that is not it, at all

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
…

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

it was a lovely trip we had
to make it for the movies

volition

if you listen closely
to the peel-back
you’ll know
i was never all-along
an adhesive entity

if you embrace quickly
the fall-back
you’ll see
hindsight can be one hell
of a beautiful angle

what is mine

smoke
     scent of winter
radiator heat
                  and mirrors

pale blue eyes
                    gales
      stealing breath
and slow-falling snowflakes
on Massachusetts Avenue
      impress my days
                       in the background

these private recollections of
recollecting you
are mine
           alone

and this gorgeous story
      we have lived
                          yours
just as
i always
           intended

strangers

maman died today
camus missed the train
                    sometime following
and me
     never thinking
                        after

like children to rorschach clouds
there are times i self-determine
the shape of elements
i can’t control

we are intertextual
i am living
                fiction
borrowed sentiments from films & novels
are just as much mine as
                               streetlit memories

maman died today
and it rained all day long
i was thinking of you
                              finally
                 wondering why
                          freedom’s just another word
on the radio
                                 for nothing left to lose
four years ago
                          i remembered
you swam the ocean
              sometime following
and maybe you are rain
with all its powers of suggestion
and the torpid fullness
                         of saturated moments

but probably it is no exquisite coincidence
just a book
               i happened to like
before its time

semiography

how could i show you?
                                                                                   it feels good
                                                                      to know you

waiting one

nothing impresses me more
than a man who knows how to wait
because i am not
a patient woman
i know conviction grows on trees
but grafting takes too long
and sometimes doesn’t work

things torn and mended
are the lovelier for being one alone
the breeze asserts itself
how long you stood there
i don’t know
these places where i am
are not unbeautiful

the sum of slow ascent is oblivious
but this timely summit yours and waking
how ephemerality was arranged
coffee cups between us
on slow morns
these nights are disorderly and
there is no place
in this space
for me the way my presence demands
more than it requires

expand
accept your unrestraint
if you should unwittingly collect
unrequired evidence
that my reverie is playing at
the corners of your mouth and
the near distance of your gaze
flickering like truth
be certain
you return before me, quietly
i’ll come twenty minutes late
or never at all

inertia like revolving doors in winter
not to find you;
and i can’t think how we’d make a meet
of two passersby
if ever we should try
i’ve been the breeze long enough to know
we oughtn’t

flowerbomb

“but what else would i call you?”
                                 lovely ambivalence
                       by what other sentiment
                              would you taste as sweet
     your divine rhetoric
                          with all the force of self-
                                                               conviction
                   i believe you
                love
  on my tongue

hypothetical rooting

do i discern the taste
      always
familiar strangers
                          smile
because i am not of it
or
   i am
it?

i survey
smooth white and connecting
lines of America’s backyard
if we had one.

i offer all the dirt accumulated
film on my street shoes
from places i’ve been
                       in a thought
to match the gravity i sense
all around me
but can’t quite make out.

chasing the sunny side of the street
where i am
it’s always windy.
is it possible to take root
                         here?
anywhere
             i am?

somehow
open and beaming and
winking violet in the sun
i don’t suppose
wildflowers are indigenous to any one
place.

solipsism stepped out

     everybody is
not me
                    in good ways

                                                                                                                    understated.

smiling opaque

in reply

some women wear mischief
in their eyes,
the curl of a bottom lip;
still others
around their thighs, but—
no consequence
mischief isn’t telling
across the fluorescent night
i sense crimes being carried out
in my name