I’m fucked up fucked up.

 

 AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

48 HOURS LATER

(for Sarasvati)

Your last feelings

and reasons

are dust motes 

falling & rising.

Because Pi

is my spirit guide,

the telephone 

has donned a bathrobe 

and begun complaining 

my constant staring 

makes it feel naked,

and I find myself out on the street

interrogating rain showers 

as to your whereabouts.

This one particular raindrop

is being evasive, falling 

into metaphors—I may 

have to get rough.

Happiness stumbles by smelling

of mad dog and mumbo sauce,

wearing cheap sneakers 

with holes the size of a headache 

and a shirt that reads 

like a menu of stains.

I search for a slice

of your sweet potato smile.

Without it 

I've begun hoarding 

my tears as holy water, 

and all the open vowels 

of my vocabulary

are now sentries 

on the windowsill—

waiting to herald

the sign & cosign

of your return . . .

THURSDAY POEM

(For Sarasvati)

Say I'm at First & U street NW,

laying across a black leather couch

with Ariel, whose half-Mexican mouth

and chile green eyes track Jordan across

the court. It's been maybe six days since you, 

now my head sinks into her open hollow

of thigh. MJ wins the game with a jumper. 

We cheer, kill the TV and chill. In her 

mantle speakers, it's Round Midnight but she 

doesn't need my long hands stroking her legs, 

and her fingers refuse to brush my hair

as though frightened by my need to be touched. 

I don’t know how to ask to be held,

I make up an excuse to bounce from her crib.

It's too late for the subway, so I walk,

the air swipes its sweaty hands on my face

and just thirteen blocks from First St. NW,

I pass where Charlie's Seafood used to be

and recall that day I had two dollars,

but bought a slice of sweet potato pie 

for a dollar and a half, then came up 

to your apartment without calling first.

Your eye asks Who is it? through the peephole,

I yell “A slice of your favorite pie.”

You crack the door, eye me like an errant 

child, your lips red as pistachio shells.

Don't ever do this again you say, then 

let me in. You make a communion

of apple cinnamon tea, say Let's play dominoes. 

We then flip a box over 

and plop on pillows, you shuffle all 

the bones and count out seven,

turning yours on their sides so I can't see.

I gather my tiny tombstones of tile 

around me. After whupping me twice and 

talking trash, you lay on your back with your 

mouth blank beneath the black dots of your eyes. 

I align the dominoes of your spine

then feed you sweet potato pie from

a plastic fork which nearly melts as it touches 

your lips. I consider letting you have 

the whole crust, but you say Let's split it, 

like a wishbone. You scoot over, brush hair

from my shirt, and I lean into the rhythm 

as your fingers find the nook of my neck. 

Now, waiting at the corner of Seventh 

and Florida Aves., I begin to wonder if

this red light will ever change?

Your fingertips still tease my ear. And,

maybe I don’t just want their touch, 

maybe I need it. Not how the letter 

Q needs to be followed by U, but how 

every small i needs the pupil that dots it.