Seascape with Vessel

Her voice
calls in currents,
the melody washing
like incoming waves.
Medleyed
with a moving sun,
her aria tracks
the heart's arc.
As all that would rise
fear what falling may follow,
she is careful,
sings of descent first,
is cautious with what
she allows to be heard
in the harmony.
She knows the sea
and the Song of Salt
are composed
in the same key,
but still chooses
to bathe in what
the tide utters
in the interim,
word
by rising
word.

Her voice
is more searchlight
than song, splashes the dunes
with waves of something
wilder than water.
Her lyrics are a people's sighs
medleyed with moonlight,
a geyser like whales exhaling.
Since tears also shine,
what saline circles
she's tasted, sparkle
like traces of grace
in the foam
swirling across
what beaches she walks.
And we wonder
what price of translation
she pays, as she sings
in a dress that is fraying
and slowly utters
every word
by barefoot
word.

Lonnie's Lament

She floods the room,
a flash of moonlight,
the pressure of night rising.
I feel my taut strings plucked
by hands soft enough
to wreck religion.
I hear sharps and flats,
the subtle fingerings
that form her signature.
I feel indigo ventricles
improvise emotions
they can't contain.
See the saucy hips,
the twin legends
of her legs,
that cryptic tattoo,
the tresses braiding rumor
and myth. See
how she pimps mystique
into solo and chorus
inside a blouse.
Her skirt flashes through my past
like Billie's final sigh
teasing hopeful lungs
in a haunted torso.
I hear her halo
tilt to caress the curve
of the ear, chords born
from the marriage
of catfish and cornmeal,
from lacquered brass
and that last goodbye.
Check her thick thighs,
how they resolve into
an ankle's passion
for expensive bracelets
and the foot's five types of finesse;
the sweet tonic of each toe.
The daughter of possibilty
and pain, this onyx angel
skips like a rock across
my river, conjuring
the holiness of dragonflies.
I know the knickname
hidden like a curse word
under her scarlet tongue.
How can I forget those lips
whose low moan caressed
my neck all night,
when their prints linger
longer than the burn of Bourbon
on my mouth?

Ode to Two Lips

Horizontal half-moons
soft as cinematic whispers,
last night heard my tongue
pray for the sacred space
between you.
I want you for
your red's exquisite sheen,
for how easy it is
to be transfixed
by the Two of Heart's glossy finish.
You know it isn't good sense
that makes me imagine
your fat bottom gleaming.
Months ago,
I dreamt you as sliced halves
of fruit beneath glass,
above teeth white
as an apple's exposed flesh.
But now I'm shoplifting Chapstick,
brushing gloss
across a canvas
stretched like skinny jeans
after a binge,
bewitched by what
surrounds your mouth's
satin machine.
You've been chapped
by wind, salt and sunlight.
But a single lick
from the scarlet felt
of a wandering tongue,
can make everything supple again.
And when are your
busses scheduled?
I want to caress
a fever into your fullness,
sighs from your corners.
You need no MAC,
Max Factor,
Revlon, Clinique, or Avon.
Peck.
Peck.
Peck.
Now that I've kissed
the blues for you,
come close and hum
your cinnamon song.

New day. New try.

It's funny how the world works. I had started this poem a few months earlier as an experiment, trying to create a poetic analogue to a mathematical proof (Furstenberg's "Infinitude of Primes"). But although the resulting poem was somewhat interesting, the experiment was a failure on the conceptual level. So, after a while I decided to give up on the analogue idea and just edit the poem to get the best poem possible. And what do you know, just as soon as I stop trying the analogue concept and just do what's best for the poem, Bam! I stumble into a way to make the concept work.

ON THE INFINITUDE OF KISSES
(for Big Kenny and Little Kenny)

