Nonce II

A loon with a spoon
and a beribboned robin
cadged a barred cage
for a bird with a bobbin.
 
A wren and a hen
set up shop in the moon,
where they peddled green cheese
to the spectacled loon.
 
The cheese was a gift
for the newly caged bird,
who declared all such kindness
distinctly absurd.
 
As for the loon
and the robin with ribbons,
they’ve been tarred and feathered
for acting like gibbons.

_

Memory

Let’s practice being small:
minikin mannequins mass
parading, masquerading as
queries from before the floor
became a field too far away
to wander; don’t squander
the quiet kenning, yearning,
keening. She seems a slightly
querulous thing, slighting even
sightly denizens of the world
in which you live; give her
ghosts instead, let her zen out
                                  (or in).
Twisting and rhyming, the
timing falls off until you’re left
mining the asphalt, miming
your own faults. Who’s fault
is that? Tarred and feathered,
she remembers the barred cage.
Full of music then, her ribbons
and robins hang in shreds. Dead
to your pleading, drunk and
needing, she winds her way
upstairs. Upstaged, you take
her dare, and make the grade.

_

Qualifying

She would wear scuba gear
in the tub—not for fear
of drowning, but because
the ocean’s nowhere near.
You are keeping her alive,
if not exactly thriving;
but that’s because of her,
not for your lack of trying.

_

Remains

Nothing left but nuts and bolts;
bolts and nuts and cigarette butts,
butts and nuts and thin little cuts,
cuts that slice like fire through ice,
ice that melts like water ought—
      bolts, butts, cuts, ice,
now you know what all I’m not.

_

O

Next day, I am all poetry—
fingers all enjambed iambs,
toes all troches. An anapestic
angle at elbow and knee, I
feel a syllable slide by my
ankle. I sink below you but
retain a voice, my one vice.

_

(He)artless

Give me no harbor
from myself;
(they let me lead
a thousand lives
and so cheat death
when I’ve already
died.) Allow me no
room to breathe,
no ship to sail,
no world to wander.
I’ll terrify the flesh
I find in the bottom
of my glass. When
I’ve emptied it. But
most of all, don’t
let me in. Begin, be
gin. Begging to sin.

_

Withdrawal

A single breath.

He watches her go off
like a firecracker, like
a fit of sullen sparks
and still he sees her, seizes
her, sails the seven seas
to find her sustenance,
a wayward glance, a sly
and sudden something like
a sneeze, the silent sound
of please that’s reckoned
in a gasp, a gazing, grazing,
dazed and dying on her
lips. Against the sodden hollow
where his heart once was.
 
And so to dark in dreaming
of everything she’s stealing
with absolutely no intent
of ever giving any of it
back.

_

Quite

If a curl against you
catches fire,
will you part
                   with can-
                                tos?
two can
what one
won’t (or will not: own it)

to be,
there

quietly consuming,

displaced. And so to
                  silence.

_

Frequency

O w)
      here is
the postcard
I marked
               Us
(lost—
           among
the pages and
the one piece of 
          my heart
I left
        for you—
can’t find that
either n—

_

Skinned

I will scratch at my  
      humanness
until it shows color;
humor me—huge
and hued, hungry
for an ung
               racious
grasp, I rasp rapacious.
Is it possible to rape
one’s self? I
                   lunge
after your lungs, long
ing to be in, greeted by
your groans, grow
ling and howling,
slipping at a lipped
syllable
            and sliding
still.
       O!     the thrill,
like tilling fallow land,
like yearning to be
home—again, and
opening the door
and coming
                   in.

_

(R)evolution

I miss the days
you go
           and, going,
are gone—

getting used
to the use
of another
       other

maybe that change
isn’t what we learn
but what we learn

(to forget)

you are you
                 ng
t(w)o me fo(u)r
the way you want

_

Mood E

A
parent
          ly

just getting to
o
   old
 
to want to be
a          lone
here

any
more

_

Stolen Meal

How can this be food?
How can it feed you?
Don’t get me wrong—
I know the caloric value
the pages contain:

just didn’t think anyone
else would recognize
the way one can feast
on letters, gorge on
words, make metaphor
their meat.

_

Illusion

The snow falls finely and I
feel you move through rooms
I have vacated. Some shadow
of my girlhood self may
flirt with you, stroke her hand
along your jaw; don’t be
fooled. She was already
wounded, knows how to
defend herself by sleight of hand
or thigh. There is no decoder ring
that can help crack this cipher.

_

The Most Clear Glasse

Ray Charles would feel
a woman’s wrist to size her up—
I’ve let you further than that.
Have you seen me now?

According to Helkiah Crooke,
sight is the most important sense
because it verifies what is only
intimated by the others.
But sight alone is faulty, too,
and needs its fourfold reinforcement.

Have you sensed me?
Have you sized me up
and determined my properties?
What are they?

And which sense
do you most trust?

When the condition most
to be feared is blindness, 
we close our working eyes.

_

Coffee Break

may
be
we

can put
            our hearts
(separately, or else—
            apart)

through the grinder
  pulseandpulse

and
       let

them percolate
(patience: wait)

then
drink
         what
         drips
 
into
the sink

_

See: "me"

if the when you
                       won’t you
ease me
             tease me, please
me—
 
can you, can’t you
                            let me
make entry
                 in t(w)o
the world

and
       t h r o u g h

(that is 
       —who?—
                    you)

_

After Yeats

She went forth into the night,
clad in garments shot with light,
moving stars with easy grace,
the moon reflecting first her face
then hallow’d ground beneath her feet,
echoes of her voice replete
with sparks of heaven’s saving fire
to crack the hull of hell’s empire.

When he saw, he knew her name
but hid his knowledge all the same;
in moving by as breath of air
he caught, entangled in her hair.
He could not fail to save his soul
but deep desiring takes its toll
and when his breath had run its course
he still had not felt all her force.

And so she, sighing, wanders still,
moved by her own restless will;
only smoke and ghosts remain
as testament to fading bane.
She can recall, at sleepless night,
the way desire once took flight
and fled to rest, away off far
and drops one tear, a falling star.

_

Transportation

who cares
whether I am trying
to get outside myself
or inside you—
just
       take me with you
where you go,

when your eyes slide
low below their lids
and your breath
lets loose beneath
my fingertips—
 
just let me come.

_