Tuesday, March 29, 2011

In Fashion

‘This afternoon,
there it was.’

-Frederick Seidel

No moon tonight
but I felt it.
An anticipation inflicted
by a dust gale at a bus stop
as people flood streets
to search for the things
they’re not sure about.
Telephoned all friends
while waiting to ride
the city into an evening
until nothing was said in
message machines responding.
The ‘them’ recorded with hair different
in the dress or tie
they felt confident wearing.
Where they are asleep
the rodeo clown ropes
the wrong one again
supposing it to be a bull
but so many cows and calves
and fecal matter distract so
look to the trodden soil
as hand disregards lasso.
It drops itself after a while.

The restraint of language.
Control toward an elegance
accomplished by a tie clip.
Don’t wear green on Irish holidays
and Christmas: do not clash
with the eighties basement
carpet of your grandparents.
I’ll never say this.
I’ll listen to you breathe
and when you’re asleep
in sheets by me
the kitchen sink is a cabinet
for the drinks we made
and couldn’t finish.

When all friends are gone,
who do you dream with?
Memories made-up to clock ticks
or spurned by birds chirping
as the body is unconscious?
I can struggle with this all day.
At night, asleep, I am not me.
Or is it ‘all me’
because when I wake up
I don't feel different.

Water-color sunrise.
A Floridian apartment
painted plaster
in involved sunlight
of anti-gray thrusting rays
pasteling shadow puppets
all colored,
all nameless.

I am not an artist.
I am on vacation just
to masturbate in water socks
amongst the waves
and the things left
drying out to die to be
swept beneath
a displaceable sea.