If there is someone
locked inside the
grip of God
who'd most unlikely be
then, he is thee, the one who lives in
rumpled clothes
who knows the sound of acorns
plopped on
gravestones
and the joy it feels to barefoot be
in grass,
oh do not ask
who it may be, you know as birds know
when the time to gather south
has come
my soul would find your voice
through any crowd
of piping
nonsense. It's as clear as Adam's
conscience was before
the tree and Eve; it's the part of you
inviolately
innocent.
Song Of Longing
A vision of
one
perfect
plum. That's all
god is.
Everyone knows
there are bruises and bug holes and
aphids and leaf rot,
flaws everlasting
on every sweet fruit that we touch
but the one
perfect fruit, that nobody's seen
but believe is still out there's
the one:
my soul
is
hungry
for the Lord.
Before And After
Stepping out of the tub,
your hair hanging droplets
-one from your nose,
you rub the rough terrycloth
over damp belly, down arms and legs
as though
you were
Aladdin's lamp.
There's something so wonderfully naked
about the pivot of hips, then the whole torso turns
stepping into an answer
to a question I've posed.
The face is innocent, eyebrows arched,
half moons
of how come
above a mouth just slightly opened
for first word to form with teeth and tongue,
but all the while, my eyes have watched
the heavy, slow swing of penis
against your thigh.
That moment when your eyes lock mine,
and then
the blood jump between us.
Below The Line, Singing
Northern soil, northern bred,
fed tales of Southern slow-slunk hatred
hung on every face
below the lazy Mason Dixon-
every lie I ever heard
held staunch.
The Judas tree grown fat with blackened fruit, one shoe
kicked loose,
that's the picture I had of you
and all your kin,
molasses
wrapped in bloody skin, the lot.
Then I heard
that one
clear
voice
that pinged with pain, that clawed its way
from throat so clear and raw with truth
that even when a nightmare's what you've reined
and trotted out for us to touch,
you hold it
like the bawling, babe of life within your arms.
Crawling with its instincts
like hot spiders in its veins,you give it care
no matter how or what it wants;
a voice that goes where no one will, and all
alone.
Quite often it is tin can-tied and making noise,
the gladdest I have found. Much of this
is Southern
broken beauty.
Like cannon
turning verdigris
slipping into history, the rain,
the rain that rusts us shut,
your words are oil
opening up
again.
When Perry Laughed
I heard he's nearly ninety.
Frail,
so tentatively clinging
to this side,
but I remember
how his voice could conjure
moonlight,
string a hammocked,
summer evening
cross my mind.
If honey had a sound
then it would sing
like Perry Como,
and his rounded breath
bring notes
to stroke the heart.
A voice that
soothed my youth
with such a moated,
moonwashed path,
a smile that broke
like sun through cloud
when Perry laughed
and always
I felt safest
wrapped so lightly,
close to angels,
and I hope the dear
old barber
hears it too.
In Deep
Sometimes
you need to
get in deep, the legs
up over shoulders, cock
to beating
heart almost, to really
feel
the thing
then, hold.
dying sun
watch this bleeding
how it runs into
blue water
making
purple
death
a rivulet of rain
this pool is mine
this lilac line this plum
and precious
blood gone
black
while crows
announce
the madness
of this reddest bravest
belly blown awake they caw
they caw
the sky away
eyes come
take me
hold me closer
seize the stain I've painted last
minute
more of artist
in this lighttime shimmered gold
and white the brass
of grasses
wheat gone waving bye-
goodbye
a Vincent
passed through here
ee hearted
Afternoons spent
looking
long road brown to black,
she's gone to love the leaves
their green
becomes her- I was
green once too.
Evenings bent
ahobblehoar, so circumspect
my thoughts drift into moon gone gray
I grieve my sweater needed now
she's how away?
Just to hear the frost of
melting somewhere, I will wary be
for long
the night needs holding
when no she
becomes
for folding me
her pockets in
she is
a leaf lift
breeze ago.
ee morning
Jarring ring, morning
bell clock
broke me from your back, limp ply of me
and peeled too soon
like petal from a pond.
Lie here still,
lilies,
toast and time
a half/sun
sit.
Make me bedsoft fur,
wet silk
and lovestiff, take me silent.
Time can
curl,
can keep itself a chair.
Watch how
stopped
the sky is.
For Elijah
When Elijah came
he did not burn the retinas with fiery chariot,
or trumpeting angels plowing through the clouds;
he shouldered his way into the world
quietly,
heart laboring
slow, slow,
umbilicus wrapped twice
around his throat.
This one,
the quiet one
with cleft in his chin
begins his reign
today.
Watch that chin,
and see how far that vertical line
will mine truth. The shouldering,
the will and want of it,
holding breath at birth
waiting for wonder
after the painful clench into a world
that he has claimed
by fighting so,
already strong. Elijah Abraham:
two turns from death
whose fist opens and closes
opens and closes
touching,
opening everything,
this heart,
especially.
....From The Tree Of