Shells

Never sink again into desire,

warm vertiginous drop

and the flush that follows.

Never again. Do not drop

the shield the ice queen cometh.

Warm and easy smile, she holds

a stone between her palms.

A heart is the size of two fists,

one in the other,

in the centre a pearl.

A stone between her palms,

to keep it warm.

To harden her hands.

To move her shell inside where she needs it most.

Soft skin gives way

to easily.

The Muse Plays a Red Guitar (Albatross)

i)

The muse

play a red guitar, skin like ebony,

deserts me feeling

forlorn. Foregone

conclusions leap about and all that's

missing is the proof

for all that

talk

takes us nowhere.

The muse looks blue when he's beautiful

and rises in coils and flames

away from his face, bent

over strings.

His fingers pluck

and his eyes sing Hallelujah

to one more king.

ii)

Everything shows on my face.

What we do,

what we do to each other without looking.

I don't want to fight with you.

I don't want to fight you or be your wife

with all the trimmings,

all the trappings.

I don't mean to trap him,

though he feels it.

Afterward, after

words and his eyes are owlish,

bird caught in lime,

lines,

lime-light.

iii)

My albatross is heavier today,

wings toward morning.

Oceanic Eyes

I tread

the depths of your oceanic eyes

and was dry to the knees

tonight,

where before this flailing

limbs only kept me

inches from sinking.

The surface has shifted.

Rather, the unfathomable deeps

of water in your body, slogging

through arteries and clogging

them with dreams,

have lost their depth.

A year, almost,

after finding my ghost lover, one sad

beyond reckoning and smitten

with beauties only I could share,

I don't think he survives

any longer. I lost him

high on the tenth floor

between a gust of wind

and an upturned collar.

The air is clear

now, the nights are colder.

A season lost

and the wheel of the year has turned

to its long slow under-arc, the basin

that is winter

falling.

Creek beds

run sluggish in the heat,

slowly in the freezing,

and rivers

that only last year floated

ships in your eyes

come barely to my knees.

Perfect Service

Perfect service,
and the brush of a stranger's hair
on your arm.
And wanting to write like Hemmingway.
And wanting to write like Joni Mitchell.
And wanting to paint as if their words have stumbled somehow
from exhausted presses,
whose letters no longer say
but only mean,
to the biggest empty page that they could find.

Wanting to paint as if you have
forever to understand these words
not scrawled across the canvas
but embedded on,
embossed upon
its surface. Wait forever
for the perfect sleepless night to take you
out of skin and meaning
of the darker sky and room,
the bed too warm,
too wide.

Wade
across the stillness
of a house with no one in it
save for Ludo, and he's sleeping
to a painting full of circles
looking forward to the spring.

Home Barefoot

I walked home, barefoot in the rain.
I walked home barefoot, in the rain.
I walked, home, barefoot in the rain.
I walked home barefoot; in the rain
the ground was warm enough
when puddles soaked, stroked
and soothed my ankles,
and falling water whispered to me.

Falling water whispered,
to me of all people,
whispered to me,
of all people.
All people
whispered to me
of
water
falling

on the drum of my umbrella's skin,
on
my
skin.

The ground is warmed when exhaling.

Evening

Sex and the smell of lilies
or peonies, lurid blossoms hanging heavily obsene
in the twilight.
Your skirt riding high
over white thighs.
Bixies pedal furious
bat patterns.

Ten o'clock, and nothing calls
like bed and a cool home
full of silence.

Nothing like a warm drum,
a stoned drum,
an easy fuck between laundered sheets
and memories of the lavender
I keep forgetting to plant.
Was there ever such a thing as an easy fuck?

You Told Me

You told me
that artists come and go a little farther
than the others;
we feel it when we fall so much harder
than our mothers
ever warned us.

Artists see the light,
and musicians are jonesing for the perfect sound
and it's alright
that loving feels like I'm about to drown.