Bouquets and Interludes
Bouquets and Interludes
Little grimace, I:
A suite of tiny twinges never-done,
A suite for Señor Wences and his hand’s mouth’s epigone
I
Some antemeridian moment: Razor scallops
Cheek Bone Hill: He looks to the glass for
Uncontaminated statistic: There’s Griot
Saying the four-character indictment: Speaking
Out from mercury’s pool; You are Elysium,
You are Wakan Tanka: What Aryan skin
You have (alack): This impress on the blinking
Morning: Yours to share, sure: His and
Hers to breathe away, see into; Old smoke,
New lace purse: No PR planned (but this) for the
Wound’s insisting grin: Be simple, and
Love the sleepless blood:
CHORUS
II
STARE QUESTO VESTITO TI STA BENE:
So, I will resend the wood’s moss, the under-wood, the wooden dress becoming you as you shed it. Your nakedness now is named. Any letter thus delivered’s sent through the envelope holding gewgaw, offering prism.
SCALARE, SCENDERE:
Fall into your heart’s painted bowl, rise from its crimson water.
CERBIATTO:
The dear fawn knows the stargazer, shows tooth, mends the hem again.
III
MEMO:
Every call that comes,
I take the naughty secretary’s mask,
And every caller hears my love
Is watering flowers in the rain,
She’s showering with an ashtray
And a battery, it’s her day
To calm and chart the ninos
In the trees, they cannot pay me
Enough to do this, their money
Is a broken chair or a lipsticked
Wineglass, and I get nothing
Anyway but a:
MEMO
IV
My anonymity’s succinct, as clinched as the redbird paying cash for the white lily. When she says You Are So Good Looking a sentence is suspended, and belief is bartered for the ruined mirror held up to the willow and held there forever, with the massy, faience face seeing nothing but its own emerald eternity in the blue ring of sky and wristlet sea.
V
I mean to call you from the well’s bottom
But my ‘phone’s texting mendacious
Minestrone and Ogallala aquifer eyes
And the penknife’s in my shoulder where
The wing was and you never talk back
When it puffs and pouts on its licked road
Just when we been down to the cage
Of the Man! Ray-ban.
VII
…as in gloom he writes on the bridge of your jasmine face where all the yellow brigands flicker and succumb…stop…yours in pettifogging and persimmon…stop…little Jackie Peplum…
VIII
BABY PARTICULAR
SPEAKETH
FROM THE CRIB
OF NOMINATION:
THE is such lonesome threesome,
Its lettered eyebrow poring down
Page it’s on, curved up in mist under
AN who love THOUGH sweetly
While HOWEVER sit on curb
All original’s radiant in
Raven-after’s call here, hear,
OF! Pasteboard ticket’s
FOR motorcycle gleam
Riding red silk-mantled
Wedding y’day’s mischief
Named, reported
AND
HERE
ENDETH
THE FIRST
BROADCAST
XI
Postscript for port commandant
If she sees this when you show it
A wedge of Victoria’s conjugal cake
Well to call it in I got no place
For the single bum at the world’s
Longest bar who bleats his only
Hosanna through his lewd cocktail
Napkin and his comb and once
Got home and saw etiolate his good
Hand in the pocket of a previous saint
STOP
Yours in picklock and perambulator
Little Sticky Biggle
X
Remember me, my vestment and my star, my candle lighted in the hand.
Remember me, the frame carved round and past my face.
Remember me, my ocean treading sky true black above the stand.
Remember me, the tree that is my lightning’s home, its grace.
XI
No thing’s left of Susan but her collar’s fleur de lis
No thing’s left of Sonia but the anvil in the bay
No thing’s left of Tonia but the saddle and the dray
No thing’s left of Tina but what is no longer fey
No thing’s left of us outside our beautiful debris
littlE grimacE, I
MODEL MOTEL
A lonely road is a bodyguard.
Rosanne Cash
Here and now lose the floor, their rules of order
Alive, however, in a motor court bright-neoned
At the crux of two lines met where Nebraska’s
Dust clasps Dakota’s weary hand with tenderness.
Synergy’s a widow in the kitchen, and she boils
Rice for sugar’s greeting. Next room down’s
The coiffed dwarf, his shirt a rooster’s terminal
Comb. His radio has the silence of stiles where
No one passes, and the wind owns the bar. In
Fall, the grasshopper’s husk is a parachute for
Riding air through the alley between person and
Possession -a battered metal necklace or a cornsilk
Ring- as if, yes if, the two can never meet, a twice-
Tried grieving after distant heaven and its unborn.
A galleon is as good as an ancestor with sandstone
Aligned; both sail the star-sea. They talk between
Walls of lunar clarity, the tall and the abbreviated,
The lax and the masterful, but it will not be seen
That they move hopelessly alone, the fluxion of their
Separate energies lasting through midnight and
Into dawn, when the holy knot is made once more.
Fingernails grow; fair hair lengthens. Quilts and
Down-padded jackets appear and the open shirt’s
Restored to closet for its own sad conversation
With the unblocked hat on the painful hook. What
Is fresh goes tasteless, herbs left by the choir in
A bastard church. The standards of etiquette die
With the passing of a clan, and beside this, the
Green room of waiting and desire is a lasting
Comfort. Positive that the season is oppressive,
A hazard unsought, the finite creatures of this
Roadside make fires, walk in them and, thus
Warmed, begin the winter of sleep, of praise,
Of going out again to hold ash and the planet it was.
18 September, 2010: ca. 4:45 pm
THREE MONOLOGUES FOR NUDE AND CHAIR
I:
Ring, ring. Call me with your pathogens,
Your gnosis, and your stutter’s chains.
Let me into you, only call, only say, say my
Nakedness is a heart’s purse opened, but
You like me truest clothed, closed. O, o
Call, and the world will flame, the blame-sent
Bridge smooth down, down, and I will cross
It as the dead star with her black lipsticks
And her sable boots of crushed geranium
Crosses celluloid, its looping back to the
Reel where it breathes, its nitrate making
Silver of my nails, my brooch of bone, my
Wait-song saying call me, ring me as you
Have the crystal of my ribs in their ocean.
II:
And, late, some muted glasnost in the boat-
House with its anchor hanging from the sweet
Throat lately kissed to disconnect, to dark
Water risen to the chin. You blush, and your
Pink kow-towing leaves another mark. We are
Pleased that you feel so much. So, a journal
Begins, is beveled flat to pale amnesia and the pen
Hand drops to wrist and writes the hidden eye
Of pulse reporting still. It’s better, much, to
Burn this ‘phone than hold it near to moisture,
To mouth. Best, to clip protrusions at their
Roots than suckle them, than open a future
Of rust and singing blood in every bed.
III:
When MTV was MTV, there were burst ampoules,
Sound and seconded sense connubial and wet
As were the tiny couple reft from cake-roof with
Blue frosting in their several bright buckles.
Dancing woman, fancy man, and all the party
Plotzed and wine-winged fleeing with sugar bells
On through window and trapdoor and several
Ghosts. Suspend wishing, roll back the thunder-
Bird’s red crest, and dream away the pine chest, the
Diamond cruising on its pillow for another finger
To sleep with, to wound with, as someone’s
Bible says, o sighs, it is wrong to do, no
Matter the oxygen jet filling out the one breast
Left, when the other is alone and weeping milk.