THE HONEY OF IT
—From Sappho, Lobel/Page
94
I want quite honestly to die.
She’s gone, and there were a lot
of tears when she said, Can you
still feel how we touched each other,
Sappho—I hate leaving you.
Don’t you see (I said) listen,
why not leave radiant
as if you remembered the
honey of it? Why make me tell you
things you can’t have forgotten?
How lazy and sensual we were,
busy with headbands of violets
roses crocuses—all you bunched
in rings and piled over me,
silly necklaces full of silky
petals, slippery damp on my
soft neck. And your palms, wet with
rare royal myrrh shampoo, would
massage and rinse out my lovely hair …
SHADOWTAIL
Fluffed at takeoff, his tail steers
a flash of flaring muscle
lobbing the flying squirrel
from limb to limbo, leaving trees arrears––
his brittle airborne skeleton
quivers at liberty,
welcoming gravity
with open arms, a feral sky-kitten
gliding past umpteen floors
to scamper on curlicued toes
safely as a chameleon goes
about creation swallowing colors.
CELLO SUITE
Cello gripped in her open thighs,
she turns the pegs,
tunes the strings;
her fingers slowly take
each note’s pulse,
walk mellowing
tenor timbres
down the fingerboard
toward rasping
baritones.
In strokes as surely drawn,
chest-filling as her breaths,
she pulls a hot summer’s reckoning—
passion’s full weight
borne down on her—
through melodies
respectful
of her resilience.
A few bars from the end
she gives in to jubilant
vibrations
in the part of her
that’s now child.
The bow lifts
lovers let go
the suite stops.
Reliving the ardor
she faces the music––
a child-birthing solo
she’s composing
herself to play
without any
rehearsal at all.
Weeks later the lovers sit side
by side on the brick steps
of her parents’ home;
her sliding tears
reflect her mother’s
stare into the whorls
of the washing machine,
and her father’s powerless eyes––
they watch their daughter
growing beyond
anyone’s control.
Cheek to her cello’s gnarled scroll,
impulsive
irretrievable love,
once wildly made, crests,
then calmly overflows
the cello’s rosewood curves.
As she lifts her bow to the skies
her lover’s hand slides
under her shoulder,
her breasts lift
to his passing forearm.
Silence, after music,
awakens their child.
They spread their palms
over a nine-month belly
the boy troubles,
palpable feet
pacing his world,
gathering strength
in a hush only he
can break with a note
perfectly pitched
to the cry
that started his journey to theirs.
DAMP CASHMERE
Out of damp sneakers and stiff rainy hair
blue jeans and brown cashmere I revive you:
in those days très très sage sniffing the unfair
intoxications your dank self would brew,
scrawny prophet of the girl you grew into.
All your wiry might resists that brash whore—
so much so I brace me for her, not you,
prickly elusive tremble-some and pure.
Tonight I hold that mildewed negative,
taken of you naked, sucking some pears.
You gave it away, safe in your black hue.
That oath I swore never to develop you
I break now, steeping you in the small hours––
playful darkness gone and swelling up alive.
WHITE SHOULDERS
At thirteen my parents
let me stop eating meat.
I had been asking them
since I was eight or nine.
I trained my appetite
never to kill anything.
I wouldn’t own leather.
I’d let mosquitoes
torture me, but last year
I started to slap them
the second they drew blood.
To be pure anything
is difficult—the world
outsmarts you. I fed my cat
nothing but vegetables
until I felt her flesh
starving when I stroked her.
When you told me White Shoulders
came from the testicles
of a musk ox, I stopped
wearing it. Always before
White Shoulders had risen
from my skin like your hand.
It was pleasure between us.
You wanted me to see: Love
matters, principles don’t.
Creatures die everywhere
for us, we can’t stop it,
there’s no safe life, no one’s
clean. Would you stop writing
if it caused pain? I would.
When you were trying not
to love me, I put White
Shoulders back on my body.
I wanted us to smell
love and death when we were
talking about other things.
RECURRENT DREAM WIFE
1.
As if she still held all the cards, she deals
blackjack all night in ocean-side hotels
where most of my disturbing dreams take place.
I feel her near, though rarely see her face.
Mornings she makes the bed; evenings, cocktails;
content (usually) to invade my space
discreetly, confident our shared story
one of these days will make me very sorry
if she can just wait my treachery out.
