In the name of poetry sometimes
we go out of our way to invent trouble:
why we stole a few kisses against
the polite company of wolves,
how the answering machine found us out;
she assumed the worst;
our poems shattered against cold glass—
separating air from air, light from light—
She calls again to rant about bad poets
writing bad poems about who they've fucked.
I can say nothing to soothe her,
to convince her it's a mistake—
this tale only exists on the page.
But I asked the I Ching anyway
who would rub ochre on your chest
and watch the sky unfold blue secrets.
The oracle said, The marriage of thunder & wind
takes place according to immutable laws;
ground water is an invisible army filling the empty places.
It said, Those who run off are permitted to escape.
Like stealth planes flying over occupied space,
we avoided radar detection only to deliver ourselves
into enemy hands. Silos tracking missiles.
I am not another soldier of the Red Army swelling
in the slippery ranks of Stalin's bottomless heart.
We come to understand completion is reached
by systole, diastole: what endures
is merely poetic fodder.
I dreamed my horse labored for breath
as I walked the isolated beach
calling your name to the empty wind;
my dead grandmother came to take me home—
there was nothing left to eat but spoils.
Who sings in the night—wolves, or the wind
tying gordian knots? Escaping us both,
you've gone into exile, a half a year and a world away.
Late at night, the phone rings. No one the line—
your old lover and I keep in touch.
4/23/89
There's a newer, shorter version, but where is it? NOt in my MS binder
we go out of our way to invent trouble:
why we stole a few kisses against
the polite company of wolves,
how the answering machine found us out;
she assumed the worst;
our poems shattered against cold glass—
separating air from air, light from light—
She calls again to rant about bad poets
writing bad poems about who they've fucked.
I can say nothing to soothe her,
to convince her it's a mistake—
this tale only exists on the page.
But I asked the I Ching anyway
who would rub ochre on your chest
and watch the sky unfold blue secrets.
The oracle said, The marriage of thunder & wind
takes place according to immutable laws;
ground water is an invisible army filling the empty places.
It said, Those who run off are permitted to escape.
Like stealth planes flying over occupied space,
we avoided radar detection only to deliver ourselves
into enemy hands. Silos tracking missiles.
I am not another soldier of the Red Army swelling
in the slippery ranks of Stalin's bottomless heart.
We come to understand completion is reached
by systole, diastole: what endures
is merely poetic fodder.
I dreamed my horse labored for breath
as I walked the isolated beach
calling your name to the empty wind;
my dead grandmother came to take me home—
there was nothing left to eat but spoils.
Who sings in the night—wolves, or the wind
tying gordian knots? Escaping us both,
you've gone into exile, a half a year and a world away.
Late at night, the phone rings. No one the line—
your old lover and I keep in touch.
4/23/89
There's a newer, shorter version, but where is it? NOt in my MS binder
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