Let us define a topology
on the emotion L
by imagining a sub-love L₁,
to be an open love
if and only if
it either contains
open kisses
or it contains
a union of emotional sequences
L(f, s),
where L(f, s)=hearts open as wounds.
In other words,
a sub-love L₁,
can be open if and only if
every hesitant male heart
that is a member of L₁
admits some non-hero condition F or S.
The axioms for a topology
are easily verified:
by definition,
an open mouth kiss is open;
L is just the sequence L(U, I),
and (if true) is open as well.
For any collection of open mouths
the intersection of two
(and hence finitely many)
open mouths is an open kiss:
Let the lips U and I
form open mouths,
then, let the mouths meet.
The topology is quite different
from the usual Euclidean one,
and has two notable properties:
Since any open mouth
contains infinite kisses,
no finite mouth can be open;
put another way,
the complement of an open kiss
cannot be a closed mouth.
The basis mouths {father, son}
are closed by nature,
but we can imagine L(f, s)
as the complement
of an open mouth as follows:
"There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a word . . .
. . . Love is a word, another kind of open."
Among the sounds
that are emotional multiples
of open kisses
is rain falling on a field,
i.e. [a topology of tears]
By the first property,
the mouth (raining sky)
cannot be closed.
On the other hand,
by the second property,
the mouth (fallow field) is closed.
So, if there were only
finitely many drops of rain
then the mouths (field, sky)
would be in a finite union
of closed mouths,
and hence closed.
This would
be a contradiction,
thus L(f, s) must contain
infinitely many
drops of rain
falling
in an open field.

Litany For A February Day

Before, I might have dreamt
of the swirling agates of your eyes,
or the coal-colored
corn silk of your hair,
or even the velvet cushions
of your lips.
But, as I become
a more religious man
I pray silently for the soft halo
of your hands.
I do not pray the way
a kneeling Nun recites a rosary
for orphans in a Favela
or the way a penitent priest
invokes "Our Father"
before his congregation,
but how in mid-July,
a pair of blue mittens
pray from the darkness of a box
for what can only fill them
from the inside.
I wait for your hands
the way gallons of Butter Pecan
frozen behind frosted glass
wait for the mouth
that will melt it,
I coil for them
the way Spaghetti on a plate
coils for the tines of the fork
that will lift it onto
the warm wonder of a tongue.
I hunger for your right hand
small in the hollow of my back,
your left hand blessing the blades
of my shoulders.
I crave each of your slender fingers
as a smoker's lips
crave ten naked Newports.
My chest prays for your hands
the way the front yard
under its heavy sweater of leaves
prays for the sweep of a rake
to lay it bare and raise small hills.
My face imagines your hands
as a second story window
imagines the brush
of airborne blossoms.
My arms tingle for your fingertips
the way a branch tingles
under a caterpillar's feet,
my legs pray for your palms
as silk curtains drawn at night
pray to be parted
in the rising heat of morning.
And what does it mean
if my entire body
dreams of nothing but
falling asleep dotted
by your fingerprints
like a leopard
with a thousand glowing spots,
awaiting your caress
as blank paper
awaits the kiss
of the calligrapher's pen,
as rainy windshields
await the swish
of wiper blades,
as every morning
those cups stacked high
behind the counter at Starbucks
become sinners at a Revival
waiting to be made holy
by simply being held
in your hands.

World AIDS Day

FATHER, SON AND THE WHOLLY GHOST

We meet only

in the alleys of memory.

Our broken smiles

glitter on the ground.

Although we bear the same name,

identical scars,

you can't remember

what day I was born.

Anger spills

down the side of my face.

This is what you have taught me:

needles are as hollow as lies,

collapse more families

than veins.

Now a prisoner in death's camp,

you grow thinner every day

until I can count your T-cells

on one hand.

The phone rings,

Mama pleads

Please buy a dark suit to wear.

I tell her

I wear black

every day,

all day,

anyway.

Surfing USA

OK, I'm now on Google Wave, if there are any other new adopters out there waving. Looking forward to exploring the possibilities, especially in terms of dealing with poetry and workshop/critique.

Page Meets Stage

If you're in the NYC area, I'll be reading at the Bowery Poetry Club with Terrance Hayes on Wednesday, December 9th @9pm. It's part of their monthly Page Meets Stage reading series. If you can't get to NYC, there will be live streaming video at www.bowerypoetrylive.com.

NIGHT HAWK

You know you can't
whistle for Love
in this city,
even if it stalks the streets
like a gypsy cab
over pavement
feigning hard

to preserve its solitary lines.
Your ears open themselves
to catch any cry.
Some are flocked together,
others have sought the solace

of a solo glide.
At the end of each avenue
you hear the lyrics
of Love's myriad migrations.
You imagine it
perched in a tall tree,
trapped in branches
until a storm stops.
You realize you
cannot decipher
even a single chirp.
You dim the lights
for the night

and kneel.
And maybe mid-dream,

a flapping
startles you,
alighting
on the sill
of a window
you forgot to close.

For G.S.

