Poems Written on the Horns of a Divorce

Poems Written on the Horns of a Divorce

by Richard Freeman-Toole

June 2006
Glennallen, AK












1.
If  I could but draw your approving glance
If  I could but draw your approving glance to me
         with a well-turned phrase, or a rhyme,
How I would study and slave over what I cannot say and will never say!
But, ah, the music of the wind and sky unman me,
         and I  falter at the crisis,
                   submit to the stained and dusty smell of old books,
                             the mother and  grave maker of all my tunes,
         and fail again
                   to  sing you to my arms.

I want to say, no,
         I want to say, no
                   I want to imprint on your mind such syllables of soul
That might enchant and charm you to me (poo-tee-wheet);
         but a flurry of feathers excites just so much (and no more)
                   breath of breeZe as it takes to say, “I have nothing to give.”

“Nothing” is all my art, “Nothing” is my puerile deal with the devil,
         who gives me ribaldries for sonnets, and pigs for pearls.
How can I entice the golden bird (poo-tee-wheet)
         to the wasteland of my arid self? By dressing a cactus in tinsel?
                   By harmoniZing the groan of cottonwoods into comic chorales ?

I spit on my words, my poses, my consumptive knick-knacks of song,
         so unmade are they by rough hands on a chain saw!
I will arise and go now, and build my hut on the hill,
         and silent will I sit, and silent sing, and pray for you to come to me
                   on crest of flood, or in an old chevy pick-up.
2.
Among School Children

         The title refers to the Yeats poem about the 72-year-old smiling public man who wanders through a catholic school looking at the little girls, and feeling the passion of youth surge through him like a storm.
         I have that feeling every time of think of her.
                   I am amazed at the old man stuff I have begun to experience--the gray beard
         (bleaching to white, soon, bright glistening white)
                   the creaky joints, the gravel in the voice that tells of rage in the dark and weeping in the bright white sun.

         The title is a joke for those who know me, quietly undressing high school girls in my mind, a lark, a spree,
         a lost pedophiliac fantasy
that becomes more absurd with each passage
         of nubile cello students in the hall and flowing flautist gauze,
         swaying onstage to Debussy, or Botticelli, or even me,
                   lost dreamer of blue herons and honeymoon rocks.

         The title is nostalgia for the days when romance wasn’t anachronism dressed in black turtle pleats,
         and there was hope on Redondo Beach Pier
                   that the girl I love
                             would float out of Gershwin into my arms.

Yes, she came that day, late, the first of many times,
and kissed me on the promontory of my desire as if she had meant to meet me there since before she was born.
Oh how the violins soared, and the ocean gathered its drums
into a crash of tides!
I wept in my heart for the beauty, the wild ravenous ecstacy
of it; and we kissed and forgot ourselves in each other, and
lay together in sweetest sympathy, a lilting madrigal,
protected from stop light and siren,
         by something simple, elegant, and so comfortable in its 
                   abandon.
We loved in the high old way,
         the way of Yeats, and even Joyce, even Donne,
                   even Homer.
But those great gates could not hold back the crush of time,
         and yea the ocean gave up its ghosts in that moment
                   of all moments, our beginning and our ending.

         The title suggests a certain literary self-consciousness, like the first kiss always must include in its arsenal of suggestons.
         We all remember what tells our story best, and my story rocked with dizzy heights of poetry and song, and never touched the sullied earth all round that altitudinous orbit--
         perigee of passion, destiny’s compass,
                   flying in an arc toward the moment 25 years later
                             when it all became dust,
                                       dross,
                                                 parody,
                                                           denouement.

         And that is the greatest comedy of all,
                   the grin on the skull,
That I love her still, through strife and struggle, I love her still
to the same notes of violin and harp, and typano, too,
and I still want her to kiss me in that high old way,
         and forget the future that had to come,
                   as tide follows eddy,
                             and feel my passion as firm and resolute
                                       as a youth, emblazoned on a brass plaque,
                                                 a song written in stone.






















3.
It came to me in a dream

It came to me in a dream
         why I see someone different every time I look at you--
As face after face flies away, one after the other,
         like the fluttering pages of a calendar
                   in a 40's movie,
The image gets clearer only with the passage of time,
         only as Death and Jesus sharpen essential features
                   with a depth of vision, of perspective,
                             born in a trick of the light--
                                       that same trick that age plays on youth,
                                                 time plays on eternity.

