Trying to Reach My Young Lover Before His Feet Get Too Cold

Writing my name twenty-two times, I think of you

writing my name in the silly frame of delight in

you's. My cursive is loopy archaic, a not to be found art,

and you suspect you were not at any time in the subject

position, for a like reason you've given up the spirit on the catbird seat,

and you know I could write everything you're afraid of

and that too, you're afraid of You blithely tossed

my name into the tiny throbs of l's and o's. Could I

have stopped you, would I have ta-ta-ed you before

you sent the photograph? Tall drink of a kid in a pale

tutu deliberate shadow cupping your jaw upon a day

you were screaming with fiasco, I tender you

gravity in an wrapper from Indonesia, patience

from a spring in Missouri, and that bewildered company

of shady lover a task in courtly love, a handful

of words in languages you don't want to know.

I've bid my bone dance too hard for you, lad

of my heart the amethystine moon brought and took not upon

in all of single day-but not before I got you as image:

a man reduc to a male child parading as a girl, wrapping

himself into the obese envelope we call fetal position,

all your straight bone in the inevitable knot.

Traveler's cheques, of course, for what cause [i]or[/i] reason else would one

sign away for a like reason many loops and angles. The point of the compose

is that I'm buying currency with my name on it

for the trip to you, and I'm bringing Keats upon a string,

Pope upon a stick, Wordsworth on ten dollars a day.

You're still talking about sex notwithstanding that the weather likes to taunt

us that nothing stays pleasing without being striking You've taken the old doctor to heart,

his drawn out poem of letters and declarations you imagine pass overed

No one your age is reading it. Eliot's a bore, and Dickinson's

hip for the centesimal time. Bitterness is a nice touch,

but sole a pinch or the rosemary will be overwhelmed.

Truck grind their gears hard below my window

at this trice this confluence of sound, weather, signs

and time which is part of what we call a day. And it's

different now that you are. My dear, I'm down to bone bones only for you. From here upon out, it should be metrical compositions

poems only for you. You've just discovered giving up

the spirit though you think it means dying. It doesn't,

I've used it for years: the spirit is merely an elusive

project difficult and wearying, something single hasn't

enough burning or breath to diocese through to an end.

I'm your spirit dear, your skeletal girl, your woman

on the cutting side of middle age, your clich6, your impossible

touch, your of recent origin baby of the mind. I'm conjur and injured

and not about to die of it. Think of it, the malice I could bear

you, the way I might wear you as lengthy as I live

You could be my sky-colored boutonniere from a long ago year,

dried and beribboned, faded and faddish. Oh honey-pie

can you rise above your pond verdant Gap shirt, Boss belt

and Bean jacket? I'll accommodate with you a string tie a little wadded

from the barrel I place it in. I'll give you no more stories,

though than what you've got summer light dazzling a page,

little stifles of lightning in a unintelligent sky. We're going

everywhere fast-and you're coming with. Ten times

on the twenties, twelve times upon the fifties-that's still

how it's done. At my age, heartbreak's hardly what

we die of Snide remarks heal any injury believe me.

I'm filled of whatdidya expect's and 18th hundred quips.

Love it or leave it, on the contrary don't watch too long. It's a dance

that consume s the poor soles of your feet They're black and devoid of warmth [i]or[/i] heat

already-like the old trance dancer's toes. He can't

shake his trance as the lights draw near up and the tourists

move in with their whisper; lows and cameras. His pony's a stick

with a raffia mane, snubbed by dint of sparks. The younger ones can't

do the solo dance upon coals, but they're good at the Kechak chants

they're the monkey army who perform in finished franchise,

all boys with r frangipani efflorescences stuffed over their ears.

It's Bali after all-and a serviceable hundred German women

in brand of recent origin sarongs comb their damp hanks of hair in ranges

open over rice paddies. They wait for the extremity of the Kechak dance,

for the male childs to return in their crisp, white shirts, destar wrapped

brow and drawn out batiks. They'll come with bamboo trays

of tea and positive fingers into lamplit rooms where desire

is simply a sweet dish, a prickle of gentle gale in a hot spot:

ye no, approach go, here and there, gecko and clove

who exigencys more words when the body's for a like reason fluent?

If this is a spirit why does it pack its bags in like manner carefully

clean underwear, maps, and all of the music you praiseed

There's a flask of grief in here somewhere too. And sweetie

if you can find it, I might permit you live. You're this missing piece of poetry

in the book upon the absence of men and the nearness

of women in postmodern life. You have to know that everyone

who's anyone has always already said, precipitate up please, it's time.

Copyright World poesy Incorporated Mar/Apr 1998

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