Fountain

You were the fountain flowing, and I
     what you swallowed up --
a dark leaf by the wind mislaid.
     From the first rush I was drowning,
spilling past your tongues of wet
     like a parting kiss,
          a capsized ship,
               a last breath.
Why you kept me in your circuit
     (I, limp in the drift)
a busy current never told,
     nor would your face, cascading
as it spat diamond drops
     on bottom-loving gleams --
          heavy pennies,
               waterstones.
So I, floating, could only go with you, sailing
     atop the budding fount
and plunging down, aswim in vertigo
     and placelessness.
It was there, in occult waters,
     that I called out peace,
          tree-roots broke you,
               then the merciful drain.

belascollage

her legs in the grip of lace --
black vines of lace winding up from the asphalt,
liquid roots welling in her combat shoes.

licorice gum spicing her talk.
charcoal dusting knees & fingertips.
& smoke. cloud rising from her shoulderline.

hair a floe of lava
bleeding heat through the fog.

ashes like pepper
wandering the winter air,
false snow spotting her lips.

& she flaming. a fresh-lit matchstick
yellow from the sulphur, gold spark
taunting a colorless moon

before falling on the sidewalk.
& the lamp-post reflecting the flame.

Parkbench

before you pass beneath the lamplight

mark the moon's violet edges
bleeding into the clouds,

suffusing your used smoke with wisps of blue,
lighting my teeth not with longing
but with a faint plea:

forget me, but come again to this bench
where our thighs have splintered,
our tongues have split,

and our hands spread starlight
though the cabernet dark

striking like winecups & smashed in the instant

Olivet

Tree rock, root rock, blackstone bed 
where we slept, watchers
breaking lookout

While olives, bats, dark stars
hung quiet in the trees, blind
but waking into moontide

Silver the backbone ridge
of stumps, of naked tubers
& we lay beneath this spine

Above, a boulder, a skull
shone white like a goat's belly
tender side up

There too a knotted heap
of body, knees and forehead
a crop of stones

Cold as rubble on Olivet's peak
& not willing to rest, he planted
bloodflowers on the hill

Which at the first sunstroke
we woke smelling: salt, licorice, iron --
bouquet in a deadly cup

When Our Organ of Wonder Has Failed

When our organ of wonder has failed
and we our own physicians have cut it free,
washed it, packed it clean on ice,
we awaken to a rallying heartbeat
half-cheerful amid bland breakfast and flowers.
We will leave the gurney soon,
travel through hallways, elevators, turnstiles
back to our old affairs.
Anesthesia is merciful -- we cannot see again
what secret metallurgy we have done
to forge a tougher organ, indifference,
from castoff love.
But when from age our anomie cracks
and we return searching to the lab,
there we will find our grail --
a freezer bucket labeled "wonder"
stashed between the tarry hearts.

Janus Poem, or That Truth Has Never Left Us

A door spins on granite dais, gateway
     from nothing to nothing,
          the plenary gate

made from lodestone -- what passes its field
     the aperture attracts,
          assumes.

All the maps mark this hinge
     as start and end, the summation
          of navigators' work:

for here the compass points to itself
     in a spaceless labyrinth,
          the door a mystery and a trap

blind and exitless.
     Thus we swivel through
          to the void elusive,
       
illusive, and invisible
     that, though empty, fills us.
          And as with time
         
we have our lives inside it,
     though for all our charting
            we have fallen into both --

duration and the living-gate,
     an absent place
          turning cloaked in the universe.




 
     What flies around the gate
           is the wind elusive,
illusive, and invisible --
     we cannot keep hold of it,
          but it carries us through
and, as with truth,
we have our lives inside it.

Cricket for Cricket's Sake

In the case of a cricket
keeping house in my coffeepot
I am impatient. Its chirping is a language
so inflected with sameness
that its legs, tireless, sing day-long arias
in the same tone.
My own tongue is variable,
and my own, and I do not speak it
to insects. Why then such insistence
on its own terms, cricket for cricket's sake?