Sunset flaring
cold fire orange
on the beaver pond.
How fast the glow fades,
blackness bleeding
to the world’s sharp rim.
Hold still, listen for
the murmuring voices of starlight
beneath the night’s immaculate silence
and the tiny pings
more felt than heard
as meteors bearing
incipherable messages from alien gods
streak the periphery,
the blurry caul
where the you
becomes the
whatever lies beyond.
November Night
Oh America
Oh, America, you big stupid brute, I love
your huevos rancheros and black coffee,
the way you dance on Saturday night,
your Southern accent and blue denim,
soft magnolia breeze and white-washed
clapboard churches. You are my neighbor,
my old girlfriend, my old demented uncle
who makes me turn away in shame from
such crazy talk, so much blood spilled,
wiped on your shirt. Isn’t it about time
you grew up and opened your heart to love?
Jasper Johns, "Green Flag"
First Snow
The dogs and I venture into an alien landscape,
Lapland, Siberia, the Martian surface, new snow
like frozen ashes, like dead skin flaking from
the god of all things too cold and forbidding.
Those twenty centuries passed in the shtetls
on the Russian steppes, in the ghettos of Krakow,
Smolensk, L’vav, were nary enough time to
accustom my blood to the profound absence of light.
I crave sunshine, orange juice, olive groves, warm
sand and blue water, and the company of dark-
complected souls who collect the sun’s rays
and reflect them in warm and lively conversation.
On this third day of November, when my world
has turned from green to white, all color drained
like blood from a corpse, I feel like a car spinning
on an icy grade, or skidding toward the ditch.
Stop Making Sense
American movies, double feature,
Talking Heads and Laurie Anderson,
in Sesto San Giovanni, the night before
we flew to Barcelona. You laid your head
upon my shoulder and purred softly to sleep.
Walking back to the little hotel,
you took my hand and leaned in close.
But you had a husband at home
and an Italian boyfriend, too, and
anyway we had that early flight to catch.
Next morning, over strong black coffee
and hard rolls dry, I wondered in silence
about your tall and eager body, a mystery
unresolved, and every place I had never been
and all their varied customs.
Succulence
The poet is a butcher
who flays the wild beast
and peels back the dusty hide
to reveal muscle and bone
and the heart that once beat beneath.
There is skill and art
in the way he carves the meat,
trims the fat, exposes the grain
of truth in the tender, succulent
morsels that nourish.
The poet is a diver
who plumbs the depths for pearls,
milky tears shed into the sea
by a god who could not bear
a beauty too fine and rare.
The strand of shining moons
that light her night-clad breast,
and the blood-red steak
on bone-white china,
remind the poet of what comes next.
(I am) A dull-edged blade
I am a dull-edged blade
sawing through the day’s tough hide.
A swift and terrible slashing is best
when the thickly callused surfaces
will not yield to the first tentative stabs.
Now the pink flesh gives way under
my insistent pressure, the bone
a hard gray stela where I make my mark.
The dogs can suck the marrow.
Blood is my ablution, and pain
is the whetstone with which
I sharpen myself for the next beast.
Middle Age
Lately I find myself slightly out of step,
like a man trying to catch up
to a scrap of paper
on a windy day.
Around me twirl the dancers in perfect time,
shoes shiny and stomping out
their happy tunes,
a blur.
I stand in the middle
unable to focus.
Is that why it’s called
middle age?
Life Is Like Toothpaste
You use it up greedily
without regarding the tube,
and spit.
Comes a day when you
roll up the spent living
to see what remains.
Now measure, and savor,
each minty morning after
another death-taste night.
Old Love, New Love
Old love is like an old suit of clothes,
well-worn at the elbows and knees
from all the years of hard work and
from all the crawling. At one time,
perhaps, you could have said it was
comfortable, but now it’s just small
and sad — tight through the back
and arms, harder to move, harder
to breathe, you just have to suck in
your waist, hold your breath, and zip.
New love is like a new penny that
glints in the sun so you pick it up
for luck, shiny and bright, a perfect
circle with perfectly smooth edges,
and turn it over and over in your
pocket where no one else can see.
You have become a collector of
pretty things that catch the light,
a blackbird caching treasures.
Old suits are worn at weddings
and funerals — your funeral —
the black wool blend pressed crisp,
the creases sharp, the collar stiff
as a cadaver, everything neater
than when you were living.
They’ll say such a perfect match,
cut from the same cloth. No one,
not even the undertaker who
bathed and dressed you, will
notice the small copper disk
in your left breast pocket, resting
on your rock-still heart, a treasure
to take with you to the ground.
