Trapped, Sapped

 

Trapped:
by causes, effects
we think we can name.

Sapped:

neglecting to bless,
resorting to blame.










.

Summer Suit

 

Let us reflect on
the phenomenon
of form when it is warm:

its check against

the slippery fluidity
of hot humidity:

its circumspect agenda

to hold up and hide the rot –
to keep the tulip in its spot –

correct – erect – within

a vase for several days
so no one will suspect

how close to entropy it is:

the crystal that contains
the business

of decline: the vine

on which reclines
the skin that barely

holds within

the runny plummy fruit:
the summer suit.








.

Something Central Somewhere

 

Pleasures – stolen – in those

sweet interstices of mind
that open up when you have
left the day behind

and dare to face the larger view –

to care for the exquisite
composition of what something
central somewhere seems

to want of you. Late May

applies its brush of summer
volupté and nothing doesn’t
yearn for you to play.










.

Some Thoughts, Other Thoughts

 

Some thoughts

arrive subaqueously –
swimming through

the liquid of a feeling –

never quite revealing
in their cool suspension

their intentions –

past the wedded ones
of charming you with their

shy show of meekness –

and alarming you with their
sly flow of sleekness –

as they undertake

to overtake you till you’re
quaking in their thrall.

Other thoughts

don’t come
this way at all.







.

Yet Another Zone

 

Emergent life seeks reassurance

from the get-go – to let go of the yelp
of undergoing anything is best
achieved by getting help.

And it will more than likely come,

all dumb with sweetness and affection –
caressing you, addressing you –
effecting something like the sense

you’re not alone. Then you’ll proceed

to yet another zone, and yet another
zone. You’ll find that you
were always on your own.









.

Preponderance

 

Preponderance – dysmorphic flesh and hairless heads

and necks and thoughtful eyes – and furry chest
devised with nipples in a state of faint arousal:

another blunt espousal of the theory that full redemption

can be had through bursting metaphor: that somehow
in the indiscriminately thirsting more might be

derived a drop of indisputability. You’ve worked on this

contraption, as you’ve worked on every other one,
jonesing for an adequately harrowing facility.











.

Talk Talk Talk

 

Convoluted conversation –
endless qualifying clauses –

and no pauses:

unrepentant sounds

abound among the three

of us today. We haven’t

yet agreed on any ways

or means or ends.

Perhaps one shouldn’t

argue with imaginary friends.










.

Insomnia

 

Disparate expectancies. Misalliances between
complacency and misery and doubt. Surely
something soon will ream them out –
release you from their demons and upend
their scheme. Then you can resume the dream.












.

Our Mysteries

 

Oracles and angels are bewilderments.

Surely we can’t know what they can.

But are we right? Let’s look past

the bluster. Every woman and each man

has psychic luster. We’ve all got

something like clairvoyant sight.

I look into your eyes at noon: they’re full

of night. You know more and I know more

than either one of us will say.

Our mysteries bewitch the day.











.

Meteorological Prognosis

 

Systems of a season-less
humidity convene like spies
inside the hollows

of a bright Manhattan sun –

clouds of happy apprehension
rig suspension of the day

the Weather Channel told you

might be fair. It won’t be fair.
It’s never fair.

Beatrix Potter Springs

are rare in New York City:
plan for chilly March or sodden

mid-July. That’s a meteorological

prognosis upon which you
may decide, in May,

you might rely.

Except for when you can’t.
Evidence for anything is scant.









.

Moment of a Breath

 

Dispassionate, affectionate:
safely miles away –
there’s nothing really
very much to say.

To hold it in your arms

suffices: a gentler sentience –
inward – warmer:
murmured tensions

are released. A ceiling

reached, a feeling caught –
marks the moment
of a breath of thought.










.

Surface and Substance

 

The surface is

the substance

and the substance

is the surface

and the whole

shebang’s

been lighted

and will melt.

That doesn’t mean

it isn’t deeply felt.











.

On Finding Words One Isn’t Sure of in Henry James

 

Procrustean
titivations! Hem
them up! Shun
runs of them.

Play them on

the flugel-
horn. Look
them up in Google.












.

Today somebody asked you what you do.

 

You said that you
pursue a daily strategy
of forming intimate

relationships with

strangers. You lure
and bait them. You didn’t

add that you create them –

because that would
have been a lie.

Look! – they have arrived

again: fluent with their
private sea, fluid

with inconstancy.

They take their places
on your shore. Again,

you’ll give them what

you’ve got, though
they’ll want more.









.

Facing Mortal Illness

 

Its leaves are tender

and it’s night.
You’re on your own.
Should you steal it –
or appeal to it?

Timidly you wonder

what you have
the courage to effect.
Your motives are suspect.

Photosynthesis

and breath persist –
for now. Existence
will allow. For now.











.

Fun to Watch

 

Struggle’s fun to watch.

