object poem: i celebrate myself and sing myself

look out, more, go out
into the back yard of memory
out the back door of time
deep into the grassy minutes
grown over what has been discarded--

aspects of each green blade
unfathomable
hence
stuck at the root
unacknowledged

dear god, grant
your refulgent
dislodgement
to me, your problematic
servant--

how can i trust in you
when you made me so deeply
distrust myself, torqued beyond self
blade to blade strung by nothing stronger
than gossamer

as if of a spider's web--each strand
beaded
with clear dew?
memory, therefore, and with it
what one would assume to be
identity
nothing
but fiber-thin net
invisible and
so wet

so delicate
i am
strung out
on time


II
thereby counterdistinct
from it, yes?

not defined
by moments,
nor even, though
it is so hard
to give this away,
the lurking at the root.

napkin poem part something of something

making the connection between what i feel
and the range of possible feelings
has never been easy--take your leaving
just now, after i'd opened the door to you, opening
so hard into the mattress soon after, a moment of exquisite
unguardedness,
so grateful, i guess is an appropriate word, for your hands,
your face.

tender slow touches after that, little gray wavelets
like those to which baudelaire invited
his sister-lover--
non-utilitarian.

three hours into our rest
every muscle longing
to change position
worrying--worrying
that turning away from you
will make you feel uncared for

and after you leave
harrying across the floor
trying to shake it out at the hands,
the fact that you came,
that i came, and that now
everything in this place
smells different, sounds different,
has been seen--too impossibly rich
refulgence
leaving a lingering damp.

what do i call this?  gratitude?
for the pale gold of your view,
upon my world, wreathed with mist,
its eddying currents, its finger-islands,
the ships that linger to make your slightest wish--
for the fact
that your gaze
has been so good
to land upon me
in the altogether sweet vicinity
of this time--
what
do i call it?

here, there is naught but order and beauty
luxurious, calm, voluptuously enveloping

lady poem: i am the eternal conquest: persephone or eurydice speaks

that golden, that golden hand
turning me in
to something beautiful

turning me in
side out, rushing flecked
stream
flecked with gold
or mica


handle me, my lord
name me anew
give me something
on which to chew
the face in the mirror
a permanent scream

unhinge my dreams

and let that other stuff
crawl in

that smile
from the edge of time--
a meaninglessness
beyond comprehension
laughter far beyond
humor


i have tried
to envelop you in anger
as if it were a pie crust, my lord,
smother you in butter
the smoothness of the flour

you are too golden, your hand is too far in
i am too beholden for anything
but shitting, drinking, and shitting again,
dreaming of violent sex, shitting, drinking,
bleeding
out of whatever part
will reject
blood
hard enough,

and loving you, darling.
teeth dyed pink
with the deep of my love.

napkin poem x3

love, convex as milk

love, do your work.

let me know the contours
of my own face, love.

i loved once.
it was a lonely enterprise
(trying to tell truth
when it is so easy to make ritual)

now i am in a harmony
in which uncertain notes
spill their wares
into the marketplace
of our

our

our

something

loving--our
act of love.

napkin poems x2

your face, so sharp-drawn
against the landscape of my drunkenness
beauty, always beauty, a thousand times beauty.

i want to find
you
in the waste-scape of a realization
you may have
precipitated:
i couldn't stop it--not, not
i wouldn't stop it.

couldn't stop
sensations
like spoons--glittering, glistening
in the heat of
the moment

bent around
one feature like
captain beefhart/convex mirror
self-portrrait

safe as milk

when the night has come/and the land is dark
and the moon is the only light we'll see

no i won't be afraid
no i won't be afraid

just as long as you stand by me (god)

stand by me, oh stand
by me

if the sky that we look upon
should tumble and fall
or the mountain tumble to the sea
i won't cry
no i won't cry
no i won't shed a tear
just as long as you stand
by me

stand by me
stand by me stand by me stand by me stand by me

the mechanics of the word
metallic, dulled
as a spoon blade.

like a tiger's tooth
dulled
within the cage

i have known you
forever and ever.

oh god stand by me.

napkin poem

fairly literally, terror
the specter of failing
your beauty
literally incredible
under me

face
with its new-ancient familiarity
and hair
spread everywhere
arms, breasts like ivory
and
wet
how could i possibly
know what i was doing?

blind hand-thrust
and dumb throb
i don't know
if i completed
or failed you--

literally, i don't
know
how
to love you.
but i will keep trying,
trying all over

your eyes and
mouth
like hot wet stars