"This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air. - W. B. Yeats

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Hyde Park: Thursday, September 2010

I ran

miles

Until it started to feel like flying

Until it started to feel like flying away.

I was filling my head with sound

Stretching for escape from the dirt of the days

Reaching toward the setting sun over the windy water.

The skin on my feet is breaking

Like the drumbeats between my eyes.

And I ran from the swans

who came right up to my shoulders

and I wished I was one of them

a warm white and feathered body

which floats on water

as if it had no weight at all.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Haiku: The Mousetrap

Balcony vertiges

Three-pound ice cream and stella

I know who-dun-it.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

On Feeling Grown and Being Small

The taste of porridge

Hangs in the air

The schoolchildren

In uniforms of gray and blue

Smilingly tug hands

And scrape their knees

And muss their skirts.

What I wouldn’t give to be

The white pit-bull

Sleeping lazily

On the stairs

Who sniffs the air of each passer-by

And knows me by the swing in my step

And the citrus-scent of my fingers.

I wear my hips too low for a woman.

I do not swing them, a dangerous pendulum,

By daylight.

When it rains I wear my chin close to my

Chest

But at night, by the rising and the falling

Of the breath,

I unravel

And find myself very small

And peculiar.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Didn't Sleep Much After That Nightmare

This weary pile of cracking bones

is terror

pounding pavement under feet

as if the mastery of the ground

gives power to the body.

The third cup of tea today

Got cold

Sitting on a desk

In front of an open window

Breathing stiff London air.

The third coffee today

Was a Starbucks latté

With too many calories

And the taste of mud

That lingered on the roof of the mouth.

And as the day drizzles to an end,

In the usual way,

I can’t help but think:

If an airplane went down

With me on it

I would want to be alone.

I wouldn’t want to hold anyone

Or say goodbye.

Just one last “Oh shit”

And snuffed out in the great Atlantic.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Homesick/Homeless

If it’s possible to be lonely

When brushing shoulders with the city

And the scat-jazz raindrops

Fall on colorless pavement

Then it’s possible to be full

Of some howling-wind feeling

Of home or not

Or here and there

And have a cup of tea

And watch the droplets

(named like horses- Lucky Strike and Betelgeuse and Sir John Falstaff)

race down the rattling pane.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Overseas

Sometimes

In the steam and mirrored home of my mouth

I touch my curving flesh

And think of you

I want you to put your

Hands on me

From a thousand miles away

Over water as violent as

Wine-soaked teeth.

To put your mouth

On mine

And breath into my mouth

Dark whiskey-breath.

And curl your fingers

Into my hair

And tug

And tug

And let it hurt a little.

I don’t want to talk

Don’t care about the picket fences

And the dogs

And the neighbors.

I’ll only talk in moans and whispers

And fall asleep

Covered in sweat and come,

With black and fluttering eyelashes.

Mahler No. 5

The homeless kid in front of the pub

Had two rotting front teeth

And worn down trainers- converse all-stars.

There was an Aussie couple at the bar,

In their forties, drinking white wine.

We talked about vegemite, but I still don’t get it.

This city is lonely tonight—

The air so cold it’s sharp

In warm, wet nostrils.

This city is hopeless tonight—

And I’ll curl up and listen

To Mahler No. 5,

And fall asleep and dream

Dark dreams again.

Friday, September 24, 2010

For Simon (Because That Skirt Was Too Short To Climb Down That Ladder)

I had nylon-covered bent knees.

A ghost of a smile, like the breath that curled out

Our lips.

This is a poem for the little boy-man

With the nose just slightly too big for his

Face

And the warmest eyes I’ve seen in

A few weeks, at least.

I am full of some kind

Of movement

Like the wake of a boat

On the Thames.

I had nylon-covered bent knees.

And I let my hair cover my face,

And pointed my black-boot feet inward.

And was eight feet tall, walking in Chelsea or Battersea

Giving out neon flashes with my moon-eyes.

And I only had one gin and tonic.

Red Beans

I kissed him

On the mouth.

He was a brown-haired Mexican man

With a great wide stomach and eyes the color of

A fine cigar. And great flat hands like plains of land, with

Square fingertips that spoke measures on mine.

It was cold, but he

Never dared put an arm

Around my rigid frame.

And his head

Was damp with sweat.

He was sweet in his

Own way-

So bursting with the most

Obvious feelings.

So softly feeling subtext

Slip through his fingers

(beans in grains of rice)

And I kissed his small mouth-

Surprisingly small

For a man his size-

And I knew he wanted to

Take me to bed,

But I didn’t.

What Would I Give

Tonight

Which is

Rapidly becoming

This morning

(another sleepless night)

I would give

My favorite pair of shoes-

The red pumps with the brass buttons-

To be next to you

Four drinks in

Fingers interlaced

Saying nothing

And knowing that I don’t have to say anything at all.

Feeling just the bit of sweat

Coming off your arm

Catching in the hairs.

Staring at the fucking white ceiling.