HURRICANE WITH A WOMAN'S NAME
As if god stuttered the seventh letter or
in the queendom of quickened candles I smell
the pretty want preserved in her blackberry smile you
never can tell if the haze of love is grill smoke or fog burning off
I hold the scented feet of her chrysanthemum sonnets
in my mouth like penny candy until they melt
into a pseudonym for epidermic skirmish that feeds
the knocking of legs like needles knitting French novels
made like marmalade into movies starring Hepburn staring
out of desire holy as a moth-eaten hat but never
kissing like two planes crashing into a sparkling
tiara of her morphined memories unless somehow
they curl like calla lilies in the humidity pouring
as an alto aria from old pitchers of illegal aliens
like my naked hope swimming to the Atlantic shore
to avoid Customs of kissing on both cheeks she
shorts the electrical systems of my fingers
until the gaps fuse into black eyed susans and
maybe one night I lick a truth simple as egg salad
from her lips or caress her almond eyes they open like a 7-11
and serve every synapse loaded as a doe-eyed dog
with a carbonated big gulp which goes flat as Bobby McGee’s
indigo EKG after eight hours I hear myself singing
the blues to her Savoy genes and turn into the spiral
arms of a Tropical Depression that wouldn't hug a homeless
vet in 1972 falling like a barometer collapsed on itself or
slant lines of liquid silver precipitate from her stormy eye
still dream under the gaps in park benches because
my OCD makes me count every antecedent crawling
the luminous length of the concrete floor of this longing.
As if god stuttered the seventh letter or
in the queendom of quickened candles I smell
the pretty want preserved in her blackberry smile you
never can tell if the haze of love is grill smoke or fog burning off
I hold the scented feet of her chrysanthemum sonnets
in my mouth like penny candy until they melt
into a pseudonym for epidermic skirmish that feeds
the knocking of legs like needles knitting French novels
made like marmalade into movies starring Hepburn staring
out of desire holy as a moth-eaten hat but never
kissing like two planes crashing into a sparkling
tiara of her morphined memories unless somehow
they curl like calla lilies in the humidity pouring
as an alto aria from old pitchers of illegal aliens
like my naked hope swimming to the Atlantic shore
to avoid Customs of kissing on both cheeks she
shorts the electrical systems of my fingers
until the gaps fuse into black eyed susans and
maybe one night I lick a truth simple as egg salad
from her lips or caress her almond eyes they open like a 7-11
and serve every synapse loaded as a doe-eyed dog
with a carbonated big gulp which goes flat as Bobby McGee’s
indigo EKG after eight hours I hear myself singing
the blues to her Savoy genes and turn into the spiral
arms of a Tropical Depression that wouldn't hug a homeless
vet in 1972 falling like a barometer collapsed on itself or
slant lines of liquid silver precipitate from her stormy eye
still dream under the gaps in park benches because
my OCD makes me count every antecedent crawling
the luminous length of the concrete floor of this longing.
