Alterability

Martin Luther was a priest –
Jesus was a Jew –
Better, worse – we’re all at least
as alterable, too.


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Now, Suddenly, On Cue

Pelagic light – a magic luminosity contrives itself
from rain, and sea: a demonstration of what
atmospheric water in a city ought to be: ubiquitously
jeweled: mysteriously ambient wet elements
of stagecraft – conduce to this penumbral drama
seemingly performed for you: to see the drenching
pluvial excesses of a hurricane-run-north extend
a gently bright, precisely syncopated rhythm

on the casing of your air conditioner: a daring act
of derring-do to send such mad Stravinsky beats
so far – and so intentionally – up to you. It takes
the volume of unfathomable quantities of rain
to render in exquisite condensation that slight tapping
on your window pane: and oh, again, the subtle
sourceless light! – unprecedented taste of shadowed
white – there is no way that you can capture, now,

the sight of it: or offer what it asks of you: you must
be Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde, so full
of an intensity of rapture and of woe so contradictorily
mild and acerbic, yearning and mistrustful: oh! –
absinthe would be superfluous in this rare flow –
you are the blessèd progeny of an imagination not
quite yours. Now, suddenly, on cue – as you recall,
somehow, before, you’d asked it to – it pours.


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Laissez-Faire Alchemy: Early September

Evoke it privately: stoke up
bewitching potions, fix your
mixtures and elixirs, calibrate
whatever sweet exactitudes
of golden light it takes to serve
the finest tolerable brightness:

crush your crises into powder
and apply it injudiciously
to spice the chowder: eat it like
the treat it is. All there is to do
is notice. Focus on the weather:
feather-sprites of clouds:

loud blue resonance of skies:
watch the evenings come like
spies: nothing on which you
rely for longer than a poke
or pinch or hush of breath felt
on the cheek. Morning, afternoon

and dusk fill up a nascent week:
a promised musk of autumn:
midnight finds you back in touch –
receive its cool love letter.
You were right to want to wait
for this. Nothing better.



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Our La Brea Tar Pit

Narrative:

Two birdies in
a puddle splashing.

+

Comparative:

Dashing passion in
the pebbles like
two criminals too
happily and hastily
ensconced in laying
waste to expectation
to retain a taste
of anything.

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Declarative:

We are many things,
but mostly must be
deeply social animals –
how else to understand
the lunacy of such
a tacit vast cooperation? –
all these birdies in
their puddles with their
story-lines that for
a moment seem
to make the muddle
seem pellucid.
Bubbling up from
our La Brea Tar Pit,
darling, damned
if we’re not lucid.


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Midday Light, Halved

Turned the CD player on and let it
carve a great big slice of Brahms –
A minor – Quartet Number Two –
before a semi-slumber threw me into
semi-somnolent hallucination – I had
halved the midday light by pulling closed
four wooden shutters on the windows:
shoved a pillow tight between

my thighs, and clutched another
to my chest, and wedged my head
into a third, patently to grab
some rest – looked like a grimly
hibernating prehistoric bird –
by this time I had heard the better part
of Brahms’s swoon of the first quarter
of the quartet’s feast – the movement

mooned-and-starred me back
to childhood – evening, setting silverware
for dinner, placemats on the table,
somehow knowing that I hadn’t
made a space for everyone – couldn’t
think whom I forgot. By now
the Brahms had reached a spot where
it could not suspend me anymore:

a jabbing mad allegro shored me back
into the need for day, and all this
hibernating musical dim prehistoric
reverie blew, soft, away – like
seedpods from a fluff of the forgettable.
Although regrettable that I could
not recall that dinner guest –
as if I’d failed some secret test.


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Depression: A Strategy

Be tiny
in your dealings
with the world, today.

You’ll get to see the whole
enormous hoo-bah close its eyes
and swing and sing and sway, that way.


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Silly Goose

It’s late – too late now –
for the break
you hoped that you
would get: that warm

orgasmic wisdom
spurting down toward
the heart and groin,
up to the head:

that geyser of two
joined enthralling
understandings fathomed
just in time to take,

while you were hot,
to bed: one, that
outcomes didn’t matter
all that much – and two:

hilarity was part
of kickass sex.
But you’re no longer
that sweet youthful

glory which might put
these gifts to use.
Today, in love,
you are a silly goose.


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