. . . only because it was a Thursday
(which is her Monday)
and she was walking as though
carrying something heavy
(albeit not in her hands),
and I thought I heard her sigh,
and recalled Lonnie
(who you might not know)
not Lonnie who was always
pawning his wedding band
so he could feed the penny slots
or Lonnie from The Hill
who always seemed to be
half a slice short
of a sandwich,
but Lonnie from
'Lonnie's Lament'
(and here she
cocks her head and
wrinkles her nose
saying "Who?")
because whatever blew
his rain so sideways
inspired John William to put
a saxophone between his
lips and blaze
a lamentation
which matches
her Monday motion,
a wistful grace
with piano lines almost
lengthy as her legs
and a bassline that
plunges like her hair
when she combs it
into a black Niagra
which she doesn't know makes me wish
I could spend
the rest of my days
naked and trembling
in a wooden barrel,
falling forever through
its obsidian mist.

A Decent Day

I was waiting for the bus outside the Borgata casino when I turned around and looked in the direction of Philly and this haiku presented itself to me;

Atop their stalks

these windmills slicing, slicing-

the quarter moon.

This is an older poem that I finally found the right ending to.

MAN CARRYING TUNE
(after Wallace Stevens)

A poem must seduce
the senses most successfully.

Illustration:
A noir figure (back-turned) on stage
entices an audience of eyes.

The muted blues he trumpets
entice even the least open ears.

Accept them then, as key
(notes almost perceived
as known melodies,

uncertain notation of certain chords,
the roots full of doubt,

notes floating like the last of Autumn Leaves
on a soft breeze that could swirl all night,
on a key breeze of cobalt notes),

A cascade of sensation
now fully falling.

We will bathe
In these sensations all song,
as a blue mysterious

beckons in the dark.


(For Miles Davis)

SIJO IN BLUE

The Sijo (SHE-jo) is a Korean form, similar to its younger cousin haiku. They are written in 3 lines and contain no more than 46 syllables. Unlike haiku, metaphor, simile and other wordplay is permitted.


I pace the beach at dawn,
my footsteps, haiku in sand

I ask the whitecaps, why Derrion,
why only sixteen?

Lake Michigan falls on its shore,
the Hawk wheels and wails above.

A Few Haiku

I have been writing (or trying to write) haiku for over 12 years. It's only in the last couple of days that I feel like I may finally have a firm grasp of the form. This is exciting for me, because I feel like I can now begin to write a few decent pieces. We'll see; anyway here are some older attempts that I've revised.


summer sunset-
a woman crying into
her cellphone

country road-
our brakes screech at
a squirrel

Spring shower-
a white cat under the
drycleaner’s awning

summer shimmer-
that woman talking to herself
wears two coats

March wind –
The white king topples on
the chess table

the white moon-
kissing my uncle's name
in black granite

Sunrise- only lipstick in my wineglass

after the snowstorm-
not one loaf of bread
on this store's shelves

a cowrie shell in her dreadlocks-

the North star

spring sunlight-
dust devils dancing
after the broom

summer lightning-
the edge of your teeth
on my nipple

August heat-
the man in front of the bank
begs for change

sunrise-
three men shiver outside
Kogod's Liquors

at the red light-
the rain on the windshield
stops

bright afternoon-
After that swooping hawk
this swirling feather

On the Rationality of Last Night

Recall that:

the passion is the moan plus the tingle;

the passion is to the moan as the moan is to the tingle.

If we call the passion K and the moan B, then the second statement above becomes

K is to B as B is to K − B,

or, algebraically:

Kiss is to Bite, as Bite is to Kiss minus Bite.

To say that last night was rational

means that last night was

a fraction (Kiss divided by Bite) where K and B are intertwined.

We may take (Kiss divided by Bite) to be in roughest terms

and K and B to be still tender.

But if (Kiss divided by Bite) is in roughest terms,

then the identity labeled (rationality) above

says (Bite dreaming of Kiss divided by Bite) is in still rougher terms.

That is a contradiction

which follows from the assumption

that last night was rational.

Hillel Furstenberg Greets His Newborn Son

(for Big Kenny, Little Kenny and Joel₃)

Let us define a topology
on the emotion L
by declaring a sub-love L₁
{Father, Son}
to be an open love
if and only if
it either contains
an open mouth kiss, ∅,
or it contains a union
of emotional sequences L(f, s),

where L(f, s) = hands open like wounds

= tears cascading across lips.