Her body casts the shadow of a doubt
that looms as the sun sinks on Dead Man’s Beach.
She walks those rock cliffs slick with light green slime,
calling to me in siren pantomime
Swim ashore, here I am, in
easy reach.
2.
Though we split up some time back, she still
seems
quite certain we are married––in my dreams.
Clothed––in the lobby of a nude hotel––
she corners me: I know you all
too well,
then phones me at The Runaway Motel:
I see our marriage isn’t
doing very well.
Though we divorced ten years ago, it seems
legal decrees can’t be enforced in dreams.
How could I dream of sleeping with her now––
but here she comes, claiming half my pillow.
I tell Mary, This isn’t what it seems!
What makes us so defenseless in our dreams?
When our abandoned lovers bide their time,
then hit on us as if we still might rhyme.
PLAYING THE WHEEL
We are
leaving the Casino at Juan-les-Pins
the roulette
marbles still tumbling over numbers
about to lodge in
somebody else’s stomach.
By a hotel
full of the Rolling Stones
arrogantly parked
is a black Maserati,
the mild swale of
its transparent fastback
frosted smooth by
the August dawn.
There a suave
finger––speaking, I supposed,
for the whole woman––had
written,
“Cher Luc, I
waited for you since three hours.
Your anger not
immortal anger?
Biot 479 310.”
My fingers
are spinning the dial
around like the
wheel of fortunate numbers
ticking into a
perfect parlay
just as she
answers—Daisy! with a voice
full of money
which I spend in the dream
Je suis Luc J’arrive J’arrive
\
HORSEGOD
Outskirts of Rome, 1996
You could disappear from the Earth you walk––
leave with no warning this Italian farm
whose family rakes red olives off the trees––
go the way of all flesh but in free-fall,
the world as bottomless beneath your feet
as Satan’s, falling nine days down your mind.
Earthly creatures disappear—just like that.
Suburban paisanos report their draft
horse missing near Hadrian’s Villa
the afternoon we toured some outbuildings––
once barns, or barracks, for imperial troops.
The horse was foraging around a steep hole.
In one quick flash this staring oculis
blinked him below ground, imprisoning him
inside the ancient cryptoporticus
that runs for miles below Hadrian’s vista.
He returns every morning for his hay, thrown
down the same ugly hole through which he crash-
landed in stagnant mud and farm debris.
It was in fact garbage of centuries
that softened to the stone floor his kicking bulk.
How will they ever get him out, we scholars
wonder, staring at those pungent depths.
Impossible to free our minds of him––
unharnessed animal life rampant in us
that will do anything to leave its dark.
We will do anything to leave our dark.
I park in the steep vale below the farm,
walk up the road, avoid the barking cages,
the lit doorways, the probing searchlights.
Eighty yards past that treacherous eyehole
I head down the steep brush-clogged entrance ramp,
a pouch of sweet molasses feed in hand,
a lead and halter, but I mostly bring
memories of horses frightened in the night.
Water is wicking up my trouser legs.
I make too much noise sloshing through muck.
After a hundred yards, I can smell him,
then hear his tranquil breathing become charged.
He sniffs and snorts at me, his rough tongue
sandpapers my wrist, and then finds the oats.
I slide the leather halter up and over
his head and ears and click the latch. He’s mine.
Andiamo, I tug, Vai, vai! Back to
our lives! But he won’t budge. He won’t be led.
I grab his clotted but deep-rooted mane
and drive my knee against his side, pull my length
across his back, like a live pallet, then work
my legs around so I’m astride. Now he’ll go.
His body hardens with still-clenching muscle.
I edge my right heel back along his side,
tuck my head to his neck, feel his ears poke
out straight, and out of rotting earth we churn—
reanimated halves of the one beast
both of us want mightily to be: the Horsegod.
We pound through reeking sludge and angry brush
that claws at our face, snags our thrusting legs.
We are joy pulsing through a line of verse!
A black hole chases us every word
of our way out, and will wait for us––there
at the far end of all our sentences,
here in the restless farmyard where we rest.
I feel our mouth tear sweet grass from the earth,
our shuddering legs go suddenly still.
I slide off, free the halter, watch him canter
off toward Hadrian’s stables still in use.