Villanelle

If the world is a mass of phrases
--and I think it's so--
then the names that we give are precious.
Every purr, every cry we manage,
tears us inside out
if the world is a mass of phrases.
I believe that the earth is changing
inches by the hour;
then, the names that we give are precious,
and the Universe, as we will it,
paces fast or slow,
if the world is a mass of phrases.
Thus, my lips bring forth lonely children,
different from me.
Then, the names that we give are precious,
and, remembering this, I carry
care in every sound:
if the world is a mass of phrases,
then the names that we give are precious.

New Shoes

I. Virelai

Tempted by a branch of gold,
their ignoble traitor strolled
through the safety of their fold
to their hidden basement shrine.

Elder Sister went to scold
when Baby told
that she caught a quiet sign—

someone, following, patrolled,
and they were sold.
Sister said that all was fine.

Traitors both were they, and bold.
He their secret would not hold,
but the other was more cold:
Baby would not give him wine.

Tempted by a branch of gold,
their ignoble traitor strolled
through the safety of their fold
to their hidden basement shrine.


II. Rondeau

The lights in the hall are burning
yellows and pinks,
sodden with heavy gladness.
The twenty-four bodies churning
fill up the chinks.
The lights in the hall are burning
yellows and pinks,
but none of the crowd are learning.
Poised as a lynx,
their Time waits to cull their badness.
The lights in the hall are burning
yellows and pinks,
sodden with heavy gladness.

I've just got to keep on turning;
that's what she thinks.
I don't have to stop this madness.
New shoes and new suitors yearning—
always more drinks—
I've just got to keep on turning;
that's what she thinks.
The future is undiscerning;
silent, it blinks,
and why think two times of sadness?
I've just got to keep on turning;
that's what she thinks.
I don't have to stop this madness.


III. Ballade

Their signal, the eleventh chime, has rung;
the hour begins to witch the hallowed air.
A dozen stars will flicker where they're flung;
a dozen girls step down the creaking stair.
A crack of branches—secret torches flare—
all twenty-four are slippers fashioned young
from the best silk from caravan and djinn.
Waiting, twelve boats are in the water there;
breathless, a thousand men wait to begin.

Why do you wait here? asks an inner tongue,
and the young men reply to it with care:
This place has life, and we before had clung
to pale existence only. Here are rare
branches of diamond: if they shatter where
we break them off, again they will be hung,
and if we never can our prizes win,
here we may woo as long as they are fair,
sleep in the sunlight, wait, and, dancing, spin.

Sonnet Sequence: Pas de deux

If I had a ticket to the ocean,
I’d prove that stars within the sea exist.
I’d pluck them out and wrap them on your wrist,
gifting you celestial promotion.
To the mountain, in a single motion,
we might go then—for nothing must be missed.
I’d grip the sky and grasp it in my fist,
bring it to your lips, a mordant potion.

We’d eat my flesh and dance a pas de deux,
overwhelming silent blossoms, snaking
along the universal roads we knew.
To keep your tiny heart from aching,
I’d give you balm of Gilead’s debut
that I’d plucked from numinous remaking.

Then I’d prove to you my sad devotion
by leading you so deep into the mist
that dusk would settle on your spine and twist,
washing over you, a soothing lotion.
Then you’d understand my strange emotion—
the times I laugh at night—or tears persist—
because it can’t be told or reminisced,
just experienced in its commotion.

I want to show myself in full to you,
but it seems you never feel that quaking,
because you’ve never tasted stars or dew,
never worn the sky. And all my shaking
and all my knocking will not pull you through,
and the door won’t open for your faking.

Sonnet XVIII: Secrets

Do not worry when you find me weeping,
for it's just to let away the tension
from the things I'm too afraid to mention:
petty taunts that haunt me while I'm sleeping.
Then I'll force the tears to come out seeping,
squeezing them with all of my intention,
mewling--do not listen!--in dissension
with the wrenching writhes my limbs are keeping.

Oh, I never mean to cause you trouble,
having strength enough of my own making.
Let me crawl back in my quiet bubble,
tearing poison from my flesh and breaking
bones and ripping skin, for pain is double
when it is not eased by added aching.

Snick!

Hunger is nothing--
just the soft, insistent whirr of electric quiet--
until it grows into despair,
rejected, dejected,
an unhappy pup.

I have been eaten up on the inside;
I am hollow now,
and the void is a kind of hunger,
and I can no longer distinguish pleasure from pain.

These things are shades of the same color,
and all I want is light!
Blare and blaze
and burn away the grit that coats the corners.
Keep all the people away;
the beached whale will explode in the pulsing sun
and rain its guts over the city.

Each whiff of my desire is a curiosity to me.
I examine it, turning it over in my hands.
It's funny how my body works without me, so I laugh.

The breath of the others punches like a needle into my soul,
but it would not be right to stop them breathing. They are souls.
Punch, punch, punch. Snick!
Back to the left margin on the next line.

Sonnet XVII

The letter with your challenge was intact
until I tore it, deeming it unfit,
and cast it in the flames. I won’t submit
as yesterday I did. I won’t react.
Your teapot-tempest soldiers have attacked,
but victory is mine because I quit.
No matter what you take, you will not get
my forfeit. I have kept our sacred pact.

