Annie

On the Texas coast

Between Mobile and Galveston there is

A great garden filled with roses

And there inside it stands a villa

It is a great rose

A woman is often strolling

In the garden alone

And when I pass on the road planted with lime trees

Our eyes meet

The woman is Mennonite

Her rosebush has no buds and her clothes no buttons

My jacket is missing two of its own

The lady and I observe almost the same rite

Annie

Sur la côte du Texas

Entre Mobile et Galveston il y a

Un grand jardin tout plein de roses

Il contient aussi une villa

Qui est une grande rose

Une femme se promène souvent

Dans le jardin toute seule

Et quand je passe sur la route bordée de tilleuls

Nous nous regardons

Comme cette femme est mennonite

Ses rosiers et ses vêtements n’ont pas de boutons

Il en manque deux à mon veston

La dame et moi suivons presque le même rite

Apollinaire

Le Cheile 2/28/12

I want you to be happy
At the times that you leave
Your hat. Therefore, the inner tube
Sleeps sounder on torn sheets,
The angels of clear water
Know the underside of your feet,
The elf and her sister grieve
For comedy is not for tourists
With their shorts on backwards
Least of all. There is a land
Laced with thin streams that sparkle
Down the back between the wings.
Buildings can have myths of flight:
A pot of milk so wee
We see the thoughts of peers
Disappear on the screen of a face
And all the places fade in glee.

A Letter

The south was my Japan.  The head a moveable house, like a tree with legs.  A palette of wheat and whiskey and peas.  Straw hat ploughed face.  I painted a chair.  It was a candle.  The phalanges of the Virgin in silhouette.  The blossoms signal the beginning of the end.  We are walking to the church.  We are going out to the edge of the property.  The cypress oscillates, flickers.  We are halfway there.  Yellow crackles like dry grass on the souls of your feet.  There is no color that does not see you.  The factory in the distance spews its white blossoms.  We are out for a walk in the paint of earth and sky.  It is a slow burn on the road to joy.  The nights are more radiant than day.  I painted a book.  A melancholy doctor keeps it on his desk.  From the windows of the asylum I see the orange dust of the fields.  The gleaners slump like marionettes in the barn.  I painted the wooden hands of the women.  The water in the stone basin is so clear and cold it cuts your wrists.

I am Not

Ted & Gertrude & Tony & Ben

& Eugene & Natalie & Kenward

                            (“His name is Kenward?”)

Janice & Ron & Rebecca & Tom & Fanny

& Charles & Noah & Alice & Maxine

               who are

                 part of the scene.

                What if I’m

                                    shy?

Are they going to           

                   pay me    extra

                                     to go to the moon?

Hell no.                 

                       Are you fragile? 

                                  Will the sky

                                  snap

your stem?

                                                                    Get out there!

(“The line starts around

the block.”)

                            Oh.

Put in a “book”

                 We are sending

                      Ames

                      Saint

                      Jerome

                      Maria

                      Patricia

(“Where is Noura?”)

                      Marlène

                      The Bô

                      Margaret

                      &

                      Elena

                      I loved being with

                    Arrows

                            of happiness

Have a Poem

There is nothing to be said,

Never was.  Clarity of sound

Is not a given, it is a created.

It looks so dirty under the sun

All the sounds in the world,

And not one of them to put a name

To it that will stick.  Prattle brain,

Be still.  Silence is your strength.

Then and only then

A name comes to seem a thing,

Hydra-headed, orchid-like,

Familial, with an alien sting.

Only in special cases is it the mind

They wish to marry.  It comes wrapped

In ecstasies of the flesh

Or grotesque cheeks and chins

That never really were beside the point.

But some are more beautiful

Than others in walks of the spirit.

The mind is tossed off a cliff

That is also a horizon

And lands on its feet in the air.

Here we are, out here, beyond the fat.

The wind draws you in.

At Long Last

The moon is painted glass

And a small crack is beginning to show

Under its eye.  Don’t touch it.

We don’t need the milk all over the floor.

The speaker wore a salmon necktie.

He understands how clouds unfold across lakes of sky.

The moment a Japanese girl

Penetrates his soul, she is flying like a fish.

Later they get undressed in a dream.

It is time to spread joy.

A yellow cat serves black tea.

The butter and blueberry stick to their whiskers.

Night was a sparkling blue paste.

Hand me the toothbrush.

Telephone!  It was his mother and would he please

Not forget to bring her The Way of the Samurai.

Close call.  Mom’s ear was nearly shot off.

One fella had a pitchfork.

A bloodied rage by the side of the road, or was it a squirrel?

Pharsalus in a puddle, and then calm.

The arrows of happiness are released by the sun.

The snow descends like rice.

We are out of the fight

And it is a great day to do laundry.

The Smell of Mendou

The Smell of Mendou

Some nights you would lean across the table 

and tell us stories of skunks that lived in trees. 

(They knew no fear, you said, 

but had grown tired of being roadkill.)

Their treeing had known more peripeties,

and the integer of their climb furrowed our brows

late into the night. In the afterglow of the tale, 

in corners that seemed smoky to children 

who had neglected eyes for ears, 

we squatted together with conspiratorial half-smiles 

and solemnly concluded the frivolous vow 

to concretize our narrative solidarity by dyeing 

long white streaks in our hair (black for the few of us 

prematurely and juvenilely silver-maned). 

A fierce clan of stink merchants; boys lost.