After Party

We are all gathered around the point of impact

Seated by the fire of old logs and old tires,

Dried-out flowers, floss and scutellum,

A bowl full of night by our side.

Some started drinking from the middle

Of the bottle, others went looking for lightwood

Just in case we lose ourselves in the sky.

We struggled even to form a bucket brigade

Of emotions, let alone ponder flight.

Better if not examined too closely,

The evening takes on the sheen of weight.

All of our motions fill the containers

Stacked along the circle of companions

Of circumstance, coming and going, unweld,

Accidents maturated in dumb tumult.

Tomorrow, we’ll nomad our way

Out of this wilderness, after it falls.

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.

The Fruit Ripening Bag Variations

Truth Ripening Bag

1.  Remove any plastic packaging, place the truth in this bag and

      fold the top of the bag closed.

2.  Place the bag on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat.

3.  After 1-2 days, the truth should yield to gentle pressure.

4.  Remove the truth from the bag and enjoy!

Spouse Ripening Bag

1.  Remove any plastic packaging, place your spouse in this bag and

      fold the top of the bag closed.

2.  Place the bag on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat.

3.  After 1-2 days, your spouse should yield to gentle pressure.

4.  Remove your spouse from the bag and enjoy!

Iran Ripening Bag

1.  Remove any plastic packaging, place Iran in this bag and

      fold the top of the bag closed.

2.  Place the bag on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat.

3.  After 1-2 days, Iran should yield to gentle pressure.

4.  Remove Iran from the bag and enjoy!

Fart Ripening Bag

1.  Remove any plastic packaging, place the fart in this bag and

      fold the top of the bag closed.

2.  Place the bag on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat.

3.  After 1-2 days, the fart should yield to gentle pressure.

4.  Remove the fart from the bag and enjoy!

George W. Bush Ripening Bag

1.  Remove any plastic packaging, place George W. in this bag and

      fold the top of the bag closed.

2.  Place the bag on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat.

3.  After 1-2 days, George W. should yield to gentle pressure.

4.  Remove George W. from the bag and enjoy!

Poem Ripening Bag

1.  Remove any plastic packaging, place the poem in this bag and

      fold the top of the bag closed.

2.  Place the bag on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat.

3.  After 1-2 days, the poem should yield to gentle pressure.

4.  Remove the poem from the bag and enjoy!

Love Ripening Bag

1.  Remove any plastic packaging, place your heart in this bag and

      fold the top of the bag closed.

2.  Place the bag on the counter away from direct sunlight and heat.

3.  After 1-2 days, your heart should yield to gentle pressure.

4.  Remove your heart from the bag and enjoy!

Device to Summon Commerce Street

Inhaled just enough into the evening

to be drawn in a woodland scene

on that street shaped like an L

we can never seem to find

unless we stop paying attention

or turn the attention around

like reading those slow books

of our youth, the massive ones

always leading in a new direction

despite staying on the same road

at least it would if I replaced a few

chips in the meditation machine

the registers revert too easily

as the coming of night repeated

folding back on to itself

in a cascade of shadows

extra pieces and parts falling out

on the unkempt ash of the way

gradually map the mind at play

The Unpunished Vice

Poetry moves me as nothing else does.

“Moves” is the wrong word.

Only paintings do it too.

And ballet and jazz and wine and sex

Everything does it.  The piercing blue eyes

Of Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia

Never did it.  I am the wrong person

To ask.  Anyway no one is asking.

I must remember to read, to read more.

It is strange what it does to the soul.

Time evaporates.  Journey to the Moon

Is a philosophical novel by Cyrano de Bergerac,

A facetious and irreverent man

With a big nose.  It was there

He exercised true freedom of imagination.

God was hard to kill, like a hydra.

I don’t give a damn what Byron says.

About anything.  Byron used to have it.

Victor Hugo used to have it.  Keats didn’t

Have it.  Now they don’t and he does.

Emily Dickinson didn’t use to have it.

Milton had it, then didn’t, now has it again.

Shakespeare has always had it.

Homer too.  Ashbery, Stevens, Borges

Kenneth Koch, Whitman, Neruda, Rimbaud,

Michaux, Lamartine, Schuyler

Baudelaire, Stein, Bukowski, Donne,

Apollinaire.  On the subway I saw

A spectacled man reading a book,

A thick book, with a title in Chinese.

Totally intent, he had a faraway look,

His total being gathered in that gaze,

In that book.  “Pleasure” is the wrong word.

These intransitive declarations I make

To the night.  I have a key to the earth.