rennaissance: tried as kate bush, "running up that hill"

1.
scant,
these touches against
the exposed parts of me
the skin
half-dead
(but alive enough
to take you inside
the cell and
the barely-named
parts of me)


i know
next to nothing,
god.

i leave
all
in your hands.


2.  (life in all its ecstasy)
not yours
the seduction
the seducer's role.

the walls unchanging,
you become
a question of volume.
volume, time, and
the time of our several fears.


3.  (i hit that dead)
your are no
unchanging
phenomenon.

(the blossom of the
cherry
outside its
black-rainslick stem--
an eternity--i stared
at you
for hours

i attempted to enter
a stream
where time
did not matter.
did not matter
hardly
at all.
i held your visage
in the palms of
my heart.)

(i looked and looked
i found you
again and again

until i had
no room

no room
for anyone else)


4. (remembrance of things past)
i
i
i
stutter
when i
feel your name
against the backs
of my eyes.

(gold caverns await you.  ceilings dripping with gold.  you will never know
just how precious
i am)

(i am studded with cold jewels.  colors that have never taken light.)

my hands
are
skeletal gems.
each bone
a diamond

each joint
a bank
of your coal.


5. (echo)
in remembrance.

i ate her gnocchi that night,
laughing with my aunt.

(oranges...
crunk.
each segment segmented
jewellike
against a pavement)

i dig through all sorrows
to find yours.  i dig through
all sorrows
to find yours.
i dig through all sorrows to find yours

nothing i can do
deserves your trust
if i only could
make a deal with god
and get him to swap our places
when the night is dark
no i won't be afraid
no i won't shed a tear
just as long as you
you     you  
stand by me
stand by me
stand by me

essay: "prayer"

every day in the past a blessing wrested for me from time by some force that let me have it.
i am wary and that may make me stupid but always i am grateful, force that gave to me this time
in which i can be loved, and learn how to care.

i am afraid of the future to a considerable degree--for one thing, i am scared of being kicked out of time.

but there's something here:
if i cannot give thanks
for what will be
(the things in which
i have no faith),
i at least can thank god
for what has gone before--
that pizza restaurant,
as an example,
when we still lived in berkeley,
where we went with young
when she was visiting from japan,
and she told me the plot of
field of dreams.
the bathroom was small there.
or the chinese restaurant
off of shattuck
where she told me about pet semetary.
or in college,
its several abysses--
throwing roses
purchased on the corner
at vanesa's house
then riding away
on my bike
because i was drunk
and secretly in love.
or walking back from trini's
knowing
that one thing
at least
that i'd given away
could never be
returned,
and the pride in me
that it had been given
entirely
free, not coaxed out
by words of love or passion,
not the result
of a bargain.

it is simple if not easy to thank you for these things god.
thank you also for this fear of tomorrow, because, like everything else,
it is part of my time.

poem: "baroque execution/nonspecific as to how"

it is asking too much of
some types of pain
that they be always silent,
always contained
in a heart beating violently.

and asking too much, maybe,
of some great shames
that they be held so privately,
like flames
in a hearth

too old to be known,
deep down in the earth
where the metals glow moltenly.

the richness of them
like wide jewels, like amber
pried from the tree, like fruit
on the vine, like fine dirt,
like cold sky--

hurt
is mine
in all its
fecundity.

sonnet-form eventually: "sunlight lick"

thick hungry moonlight
touch as if it were leaves or bark
my heart
silver me over
lay down an ocean of inert white on me

that i may move
through this gross fire
in secrecy.


light me to bank me,
tamp me down,
light me to create
a shadow-ground
teach me that lesson
you've taught me before
the one i have learned
over and over--
teach me and teach me,
make me your trick;
teach me all night
until sunlight licks
the horizon, a white radiant skin
that makes shadows turn back, and turns me thin.