"Grant them eternal light," say our Catholic fathers,
Knowing only that heaven is good and truth is long;
Knowing only that the changes in Dante's face of God
Are accompanied by flute music
         and spiraling ladders of augmented 6th chords--
Knowing only that what is most ourselves
         is the most we love.

How could your twist of smile,
         your eyes askance
                   (looking at what no one else can see out there
                             just beyond the frame of the photograph),
                                       your delicate knowing sigh--
How could these things remain constant in the chaotic deluge
         of my rampant selves,
                   my tornadoes of temper,
                             hurricanes of hassles,
                                       droughts of despair?
How could that static moment of all-there-is
         be seen from the back seat of a speeding ambulance,
                   or from Apollo's tin chariot,
                             wreaking  havoc among the groundlings,
                                       and spewing sulfur on the field?
Even of the maker of all cosmic framers,
         of time clock blamers,
                   and fierce lion tamers,
                             this was too much to ask.

And yet, I know you now,
         I get the gag, the running gag, your inner light,
                   your ex cognito, your dance with Elvis,
                             your shifting sand;
I know you now because I, myself,
         eccentric electron spinning round
                   the central proteus of my comedic narrative,
                             have begun to slow down--
My orbit decaying to a quantum slump,
         as my Zinging catapults of narcissistic lasers
                   reflect less of me, and more of--everything else.

The most I love is the myself in the you in the big of the
         whole enchilada,
And at last I am transparent, and you who are me
         I can see,
                   and cherish,
And I damn my eyes for not seeing it before,
         and know I was seeing it all the time.






4.
The Steps of Good-Bye

A fifteen-year-old Korean boy stood on the steps in front of my house
         to make his last good-byes.
"I will not forget you," he said, and trudged his way down into the future,
         clutching young wisdom to his breast,
                   like a stolen kiss.
I watched his back recede into my past, and wondered which story
         he would tell his friends, gathered round some bonfire of home,                    about his craZy American music teacher,
                             the one with all the life lessons.

I guess at the depth of my hypocrisy not in yards, but in gigometers;
         I spit on the obscenity of my insight,
                   not as the blind leads the blind into a ditch,
                             but as a scarecrow breathes fire to quench
                                       a Molotov bomb.
Not only do I not get how people are so easily persuaded by my horseshit,
         I am astounded by my own braZen persistence in
                   shoveling it into their minds
                             like cheap coal into a furnace.
I wonder how anybody as stupid as I am can fool so many?

It must be the art of it--a good show, fluid phrases ensconced in
         tones of voice that virtually emblaZon the Baptist's
                   uplifted finger of Truth onto the mind's retina,
                             haZe our clumsy estimations of what is,
                                       in glowing clouds of Spielberg
                                                 comfort our knotty doubts and derisions,
                                                           with sincerity! Ha!

I don't know anything about philosophy, but I know what I like to think,
         to keep from admitting I have fucked up my life
                   in practically every corner of its cubicle of meaning.
I've misjudged every nuance of literal syntax, and plowed my bullish ego
         through Peijing, Shanghai, and Singapore,
                   snarfling up shards of crockery too small even to be
                             filled with dung.
My poems have rhetowrecked themselves on the Walrus's beach,
         and the Carpenter bleeds, irregardless, on His cross,
                   while Lennon rhymes his tasty dish of oysters,
                             hungry again after an hour, a day, a minute.
Astral entities mess with my head and Jeanne knits me a straight jacket
         out of rusty mail lint.

I asked Job, once, where I went wrong, and he giggled his reply,
         "I guess somebody up there doesn't like you, hee, hee!"
                   (Fucking Jews)
I asked Mother Mary where was my penance,
         that I might do it and be done with it,
                   and she hummed a snatch of McCartney all knotted up with
                             It's a Long Way to Tipararee
                                       before waving her damned up-lifted finger.

