872 Life poems

That day I hired a private detective to follow me, and could not read his notes. In a tangled grove, I hid behind white pines, compressed my body, then watched him write, left-handed and myopic, under an Irish cap, when I asked for help from strangers who spoke Slavic languages. Wary, moving ahead, I found a depot, watched an immense train churn, haloed in steam, and boarded, second class. I had no ticket, and my expired passport represented a drooping head with unfamiliar eyes. Unshaken, rows behind, the stranger waited, wielding camera and pen. Across the border I disembarked, but knew he would capture me, with soundless footsteps, even on black gravel. I tried to recall my crime. I know I am guilty, but never why. Lawless, I have ignored those signs: WRONG WAY ; GO BACK and NO WAY OUT , circles that tell me YOU ARE HERE . I gather it is the whispers that explode, the looks that make dogs whimper. When I bow in prayer I think of love; I know I’ve killed my friends, pelting them with a touch—and yet I’ve heard they are alive. Besides, that’s not the real offense. I would cross any path, or trek through swamps to find my crime. But even he, that bald, insistent man who follows me, unsleeping, cannot tell me what I’ve done.

So lightly and invisibly I hardly knew it, river of blood descending without joy back to the heart through the frail vein all the time —the largest of the body!— shredded then dissolved ("obliterated") and there was a sudden seepage into surrounding tissue instead of the blood pouring out as you'd expect forever, and a new vein formed to bypass what was gone like a wild meander even the smallest flood ends, and the river goes straight from that point. But in my case the thin-walled base-ends held forming an anabranch, a section of a river that diverts from the main channel, rejoins it downstream. Local ones can be caused by or make small islands in the watercourse but sometimes they flow hundreds of miles like the Bahr el Zeraf in the south Sudan that splits from the Bahr al Jabal of the White Nile, doesn't return until Malakal instead of leaving behind, as it could have with the blood being old, a full-fledged oxbow lake that before too long will blister in the sun, become a little blue scar beside the heart.

Inexplicable, the sign outside a deli scrawled with FLOWERS and below that: ALWAYS. But there were no flowers. And I have never seen an Always. I would like to, and I have looked. I have kept my eye keen for Always, have liked its idea like an expensive purse, coveting it as it appears, riding the arms of rich ladies who are so very lady.                      I've rolled on velvet cushions where I heard Always slept, and I once tried to kiss Always, but I don't think it was the Always I was looking for. I like your Always, it looks such a demanding pet. It looks like it kisses nice and soft. It looks like the bruise I found flowering on my knee. I fell down at your voice. Not to worry, I got right back up, walked ten more blocks and by then I was halfway home. I knock my knees blue and scabbed crawling toward you, wanting flowers, and always, always, always to slide against the cold vinyl of a car's seat, your pale hands on the bare backs of my legs, that's one Always I want, and whoever knew there were so many species of Always? Your bare hands on the pale backs of my thighs, printing bruise, and if you said Flowers, said Always and we could erect a forever of something like sheets and breakfast and an ordinary day, my eyes would always slide across the table toward you, to warm their twin marbles in your palm, my face would flower for you daily, so that when we die, roses might petal themselves out our throats.

(for Niyi Osundare) Something in altitude kindles power-thirst Mere horse-height suffices the emir Bestowing from rich folds of prodigious turban Upon crawling peasants in the dust Rare imperceptible nods enwrapped In princely boredom. I too have known A parching of that primordial palate, A quickening to manifest life Of a long recessive appetite. Though strapped and manacled That day I commanded from the pinnacle Of a three-tiered world a bridge befitting The proud deranged deity I had become. A magic rug of rushing clouds Billowed and rubbed its white softness Like practiced houri fingers on my sole And through filters of its gauzy fabric Revealed wonders of a metropolis Magic-struck to fairyland proportions. By different adjustments of vision I caused the clouds to float Over a stilled landscape, over towers And masts and smoke-plumed chimneys; Or turned the very earth, unleashed From itself, a roaming fugitive Beneath a constant sky. Then came A sudden brightness over the world, A rare winter’s smile it was, and printed On my cloud carpet a black cross Set in an orb of rainbows. To which Splendid nativity came–who else would come But gray unsporting Reason, faithless Pedant offering a bald refractory annunciation? But oh what beauty! What speed! A chariot of night in panic flight From Our Royal Proclamation of the rites Of day! And riding out Our procession Of fantasy We slaked an ancient Vestigial greed shriveled by ages of dormancy Till the eyes exhausted by glorious pageantries Returned to rest on that puny Legend of the life jacket stowed away Of all places under my seat. Now I think I know why gods Are so partial to heights—to mountain Tops and spires, to proud iroko trees And thorn-guarded holy bombax, Why petty household divinities Will sooner perch on a rude board Strung precariously from brittle rafters Of a thatched roof than sit squarely On safe earth.