So ultimately, anything you try
to do—to lie, destroy, malign—
will force you lower in the public eye.
We laugh at all your threats; you have no spine.
I challenge you: come forth, corrupt, decry!
In the debris, my dignity is mine.

Sonnet Sequence: The Question

There was a moment—single, lucid, clear—
in which I faced the dark Unknown nearby
(my feelings), far too desolate to cry
and far too terrified to quake with fear.
The door was an avoidable premiere.
I pushed it open, farewelling the sky.
The thickened closeness fell upon my eye,
the warmth, the putrid wetness on my ear.

As I descended through the filthy damp,
I heard the echoes in the moldy air,
and saw the twisted creatures who encamp,
perverse, entwined with one another there,
but handsome in the glitter from my lamp,
newborn each time I yielded to the snare.

Beyond that chamber lay a deeper force,
its purpose one that no one understood,
if evil or indifferent or good.
It was a power of uncertain source.
My bravery derived from the divorce
of life and joy, and death did as he would,
and then I did the only thing I could:
I opened up my eyes and faced Remorse.

Thus, knowing, I had nothing I could lose,
I turned my eyes into the monster's gaze.
I heard its laughter torment and accuse
and watched with interest its divine ballets;
I saw it, still a mystery, diffuse,
like mist, into a cloud of cheap clichés.

Then, in the center of an empty hall,
unwarmed and raw upon the granite floor,
I found my heart surrounded by a store
of void and impenetrable wall.
It flopped and panted, breathless to enthrall,
exhausted as a box of tusk and boar.
Not all the images I could restore
to my imagination could appall

me as did this pulsing, writhing thing,
pale gray from lack of blood, but at my back
the Question loomed and drove me with its sting
and threatened with its imminent attack
until I let it move through me and bring
me in itself and gather up my slack.

Then I, the Question, opened up that box,
the box-lid turning smoothly on its hinge,
and hefted out the tome without a cringe,
and set the weighty book upon the rocks.
The pages turned like yellow vellum blocks;
I felt the pressure change with every twinge,
alarming, like the touch of a syringe,
and welcome, like infantilizing shocks.

I found the page marked Truth, began to read,
and many fears were there, and vivid pain,
and secrets kept, and secrets lost to greed:
too much for any person to contain.
At last I saw the tangled mess recede
and found the thought I sought to ascertain.

The written word was Yes. It hovered, small,
concise, and legible, and at my stare,
it thrummed along my body like a flare
of perfect intonation through the hall.
Then I was full; I could not read the scrawl
that filled the pages (yet I was aware
of soft deceptions and a nom de guerre),
so I replaced the book within its stall.

Determined, grim, I went back to my sphere,
returned to shallow sunlight, shallow sky,
empowered as a steady pioneer,
who makes his first decision to defy
the mystery his nation calls Frontier,
intent upon his choice, and says goodbye.

I often wonder—knowing how we war,
how weak we are—if Fortune disagreed,
or whether God believes I will succeed.
I have no self-assurance anymore.
And yet I know in my own arms I bore
from frenzied insight a most perfect seed
of real honesty: a tiny creed
of softened driftwood that I rode ashore.

And thus, whatever force conspires to bruise
or sunder or obliterate my phrase
must face the resolution I refuse
to cede. As I confront the maze,
I build my confidence in what I choose
and set my mind to grimly smile at praise.

Each Little Drop of Action

Now, as then, each little drop of action
hangs suspended for examination,
still, before it plummets to my forehead,
boring, drop by drop, the Grandest Canyon.

Little drops of water make the ocean;
little grains of sand, the earth: I know this.
Little drops of action fell the Heavens,
seize the earth, and give it to Gehenna.

Now, as then, each little drop of action
hits its target with precise decision,
driven by their practical Creator.
I am frozen, powerless to act.

Sleep, Sleep

How long will he sleep?

Until the cold air washes me clean,
until the twilight fades into night?

This is what he cares for,
the simple things,
the money, the children,
and I, now as always sleepless,
am bitten and stung.

When he wakes, perhaps,
we will go somewhere.

Until then, I watch
(disgusted or hurt?)
as he sleeps,
sleeps away the twilight.

I watch and do not dare
to make a sound.

Who do I fear?

Only my own tendencies.

Why do I allow him to make me angry?

Because I enjoy it;
I like being aggrieved.

I'm a martyr with no cause to stir me.

Remind

My voice in song
is a beautiful sound--
I say this objectively,
and it is true.

Therefore, when next I wonder
what good can come of me,
remind me of this:
that I can sing.

I will sing the songs of my peers,
and they will sing my songs,
and if you are not one of us,
you will listen and not hear.

Late Afternoon

Sleep on, and do not listen
to the odes I sing. Sleep on,
and I will be my own
audience.

Observation

I annoy you when I'm happy.
I annoy you when I'm sad,
so I wonder if the person
whom you like is really Me.

