The Poetic Impulse

If the napkins are the Opera House
then the salt shaker's the fat lady;
if a pope's hat, a well fed cardinal.
But if the napkins are themselves
(each without a self) then
the salt shaker's an excuse
to spill this horrible wine
on our ridiculous host.

Catholic Tastes

I've always enjoyed the ripe canvases of Bruschetta,
his way with red.
In Mary Asserts Her Virginity
the Pope is unassailably crimson
while she, big with labor,
her mouth a void,
emerges from shadow
in the subtlest of rose glows.
One wonders from where the pigment comes.
It looks like the lipstick of a former girlfriend
who coincidentally was named Eva.
She applied it hungrily,eager to eat the world.

After naming comes colouring in

Long tilda nilson.

Long gendarmes.

Obsolong wilkers of nune.

Pertankeruss lobsong ter bilser;

dus teric, dus oblong, dus elm.

Lines Written As If Last Thursday

In this dream the dogs bark backwards
as if to put you to sleep.
The hills are much the same
but the going is easy
as you climb toward something:
not a sacred image, or forgiveness,
something more complicated,
so much so it exists only now
while you're reading your eyelids
and your own peculiar ghosts
the wind can't get through.
It tries, don't doubt it;
even while you are ascending
-a grand word, noble, like your
current disregard for posture;
parts of you are breakdancing
the rest of you a waltz,
which suggests
a divided spirit
except, we know better, because
just before you fell asleep
you touched us with a moonpaw,
the lightest brush,
more a whisper of touch than anything,
a ghostdance,
and mumbled a phrase
-or telephone number-
I didn't catch,
only, it came out urgently
as from a whole body and mind,
the complete package
cartwheeling away into soft deep space.

The Problem With Aesthetics

Watching Morgan Tsvangarai
elucidate the problems in Zimbabwe
I am struck by the beauty
of the interviewer's tie.

Saturday

morning conjurs up the crescent moon,
a sliver of memory, washed silver.

the sky's ablutions are neat,
all brightness & sparkle
-hint of a good god.

chores absolve us.

and the deep-veined songs gone

our lupine tendencies doze,
one-eyed in their hunger

as
soft-pawed we go to market.

Old Nightmares

Where the fairground used to be.
Night's necklace of globed colours
swinging in salt breeze; lovers,
car-lovers, shy couples blinking
at the carny, shifting weight,
the shuffle of Grosbys in the grit,
sweat-stained change fingered
in pockets, chiko-rolls and chips.

Always a lost child
restored to the begetters
with a melted liquid face
red as sunburn, sunset;
the saline channels follow
gravity's chaotic chance-path
down soft planes of skin,
wash the way for and seed
the later map of wrinkles.

Trinkets hardly worth the eye
and arm-throw, let alone the dollar
are clutched as trophies;
in the other hand the big hand
that holds safe animal warmth
and almost defeats the string
of bright spots, the rider's screams.

Flu Season

There were no wars at the start.
Cabbages abounded.
They took place behind closed doors
in the dark
I envied Eggers his obviousness
avoided The Da Vinci Code
all xmas, hunkered down
is such an american word.
I don't doubt it.
The air grew recompense.
We grow up by accident.
I was such a good swimmer
before I was born,
I don't know what happened.
I thirsted for an indigent bark,
a corkscrew -I had to use my hands
- the wine was bad, french,
like the movie Brazil but more so.
I nodded off
the most stimulating night
I've ever had,
woke miles from friends,
a bathroom.
(I never set foot
on a true path
that didn't / coexist
with nothing much.)
I envisaged, as they say,
a different sort of tidal mapping,
something done with the growth
rings of eggplants. Birds embarked
at that -their purplish hue,
imbedded direction-
a dog coughed.
I covered the dish
of half-hearted ham fists
you'd left on the counter
counted the hairs of your return;
I coveted their volume
& no doubt I courted disaster
but it was such a good dancer
(innumerable fears of loneliness
are so much phlegm.)
I eschewed reality but grew
increasingly fond
of realism until
while misreading McCarthy
I sent my wet thoughts
up the chimney the ceiling
the unfeeling smoke detector
(wherein lies your heart)
and let go of love of longing
of trying to be well.
(That's mine. You can't even
look at it unless I say yes.)