bodies
I am a liar,
you circle me
twice, I am
about to tell you
how guilty I am
I want you
to be someone else,
to tell me this desire
is original
we cannot otherwise
part, the flashing lights
occasionally reveal
the impressions
I was born with
I'll cut to the quick:
the lights are coming on
and I'm afraid I won't
love you then
the kiss
your ebony cats glide toward us in tandem--
you part your hair and lean over me
on my side of the bed
we kiss, but I'm almost afraid to touch you,
the truth may speak itself unwittingly
as I draw the sheet taut
against the length of my body
touch
the body ferries your spirit,
disconnected as a dream
from its birthing place
the space beyond the womb
is untenable, every moment
accrues strangely into age
as touch is slowly relieved from you
lament in three colors
when my heart becomes as vivid
as your apples and geraniums
you must promise to paint it--
the north light will pour through the window
into my palms, and be gone
light
the blinds divide
the blue sun,
your blond hairs glisten
on your uncovered leg
light bends around us
like fabric--
at breakfast I explain:
the peculiarities of light,
our bodies mapped
perfectly by chance
prediction
just over that dune,
that's where you'll meet her,
she'll have fair skin
and will be sunning by the shore
the edge of the ocean will tangent
the brim of her hat,
you'll make some abstruse comment,
how it flattens space
and makes it appear
she and the water are touching
twelve hours in the future
you drink sake
and walk down white roads
too small to contain
your ambition
the moon is remote,
drifting through the branches,
the thing in itself
unaware of the man
yelling at it
surrender
The spilled wine spreads to the edge of my napkin
over the course of our dinner. After the second bottle,
I confess that my wife has thirteen ribs.
On the third bottle, we compare traumas.
The gay waiter interrupts
with the indifference of a Greek chorus:
'our most popular sin is the chocolate souffl'.
An hour later, my red napkin could pass
for a thin sheet of venison tartar.
The waiter pours two flutes of Kir Royal
then impatiently stacks the chairs behind us.
You lean back as if you were Isaac
anticipating his father's judgement
and we are both in that drunken, beatific state
that makes any room sacred.
one metaphor
twenty winters from now
you'll still be divining
profundities from copulation
and I'll still be mining
my family secrets
for that one metaphor
that will inexplicably
explain my childhood
there's so little poetry in the reality
that we can't write our failings
into a good life, or be thankful
our compulsions move us
any closer toward truth
in Japan, a bird alights on a branch
outside your window
and inspires a hundred tankas
or it simply wings
over your house, unnoticed