Bath

When you would become the mirror

a shine collected in hazel iris

a shine collector you took

what long ago I threw

thrown back

the leaden weights affixed to swimmer's feet

bite your lip before you turn and walk

tell me what you feel in sunlight

now in dark

How the brine will

buoy a body

while insects in rattling oaks

sang summer months, we were together

practicing the deadman's float in your

parent's pool

and if you had read to me in the tub

maybe it would have all appeared

like an image seen in fever

But for how that water was only

built for one.

Dream Poem

In the dream

I am the lone worker

on a fishing ship

wanting to know

the time just like

the bird who comes

to take the watch

that my grandfather gave

to my father before

he was committed.

Her beak seizing the chain

stripping my palm

as she streaks from the deck

like a thread of lightning

connecting with its point

of genesis in the sky,

I follow her ascent

until the sun absorbs her body

and I am blind from that

moment of looking on.

Then she is diving furiously

furiously into the surf

as if endeavoring for a fish

my heart

knowing

somehow

that she will not resurface.

The picture of her delicacy

suspended within that bath,

her feathers lifted away

by the density of the water:

I hold it until I am awake

and for some time

after.

On Visiting the Rothko Chapel

When I went down on my knees

in the dark with you and stared

up at that canvas it wasn't long

before I saw His face

or one I imagined

could belong to someone like him.

His long features; lips pouted and

chin sloped emerged

from the black and purple

from the vast oil bruise in the way

people always told me he would come

perhaps in less literal darkness

perhaps when I could feel the weight

on my back from all that he wasn't

Don't you want a poem

that will just

give it to you

that will undo your

fastenings with its teeth

and

lay you

out like it was murdering you

when really it was making you live?

After the reading is done

it will take maybe twenty minutes

for you to be able to move again

just lying there with the volume

spread open

on your chest: its cover,

jacket removed, moving

in time with your breath

A poem where

afterward you need a cigarette

to escort you back to the world

outside its lines because you

came that close to forgetting

that people had needs at all

And maybe the next morning

when you come back

to its pages the passion

will have dwindled some

it will seem somehow tired

in the light, its

movements and print both

a little less bold

But when you read it

(now at your desk

with your glasses on)

it still reads you back

with a tenderness

and understanding

that was absent in

the lustful evening

and you will maybe think

it's better that way: to be

who you are in its company, to have

the poem see you hungry and wanting

but still know exactly what to say.

For Carl Dennis

From 1974 to 2004

you wrote in some bright room

that I never saw the light of.

Thirty years. So much of my

lifespan spent with your fingers

in ink and I never read

a word of it.

Not even today in the library

when I ran my fingers down

the spine of your dust

jacket and then walked

out the door.

I know

I am ungrateful not

to give you my time.

A few odd hours in

recompense for a

whole life of

work

But it comforts me enough

to think that you're out there:

you and others like you

rubbing sleep from aging

eyes just trying to say

something. To think

that after all

of those pages,

one of you is bound

to have hit on something

that will save me, something I

just haven't got around to reading yet.

Twilit

In the street, children gather bits

of sidewalk chalk from their day

spent painting the town.

I am sitting on a friend's porch

satisfied by the early evening breeze

when they call for me to lie

on my back

in the grass.

They have ground the remnants

of their chalk in a bucket

that last week they were using

to wash neighbor's cars for money

They laugh as they spread

the dust over me, and then

leave

as I remain there

the color of the twilit sky

supine on the floor of the city.

Boys and Girls of America

I have seen how we grow cross eyed in classrooms

and am concerned with how little most of us

grin when we kiss. Where are the ones we left

in backseats of our mother's station wagons

fumbling for the braclasp of the world?

Please touch one another more.

In exceptionally public and overcrowded places,

demonstrate that affections exist that are beyond

the scope of our control. I will not be offended

by your tactlessness. It does not matter to me

if you are unattractive. My heart has been beating

at a concerning rate since Sunday, but I believe

that the way it touches the roof of my ribcage

is affectionate so I am keeping myself on this diet

of coffee and nicotine. If I have a stroke,

please call my mother.

Ladies and gentleman, I am ill suited to the bluelight

of the television and its thick film of noise.

My yelling days have passed and now the only place

I am interested in being loud is bed. I am not embarrassed to admit

that I still have faith in poetry and its quietude,

the manner in which it compels me to stop for

a moment and admire its self-certainty

like a pretty thing in heels

whose pendulum sway somehow distills

the screeching motion of the world.

Most of us have been writing about a feeling that can

only be communicated through the touching of lips, but

after a long day I still want someone to read to me as

much as I want sex and a glass of whiskey.

Boys and girls of America, there is nothing

unstylish about being genuine. I had

two drinks before writing this because I find

the idea of your judgment terrifying. Still,

I want the best for all of us. If I had your names

in my address book, you, collectively, would be

the first on my dinner party invitation lists.

I spend most of my time alone wishing to be disarmed

by your honesty.