yesssss

I had a heavy hand of dimes
and dollars to spend
on books pilled with spittle
pears soft at the stem
and a train ride to Connecticut
up to your demesne
I am a man hopped-up on luck, wrought-up with knowing
limbs flushed with gusts of blood
I hum along the tracks a roused tom in the thrum
ready to greet you where the day spills on your windows
your little split teeth hard kernels
in a lush husk that holds a body gorged on light
with yellow Latin on my lap I pass
through sheaves of beard-weed pierced with quince
specked with must and rip-seamed, I endure
pressing toward you little avid machine lucid and sure

"write a poem on wanting to swim."

I felt an old urge tear through me to jump in the water.
I hadn't been in since summer
when the whole earth bright--
a glass phial in light--
stood ready, and the blue lake too.
My only water now is tepid showers
or unwelcome rains.
I lusted for the idiot, the drunken
womb, that water, cool on the skin,
and the whole air rasped at me
like felt, and the white columns of the footbridge,
the sluggish meter of the radio-tower blinking,
the white eaves of the earth those clouds that move
tremulous and quick, how they pressed on me;
I wanted to open my mouth into the deep
body that cares nothing for my misfortune.
I want to speak humming and low
into white orbs of air, and echo.
Up here the air whines with too many unseen
radiations.
The yellow-brimmed wood keens to empty itself.

autumn!

Little spitcurls of light arrive,
blanch and die in the lovage,
and sour autumn olives red
are pendant here.
In this pallid hour, a fallen chestnut
found, mealy and dark, split open,
might, crumpled as an ambergris,
a little pearl of dusk, round as an owl's-eye,
find a new rest in a whorled palm, and I
whose lips pursed for sought mercy
all morning, who's shuddered at clocksvine,
asters, carnations, might perch
at the lip of the new hour as a hand
on a new-set bowl.

it's international dense love poem week!

JK, that week is only celebrated on this blog.

---

The last rhododendrons go filmy with rot
at the edge of the path while the greenhouse roses preen.
All the stone monks on the church wall sing atonement--
perfect new Os of frost in their mouths.
Since I saw Carmen at twelve I've known to look
in the hearts of roses for lascivious intent.
Somewhere too an alabaster girl is weeping.
She lays it at the feet of those musk-flushed bells.
I hark to the keen drawing-in of breath
that's winter arriving, those old leaves
a little silt of paper at my feet,
that trunk like a black cloth
perpetually wrung.
Soon the pavestones will shrink
pitted and starred with salt.
Nodding too I go and wait.
Nodding too my unwept love is stirring.