In other words,
a sub-love L₁ is open if and only if
every hesitant male heart
admits some non-zero condition f or s
such that L(f, s) ⊆ L₁.
The axioms for a topology
are easily verified:
By definition, an open mouth kiss, ∅, is open;
L is just the sequence L(U, I),
and so could be open as well.
Any union of open mouths is open:
for any collection of open mouths
the intersection of two
(and hence finitely many)
open mouths is open:

let U₁ and I₂ be our open mouths
and let hungry lips ∈ open mouths
(with lips s₁ and s₂

establishing membership).
Mouth f to be the

lowest common multiple of f₁ and f₂.
Then, let the mouths meet.
The topology is quite different
from the usual Euclidean one,
and has two notable properties:
Since any open mouth
contains an infinite language,
no finite mouth can be open;
put another way,
the complement of a finite mouth
cannot be a closed mouth.
The basis mouths {f, s}
can be both open and closed:
they are closed by nature,
but we can imagine L(f, s)
as the complement
of an open mouth as follows:
"There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a word . . .
. . . Love is a word, another kind of open."
Among the sounds
that are emotional multiples
of prime kisses are
thunder and rain flooding a field,
i.e. [a topology of tears]
By the first property,
the mouth (sky) on the left-hand side
cannot be closed.
On the other hand,
by the second property,
the mouth (field) is closed.
So, if there were only
finitely many prime kisses,
then the mouth (sky) on the
left-hand side would be
in a finite union of closed mouths,
and hence closed.
This would be a contradiction,
thus L(f, s) must contain
infinitely many
prime kisses.

Seven Things

Seven Things I Should Have Said, Before You Left.

I preferred your sandwich with the crust untrimmed,
Your sighs were iridescent oil on asphalt,
Domination always twitching on the fringes.
The secret? The alphabet trick with my tongue.

Your voice steeped fragrant as loose leaf Darjeeling,
brown bits of cinnamon stick on my tympani,
most nights I dug its squall of sudden spice.
And any bag, even silk, was too much restraint.

Given time, the bend of The Butterfly Position
(insistence banging the bottom of the bundle)
gears shifting like a manic derailleur
probably could have cured your scoliosis.

I never liked your girlfriend with the organic perfume,
that protracted eyebrow, a geometric sneer,
knew she was orange juice on a sore throat,
afterbirth on ice, dripping all night.

I came home early that weekend from Chicago,
saw her feral hands clasp your jagged gasps.
The camcorder wasn't the only thing turned on.
I fapped to the tape at least once a week.

I never enjoyed the sound of slapping you.
But what else would we have done for rhythm?
After nights of Neapolitan, vanilla is a prison,
even if French, with flecks of exotic beans.

When you angled the just oiled pistol
and proclaimed "Either we say 'I do',
or I shall have to kill myself."
I thought, "Well, I'm going to miss you."

I do.

How It Works
"let's stop pretending we understand jazz"
Nicole Blackman

Let's try charting, (We understand Pi)
let's touch, fingering we understand digits
let's sign, waving we understand tangents,
Let's strip, opening we understand clothes.

Let's steam, reddening we understand Blues,
let's hope humming, we understand Bird,
let's scale, mapping we understand Miles,
let's train, loving we understand supremes.

Let's tongue, kissing, we understand heat.
Let's sweat, dripping we understand drums,
Let's bop, as though we understand Being,
Let's loop, proving we understand knot . . .

Hole (note)
"each hoisting forever upward his burden"

Each shriek, held
hoisting a heavy tome
somehow calligraphic,
upwards as dust rises
a new music, old
burden, breathed.

Each bar stumbled from
hoisting hymnals
forever shouting
upward, arpeggiatic
a soul, saxophonic
burden, burnished.

Each solo, nail sharp,
hoisting a hammer
forever falling,
towards
the ash-black
burden, airborne.

Each melody almost
hoisting down heaven.
forever. flaming
upwards. hell-bent.
your passion's single
burden. burning.

Old poem, New version.

THE FIRST GOSPEL
B-Bop Solo #1

Some days,
the rain burns.
At the center
of the burn,
there is a cry
without end,
the why of whatever
is suffered.
Isn’t the ‘I’
a pupil
of affliction,
dilating
in darkness?
Is the 'I' lashed?
Is something like skin broken,
the opening jagged,
groaning like a mouth?

At the center
of all cries,
an eye.
In the core
of the eye,
an Iris.
At the end
of its stem,
a serrated slash.
In the mouth
of the slash,
beads of blood.
In these tears
of blood,
a saltiness.
The salt

crystallizes
into a song.
This hymn

is a hinge,
and in its arc
something like
a door
opens.

21 days til Spring

March,

with your brass band of winds,
swirling overture of air,
clamor of grey clouds.
Must you
cacophonate my heart?
I would settle for being
a single petal
on the gardenia
in your hair.