A MIMOSA IN BLOOM

We had planned to pretend, each one
Of us was Ulysses trying to find his way home.
But we didn’t go sailing, stayed with shiraz,
Watched the sails boats in the watercolor on the wall,
A joyous scene painted by Raoul Dufy.
There was a rapture in observing the curves of the ropes,
How the brown of the masts had white spots.
We talked of dead cities, Bruges,
With the willow on its Lake of Love,
And how the City of Y had sunk beneath the water.
Bouquet said, “When I finish my dissertation
On the one couplet rhyme in the entire Paradise Lost,
I will return to my painting and paint
Three yachts, each with human teeth,
Biting children’s chests where the heart beats.
I will call it an allegory of late capitalism.”
From the bath room, Linda, immersed in water,
Shouted, “I’m bored. Someone tell a joke.
I’m bored watching this rubber duck float.
If you can not tell a joke, bring me a real mallard.”
Varennas came in, carrying under each arm
A crystal Lalique wild cat. Said,
“Do you know that by the wheeled cart,
Where steamed snails are sold,
There is a mimosa in bloom.

 

AN ABSTRACT WILDERNESS

Young bamboo uprooted by heavy rains,
The roots are
Dark brown curls,
Long, longer that than the longest bamboo limb
With its arrow-head leaves.
The roots spread out, floated on black muck.
Looked like the hair
Of Madame Stuart Merrill as painted by Deville.

The flesh-colored sand beneath
Had pale blue eyes: two rain drops.
There was something of the sinister side
Of Symbolism about the vague scene.
The atmosphere that surrounded
Was a garden of black lilies.
The rain had dimmed and darkened the distance,
The peacock appeared as dark blue.
I gazed at the end of the uprooted root.
The ends looked as if the pincers of a sea creature.
The rain increased, all became abstract, it was impossible
To designate with familiar name any shape.
The heavy rain gave a wilderness without nomenclature.

 

WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE INNER LIFE OF ISIDOR DUCASSE

In this retraction, a kind of backsliding, perhaps a hiding or hedonism,
If a series of dots……….are inserted in a sentence, or a pretense
Of a sentence,
The gesture, the enactment,
That is undergoing, in progress verbally and disrupting
Might become
Under auspicious conditions……….a deviation
From a direction, result………in an arrival.

The red of the railroad station light spread out on the wet sidewalk
To become
Wet arabesques, if seen abstract,

Or,

If viewed from the viewpoint of realism, apparitions.

I stand by letters on a window glass, not read to turn into a word,
Thinking……….We know nothing about the inner life of Isidor Ducasse,

Or……….anyone else, or even ourselves.

So our psychological commentaries are fictions: comedies, tragedies,
But never histories.

The footstools in witness chairs, all testify to lawyers
That we
Like Gloucester are blind, been blinded by hands or language,
Need the myth of a cliff and the myth of a sea shore with sand,
If we are going to survive suicide,
And continue a maimed life.

This enactment, not to describe the cliff and the sea shore, not to
Define
The cliff and the sea shore, not to even find the cliff and the sea shore,

But to become the cliff and the sea shore.

 

RECONCILING MYSELF TO THE IDEA
OF MY COMPLETE ISOLATION

The approach to the other, if the other
Had a human voice and spoke words
Was like becoming a spinning top unspun,
A paralyzed potential force unrealized,
The string wrapped around, but the top
Never tossed. The painted wood, red
Stripes on a yellow ground, held in hand.
The hand trying to comprehend the wood
Under the bright paint, to communicate
With wood grains, failed, and to palliate the hand
Became the desert dream of an eclipsed moon.
After the solace of a long silence, I sensed
That something was concealed inside the air.
Like in all transparency there was opacity.
This hidden something was looking
For a ladder to come down from a cloud
And return to its origin. I saw this something
Was my lips. The lips in spatial suspension
And disembodied metamorphosized me into
The Hurdy Gurdy music of a white sausage German town;
There, stallions ran unharnessed away from a life of pantomime.
My lips of music, become nostalgic, watched through a wall
Oleander flowers spread over peacock feathers on a bed.
The pillow case had an embroidered Medusa
With her red hair spread towards the pink fringed edge.
I became clairvoyant saw in yellow rooms
There were love chats between dead stars and street lights.
I said “Hello” to my face reflected on the dark waters
Of the sinkhole by which I stood watching
The earth’s dark, underground waters flow.

 

I HAD DREAMED OF A SEASIDE ROOM
WITH PORTUGESE ROCOCO COUCHES
AND LONG, SWAYING CALICO CURTAINS.

Closing firmly the door behind me, I sat
Behind an ebony desk with tiny gold leaves
Climbing up its ebony legs to interview
A nest of stones in an azure, black rimmed bowl.
The just born stones wanted to be taught to fly.
These were the first words the stones spoke.
There was something of a scream in their words,
As if an echo from a birth cry.
The stones told me that they had checked
All the mirrors in my private room,
But bypassed the mirrors in the more
Public parts of this old, rented house.
I saw the stones had scribbled in their notebooks
Something about murmurs and mummies.
The stones never capitalized or used
Periods at the end of their sentence,
As if there were no beginnings and no endings.
I looked around the room, there were
Human eye lashes, human eye brows,
But no human eyes, or human faces.
I had in this employment office, interviewed
Many people wanting a job, but this
Was the first time I ever interviewed
Newly born stones who did not want
A job, but just wanted to fly.
When the stones asked me,
Could I teach them to fly,
Fire alarms went off in every bone,
Puffs of smoke came out my ears,
Ashes spurted from my mouth.