In that darkness,

Speakers rose like

Housing projects,

Moonlight diamonded

Mesh-wire panes.

What was it that bloomed

Around his curled

Body when the lights

Came up, fluorescent,

Vacant, garish?

The gym throbbed

With beats & rage

And his eyes darted

Like a man nailed

To a burning crucifix.

At 10, I did the freak with Nikki Keys

In a stairway at the Blumberg Housing Projects

As the music came to us on the 18^th floor

Like the need for language or the slow passing

Of jets. A dare, we were up close, all pelvis

Taking in measured breaths before going down

Like a pair of park pigeons. We could have crushed

pebbles, thrown fine specks of dust

At the moon. We formed the precise motion

Of well-oiled gears fit to groove. This was three years

Before I would have sex for the first time,

Before I would discern the graceful tangle

Of stray gods, the bumbling dance of mortals.

At Club de Lisa’s,

1946, a party of white

Patrons pulling back

The curtain separating

*

The races. Sound

Scopes, Rocksichords,

Oboes. 5 billion

People on this earth

*

All out of tune.

Minutes from

The cracked bell

I plot a map

*

Of stars: Ursa Major

to Vine & 2^nd & order

This gathering of

Intelligent earthlings

*

To embark upon tonight’s

Spaceship – Ihnfinity, Inc.

Cosmic koras, bassoons,

Sharp, brass trumpets.

His music swims in the room’s colors,

Not making the décor any prettier,

In its war of blood and tar;

His bleak tone blare into blackness

Of hard luck and lights.

Easier to sit in the front row

With your feet propped on stage

Than to play in a room where

Notes are harder to hold than a cheating lover.

As everyone heckles advice,

Somebody tells a fable about

Dignity and the failed attempt.

Toes painted by her lover,

            what woman wouldn’t feel lucky

walking barefoot over a carpet of two men:

            one unknowing,

one in it for the game?

When she reaches for her shoes,

it will be only a moment before her husband rattles keys

            at the front door. Her lover must stretch under the bed

for his wingtips before tip-toeing

            out the back.

Once, I showed Ethelbart

A love poem

I wrote about a woman

I was dating.

What you think, man?

I asked.

His comments were an X

He drew from one end

To the other.

Then he folded it up.

Gave it back to me.

Man, don’t you know,

I broke up

With that woman.

In his bath my son looks half-

drowned,

lying so still,

his hair a scarf of weed,

his eyes closed,

and only the water breathing.

He practices

in his porcelain bed

his resting,

rehearsing

until the water takes cold

and he shivers a little against it.

We unstrung necklaces into two glass bowls

and passed them round to the mourners.

The beads were onyx, agate, quartz, all manner

of stone. Everyone was to take two

and at the end of the service

put one back in my sister’s hands.

What could she do but collect

the round weights all night?

She has not restrung them,

not wanting to be finished yet with death.

Where my father’s hip was rejoined

his leg lost an inch or two.

His right shoe is a ladder,

a shadow under him,

a hearse of black rubber he can’t escape.

He stands before the shoemaker

in his old bare feet

shaking off sadness,

a boy shaking pebbles out of his shoe.

Some of the prisoners were strung like beef

From the ceilings of their cells. “Gus”

Was led around on a leash. I mean dragged.

Others were ridden like mules. The guards

Were under a tremendous amount of pleasure.

I mean pressure. Pretty disgusting. Not

What you’d expect from Americans.

Just kidding. I’m only talking about people

Having a good time, blowing off steam.

She gets herself so wound up. I think

She likes it. Like a wrung rag, or a wire

Wrapped round itself into a spring.

And the pressure, the brute strength

It takes to hold things that way, to keep them

From straightening out, is up to her

To maintain. She’s like a kettle about to blow.

All that steam anxious to rise and go.

I get tired watching it happen, the eyes

Alive with their fury against the self,

The words swelling in the chest, and then

The voice racing into anyone’s face.

She likes to hear it, her throat hoarse

With nonsense and the story that must

Get told again and again, no matter.

Blast off! she like to think, though

What comes to mind at the moment

Is earthly. A local wind. Chill and small.

Give a man a stick, and he’ll hurl it at the sun

For his dog to race toward as it falls. He’ll relish

The snap in those jagged teeth, the rough breath

Sawing in and out through the craggy mouth, the clink

Of tags approaching as the dog canters back. He’ll stoop

To do it again and again, so your walk through grass

Lasts all morning, the dog tired now in the heat,

The stick now just a wet and snarled nub that doesn’t sail

So much as drop. And when the dog plops to the grass

Like a misbegotten turd, and even you want nothing

More than a plate of eggs at some sidewalk café, the man –

Who, too, by now has dropped even the idea of fetch –

Will push you against a tree and ease his leg between

Your legs as his industrious tongue whispers

Convincingly into your mouth.

Mostly I talk of rep ties and bow ties,

of full-Windsor knots and half-Windsor knots,

of tattersall, French cuff, and English spread collars,

of foulards, neats, and internationals,

of pincord, houndstooth, nailhead, and sharkskin.

I often wear a blue pin-striped suit.

My hair recedes and is going gray at the temples.

On my cheeks there are a few pimples.

For my terrible eyesight, horn-rimmed spectacles.

In my monk cell,

my trunk coils –

a crucifix

or a question mark.

Which one of you

unscrewed me

from the blue jungle

like a chandelier

and placed me here?

After my mother and father fight,

my father takes my hand

and we walk down to the Mississippi

where he smokes Camel cigarettes.

He flicks his ashes away from me.

He rarely says my name.

All day on TV, I watch monks

in Saigon douse themselves in gasoline

and light their saffron robes on fire.

When they ignite, they do not cry out.

I study their silence to comprehend

how a tongue turns into flame.

Six monarch butterfly cocoons

            Clinging to the back of your throat –

            you could feel their gold wings trembling.

You were alarmed. You felt infested.

In the downstairs bathroom of the family home,

            gagging to spit them out –

                        and a voice saying, Don’t, don’t –

Do you want Batman or Spider-Man.

Do you want the wizard hat or Professor X, the green skull

            with a rose in its teeth, do you want

the thunderbolt or the smiley face.

George Washington with spirals for eyes.

Get down on your knees and look in.

Bring yourself close and look in.

A’s and B’s, upglistening like fish.

Upglistening and then lifting

            over the pool.

Ahh, Behh, breath over water in the air around you,

what will you bathe. Throat-Stander,

            in the song’s black pool?