quietus

my heart like

a split end.

trim it off

with the fat of memory.

throw it away

and watch the arc it makes in air

as if of your hair.

it wasn't you,

lover, that crawled out

into day,

white skin pimpled with shock

beneath a blue sky.

as if i stripped you even of skin

and wore you,

huddled

within.

in the sanity of moonlight,

moonlight dripping memory,

i draw a zinc-white thumb

across a lip

and wait for night

to dry.

quietus

apocryphal intervention of the phoenix:

black hair, blue smoke

curling up from your cigarette.

i don't remember what you said,

but it comes back to me,

the porch light and the porch railing

and the knowledge,

forceless yet infinite, rising, catching fire,

that it was done...

that that which i never had had

was gone.

then i was

excoriate.

now i look at

the wound

and wonder

whether to let it heal.

like words scored

into a tree's bark--an easy if inept metaphor--

your mark,

branded to my tongue:

veronica. veronica. veronica.

quietus (in translation)

i see your face

as if transient, in a dream,

my first and last love--

the retching

stickiness

of memory

and the wrench

of distance

a hand that wishes to

hold nothing

yet

lets nothing go

a wretched
and circular
desire.

i read your face

as if in memory

dearest

i read and rend your face

as if from memory.

a hand i once held

is over-full of memory

and my own hand

is over-full

of shadow--
substance.
i was robbed
of substance.

fullness--i was

robbed

of fullness,

and hang,

sick,

like a crescent moon,

somewhere between day

and hungering night

while night

empties her budget

into her own
hollowness.

quietus

as if i were made
of particle-board,
screw happiness
into me,
o god.

i have
resisted
with my eyes
and hands
the touch
of it,

your most
refulgent
gift.

but it crept in
through my ears and mouth
and vibrates on
a crystal pitch--

your logic is not
my logic, god. 
i am held
in the palm
of your hand,
blind,
and you make
me sing,

sing most
anything.

quietus

my hair looks in the mirror like a thatched roof
when will my hair stop looking like a thatched roof?
lover when you come to me
lover when you come to me.

my eyes are in the mirror like two coals
when will my eyes be less like two coals?
lover when you come to me
lover when you come to me.

my cheek is blank in the mirror like an unlined sheet
when will my cheek not be an unlined sheet?
lover when you come to me
lover when you come to me.

my brow is in the mirror like a coin
when will my brow be spent like a coin?
lover when you come to me
lover when you come to me.

my mouth is in the mirror like a tight-tied bow
when will my mouth be bought and sold?
lover when you come to me
lover when you come to me.

quietus

geryon was a monster.  everything about him was red.

i was within a cosmic self-friendship,
something casual.

but the blue world
turned me into a battlefield.

i saw red-running hands
their red turning to silver

in water and the water
turning red.

the moon trailed a path
against the lake

and there was nothing left
to view through the window

nothing left
so the glass shattered.

when i thrust
a fist
against it.

quietus

when i arrange my love as if a smear
of yellow-gold encrustment on a wound,
infected like an unattended tear--
upholstering skin--the letting of the blood--
when i abide my love but bare, a place
cavernous empty, echoing, empty, caverns--
when i regard my love within my face
its undiluted strength a weft that ravens--
when i address my love, when i address
my love with terms of love, when i belove
my love with terms a dove would creel to press
bare from its beak, when i my love behoove
when i behave with love as if addressed--
when i think any paucit word is clearer
than those i shed, but cannot break the mirror.

quietus

love is the great good use
one person makes of another

indiscriminate
writing
ripping
things from out
the skin
and merchandising
them
i am
the tool
of sadness
the tool
of labor
i am
a lead weight
i am
colored like
an oyster
with the same
impassable lips

until
any fool rips
me open and
makes me his whore

(little polly
little polly
of the strawberry letter)

quietus: nocturne

for e m

want to be
the bitch at your feet.

want for some amount of time
to be some one single thing,
univalent,
uniplicitous,

your
spaniel
this may not
be
normal

quietus

the mask is
that the image is.

i fend off the moment
in which to let you go
you and your shirt,
your shadow, its taste,
your smile,
your voice,
and that feeling
that sunlight
meant something
when i was near you.

lover, i search your coin
out
amidst the eternal cushions
of the couch.

quietus

croesus of the golden horn
and page blossom from the silver book
the sound of sand scraped against itself
the crunch of a thin layer of sand imploding
and page blossom from the silver book

i have done such things
i have done such things
sweetheart do i know you anymore?
what have i done?  do you know?

descent into ownership
the black and red grip of mastery
the press of lips and the grind of hips
i broke shallow against a lintel
i swept the pieces with my mind

with the mind that spilled from my head
with that page of blossom from the silver book

quietus

i was a magician, a master-weaver.
snakelike, the rhythm to you and i
that i wove again and again.

no escape from the outcome,
as any gambler knows,
but for one shaking minute,
shaking like the leaf of a deadened aspen,
the sequence itself can change,

for one cheated ray of light
the sequence itself can change

like jenga.

patient in pale state
my hide in tatters
(it does not matter)
i wait   for my breath
to   rebound
what i never
had, what
i   always   had never had.