DATING THE INFINITE
I went out with the infinite.
We swapped spit
in the backseat of a jalopy.
Explored ourselves
while ignoring the movie.
Walked home from the parkinglot,
falling all over each other.
Detoured through the park.
Dallied on a bench.
I sneaked a hand up her skirt.
She held me by the stones.
We gazed at the stars.
I wanted to go all the way.
She said I could have more and more,
but not that.
My mouth to her bosom sank.
I kissed all galaxies known to man.
Above a zillion crickets,
she giggled: I hadn't scratched the skin.
My chin found her lap.
Her thighs spread.
The egg wet my face.
Till awake I became suggested.
Alone on my threshold,
with a scent on the fingers
and a hint in my tongue.
DRUM THE TRUMPET
Every beat death cheats. Every beat
echoes in the eye I am not beat.
Every breath drawn sketches the next scene
I might never to complete be seen.
Every breath draws closer to the closer.
Every door I pass through,
every lintel I cross beneath, tells me
I am not through yet bearing my cross.
With every beat, with every breath,
let me get a bearing the better to
bare this my sole truth. Beat the drum,
blast the trumpet. This be wisdom
not to drum in, not to shout out,
but dumbly to face and to face about.
Every breath death cheats. Every beat
closer to the closer, closer to a shadow
on the window closing itself itself to bear.
JOB’S COFFIN
The mockingbird quibbles
with a moon caught like phlegm
in the spruce; people dot their homes,
connecting sleep, eying recipes
tonguing the night, while I, out
back, head back, eyes up, into the stars fall.
Tumble quick below the Fox,
beside the Arrow, to the
dim, thin diamond. To the
Greeks – the dolphin the bard
to freedom singing rode. Across the valley,
over the swamp, the whippoorwill
fins a shark of hair up my spine,
crying from hell in heavenly tears,
tearing after, homing on, prey;
squeezing hot out of me
the mockingbird’s point;
the moon content,
climbing twig to twig, to
let both, through the dark,
coffin and dolphin, ride
either side the coin.
QUIET PRACTICE
I know,
standing arms akimbo at the window,
outside falling snow, practice.
Feel, at a point behind the eyes,
between the ears, above the nose,
tastes of quiet accumulate.
Late grows the hour.
Our time comes to us
through that focus, while the snow
outside the window into the snow grows.
I shuffle, unbending elbows, over the floor
from the window to the stove, thinking
through the shuffle, the crackle, the creak,
the wonder if yet over the creek ice
for the snow to pillow the snow.
Heat, bending over the stove,
I know.
RADIATOR CAT
The Persian lies,
on the radiator shelf,
level-true, hauling
from the well of her being
an ever-deeper purr
perfecting her perception
of motion perpetual.
The iron coil below ticks, pops, clanks.
The cat blinks,
unable to see beyond ecstasy.
This is not love. This is heat
gathering above steam inside iron.
The cat yawns; purr decreasing;
easing into preparing, from a split-second
before the too-hot, to stand, stretch and leap.
The Persian, on the floor, shakes herself,
forgetting the perfection of just before;
squinting at, while waiting for,
the next attempt at the tempting.
This is not the flower.
This is the cosmos.