oy

The new rain thinned the ice last night.
When I prod the gemmed pool with my boot
down under the black water
I see Pyramus and Thisbe,
white swimmers specked with blood.
Thisbe opens her mouth
into the flood,
and the ice-sheets close.
Somewhere in me
a mendicant soul stirs,
braying for its keep.
The ice rasps as it moves
under hushed stands of pines.

"i have never and will never wear loafers."

I am writing a poem for you
and your new-shorn hair,
that mass of fur on the barber’s chair,
And you, sullen, in your plastic cape,
the sun outside
capping your red ears,

letterman jacket
sour with dust,
a hunch, a frayed cuff,
errant arms big with lust,

eyes winsome, neck ruffed
perpetually with three days of scruff.
Sloven in your sweet daze,
I want to see you again
through glens of quilt-down, heart-
wrenching knees, white
slice of gut--
I could beg
for big diadem you with a parched throat
until the white houses folded
their shingles down, opened
their lips, and sang.

Trembling, sullen
before the goad,
I drag my feet
in stitched skin
over stone,

drenched and animal
through new ice
kindling light
under the trees,

all gunny-sack
thighs, tongue ransomed,
hiding from that slick
half-slitted disc
in cloud,

bleating for you,
hot guts, shorn
fur,
reeking of warm
ordure.

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