The White Dress

A bundle of light walking in a light rain,

An elemental mode of freedom

Where the simple objects are the most true,

People, green trees, and fresh water,
If your silk touches me, I am coming.

You talk with me late into the night,

I drink the chamomile on your breath

And the vanilla of your neck and breasts.

You are something soft with freckles

Where my mind roves under your bodice.

I am blowing your pinks when dawn breaks

And the curves and curls of your being

Kiss the lips of the day.  My summer, my snow,

The most secret of desires changes with you,

So walk with me now into the light.

When Lilacs Last in the Brickyard

Walking through the door a slow scarf wrapped
Around the throat of midday
The flames scorched the bride of the city
And muted the desire of tracks in transit
The last time these cigarettes were smoked
It was in the cotton fields by the stadium
Where the children of our new tribe choose
The skillful actions of sex changing
Patterns of movement above ground
The outskirts up in the air like a tent
Or a reversible umbrella of silk
Anything to keep the muscles from slack
The forms repeat themselves hand in hand
Like the shape of cold in the mind of cold
The ducks keep their bottoms warm in the pond
And the pigeons are wheezing at the sill
When the phone rings the bird ranchers are outside
With a warrant while the dust from their duds
Settles on the porch in the sunshine
Who prosecutes the molesters of lines, of flack,
Angelic in their justice not a serious condition
Just hand spasms and babbling
As the palm trees stir their spiked fronds
We move through a world where rocks move alone
That guy playing the fiddle is blind

Ames Hodges
& Mike Taormina

The Queen of Colors

If we could live inside the head of a girl

Andromache ravens pearls

Gravity wells.  Alpha.  Sunless noon.  The absolute.

Brambles cover the house after her spindle.

We are dormant under the sea.

Wine-dark lips.  You are something moist with barbs.

Are you wearing the spermicidal dress?

If you come back later I will drink you.

Gangrene plumbs the coal mine of the soul

When the mind descends under her bodice.

The logic puzzles kept there for our senses

Accumulate like spores in the darkness.

She walks with me now away from the sun

To be my bottle of night, my bruised thighs.

She is exquisite without eyes!

Chocolate ribbons of coal.  Scorched bride.

“Come away burnt sugar into the forest”

Where our bodies are mysteries to the vulgar,

Stacked like bricks, the bricks of an oven,

Not keeping track of the atrocities,

The smoke-filled lungs of a smoker,

A spot in the sheets where the moon drops,

A tarred pelican on the gulf coast,

As night revolves on the axle of night.