"FROM THE MARGINS OF THE BLACKS"

I.
Adam's web bathes vain neglect in prayer.
Apple in his left hand,
Open to Exodus
Crimson shoes hacking,
hacking at the asp.

I'm sorry I can't help leaping
from William Carlos
Williams to Whitman
As if he never wore white in the river, parrots

gyrating, a comforter undulating over you green,
coming down.
Like Ginsburg's mother he's pretty,
his blood: bright enough to be spilled.

II.
Red blood drops, a second birth
out into the womb of world.

Alabaster and daft
moths whiz by

Insofar as is recognized
in their wings our ironic mobility.

III.
You, right now, are scared to admit
Innocence, civility, and pride
Let yourself go unchosen,

Be a nail, a crown of laurels, wool.
The unpreserved, expectorant word.
A certain freedom, in the end

Is undoubtedly not
Unlike my simplicity that singlehandedly
does not let me exist. Versus technology

on these holidays of song and use
Resurrection hails hell in small things
like slivers, a coin, a crowd.

IV.
Your world creates you, lonely in the hay.
Strutting forth, spurting old lyres:
You could draw horsehair across them

and invent symphony. Ignore Dad's warning
Dry leaves won't burn at night, however dense
the chest of the white grand. But it tickles

In the hot wind of random verse
Let your amateurish effort be a mountaintop.
Your word gun: cocked, catastrophic

Trills sirocco in your blond selves
Your boy, your girl,
Your superstar dessert hot and squirming.

V.
What is the meaning of dill pickles or a kewpie doll?
I tingle into him while he forgets
his dull roots drying with the dread snow
of April. It's hard to November your own will,

Mary as spiritual, poetic and sensual.
Remember her as black.
Aquarius versus Scorpio, it's hard to remember
the child versus the unbred, unabashed woman

Because they are air, hot, fire.
In my eye is an image in women, indifferently
waving their faces without a scent
of material connection. These flags of discovery

all pale, uncovering why we should love them
Don't they all have a hole
we lie in,
regardless of effects?

VI.
Rote friars, too long too learned
speak for the other that is her
However brusque, however brief
Her burial lacks a period,
without a contour to flesh them out.

Word, you are her confessor
Errant shrapnel against a white wall
In cervicide: the slaughtering of dears
The university of letters is the key
A bandage only innocents wear.

"You've cut out the flute from the throat
of the loon": Plunge it and find
two uteri beating, one underground
one brightly venal in the heated sky.

VII.
Droll daughter, hello at midnight -
Do you feel the bard's East stalking you,
drowning laughter? Never fear the draught;
it will pass, dafter than peaches.

Sensemayá who reads and writes
from one book to the next. Haply llorona,
Marschallin, soprano to the stars.
Your façade faces north without the moon.

If you don't mind, my Medea,
we'll face away this miasma of calm
in a needle eye communion to evening
The electroshock monkey is in wane.

Might I say - for your shoulder men cry
In your eyes, eternally
Might I say women die for your lies?
Or your truths better yet, they remind me

For your dagger I watch
while the bard's east encroaches
on lonely feet, while I smile
and for a lock of his hair I betray you.

VIII.
Quaint the ambience here:
Good evening. How many of the servers
have been raped, do you think, or humiliated?
Eavesdroppers all hear a familiar voice:
youth robbing the grave's old pall.

The quiet sleeper's mind wanders head stone and still plots.
Does a cornice in the ground resemble a serving cover?
You may pick a pig, an apple, a myth
and plot for its pantheon of perfomers.

I love it all, I live with it.

But still, does your ear open as long as this presentation reigns?
Not in my mouth the fruit, where you seek it neither:
slicing ribs and eye holes, now you've slipped.
Good world: lacks not fools, scapegoats, royalty,
but I wonder what happened to Bambi, and what will become of you?

What happens to pugilists' brains?

Nice finale: passionate, red-hot food,
come crashing when we want them to,
to us, with wine,
with stone heads and kid gloves, to us
with sentences in our red-lipped mouths.

IX.
Does reflected flame burn the mirror? Summon spirits?
My glass chinked at the opera,
refracted bluehairs in row one,
stoooped dinosaurs for whom Strauss:
was foliage without meat, peaceful;
the juice of Der Rosenkavalier
we brontosaurs craned for,
rain from even above the clouds.

X.
On Sunday it is okay to use
banal words in sweetly musical mosaic,
myriad rhythms.
Their color has wealth in time,
tears on granite, jingles on pigskin,
skirts, whatever.
When we speak to each other I hum a hymn
to know you,
a little like war, and don't find the difference.
The Jews got the hell out of Egypt.
Our plagues are merciless, economic, romantic -
I won't bore you with shades
of black
unless you'd listen,
the sun too, fierce and firm bely
with a short sweet admission of guilt
in your invinscible armor, angelic face,
long brown legs and round breasts...

XI.
Not all fools are gold, plaiting prejudice with politeness.
Hard to tell. Open up your white grand Chopin.
Perhaps treasure in black and white keys.

Like Manila or a broken coffin,
curiously, it hurts, extends a hand
laden with middle-class insurance:
business, middle-age, not autumn but what rests
as you slow down, learn to mete out later moments,
dismay to disillusion, like Eberhard, travel:
porcelain, furniture - cumbersome,
men's clothing - fantastic.

Your grandfather clock doesn't know yet
your underwear's silk.

 

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