improv for Long Island ex-pat

observing things, people at motion
subconsciously drowns a creeping star
they wipe across the sky -- warm missiles
with self-regulating (seismic) voices rinsing
voices, certain but unrelenting  the smell
a knee-high pile of leaves, dry branches
set ablaze creeping stars wipe
across my face flush with observation
and stronger wrapped in purple, velvet cloth.

42120101135, untitled for 9/9/99

Been a while, friend
but i still remember
tastes of your skin
before hands get lost
let me touch your hem
breathes in me again
ignites that first night
forgotten memories
long frozen rhyme
future i do recall
when monstrous lust must
in glacial sweat fall
the ache towers tall
returns the bellow's call

leather

the way you settled w yr pricey leather curves
reflected twice inside the perfect square
mouth-wide, beside dry eyes
heave a matching leather bag with skinny
shoulders. you are ruined, spread
across this royal path to my bed
blankets velvet, why do you think
our sky-high pirouettes are shaped like
this gently bent negative space
from where yr shudder originates?

Improv for Disaster, or Indexed: Four False Starts

1. Outloud, too loud to be heard, count the memories passed by

2. The dismissive vein tapped into daily

3. All walls, being higher than others,
must or must not terminate at both ends

4. The designs of beauty preclude you --
boomeranged, bent into a parading affair

untitled 2161208

I long for her hand and dream of holding,
From a distance watch them hollow, sigh

And in the afternoon of a blink disappear
Tap your forehead, miss the rot
Suspicion buzz in circles, time rubs
Its legs, hands, thick meaty palms
Greasy with hot cooking oil

You can only blame them, who else?, so
Suspiciously slick and mock-inviting

Are you willing to play with the language
Passively cherish --

There is a field beneath flaking sky
Warm photosynthetic layer keeps it dry
Amber waves of microwave heat
Steam escaping a mugfull of retreat.

Instructions for Reading in Public

When reading in public
Carelessly snicker
Puffing air from both nostrils
A plush dragon
Loud enough
To be heard. This way
Blackberried blonde
Prickly Dominican mom
Decked-out Congolese deacon
Will have but the shiniest doubt
You are in precious and personal
Communique with this particular clerk
And His vastly taxonomic work.

Be sure to snicker
just loud enough
to be heard.

The Photographer's Job

The photo's shallow focus
Eminence; A crepuscular grain of stoicism
Litters the simple portrait, unadorned
With background yet cluttered
In grey tones of cotton, four ivory buttons
One beside its perch.
Refusing the portraitist's love
His shorn fingernails long-ago grazed
Preposterously upon the subject's left cheek.
Subject, accepted, as 3 million eyes remove
Recast the ambulant crown of jackal's fur.

untitled 3222010

To think rain then see the umbrella
Unafraid of
Confident in
Its huge freckled beauty
Aquiline and staring deeply
Red breast-sized droplets
Slapping the evening air
Wide painterly halo, impossible
Pinkish-flesh surrounding the street lamps'
Pulsing head. Never
Believe such things, even whispered
Atop a long-sallow, sworn-upon pillow
As they were, on many tender nights.

Gut softness exposed to cross fingernails
Of moonlight, here things are more realistic
And I am convinced
That I am convinced
I am that Man, warmer than coal
Rich as butter patiently churned
From darling milk.

untitled 3162010100, for a.w.

I don't want to play dress-up
in my beautiful skin & now behind
powdered teeth

I am wailing for happiness
see, already under a shroud
so why bisect with a tie

Or stomp out the sun with the false curl of a hat
why the heels, toes cut out
not waiting, wailing

Nothing done with a smile nor easily
nude practicality & little wisps of Whitman
collapsing alveoli, alluvial grapes, still on vines

Strangle around a skirt I will not entertain
will not entertain its baroque desire to drool
to widen here, elongate there, draw their upon-me eyes

Kneeward & beyond to where. Part of me

Wants
replanting each grape
refilling the grave

To impress you
though that share is small
the more substantial stock

Only wants to raise myself.

untitled 3162010

there is no learning
only the watch and
sea, desperate
paddling & constrictions

(wind, sharks, hunger
& their very thin relations
but this cold ungiving night)

not shackles but
endless, star-filled sky
pregnant & bending horizon's breath

the chill a child
mistakes for death
on the back of his neck.