Forgive Me

Six new callouses,
a soft, tired lip,
and the neighbor's dog is just as loud
as I can ever be,
so please allow me
to go on annoying you,
because, if I don't,
I might die.
Oh, what pain there is
in existing only as a nuisance,
in learning that my soul
is made from rudeness and taboos.
If I were alone,
I couldn't bother anyone,
but I don't have the courage
to unlock that door,
so please forgive me.
I know you'd like me better
if I were gone,
so I will hide in this corner,
play as softly as I can,
and deepen the six new callouses.

Bread and Water

Bread and water:
these are the things upon which we center our lives.
They are soft or hard, clean or dirty,
and we swallow
without knowing, without wanting.
Bread and water,
maple and brass:
these are the things I allow to pass my lips.

Where are you?

The moon has risen over the curved, swollen lake,
and the sun has fallen behind the trees;
the leftover drops of an afternoon summer-storm collect in my shoes and the hem of my skirt.

It is evening, and I
am alone in a room that grows darker with the darkening sky.

Perhaps in some exotic encyclopedia destination--
Mongolia, Java, Peru,
the Ukraine, the Sudan--
but no, you have less Atlean aspirations.

I know better; I know you revel in the company
of the loud, the generous,
the hometown barons who never think beyond the borders,
beyond the next year's crop.

Far too bitter--(am I)
and I ask the unanswering purple sky,
Why am I less interesting than they are?

Why seek a riot, an orgy, a crowd,
when waiting are a candle, a book, and a servile wife?

And this is the seventh night you have slept beside me,
and the seventh evening I have spent alone.

After Lolita

I wonder, wonder
does my body fill him with disgust
as it properly ought to do
--great white slabs of fat and flesh and blue-tinged blood;
prickly hairs and wobbling breasts and arms and thighs--
as all bodies ought to do,
the hideous, odious things they are
--and we do not look at them, and we cover them up--
but he never seeks me out,
never reaches for me,
and there is no relish in his kisses
--as if I were a sister or a cripple or a child;
as if I were something to condescend to,
a starving, dirty, ugly orphan whose skin crawls with lice
but who must not be made to feel unwanted--
but when I look at his body,
it isn't revolting
--it's not art, it's not beauty;
I find it absurd to think of it in those terms--
it's just him, and I want him,
and if he wanted me,
he would show me, so what am I to think
when he makes it perfectly, kindly clear that I'm unwanted?

Beatrice & god

Myshkin, Prometheus, Ganymede, Grail,
Word, Dulcinea, Patroclus, or Veil,
brother or foreigner, slave-child or god,
who has been seeing your foot sores were shod?

When you are swallowing crumbs in the dust,
is it your quest? Do you do as you must?
Are you in need of a sacrificed sigh,
or are you ever so better than I?

Do you need guidance, a face to adore,
a leader, a mother, a forum, a floor?
Do you want nothing of riches and fame
(prompting my heart-mind astir at your name)?

How could I live without One to admire,
mimicking virtues he seeks to inspire?
How could I live without Someone to awe?--
and yes, I would like to be loved by that law.

Virtue, we know, lets me choose only one;
this is a Tragedy Under the Sun.
If there were One who could awe and be awed,
I were his Beatrice; he were my god.

Virelai to a Dead Child

Tousled hair and trusting eyes,
tender lips that chastise lies,
scrambling limbs, a hand that pries
into window with no key;

bright and winsome while he dies,
the endless whys,
never asking to be free;

terrified and shameful cries
below the skies,
dripping from a soot-stained tree;

watching while his body dries,
kissing corpses as goodbyes,
waiting for his blood to rise
and for him to run to me;

tousled hair and trusting eyes,
tender lips that chastise lies,
scrambling limbs, a hand that pries
into windows with no key.

Rondeau

The last of our nights is ending;
still he prefers
to leave me alone and quiet.
I should have had tools for tending
hope when it stirs.
The last of our nights is ending;
still he prefers
to let me stay home, befriending
crickets and furs,
while he drinks his depth of riot.
The last of our nights is ending;
still he prefers
to leave me alone and quiet.

With my expectations drying,
aiming them low,
the frustrating heart-clamp daunts me.
Since he doesn't see me dying,
why let him know?
With my expectations drying,
aiming them low,
to let him be drunk on flying--
may I let go?
The effort I've wasted taunts me.
With my expectations drying,
aiming them low,
the frustrating heart-clamp daunts me.

Villanelle for Ganymede, Hebe, Dolores

I follow an endeavor that always runs late--
I am not concerned with sex.
I must preserve their Perilous Magic, their Fate.

Though anyone on earth can imagine that State
(animality; and flex),
I follow an endeavor that always runs late.

The blush of Hebe, Ganymede's god-tempting bait,
trembling hands, and slender necks:
I must preserve their Perilous Magic, their Fate.

Though I have stolen youth, it will never equate
with the beauty Knowledge wrecks.
I follow an endeavor that always runs late.

Revoltingly conventional; but if I wait,
they are charming while they vex.
I must preserve their Perilous Magic, their Fate.

To seize and freeze their innocence--ignorance--straight,
whole, in halves, in tiny specks,
I follow an endeavor that always runs late:
I must preserve their Perilous Magic, their Fate.