Have you ever looked at that painting, not the Madonna, the Baptist?
         What a disgusting, flaming, faggot he is, with his fucking finger
                   and his grin. What little comfort his beautiful truth makes,
                             as a head, yearning for mama's bosom,
                                       cracks like Humpty Drumkey on a marble breast.
And what is all this ART imagery, anyway?
         Am I trying to make some point, or am I just wiping my sloppy dick
                   on a library book's color plates for maximum exposure?
                             What am I advertising, anyway, the culture or the dick?
Damn lot of good culture did, or brains, or effort, or sincerity, or passion,
         or pride for that matter,
                   when my only love hitch-hiked her way into my erstwhile
                             with a hobo in a pick-up,
                                       giving me her own brand of up-lifted finger
                                                 through the back window,
                                                           yes, grinning all the time.

Hooray, at last is revealed,
         (as we segue back. like any proper ABA form,
                   to the Korean boy on the porch),
                             the point of the poem--my wife;
How, in absentia, she has become every poem, every song ever sung, and
         every true thing (as if she wasn't already, if I had only known);
                   how I have come to doubt every sound but silence,
                             and scream aghast at the stupidity of poetry,
                                       when Orpheus's broken banjo jangles him
                                                 down the good-bye steps of Purgatory,
                                                           and pitches him into Hell.





5.
I do not hate the way you look at him

I do not hate the way you look at him,
All smiles, all sympathy, glowing through the dense brown,
Any more than I would hate, say, a knife sticking in my arm,
         or pancreatic cancer;
No, I bear you no grudge, your vast theft of my dream of bliss.

Your lips parted, breathing him in, do not suffocate me
         like a plastic bag over a baby’s head,
                   or a tornado sucking the ether from the center
                             of everything I ever saw drifting on the horizon
                                       of my hopes,
                                                 every article of meaning from the
                                                           once and future dictionary
                                                                     of my self.

I stand on a cliff and do not see myself drowning below          
in the canyon’s turmoil, because I know those parted lips
                   can sing just as sweetly for me.
Who, I ask you, couldn’t unhear a splash of stone
when
                                             democracy so thoroughly inspires
our songs of praise and
equality,

Mickey Mouse still likes me, and
                   St. George, dragonslayer deluxe,
Is lurking in the China room, battling evil with silver cutlery?
Who could doubt there is so much sun in the system that even the
         backside of the moon is warm as toast,
                   and Hercules hefts our planetary obesity
through outer space like a straw,
                                       like a gnat,
                                                 like a solitary chromosome,
         not diseased, not poison, not even scalding like a brand
                                                 or a sip of boiling oil?

I do not ache, I do not bleed when his touch violates my holiest holy,
         and my heart does not splinter into smaller and smaller shards with
                   each caress;
No I am strong, I am whole, I am happy;
I do not limp to my station at the door,
                   or the cash register like an old used up dog, and
                             watch the marrow seeping from my broken bone—No, no,

I am above the throng of rioting ghosts of my desires,
I am beyond “Hurt”, my friend, my confidant.

I have come to a pinnacle of acceptance and do not miss
my one and only true thing,
         any more than a snow man repents his melted eye.
I am a rock, I am a bastion, I see beyond that smile I absolutely, positively
                                Do Not Hate,
And I do not wish he would die a horrible agonizing death
of leprosy or gangrene holding his
rotting dick in his hands,
                   or be crushed to smithereens by a hurtling snowplow.























6.
I composed this poem while driving

I composed this poem while driving,
         (this part anyway,
                   the part of the piece that’s sneaking like shoplifters
                             over the swiftly tilting land toward the exit,
                                       the opening, the object of its literary libido,
                                                 its ecstacy, its end,
                             even while the car is careening forlornly over the                                                   broken ground, away,
         away from my dearest love, my life),
Because I could not wait to profess my affections,
          without cynicism or guile
til after my absence had sufficiently impressed itself upon the scene.

I wanted to remind the bestower of farewells
         that for me there is no good-bye;
                   I wanted to sing again,
         and again my tender croon in her ear,
                   before the erosions of wind and rain wiped
                             the memory of our last kiss from her lips.

Oh, how I longed to lengthen that embrace into an infinite minute,
         to die right there in the living room, sweetly parting
                   to the applause and edification of
                             groundling grunts and guffaws.

How I long to look ridiculous again,
         if my emasculation could boon me yet another touch,
                    another thrill of blood and breath.
If only I had not to go,
         had not to flee,
                   from what death you might later say ---
                   had not to hide my face from your looking at me
                             with great glowing eyes,
                                       then looking away.


