THE DANCE: NANCY
I said I wouldn’t dance with you:
Your hair’s too blonde, your eyes too blue.
A loaded gun and fully cocked,
dynamite cap set to go off.
I swore I wouldn’t dance with you.
She’s too proud of humility.
Her giant modesty towers from her knees.
She’s so proud of humility, the giant Modesty towers from her knees.
Even us healthy ones she treats like disease.
I said I wouldn’t dance with you.
Your arms, I knew, would hold like glue.
No neon ever hijacked us,
I refused to be target practice.
I knew I’d never dance with you.
Oversharp in her ignorance, she’s
indisputably a genius between the knees.
Oversharp in her ignorance, undeniably she’s a genius between her knees.
The peacock preens, pretending that no one sees.
I said I wouldn’t dance with you:
The night’s too young, too bright’s the view.
But that bandit moon lit the fuse,
and insurgent night made the news,
though I’d sad I’d never dance with you,
dancing in the moon
light with Nancy and kissing her good
Night
comes quickly this time of year
and icily as well: the wind
bites nicely and to the quick--
oh these thoughts! are dancing nicely
through the wind kissing the memory
somehow – I can hear the
memory embers
hisssing in the wind (is sharp
this time of year) like java in the night
comes dark and sharp and bitter.
Spring it was or was it fall? (no matter)
(no matter at all the season) the reason
I recall at all is Nancy her name
whispers in the moon light, or
is it the night
wind that’s light
ir was it the fall --
-- no matter --
it was time and she was mine and we were
hours until the dawn (comes quickly, this time)
and I must go on
I wanted to go on, to bound
fast as the hound Wind
and as free too but I was bound too fast to the ground
and ground too far down and
ground far too fine too but I danced on
with Nancy till I was out of time
and out of mind (but I must go on for now)
I dance with my mind I dance
with the wind and the night and the ice and
but where is the Nancy?
I dance with memory and death and death and memory
and now the dancing’s through, for
every spring one makes, a fall’s not far behind--
and life and mind and bight and wind
go quickly this year of time and mightily as well
and all matter
(but no matter)
though I promised never to dance with you.
NYUN
"When birds
lose their plumes
in the sand,
they can't
glue balloons
to their hands.
They can't fly
so they die."
The years are like so many sweet girls.
They cuddle against the navel in the middle of the night.
They change O they challenge the body
with pain with delight.
But though the waist is gone, its shadow yet remains.
Is this what we needed?
To lie in fields that we seeded
with the sperm of you/and/me?
My skin is a wrinkledup grocery sack,
all the goodies unpacked and eaten long ago.
My erection turned into slush yesterday,
my eyeballs into snow.
But though the face is gone, the halo yet remains.
All the stones unheeded... The skies... The fields....
Back have kneaded into worms, my butterflies.
And the years. And the years: just like the sweet young girls!
Hanging in memory like leather kites,
gaudy garish stabbing neon lights
to mark the passing of fond remembered rites.
But though the voice is gone, its echo yet remains.
Is this what we needed?
To die in fields which receded with the germs of yesterday?
(A toast: Time is a precious necklace bequested upon your birth. As time's beneficiary, you must realize its worth. Though age encircles your throat with its usual yearly pearl, the worth rests in the wearer and not within the jewel.)
The Duane you loved is gone:
There's a Stranger in his skin.
The old duane was younger,
and the new one's bones are thin.
Former laughs reform as coughs.
The change cloud-to-clod begins.
"When birds lose their plumes in the sand,
they can't glue balloons to their hands.
They can't fly so they die."
[nyun is a Korean homonym that means years or floozies]
THE OBSCURITY OF HEAVEN
The bomb is in the temple, the eraser on the page.
Our timid mirrors reflect but they never take a step.
A cancer’s in the nipple, spectators usurp the stage.
We mourn heaven: “It’s obscured, so we cannot know its worth.’
And we moan that circumstance proves to be our best defense.
Clouds are integral as stars in its measurement from Earth.
Our judgment misjudges us and aborts our renaissance.
We can reject starvation without accepting poison.
The body discharges pus while mitigating relapse.
Hunkering down in our forts is desperate strategy.
To drive the enemy back we must go upon attack.
Garret verse, a poet’s corpse that has no utility.
EVANGELIST
The arch science of religion
taught me to carry lips of mercury.
Now I have a hoard.
I wore a heartfelt tongue of stone
while a student of the science of love
and I learned to starve.
THIS INDIFFERENT ETERNITY
There is not enough dark
though the night is unmooned.
The stars are toomanyed,
skyfull prickly pennies
instead of ebonstones.
And thus my mood is mocked.
Cosmos ignores despair
and unechoes my cries.
Depression is the stone
that I must bear alone,
its whole weight in my thighs.
Reflections are unmirrored.
