In Which Words Come Together

original desire

seems still.

she saw

young language

in bare-breasted excitement-

don the styled winds,

in which we are lying

(laughing actual) clothes disarranged,

little smiles expensive.

not one lunatic creates

this lady.

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.

Haiku: The Mousetrap

Balcony vertiges

Three-pound ice cream and stella

I know who-dun-it.

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.

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.

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.

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.