7.
It Was Hope

It was hope that was my undoing,
         silly boy, pride of fools;
I thought that, after so many years, my dark star might set in the east,
Lift at last the stony night,
         a curtain flown away with the nightingale--
                   and that all my tedious bonds, whose frail
                             retractions prattled in the wings,
                                       would at last release the dawn
                                                 God's forgiveness.
Alas that black shade whose diaphanous teasings tempted my soul
         to vain aspirations, has bolted itself to the floor of the proscenium--
                   the melodrama of my torment knows no intermission,
                             and I am desolate again and finally.

I used to watch movies, that I hated, all the way through
         because I figured they had to get better in the end--
                   they never did.
How could I be so pompous as to think my stupid life was going to be any          
         different?
I've invested my prime in a bad play, and now that I have no more futures to try,
         the playwrite flourishes His last argument, a comedic pratfall,
                   in the faces of the groundlings, the true heroes.

Perhaps it is I, the witness of my own fall, whose applause was enjoined
         by the cruel bard of Charon's Deep;
Perhaps the last laugh was supposed to be mine,
         if one may truly peer from the balcony, aloof and amused,
                   at one's own dismay?
Perhaps a Chekhovian sense of humor is what I lack, not good luck,
         not any kind of a God-damned fucking break?
Certainly the Keystone Cops could not have tripped over their own dicks
         more hilariously,
Surely Charlie Chaplin could not have flattened his ass more pathetically,
         or gaZed abroad more hungrily,
                   or lost the girl more completely--
                             I mean, how funny can it be?

But I have another theory, one that denies the trivial ironies of satire
         their raucous guffaw--
It is that God hates me, has always hated me, and always will hate me;
That in this eternally fixed enmity is the only intimation of immortality
         the Author offers his dramatis persona--
That, by buffoon or tragedian, the play achieves its true reality
         through the permanence of my plummet from the stage into the pit of Hell.








It's Not Necessarily a Duck
I.
Beauty's Beast has played the fool on many a comic stage;
         his benign ranting,  easy mark,
                   cheaply satisfies the most moderne college crowd's appetite
                             for  levity and ridicule.
Held in cool estimation is Beastie's rave, and all the reviewers doubt
         in truth his  claim to towering passions, heart of fool's gold,
                   the lofty molehills of perspiring rhetoric.

But tell me, dear one, tell me true
         whose voice it was that spoke in muted strains,
                   out on the rocks of Redondo Jetty,
                             of love eternal, destiny revealed, and
                                       all time focussed in a single kiss,
                                                 if not the Beast who came from a distance
                                                           to give you all he had
                                                                     and ever would have?

You listened, then, to his songs, his graveled muZZle mane in wild array,
         as if his soul, caged and bleeding in a barbed bastille,
                   did whisper sighs of roses,
                             a tender gentle music.

You, in all the world, knew  his dythrambic soliloquies for what they were--
         plays of pain for an audience of philistines and bureaucrats,
                   cops in groundling garb echoing  his father's abuse,
                             his mother's guilt, his brother's derision,
                                       his friend's betrayal;

You, of all others, watched him roar his rage,
         spend his frenZy on the footlights,
                   so he could come home--
                             home to you and that caress of sympathy
                                       that changed his froth to honey,
                                                 invective to lullaby,
                                                           rasp to release.

In all time was there ever a better reason to love?
Is it any wonder that you were all to him,
         him whose heatless fire warmed only the gossip's tongue,
                   him whose witless wisdom piloted only a ship of fools?
Is it any wonder that, forgetful of whatever else he knew, he came to think
         the text of your understanding was written in stone of astral halls,
                   just as his grateful love was fixed in the stars?          
Is it any wonder that, in oneness with you, he assumed that
         what you gave him was his forever, NO MATTER WHAT,
                   even as what he gave you, his best self,
                             was non-returnable, non-transferable,
                                       non-negotiable, one time only?
Is it any wonder that in his darkest hour,
         when every face was turned against him
                   and his every assault on the hall of fame had come to nothing,
                             and speeches in the square were like buckets of salt
                                       poured on old fester's harsh hurrah,
                                                 that he was sure that you,
                                                           surely you,
                                                                     would remember?