Bloody blotch
on white.
Unconscionable fight.

Not the jittery-panic kind –

the voluptuous-panic kind.
Emptiness torn.
Something else born.












.

Beyond Your Bounds

 

Exigencies of existence
breed despair –
the sense that incarnation
is a trap – a lethal dare –

which makes you care

beyond your bounds about
what you can’t bear about
what you must care
beyond your bounds about:

betrayal, sickness, death –

existential loneliness.
There’s no redress.
But stick it out.








.

In the Constitutive Shadows

Another soul has shed its raiment

and it manifests as usual

as naked ghosts: hosts to gossip –

undermining and corroborating

flotsam-jetsam evidence

in all the constitutive shadows

of the human being to which they

bore witness that a life was had.  

On balance, they were glad.

.

Another Sweet Ebullience

 

Your story keeps absconding with itself –
you had it neatly wrapped into a sweet ebullience –
and then it came back morphing all its characters
into a random range of unknown creatures,
whose new traits and fates and features,

while not terribly unpalatably strange, were now

conniving to pursue a different theater from the one
you loved and knew – a cast unutterably foreign
to the last – a lot for you to swallow, because
you’re forced to turn your page and follow them 

onto heir stage: you have no voice to alter their

direction: no choice but to submit to this unalterable
insurrection: construe a brand new tale, and find
another sweet ebullience in it – find the makings
of another story to regale, and spin it.









.

Terpsichorean Meditation

 

She sat there –

softly falling
into
trance –

imagining

unlooked-for
opportunities
to dance.











.

Brutality, Beneath a Complicated Pact

 

The rootedness of England –

its template sir-miss-madam-ness –
its sense that human nature

is brutality, beneath a complicated pact –

that someone’s always
sitting on your back –

and all that can be done

is to go in: that you must bear
your own unconscionable sin:

no Emerson can tell you otherwise.

Something got me this time over
the Atlantic Ocean – a severance born

of surmise become a certainty – a notion

that millennia of human intercession
have produced a monstrously alluring

darkly polyphonic song –

and that it’s that to which I think
I may have finally discovered I belong.









.

Good Sports

 

We are organic compounds

with a confluent collective smell –
a sort of existential potpourri
for whose strange seasonings
so far we haven’t found a reason.

We merely find we’re here.

We’ve gently meant, and bent,
and spent our meaning, leaning
on whatever data it supports.  
We’ve tried to be good sports.










.

When the Spirit Moves

 

When the Spirit moves
it must remove itself
from where
it had been hiding:

manage to resume

its plumy
gliding through
the motley-colored air –

get to overt “here”

from covert “there” –
prepare for
the abrupt catastrophes

of change that it exists

to bring about –
which if we’re lucky
we will sing about.










.

As if in Some God’s Cosmic Lap

 

Oh, spacey naked

Baby Boo!

What is to be

done with you?

Warm upon a sweet

pink flannel wrap,

you lie as if in some

god’s cosmic lap,

your body in-between

two halves of nap –

ever at the brink

of happy heaven –

fat and smooth and ripe –

at forty-seven.










.

Encore une fois!

 

Captive in your aptitude
for autobiographical exactitude

your pen cannot not wend

its way – nor not not fend

off all the bites and stings

the superficial critic brings.

Sweet single beat!

Repeat, repeat!

Ecrivez ‘moi!’

Encore une fois!










.

Mutant Miscreant

 

Mutant

miscreant –

or some

new beauty –

manifested

quirk –

the sort

of work

you do

not do

intending

to.

Relentlessly

pursue

what can’t

be thought.

Chase

till caught.








.

Sat On It

 

He planned

the thing 

with sweet,

efficient,

and complete
dispatch –

then sat

on it
and waited

for it

endlessly
to hatch.











.

Politesse and Cheek

Wellbeing can presume

a lovely union
of complacency

and ardor – bartering

between desire
and the certainty of calm –

a balm which blurs

but won’t put out the fire
in the human heart:

replenishing its aptitude

for wielding the fine art
of startling  reassurance –

politesse and cheek.

This is what happens
when you speak.










.

The Things They Thought

 

The things

they thought
we’d do today
we don’t.

They told us

we should
do them but
we won’t.












.

What We Decided

None
of us

has ever
had
a mother.

So we
decided

to climb up
upon
each other.












.

England

 

Something half-came back with me
from England. I’m too jet-lagged
to decipher what. But
as I ferreted through shreds

of the remains of my dim consciousness

today, colluding with Manhattan to return
me to its mix and sway,
I sensed I was the object

through my haze

of a determined gaze –
a distillation of the past
innumerable-seeming days

when England spooned me up

and swallowed me –
a fix of Caliban-ish eyes
which bade me undergo an absolute

refusal to resume whatever compromise

had held me up until that moment.
The sort of thing that ought to foment
change. Rough magic. Strange.







.