,
And every single stage depicts a unique scene.
You’ll often find me drifting, wandering niche to niche.
You’ll often see me journeying back and forth in time.		
And if I, on occasion, delve in grief and grime,		
I’ll sooner soak in rivers rich in lambent fish.		
Had someone known how fecund life can be,
She might have told me, earlier in the day,
That every moment lived hands you the key
To yet another niche along the way.

You speak of time and of the wounds it allegedly heals.
You speak of grief as something that in time shall fade.
But isn’t time rather a rascal that reveals
the marks once etched by a savage blade
on tender skin? On your eye’s very membrane?
Isn’t time the tautening of a scar, thus urging you against motion,
the rent in the eye that drives you insane,
despair that fattens from pond to creek, to river, to ocean?

Time’s job is not to ease, but aggravate.
Time’s job is not to efface, but accentuate.
Time’s job is to create that perfect monster wave
that will flatten you against the sand.
So don’t you be deceived by that insidious knave: to him
We’re mere sheets of parchment to stab at with a vicious hand.

When the night is well underway,
And the silent, silvery moon's risen high in the sky,
Watery creatures, slender arms and scales shimmering, will say:
“Listen to the whisper of the little ones in the underbrush;
And listen to that cunning old owl—pretending he's a gargoyle and not a fowl.”
“Indeed. And listen to the muttering of the souls of those who drowned,
Their breath prompting the foliage into pointless flight. But let us be still now, so we can hear
The moon,
And bask in her light.”

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
The underbrush is fermenting, belying
the apparent solitude of the scene.

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
Shrill chant soaring, a fervent prayer—
and a warning.

Wet-my-lips
Beware!
Wet-my-lips
Hide!

The graphite clouds are about to burst.
The world goes deaf in the stagnant air.
All is portent. All is expectation.
All is taking place elsewhere.

Then bullets rivet the watery mirror,
and a blast of wind is born by the void.
The covey huddles, and the hunter darts
for shelter under a crumbled priory vault.

Drops ricochet off limestone blocks,
piercing, blinding. The gusts bend
the path of the rain, lashing, soaking—shaking
the man’s resolve.

Stiffly he rises; wavering
he stands, buffeted by the wind.
He pulls his coat tighter around him, and,
shotgun in the crook of his arm, he leaves.

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
The underbrush is seething
with flurried alacrity.

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
downy forms scampering, squeaking
in utter frivolity.

What is joy, and why has it left me?
Did it begrudge braving the waves at my side,
Biding its time until it was time to flee? 

Once, the winds, fair and gentle, added frosting to the sea.
And peacefully we moored, ever leeward, at eventide.
What is joy, and why has it left me?

Once, it was there, in the screeching of seabirds on their fishing spree,
In dying rosy the horizon and pushing cruel clouds aside, 
Biding its time until it was time to flee.

Summer rain was drops of pearls come to rest upon the lea.
Back aboard, the suite unfurls, and the ketch starts to glide.
What is joy, and why has it left me?

Sustained by winds and lush with light, at dusk I reach the quay.
The morrow will bring another feast, if I am to believe my guide,
Biding its time until it was time to flee.

That cruel clouds indeed were gathering, I couldn’t, wouldn’t, see,
Or that under glittering azure ripples cutting shoals do hide.
What is joy, and why has it left me? All the while
Biding its time until it was time to flee.

I want a place by the sea, and not just a kitchenette.
But an airy, ample space where I can breathe
And then occasionally, only occasionally,
Smoke a cigarette.

I want a place where I can indulge in old dreams,
And taste the freedom that as yet is but a dream.
And in that ample, ample space, I'll at last unfurl my wings.
I want a place by the sea, and not just a kitchenette.

I want to feel the salty tang lying heavy on every down.
I also want the sound of waves, a song that sings my fate and ways.
Alone and free, with wings unfurled in that vast and private space,
The sound of waves, the very anthem of my days.

You needn’t bring me the stones
To build myself a cell,
You needn’t forge the iron bars for its door,
Or give me the rope to hang myself
I can do all of that and more—truth to tell,
I can do all of that and more, and do it rather well.

You are everywhere and nowhere,
dauntless and cowardly,
unassuming and brutal. You brandish your stinger
like a sword, you flaunt it like a banner.
Proud, so proud—and witless, you, my friend,
are nothing more than a glorified cockroach
that I can crush underfoot.

She hovers,
held in her mother’s arms.
Airborne; dainty little bird.
Not yet terrestrial and no longer marine.
Not yet realized and no longer a vision.
She is future promise and obscure past,
fading memories and keen sensations, she is
billowing shadows from a submarine world.

She is here now, real now. Now
she is a creature of light and air and sound.
But for the remainder of her life she will dream
of silvery fishes,
of algae and slime,
of the dusky silence
whence she’s emerged.