II.
Beauty's Beast is better now, his collar trimmed, his claws filed down;
         his roar is tamed by Avian.
The gods of once-deaf heaven have rained their praise,
         and lent some kindness to the marketplace.
Something fair has sprung its shower, dissolving the salt,
          balming the torments with gift of grace.

No longer wild with brutish gape, his visage sags in sleepy dreaming.
Shattered desire has given rise to Ash-Bird AriZona flying through
         light clouds and wind, dropping tunes like snowflakes
                   on every upturned smiling face.
Is it any wonder that the once-stony-froZen riverbed 
         now flows again, a torrent of melody, toward the ocean of Redondo?
                   That all his wrongs have flown like geese to northern frosts,
                             arctic wastes of remembering?

The ruin of his disaster clutters his yard, but time is on his side;
         even now old swords scratch the stubborn earth
                   into furrows of hope for the seeds of summer's bounty.
The Beast is aged and toothless now, and yet his songs are like the                    springtime of his love that has never grown old;
                   the soul that found you and completed you
                             has never lost sight of you even though the
                                       wars cost him his sight and his mind
                                                 for longer than you can ever forgive.
Under the sway of shell-shock his roar of agony was a terrible thing,
         but never once did his heart turn cold--
                   how could his soul turn against itself?
                             How can the soul become SOMETHING ELSE?
It just goes to show an old adage false:
         that just because something looks like a duck,
                   and acts like a duck,
                             and quacks like a duck,
                                       it's not necessarily a duck;
                                                 it might be a swan.

III.
Speaking of quacks, it has been suggested by eminent experts
         (in the field of psychology and other forlorn and useless disciplines)
                   that the passionate soul behind Mr. Beast's veneer
                             is a neurotic emanation, a false construct;
         it has been suggested that his heart is a bag of old bones
                   rattling polonaises in an archaic ballroom--
                             that the rotting silk enfelades are hung with bats,
                                       and the ring you gave him is made of plaster.

"But Ho!" he cries, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Academy,
         If you would but turn your microscopes on the silver cord
                   that binds my heart to her heart,
                             you would see photons waving their wash of quantums
                                       round a nucleus of  living, dancing identity
                                                 that, ill-suited as it is for mundanities,
                                                           is as real as the phone line
                                                                     at whose end he languishes,
                                                                               for all the unreality of
                                                                                         his shattered mane."


Perhaps "neurotic" is the word for every great and perfect thing,
         such as John the Baptist's Compleynt,
                   or the Gettysburg Address.

He loved you in the high old way;
         his affection was born in the remote outlands of poetry and song;
                   "And, yes, no therapist has ever endorsed the scroll on which
                             the alchemy of my tale weaves strands of ether
                                       round its timeless lines;
         but neither has any patriot ever died for more than such a thing
                   as the sonnet I hold in my fist,
                             or the hush of her hand on my throat.
These are things that proclaim their own reality,
         as loud and stentorian as the brave row of planets
                   sing their names around the central sun;
         better to call "neurotic" the orbit of earth around the source of all light
                   than insult my love with street names, country matters."

And so sits the Beast on is throne of dung,
         a complex pattern of pictures--some
                   ugly, some magnificent, but all of him, and all of her.
His outer form is illumined from within by magnetic fields
         radiating outward from the electron shaft;
                   all manner of faces shift from one to the other,
                             as a river flowing over a rock makes many faces,
                                       yet it is the same river,
                                                 the same rock. 
Thus is the pleasant country logic of an old adage proved  false:
         that just because you are blind enough to see something that
                   looks like a duck,
                             and acts like a duck,
                                       and quacks like a duck,
                                                 any fool can see
                                                           it's not necessarily a duck;
                                                                     it might be a fucking swan.

























