FRIENDSHIP
Our meeting would be unbearable
If we sensed the other were present,
But we meet,
Do not see human beings,
But see illnesses,
Sickness reunites us in a congenial greeting.
This situation is what has sustained
Our social lives since our births.
For my part, I reach into my backpocket,
Take out an old-fashioned flask.
It is silver and has embossed dancing girls.
I take a swing of Tennessee mash.
I offer you none,
For I assume you are on medication.
You know I live in a shack in the slums,
So you tell me you have a new house, two stories, on the beach.
You know I ride a bicycle,
So you tell me you have a new BMW.
I watch you walk away, posing a good posture,
But I know the pain it cost you to walk upright and straight,
I know about your secret limp.
A DREAM OF ANGELS
I dreamed I was in a massage parlor run by God.
I was rubbed with sweet swelling oil by angels.
The angels all had multicolored wings,
Spotted with eyes like those on peacock feathers.
I had taken one of those sleeping pills that can be purchased without a prescription;
The dream was vague, but the angels dressed as you dress, Carol.
It means the angels were almost undressed. I am sure these angels
Were not pure intelligences-donning apparitional bodies for earth visiting.
Carol, are you still studying medieval philosophy?
A jail is a fine and private place for such perusal,
Carol, why did you stab that stranger you thought my lover
Who accidentally knocked on our door.
I miss you Carol. I recall the moment the police came
To take you away from me and your four other lovers.
CAROL’S SUICIDE
I read a poem by Rossetti about a girl
Looking down from the bar of heaven.
I wonder if she left her fingerprints on the gold bar.
I know when you look down, Carol,
You will leave your fingerprints on the gold bar
For even Heaven cannot take away your body
When you looked down, Carol,
Did your white gold hair fall down between stars
To edge each grass blade with an aureole.
Can you answers questions from your present heights?
I suppose your answers would be in the puzzling prose of an oracle,
Or on a dropped page printed like a language poem.
Carol, I don’t know much about those in the afterlife,
For I have lived among the dead in this present life.
I’m having your pink shoes cast into bronze.
I hung your nightgown on a coat hanger
By the opened window, so every night
I can watch it tremble in the wind.
THE RETURN
In dreams, lost waters are found.
Returned during the night, a red creek
Spotted with gum tree shadows.
With its return came the return of
The song of an indigo bunting
Hidden among chinaberries.
The tiny sound silenced all
The loud sounds of this world.
And my sleep became a blue music.
ORPHEUS
As soon as I took my gloved hand
Off her bare shoulder
She walked on a pavement that appeared on the water.
As she walked away I looked at my gloves
That she night after night begged me to remove.
I tried, I pulled and pulled,
But the gloves would not come off
I sadly watched her walk across the gulf.
She walked towards the shore where neons blinked.
She never looked back.
I felt as if I were turning into a pillar of salt.
A carpet dyed with sea purples
Welcomed her inside a room
Where wax fruit was being sliced by a guillotine.
From across the water, I could hear her happy laughter
And the glass clink on the chandelier
From which she was hung.