We have a friend in common, the retired sophomore. His concern: that I shall get it like that, in the right and righter of a green bush chomping on future considerations. In the ghostly dreams of others it appears I am all right, and even going on tomorrow there is much to be said on all these matters, “issues,” like “No rest for the weary.” (And yet—why not?) Feeling under orders is a way of showing up, but stepping on Earth—she’s not going to. Ten shades of pleasing himself brings us to tomorrow evening and will be back for more. I disagree with you completely but couldn’t be prouder and fonder of you. So drink up. Feel good for two. I do it in a lot of places. Subfusc El Dorado is only one that I know something about. Others are recently lost cities where we used to live—they keep the names we knew, sometimes. I do it in a lot of places. Brash brats offer laughing advice, as though anything I cared about could be difficult or complicated now. That’s the rub. Gusts of up to forty-five miles an hour will be dropping in later on tonight. No reason not to. So point at the luck we know about. Living is a meatloaf sandwich. I had a good time up there.

We wash up side by side to find each other in the speakable world, and, lulled into sense, inhabit our landscape; the curve of that chair draped with your shirt; my glass of  water seeded overnight with air. After this bed there’ll be another, so we’ll roll and keep rolling until one of  us will roll alone and try to roll the other back — a trick no one’s yet pulled off — and it’ll be as if   I dreamed you, dear, as if   I dreamed this bed, our touching limbs, this room, the tree outside alive with new wet light. Not now. Not yet.

I brought what I knew about the world to my daily life and it failed me. I brought senseless accidents and a depravity sprung inside the jaw. Also I brought what I had learned of love, an air of swift entrance and exit, a belief in trouble and desire. It will amount to something I was told, and I was told to hold fast to decency, to be spotlit and confident. I was told next year’s words await another voice. But you are a hard mouth to speak to and if I write the list it will be free of constancy. It will include fierce birds, false springs, a few oil lamps that need quickly to be lit. Also dusk and weeds and a sleep that permits utter oblivion from our stranded century. This is not a natural world, and if there are recoveries from confusion, they pass like rains. I don’t look to the robins for solace; neither do I trust that to make an end is to make a beginning. If we are not capable of company, we can at least both touch the quartet inside evening, the snow inside the willow, the bewildering kinship of ice and sky. But as I walked I saw crows ripping at shapes on the street, a square of sunlight flare on the roof. Take my hand, if only here and not in the time that remains for us to spend together. We will stand and watch the most delicate weathers move, second by second, through the grim neighborhood. I will lean into you, who have loved me in your way, knowing where you are and what you care for.

An enormous list: coming and goings, nights and mornings, births and deaths and rebirths and second deaths and little lapses like grace notes where sadness surges in: sadness surges in, a passing-windshield light-effect on the ceiling. Would you prefer it some other way? I’m versatile. I’m hungry. I’m hot. I’m not really sad either. I’m happy, it’s just that this happiness isn’t the happiness I expected or sought and for a time I confused this happiness with the sadness I thought I was experiencing. I feel a lot better now. Oooh. That should give you an indication of the improvement. Oooh, there it goes again. And again, only I didn’t say ‘Oooh’ this time. I can’t explain it, but it feels terrific, like a totally fulfilled infatuation or a California Lifestyle apartment ad.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Call the roller of big cigars, The muscular one, and bid bid Command, order, direct him whip In kitchen cups concupiscent concupiscent Sensual, desirous curds. Let the wenches wenches Girls dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers. Let be be finale of seem. Let be be finale of seem. A possible literal paraphrase of this sentence might read “Let artifice and illusion give way to plain reality.” The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. In the context of death, an echo of Hamlet's comment to Claudius: “Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots.” (Hamlet, act 4, scene 3) Take from the dresser of deal deal Cheap pine or fir wood , Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet On which she embroidered fantails fantails Birds with a fan-shaped tail once And spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come To show how cold she is, and dumb. Let the lamp affix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

At five, the market is closing. Burdock roots, parsley, and rutabagas are poured back into the trucks. The antique dealer breaks down his tables. Light dappled, in winter parkas shoppers hunt for bargains: a teapot, or costume jewelry, a grab bag of rubbishy vegetables for stew. Now twilight, the farmer’s wife bundled in her tweed coat and pocket apron counts out her cash from a metal box, and nods to her grown-up son back from a tour in Iraq, as he waits in the station wagon with the country music turned way up, his prosthetic leg gunning the engine.