9.
Sleepless
I must stop writing about despised love pretty soon,
         else my poems will become as boring as myself
                   writhing under the hot blankets,
                             dreaming of dreaming,
                                       thinking of booZe, or drugs, or sharp knives.
I know that poets should see the world through the word-clogged          glass of thought--
                   thoughts articulate not in the outline of a waning moon,
                             but the crucible of corporate pain,
                                       our only true connection;
         therefore someday,
                             maybe Tuesday,
                                                           good news will flow
                   from my heart, clot the blood, and become
                                       impersonal as the weather.
But for now, all I crave is a moment's escape from the
         flood of pictures, the riot of soliloquies that crowd my brain,
                   that clutter my inner ear forbidding sleep; and so
                             I write, compleynt after compleynt
                                       to you my cruelest lady de la luna,
                                                 my love forgot as if it never was,
                                                           like the outline of Aphrodite's face
                                                                     lost in the dark of midmonth,
         trailing featureless, hour by hour, across the sky,
                             so much halflight as is wont to glisten in a tear
and
move on.














10.
Thanksgiving Day, 2005

Thank you Jesus for my life and my death,
Thank you for all You have given and All
         you have taken away.
I'm sending a half-empty box of candy to the love of my life
         who loves me no more,
And, as if that weren't enough,
         I'm sending a package of death.
I have no shame I guess, because I can't keep the date a secret,
         (not the date with her, the date when I'm going to kill myself),
                   and I can't even hold in when the classy thing to do would be to                              spring it on my kids for a graduation present,
                                       rather than to announce it like a parade
                                                 or the weather.

Thank you Jesus for giving me the chance at happiness,
         a peek around a corner I will never turn,
                   and then sending a wave of coincidents,
                             bending my joys, like a tornadoes (not the joys, the coincidents)
                                       leaning on corn in a flat valley.

I actually thought we were going to make it this time,
         make it to freedom,
                   but the curse You sent me, careening out of my mother's womb,
                             seems to be still in play (ha!)
                                       and this time I cannot spring back.

I know it is a sign of quality, to suffer so and survive, but
         "the Grace that brought me here thus far"
                   does not lead me home but to the grave.

Yes it is a kind of peace to have the future parceled out like candy, like corn,
         like the chores before Sunday morning--
                   vacuum the rug, take out the dog, lay down the newspaper
                             (to soak up the blood),
                                       load the gun.
And here's the comedy--she won't believe me any more than I believed her
         not long ago when she needed me and I hung up the phone;
                   she won't believe me when she gets this poem
                             sticky with chocolate covered cherries,
                                       and reads another bad poem, another pathetic plea.

No, she will think the refuge I take in poetry will shelter me again
         from the hale of groans, and the whoosh of rain, and the--
                   (what's a good onomatopeoeticism, ka-blam?)
                             the shattering stillness, and my words like blanks
                                       will furiously signify nothing.

I have left lots of room for changing my mind, and she will think so too;
         but what she doesn't understand is that the thought of temporary insanity
                   is more comfort than permanent insanity--
                             that I can bear the emptiness of my life only if
                                       there is not much more of it;
                                                 like a wounded man can bear the pain
                                                           waiting for the morphine to kick in.

I'm sorry I can't write better tonight, but writing well
         has not been enough to win her back from a dirt floored fantasy,
                   and I have written well on other occasions, believe me,
                             and left her heart cold as snow.
                                       Jesus, FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.

Perhaps she will weep a little (I know my boys will),
         but my songs will fade like echoes, and my footprints will fill up
                   with crystal flakes.

She will smile at him, and stroll back up the glistening lane,
         taking his arm, maybe with a tearful kiss on the cheek,
                   as the memory of me, shadowed already by so little time,
                             ghosts ahead of them in the mountain wind,
                                       drops dead amid the whistling trees.


11.
Sonnet

I look into the fireplace and see
The remnants of a blaZing log have died--
The glowing red nuggets remind me
Of my loss: my wife is no longer by my side.

I think how just awhile ago this ember,
Burning bright, a single song did sing;
And now, in pieces, faintly can remember
What it sang, or really anything.

So once my love, a single flame did shine
Its joy upon a single smiling face;
And now those precious eyes, no longer mine,
Have turned away and left me in disgrace.

Broken into pieces, my heart goes hence--
The fragments of its song hushed into silence.






12.
Psycho Blubble

Not-so-tricky Dickie Wicky is drowning in a pool of boiling fat.
"Help!" he cries, "Else I die!"
Quick as grease the doctor comes to trumpet call and chariot rumble.
"What seems to be the problem Dickie Wicky, my beamsome boy,
         my poppet, my pet? How can I serve my precious pal (in a 50-                    minute hour, by the way,
                             NEA insurance? okay), hmmm?"

