a mounting to the soul

A clerk let him into the locked room, and William dropped his backpack on the heavy wooden table, folding his long body into a chair. He was early. He tented his hands in front of his face, as if they could shield him from seeing Bridey. “If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.” That was Auden. William had set the poem to music for a pretentious tenor at school. But what did Auden know, padding around in filthy carpet slippers, filling teacups with cigarette butts? Auden, by his nature, was always going to be the more loving one, so he’d tried to make the longing admirable and desirable. William knew from experience that it wasn’t. The role of the human brain was to rationalize suffering.

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She came to my door

and I knew she

wanted to enter

my world. Her eyes were

extinguished from a long

walk and yet were

refurbished like an electronic light

pressed upon like new wind

on a flaring shoulder

once the thought of sitting on the settee

shook her over like

a setting on a Monday morning

after a drawn out, conspicuous weekend.

I examined all of this as she left me

without any money, smiling

as if she had gained something.  

The tanned blonde

                                    in the green print sack

In the center of the subway car

                                    standing

tho there are seats

                                    has had it from

I           teen-age hood

I           lesbian

I           envious housewife

4          men over fifty

(& myself),     in short

                                    the contents of this half of the car

                                    Our notations are :

long legs, long waists, high breasts (no bra), long

neck, the model slump

                                    the handbag drape & how the skirt

cuts in under a very handsome

                                    set of cheeks

“stirring dull roots with spring rain”, sayeth the preacher

            Only a stolid young man

with a blue business suit and the New York Times

does not know he is being assaulted.

So.

She has us and we have her

all the way to downtown Brooklyn

Over the tunnel and through the bridge

                                    to DeKalb Avenue we go

all very chummy

She stares at the number over the door

                                    and gives no sign

Yet the sign is on her

Let you drag me here, without demurring,

Where it’s all so bright?

Wasn’t I, good simple soul, as happy

in my lonely night?

In my room and snug, with none to see me

As the moonlight lay

Sweet and eerie in a mist around me

Till I’d drift away,

Deep in dreams, and what delirious spells of

Unabated bliss!

Nuzzled to your image warm within me,

Dreaming dreams of this.

I’m myself? Among the candelabra

Planted! Made to play

Cards! - with those insufferable faces

A nose-length away!

Why? You draw me more than any meadow’s

Fragrance in the spring.

Angel, where you are is warmth and loving,

Every natural thing.

 

On my hands are the odors
of the knockout ether
either of above the sky
where the bluebirds get blued
on their upper surfaces
or of down under the earth
where the immaculate nightcrawlers
take in tubes of red earth
and polish their insides.

O poets if only

that first hideaway

pain were not

to blame or

needed for

your poetry, you

could be cosmocaught

in big       blank       space

where letters could bend

like better worsted

wrapping stars and

moons and planets,

but then again you

would find enough

here to be amused.