She came draped in birdsong
among those tender ponds they’d planted
for us
among our dressgreen lawns.
Immediately,
her smile feathered into action
a fowler’s net over us unwary all
(and I, admittedly, no less the nestling than another).
And when she’d left
our ponds in tatters,
our lawns gone feral again,
her shoes still twittered
In the new forest of I’s
(some trees fallen, some blazed).
REGRETS
I’m sorry we never walked arm/in/arm,
but that was from my own defects
and not your guise.
Next to your lovely limbs I’m left un/armed and fallen.
If I never said you were beautiful,
then it was from my tongue’s neglect
and not my eyes.
(I could tell you were lovely at once, but not tell you.)
Then I finally stripped down to humble,
paraded for you my regrets,
frustrations, sighs…
Keep my rubble.
You may require fill material.
FROM VIENNA, THEIR INTERPRETATIONS OF DREAMS
Two men fought their Mein Kampfs in their minds,
their unconscious wars on vaginas,
their struggles with a less-than mankind.
While Freud, that Jew, painted Austria
as a vast panorama of dicks,
Adolf Hitler, antisemitic,
bent crucifix into swastika.
Reader of signs, and maker of myths,
these, then, our architects, these our smiths.
GLUE ALL GONE
1. At my touch you’d rain from within.
You’d pulse like pigeons on a bush.
Our stormy passions fused our crows
into a rainbow made for me,
(Monochrome to Technicolor!
Distinguished Valor in a poem.)
Each new day after the havoc,
honored like sabbaths tossed in clay,
ceramic artifacts, intact
(though blackened and scratched) among bricks.
We did love the moon’s wallpaper
till stripped by scrapers in sun’s gloves.
2. There’s a toad between my legs
where I used to rear a snake,
and that nest between your limbs
disintegrated to stems.
3. I was determined to climb the mountains
but you always rode the lifts.
I was eager to dare the uncertains
and you wanted to tame the ifs.
Whenever my compass pointed to lost
you would new-rig my spankers,
and when all meridians were crossed
you would balloon my anchor.
I was the pistol in the crystal shop,
and you the glue in the glue gun.
The day came when you were ready to stop,
though my days had just begun.
You had followed in the wake of my wrecks
with your tender of repairs.
And now I gamble on an empty deck,
my hold bereft of a pair.
YOUR MARRIAGE TO THIS OLD MAN
To possess a stone of rules against those pharaoh-boys
and their noisy persuasions and their handsome toys
you needed to meet a thin christ at Calvary
or a buddha declining in his banyan leaves.
The unexpected dwarf you met your wedding night
was a bullrush baby again, enough of knife
to open a Red Sea but not a Promised Land.
All the commandments are sleeping tablets cut from sand.
You’re lost in the desert, and deferred in the dust
your legendary golden calves, your burning bush.
…