"I'm drowning in a pool of boiling fat, you asshole! Blub, mother-f blub,
         a pool of, blub--"
"Ah," intones the cagey sage, who lifts his eyebrows like barbells,
         and adjusts his pad. "And just how do you feel about that,
                   Dickie, boy, my pride of prison, my joy of dark?"

"Gee, Doc, I'm glad you asked; I guess I feel like my skin is burning off,
         my lungs are fried, I can't breathe, and,
                   thank God, my feet of clay have dissolved into slippery silt,
                             an ever so slightly chocolate color mixed with the                                        blood."

"Yes, but dig deeper Dickie Doogie, how do you feel about that?
         Listen to your heart, my son, tell me how I can--"
"You think you could give me a hand, Doc, pull me up a bit?
         My legs are gone now, I'm light, I'm very light, a wisp, a smidge,                    a--"
"Well as to that, you know, I'm not allowed to touch--"
"How about turning down the fire? The knob is right over--"
"Now, Dickie you're dodging no doubt, you know;
         and anyway that would be a job for someone in maintenance,
                   or maybe food services. (Looks like you're getting fairly well                              done, haha, sorry--what would life be without humor,                                        you know?)

Thus did the 50-minute hour run its course,
Not-so-tricky Dickie Wicky sinking deeper into the slime of himself,
The brave healing man battling reality-blocking denials,
         As the final dunks burned the lips and splashed the nose;
                   the answers were in whispers now because he had no throat.

"Well, time's up, my--"
"Don't say it!"
"--whatever, and I have other--"
"Don't say it, please."
And Richard's words are like fluttering ribbons, barely winged,
         singed and flared; and all his mind is bent to the sensation
                   of dying alone.
The doctor's back recedes with a parting salutation,
         "Well, I'm off," he says.
"So am I," he says,
         but only the ghosts of martyred saints can hear him now,
                   as the wave washes the world clean of him,
                             and all is peace at last.
Blub.
                             













                             
13.
Christmas 1956

When Marcia was five, her parents purchased a plethora of pretty presents
That took a good half-hour just to unwrap.
There amid the orgy of paper and ribbons, when all was revealed,
         she squealed through her two front teeth,
                   "Nudder predent!"
                             her cutest moment.
How could she, through kindergarten eyes understand that all good things--
         you know--
                   must come to an end?
How could she curtail her ecstasy of delight by facing the truth,
         (bitter enough for a 5-year-old, much less a grey-haired divorced man,
                   54 years to the bad),
                             that every bliss is limited by the flesh it wears,
                                       and the time it passes?
How could she, dipping from that well of joy,
         every brimming cup like corridors of unfolding stars,
                   fail to conclude that material satiety was as infinite as appetite,
                             Santa Claus without end?

How we fail to realize, striding through our tender momentous theatricalities,
         that every smiling scene fades to black, music swells,
                   and hearts opened to the sun close again in preparation;
How we fools fail to remember that each ebb impedes each flow
         with cruel exactitude--the precision of pain
                   that steals each happy hour before we have done,
                             and never enough, never enough!

My love is like a flower kissing the dusky evening glimmer with open mouth,
         and gasping breath, crying out, "Please let the day be not over!
Gentle Jesus, miserere nobis, let me sleep in dreamless death,
And let not the empty night implore the suffering strains of evening
         be kind with yet
                   anudder pome!"
14.
Blues in the Dark

Your hand reaching out to me,
Enfolding fingers round my lonesome cock,
Was like the first rosy dawn of spring,
The first thaw,
The raucous hurrah of returning,
The sailor home from the sea.

Your opening was like the lost lottery ticket
Crowding out, with glorious summer,
The shadows of froZen March,
Its crackle, its black ice,
With unexpected, unhoped-for riches;
Parades and confetti and brass bands
Cheered my return to the precious couch of love--
Cheered and sang
         (though quietly, so as not to sully too much)
The subtle exhalations of vagina and thigh,
In choral canons and intricacies of isorhythm.

With us, the coming together was tender, so tender,
Mounting from ecstasy to bliss,
As trumpet turned to Angel Song,
And bright heaven's grace bowed low.
But as ocean bent back its wave,
And semen sought its restful womb,
And bagpipe twirled its final kilts,
You said to me, "Excuse me sir,
I thought you were someone else."


