poem: "moon you asshole"

fucking blank-ass half-moon
with its fucking blank hungers
sucking the dark to its very edge
and then withholding its light
dyeing only the fringes of the objects
it touches
with white.


touch me o moon
for real this time
use me to your rhythm,
your circadian rhyme--
don't stop with the skin,
nor the muscle nor marrow
but down to the idea
of the body, to the narrow
est jointure of thing
and its shadow.

use me like a tide
driving to the sides
of a beach trimmed with cliffs.

fucking asshole moon
with your fingers cold and stiff.

poem: "i stood at a stone gate" x2

i stood at a stone gate--beyond it,
a city
blushed in moonlight.

its wide avenues
brushed by moonlight.

its spires, its monuments
touched by moonlight.

its center, a fountain,
engulfed by moonlight,
light-washed, cool light,
even the depths
sparkling

like a diamond.
i thought
i walked
the avenues,
plunged

my hands, my face
into its waters.

but the moonlight was
a chimera;
i touched only
the stone of the gate;
i felt only

the raw warmth
of my own hand
against stone.

poem: "i stood at a stone gate"

a blank
fulfillment
--

despair is
something like that,
if you can call
what i have been
desperate.


ridden, trembling,
over a crumbling plain
i was pulled up short
at a rough stone gate.

beyond it, a city of bone
encased in warm silk,
in red and black depth.

i felt the blood beat
in my lips and tongue,

all eager to taste:


the hum of my mouth
was the fulfillment.
the emptiness of my mouth
was the blank.
i stood at a stone gate

and said your name.

ravel: "the enchanted garden" orchestra

there is an absence in me
fed
slowly
by remembrance of you

the cadence
in which
my heart beat
at your closeness


so
hard
to acknowledge
the passion
that i felt

so difficult
to become what i am
wholly
so wholly i was

yours

ravel: "conversation of beauty and the beast" 2 pianos

i never thought
that light was anything more than a refraction,
the beam from the stars
a wet nightmare
the shreds of cloud

across the moon
a strange dream

a familiar vision of
bleeding things...
fingertips, gums,
the place between the legs
all sticky with it.


it is not beauty that makes me
love her

nor is it darkness--it is
the simple fact of it:
my love is a briar rose.

ravel: "laideronette, empress of the pagodas" 2 pianos

never doubting
that the silk i wear
would be any more sweet
upon my skin
than rough fiber--

that i am myself
whatever i am clothed in.

secret life,
watching the clouds float
through the roof of glass.

nobody ever guessed

my thoughts to be
of something
less than silk.

ravel: "little tom thumb" 2 pianos

it might have been
a blade of grass i lifted

but it was my sky,
my all.

i have never lived within
a small struggle,

never covered myself
against the rain that covered me
at a single drop.

i have never shown
less than courage.

ravel: "pavane of the sleeping beauty," 2 pianos

i was dreaming for a long time,
lulled as if by the sound of the rain:
dreaming of the open casement,
the copper-colored silk
of the window hangings
bellying slowly in the wind.
my golden body draped
as if it had dropped diffident
as a petal to the shade
under the rosebush--
the gentle rise and fall
of the breath in my lungs,
the caress of my dark curls
against my cheek,

always fresh,
always new.
i dreamed of myself
against the stone of the tower

the bellying copper silk...

in at the sill
a green strand grew--
it traced a pattern
that became
new
in the stillness.
then i wished for you.

no longer old in my freshness,
i dreamed myself awake--
i dreamed myself
entwined in your arms
draped
against you
as if
you were
hot
stone.

block-form "restless mouth"

the thing inside i carried, that i housed,
swells outward, as if ungrateful--as if incapable
of more than feeding and growing--
but it is i who have fed it--i who have housed it--
it has dined in my hell.

perhaps i have let it become me--perhaps
the thing i swallowed has swallowed back--
perhaps i am no longer more
than a blind white mouth
and a rapturous white tongue

tasting, tasting everything--tasting
without feeling.

in the mirror i see black-silk head
and green eyes--they obsess me--
nothing like me

who is, inside,
only flavor.

poem: block-form 1

i am going to be exposed like 
the inner curve of a peony's petal.
as if that thing was in the palm,
as if it were within the caress
of a setting sunlight.
i am going to sink into transparency
like a dying day, dissolving into water
as if i were rock for a thousand years.



you broke the back of my horizon.
you broke my world.  at its beginning
i was a broken thing, a mold
through which thick white trickled.
i was the plains to your river, and you would
flood, map me, draw your world over me
like a thick down quilt
put me down in softness.
put me down into your glory.



i turned to the wall
i turned to the wall
i turned to the wall
and said your name.
i do not know
if anyone could hear it
over the sound
of the rain.