If I Were to Map the Land of You

If I were to map the land of you,
I’d have to soar so far above the view
that I could catch the last faint contours
of the fringes ‘round your thinnest ground –
the beach and coastline of your mind

that bind behind into the breach of cliffs

emerging from your fault-lines leading up

to barren mesas of your terrors blending

slowly into grasslands of your milder

anguish into forests into jungles into seeps

and deeps of unlit sexual complexities
that would be drying out – as I surveyed

the rational intentions in your understanding –
into vast Saharan sands – soon to swivel
down perimeters of your peninsulas

that lead towards the blind reflex
of walking feet: vexed parts of you that
move ahead no matter what. But oh! –
to map the land of you from that high
spot would make me miss the hints,

the glints that I can only get up close
if fleetingly. I cannot hike the whole
of you but I can sit in shadows and await
the breath and scent and strangeness
of the soul of you. So that’s what I will do.

.

Pledge to Reunite

Among the cast of characters
that constitute the mind,
today I’ll try to find and introduce
that pale ironic lady invalid reclining

on her burgundy brocade divan

to that mercurial tight pink
athletic boy who will not let himself
get one small breath behind
the panoply outside. To make him
share her company beneath

the lady’s canopy, and let her
breathe a whiff of his taut
muscularity – to have her faint
cologne mix with his sweat:
well, that would win my bet

that I can hardily survive this
business of remaining heartfully
alive. Ah, but when they part –
what will they keep? Perhaps
a pledge to reunite when I’m asleep.

.

Waterloo

Faint strains
of strained attention –
wherein I sense
a Waterloo –

connect me over
distances – to you:
and you are not
the winning side.

Like Bonaparte,
you are the dark part
of the heart.
I cannot reach

into your mêlée
without injuring
my hand:
I need my hand.

You’ll ride down
thinking
you will conquer
other lands –

perhaps you can;
but watching
from the cliff
I sit on? No.

The day beats drums,
all blue
and loud and slow:
for you.

.

Do Keep in Touch

Why do we never see you? Do
keep
in touch.

Are you not there? Could it be true
you’re
a crutch?

You have that rep, sometimes, due to
doubts
and such.

But oh! We’ll pray when we’re askew –
in
the clutch.

So never mind. Earth turns on cue.
Thanks
so much.

.

A Manipulated Glow

Cast a thin cascade –
translucent whim –
whispered shade –
dome it over all –
spider web umbrella –

see the tiny shadowed
textures it suggests
below – celebrate
the lent complexities
of a manipulated glow –

borrowed for the time
light takes to alter sight:
believe that everything
you see is true. Tell me
that it isn’t you.

.

Noodle-doodle

Today the Universe canoodles
like a lonely clarinet’s sad random noodle-doodles:
hooty calls which fall into an absent-minded blues improv –

then lobbing out of nowhere – as if in a dream
of swooning in some other Universe’s arms –
descends into full-throated chesty Brahms;

today the Universe sends out a yearning song
to notions that there might be other unknown
lone dimensionalities who’d want to hum along.

Today the air is full of sweet discarded melody.
Today with a magnificent but unappreciated ingenuity,
the Universe pursues a splendid superfluity

of tunes which dip and dangle, pirouette upon
the infinitely tiny squeeze
between its longings and complacencies –

all the major and the minor keys.
Today its delicately bobbling balance
could be wobbled by a sneeze into catastrophes.

And yet it floats as if on preternaturally calm sweet seas:
quantum-tiny latitudes and longitudes
all sway a little here and there

and back again at each new
noodle-doodle from the solipsistic clarinet’s reprise –

self-correcting by degrees.

.

To London (Again)

Welling sensually up from somewhere
at the center of you comes a plume,
a channeled coalescing bloom of feeling –
warmed as if by some strange secret
magma – which quietly asserts its

slow investigation in repeating rhyme:
a fine collective cadenced assonance
which, as it rises, seeps into, infuses all
the soft surrounding tissue – porous walls –
of consciousness – with some new

propagating prize: proliferating
and insinuating – probing, staining
all the fibers of you with its deep
red-purple purpose: visceral sweet sense –
utter private rightness – calm and deep

as velvet, spreading into everything
and bringing it alive: receptive as
a cat’s night-seeing eye. Ah – the slyly
wonderful decision it has made you make!
(Can almost smell faint-diesel-tainted-

late-night-damp-leaved river air.
Remember when?) In late November,
for a week, you’ll go back to the wedding
cake of London and receive her lovely
murky benediction once again.

.