|
|
|
FLASHBACK, BOSTON |
|
Your back is to me and I’m
only half asleep. Things fuse. People start to be that one you always half expect. There
haven’t been so many, but as years go on you isolate those qualities you wanted from
the ones you didn’t want and chisel them the way a sculptor would into a perfect
mass. Not a statue but a someone bending your own way and bending you to theirs.
New England ? If not then take a compliment, for that full face and body met and living
there needs no addition or subtraction to be as perfect as perfection is.
If it was not you, blue white eyes framed by wire spectacles, that brought me from across
the room, then allowed me to imagine back. Don’t interrupt my thinking and I’ll
not interfere as you sleep up the sun.
I remember that I looked away in wonder, that it happened, that I had proof of it, that
spring is all that everyone, including me, has said it is.
Will I one day rephrase, reappraise the Boston spring that handed you over to me ? You for
two days only, one on your ground, one on mine, a third split down the middle. Am I to
have the luxury - for luxury, read time - to find out if you really are as you really are
or do I go on definitely / indefinitely seeing in my head only your thighs inside /
outside mine ?
Let me come back. Let us both come back. I’ll pole vault high, clear through the
middle of your mattress next time and pull myself straight into you. Even winded after all
the stairs, you’ll know I’m there. Wait for me. Keep the windows open and your
tooth gap smile alive a while longer. Just a small while. I won’t be long.
No elevators leading to high rooms and canopied beds in old hotels, we’ll stay and be
in your room only or walk the whole of Boston in a single afternoon or one long endless
evening.
- from "Moment To Moment 1973, 1975 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Spiro Agnew o
Piero Cappuccilli o Dorothy Dandridge o Marie Dressler o
Lou Ferrigno o Joanna Moore o Ivan Moravec o Carl Sagan o Ann Sexton o Sargent Shriver o John Singleton o Mary Travers o Ed Wynn |
|
 |
|
To love is to lie
down with the angels.
We ought to dine with angels every day.
With understanding comes both recognition and resignation.
Snow melts in the telling. |
|
NORTH STREET REMEMBERED |
|
You’ll have a phonograph
a chef’s hat
and a yellow suit
of your own choosing,
even if we have to
pay for them on time.
A canopy above the bed
that I can chin on.
A headboard
you can prop your head against
and
read.
You can write and polish words
while I sit quietly
in some dark corner
watching.
I’ll teach you music
slowly and without pain
and you can show me
how to make Quiche Lorraine.
I’ve never been up Beacon Hill,
you can take me there.
Later in the summer
we’ll go to that beach
in Provincetown.
You can show me
where you started
writing out your poem.
Don’t you see
I’ve got it all worked out
we’ll follow every sun
there is to follow.
We’ll be equal in all things
you’ll give me youth and you
I’ll give you more of me
than I yet know.
Each other we will give
each other’s other.
I’ll lose weight, you’ll see.
Before we leave for California
Paris or wherever
we’ll get it all together.
I never sleep so well
as when I’m sleeping
next to you
or talk so much
as when I’m talking
at your ear.
My hand
while touching
just your back
has touched the sky
as sure as God has groped
the stars.
Ask my name
and it’s now yours.
Demand my purpose
and you know it’s you.
My needs are only
those wants you want.
And when I sleep this night
or any after this,
though you be miles gone,
my head still rests
against your belly,
moving down.
Or at your back
against your shoulders
moving not at all.
- from "Moment To Moment 1973, 1975 |
|
|
|
|
