DEAR READER:
Forgive the news
for all those old sorrows
of the world
rubbed across the page
like tired cheeks
of children who
won't go down into the mines
anymore to be flogged
by yesterday's newspaper.
1/85
Tuesday, January 1, 1985
Blue morning glory (garbled text)
Blue morning glory
against the sky, whale stars
Julie dreams, Hola cuervos!
We pass the thin cows
and talk of tequila and cordón cactus
and blue whale blossoms xxxx
hanging clusters like anenomes of the sea
I was way low not sure
something looks like blue vultures
standing as dead as roadkill
to see a cardinal in this desert
is like riding a red blooming from opuntia
but this flower flies from bush to bush
an odd ritual of spring on the wing
and trees in full bloom.
December 2, 1985
ON OUT
ON OUT
What is better: fucking on the river rocks
in the hot sun or minutely examining
the wanderings of dung beetles
for some revelatory cipher or glyph?
After photocopying Lew's book I wrote:
To Whom it May (or May Not) Concern:
This illegal version of On Out
was photocopied during work hours
on their machine when no one was looking.
I got the original from Geoff
who got it from Chuck (Charlene) Sutton
who was, at the time seeing Grover Sales
to whom the bok is signed—
For Grover—
If you can't kill it,
shoot it."
Lew 8/19/66
who was seeing another woman
whose room mate was seeing Geoff's brother
(I think) and Geoff who is seeing me still
so I can't steal the original yet.
This thief hopes that Lew, wherever he may be
will appreciate the spirit in which this book
(and everyone else) was taken.
The steelhead rest by the banks of the Salmon River.
You thrust your hand in and grapple;
they explode with a flash of rainbow.
The fish no longer return. Do you remember
how the fish slipped up the rapids
with a motion almost quicker than the eye?
Tonight I thought of Satie,
who ate only what was white.
White sugar, cauliflower, wine.
An abandoned grape arbor shades
the once-tiled floor
of what we called
Lew's cabin.
I still see you
along the river, green as cat's eyes.
Strangers appear frozen on film
but we all recognize ourselves in the mirror.
The fact is that we lie.
We hold each other up
Like mirrors and Lew
walking off into the forest.
Things are not what they seem.
date?
this becomes Zenia
85?
OUT TAKES
OUT TAKES
Archers hunt for inkstained fingers
An old grandmother quilt, a rag doll
A tidal bore rushes through narrow tunnels
I am filled with a sudden chill.
Short Poems 1985
DEAR READER:
Forgive the news
for all those old sorrows
of the world
rubbed across the page
like tired cheeks
of children who
won't go down into the mines
anymore to be flogged
by yesterday's newspaper.
1/85
DELUGE
Just as I was beginning to forget,
you arrived at my doorstep
and music burst from your eyes
even before I could hear the wings of Icarus
whisper danger from the sun.
Broken wheels in the desert are as useless
as the arms of a saguaro's embrace.
The yucca-pale dreams brought a deluge of rain
and I am drifting in the lake of your eye
once more.
5/1984
LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON
All back in breast, your mouth,
my mind semicolon slow velvet clouds,
sweet, almost painfully tender,
like two people in the same dream.
Our arms encircled the ground—
Shaken from the herd,
pine needles shudder in summer wind.
There's that moment between dreaming and waking
where time and consciousness don't exist.
Like the hearts of twin doves,
my breasts drift into a pulsing slumber
against your back—
what better place to rest?
2/1985
LOVE IS LIKE
—after Breton
My love is like a blue gardenia-scented night,
or a lone tree first seen by sailors too long at sea,
where there is no time for crowded lamps
or stars in the darkness.
My love is like a candle burning
at both ends of the church
where the darkness ends like the pavement.
My love nails the graveyard of a smile to the earth
when he is angry; cataracts skyrocket across
the liquid corridors of the Nile
and lemon sphynxes drift unheeded
inducing the dunes to mate with rocks
and with dopplered sound.
By the execution of desire, vain fruit ripens
because my love is a phantom mirror
to reflect stray music.
2/85
OUT TAKES
Archers hunt for inkstained fingers
An old grandmother quilt, a rag doll
A tidal bore rushes through narrow tunnels
I am filled with a sudden chill.
1985
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