Simplicity
I spot her distant smile
and choose simplicity,
her face among many as many times before,
white skin, black hair, black eyes,
her name a blank on my tongue
A voice says
Her veins run liquid fire
Her back is an S chiseled in alabaster
There is a mole on her left shoulder blade
like a blot of lust
written on a tablet of purity
Her eyes are cool opals set in the midst of a sea of desire
Go talk to her
He's not helping
Simplicity knots and wrenches away from me
I build her into an unbearable vision
If I tilt this windmill
it will shiver into insubstantial powder on the breeze
We share closed-mouthed, enigmatic smiles and glances away
yet
were I to whisper destruction into months of silence
I would see the real woman awaiting me
-- Fall 1990
Foreign
I would write
a poem in a language you do not speak.
And I would read it to you,
and, finishing, smile
and say, -- There.
-- You have heard
my heartsong,
purer than any I could compose
in our English.
It is the lament
of the foreigner,
walking, awkward, afraid, uncertain,
and small,
drowning in
what he cannot comprehend.
This
would be my poem to you;
in not understanding
you would finally understand.
-- 1990
Muted
The sky glows faintly
past moonless midnight --
mysterious sourceless muted light --
not quite surpassing
the glinting stars behind.
I ponder this
as I lie sleepless, preoccupied,
gazing out my window.
You are an enigma,
wordless woman.
You are a rock,
solid
and silent.
None may move you
-- folly be the efforts
of he who tries.
Crickets and cicadas outside my window
sing loud their little business
but stone, more substantial,
offers the ear less of an explanation
of its greater strength
and weightier worries.
I blow through this night rootless
-- as all nights, and days --
a nomad puff of dandelion-seed
seeking soil.
-- All soil is
stone split
and
crumbled into loamy richness
by
eons of roots' grasp --
and yet you admit no fingerhold
on your smooth surface.
It is no wonder
that I roam.
A
different child, a
shadow on the playground,
now in manhood
still seeks
to flesh out self.
And fumbles at conversation.
You, too, are timid
-- so, you drift back, silent and passive
into my sleepless thoughts --
this I can know.
But your muted eyes, faintly glowing that
absent smile --
this, I do not know.
Do they reflect my want of you,
or glitter celestial indifference?
-- 1990
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