15.
To Bill Mosher

Billy, my Billy Boy, my Detested Friend:
How I wish you were me and I was you
         the night she took you in her arms and enfolded all joy
                   and you together in an embrace that summed up
                             every nothing she needed to sleep.

I confess I have nothing in myself, too, but of a different quality--
         I am a form with no face, a phantom atom,
                   static lightning charged with angry expression only,
                             light without heat, while you in all God's bovinity
                                       have won the day, together
                                                 with the heart of my heart's heart.

The better man has won, and won unfairly, but pah to that
         my beamish boy;
                   making mud pies in the forest of your back yard
                             is fit occupation for one who knows the
                                       voice of the river like his own, and who
                                                 speaks to the trees of cabbages
                                                           and leaves the King well enough
                                                                     alone.

I sigh with every sigh, and weep every singular tear
         of she who now gives herself to you,
                   the greatest gift of your little life;
I weep each of her tears and scream my poet's agony
         as you hack my soul from my soul with a borrowed chainsaw.
Indeed it is the poet's soul which invalidates my claim
         and justifies your disgraceful theft,
                   because poets' rhymes cannot warm the lonesome breast,
                             when fire from a broken log gives more heat
                                       than Keats or cummings;
         for my tears are dry on her cheek, a faint brush of breeZe
                   in the timorous firelight,
                             and my screams are mute,
                                       out of sight, out of mind.

I envy you with the only feeling I have in my limited arcade of
         human scenarios--fierce rage and threatening bravado--
                   but my hands are empty of weapons,
                             and my mouth is full of sand,
                                       and my heart is full of sorrow you will
                                                 never understand.

I have wished for your excruciating demise
          more times than I have breathed
                   (since before I met you, and after);
I have plotted and schemed your execution
          in the court and in the yard
                   more times than the sun has risen over Camelot--
But now as the tale's end approaches, and I fade off the screen,
         (any secondary character's fitting denouement),
                   I thank you for being who you are,
                             who you always were,
                                       (who I wanted to be and could never be)
                                                 my Lady's sterling, shining, furclad
                                                           White Knight.


























         16.
New Year's Eve 2006
The Queen of the Night brought her angels and harps,
         her viole da gambi, her pavanes;
                   the lonesome traveler spent his last tears
                             on the Mother's breast,
                                       and lost his grief for a moment
                                                 in Mother's arms,
                                                           the clock striking 12:00,
                                                                     bright stars rising
                                                                               through clouds and wind.
Glad did he sing and gladly die to the old year's travail,
         its riot, its shame;
And glad did he take her for what she gave and offered again
         for the price of a song that
                   dwelt anon upon his lips, regardless--
But, all in all in all of all, the gentle embrace,
         such a gentle, gentle embrace,
                   did slake his thirst for earthly drink,
                             the thirst for pain and complication,
                                       but momentarily,
And back he goes, pitiful junky, to the place under heaven
         where oft he played on Arjuna's bow--
                   the place where, maligned with calumny,
                             and smeared with shit,
                                       he endured all pain
                                                 for the sake of brown eyes,
                                                           out of whose gaZe he cannot exist,
                                                                     Heaven or Hell together.
The Queen of the Night shone down her light
         upon the trackless waste of Ulysses' road,
                   and for awhile he saw his way home;
To see and feel what should have been his all along,
         was like all peace, all wonder, a comfortable death, a dream--
But--
         when all was like said and like done,
                   of Heaven's music, confetti chorales,
                             it just wasn't, quite hardly, nearly, almost
                                       enough.
17.
Obsequy

My lady of the morning has slipped away,
My heart is broken, sigh, I sigh--
And yet I have no more songs to mourn her passing.
It is like when the sun consumes a shadow into its brilliance--
Can we climb the lookout? Can we condemn the light?

Her face was all beauty, her form an ecstasy of contour,
The perfect curve of Mother's rolling hills;
Her breast was the giver of all love's sweet milk,
Her sex the great enfolding dark of pleasant healing sleep.

It is to all these things that I have bidden farewell,
These I praise in my final speech;
And all these which I will remember in my dreams
As I turn from the past and reach toward the new sun of night,
The cool, starry presence of another new beginning.