Monday, October 12, 2009

Occasional

This is an occasional poem, about getting married.


Regime

We are speaking to you ladies and gentlemen
from one body now. We are transmitting
on a single frequency. Show trials popular
on other channels have been banned from our network
We are corporate. Our pieces fit together
Our molecules flood your mouth with a single liquid
sensation. We are one mouth. We are the meat and the
mind.  In our house we have our one, compartmental way.
Ladies and gentlemen we invite you to see through our eye
Our key fits our lock, here let us open our door to hear
the rain, here let us beat each other up and be rescued
by an elephant, let us hold tight on the ropes when
one of us jumps over the edge

And yet we would do anything. Bake a Fourth of July cake
and sing, and watch across the pond for amateur fireworks
Our own amateurishness pleases us like bacon
Our body is too much for the bed to hold
our arms and legs are unsorted, unlimited—
childish, heavy with new power, or propped up at rest,

fragrant, irresistible. The cat steps all over us,
the cat licks our hand.  Go on then, go on and
don’t be an ass. Make the past last

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Early, Not Yet At Work

Slight-limbed tree, winter
tangle of twigs, branches none
thicker than my thumb. Outside my
window the taut
arbor twitches, is struck.
I stand, look out,
see the squirrel who’d jumped
and now hurries down the trunk
toward the cold ground.

Cruel anger, subsequent remorse
Flowers that grow in lightless
Monochrome and die
When touched by you and I