FRISSONS

A Poem in Voices

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror,

which we still are just able to endure,

and we are so awed because it serenely

disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is

terrifying.

                                   Rilke

                         INTRO

                       (Musette)

That magpie gave the damnedest laugh

I ever heard.  Toughened, bitten people

Spit on their palms, but me I slip my hand

Beneath her skirt and thumb her thighs.

She embraces the liquor cabinet, finds

A potion to quicken the worms in her belly.

She’s a fire pit, a laboratory fake, young,

pretty, and halfway wants me dead.  I watch

Her sleep, thumb a hefty plug of bourbon.

Like this—right.  It’s enough, almost too much.

Nothing comes in the usual way, but by

All these alchemies of misunderstanding.

        The Blue Jirl

She is neither cold nor hard and her dog

Is just as blue as she is.  The color blue.

She is more conscious of her blueness

Than aware of her own nekkidness, her

Long and boney nose, her four fingers

On her left hand and six on her right, or

The little potbelly she rubs like a magic lamp.

Blue light and blue water and burnt orange

Beach beyond her canted hips; the dog’s

Head bars my eyes from seeing their darkened

Wedge or what I must only assume is dark.

She has a tiny moue of a mouth and no eye

Lashes; a scar runs from her chin to her

Left breast in a graceful curved smile.

Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing not

The perfection of the odalisque tradition.

She simpers and whines, though, quite

Out of keeping with her stateliness, her

Sang-froid, her attention to the moment,

Which is keen as any Zen priest’s

In its sucking up of all that she creates.

She rises, she walks, and her dog follows.

Her rump glitters gold and a white star

Floats between those two cupped crescents.

She turns and says, “My wit-dream, you.”

And for the first time all is clear and all

I have ever wanted of love smashes her

Out of all memory, leaving only her blue.

       

                        Camilla

I see her still as a face on a stone,

A body one cube of granite, even

Her neck buried, her chin resting on the flat,

Angled surface, what would be painful

To any flesh and blood woman.

So, nothing there to dream into sex

And nothing to hold in your arms.

I still want to kiss her lips,

Though I could not take her hands.

Even to herself, she was without desire.

A man might kneel and lay his head

Next to hers and wonder what

She is thinking and sense only the air

Between his eyes and hers and the skin

Of thought taut between cheek and cheek.

I have tried to shape, to shape her breasts

And measure the space between her knees

And imagine my finger sliding along

The flesh where her buttock meets her thigh,

And taste the sweat I found gathered there.

She smiles.  She smiles.  She smiles.

I vanish like a harbor in fog, groaning.

         The Long Wood Box

The creature, a water dancer, writhed

And begged me to touch her there.

I didn’t understand until she smiled

That this was not part of the show.

Later, in my bedroom, we made love

Time after time and we made marks

On the bed sheets with her lipstick:

A zero for hers, a minus for mine.

There were far more circles than lines.

I came back to the room and she was

Nowhere to be seen.  I found her

Beneath my robe, asleep.  She said,

“You must never leave me.”  I argued

With her when she said she must go

Home to sleep.  “You must never leave,”

I said.  She picked up a long wood box

Carved with faces overlapping each

Other like waves fading out on sand.

“We must fill it with flowers,” she said.

“It’s already full,” I replied, but didn’t

Tell her what it did and did not hold.

Under a billowing canopy in the square

She filled her hands with white trumpet

Vine blossoms and begged me to find

A flower I could put behind her ear.

I left her for a moment and when I

Returned, she was gone, the box too,

Taking all that had hurt me except her.

                     Plumage

She had one grey eye, one orange,

And gala lighting in her smile; she made

Me pet the edge of her square love

And melted the round edge of mine

Into a green cup she sipped and spit.

I never knew the color of her hair

Or the shape of her breast and belly.

Her legs were all knee and ankle,

And her thighs came together, thumbs

Opposing fingers in a sign of consent.

Indulgence in paradox.  What woman

Cares when a man complains of such?

She whispers in her fist, cocks a brow,

Staring off into the division of space.

Her emotions despised her intellect,

A landscape painter’s low point of view

Capturing a moon among livid leaves.

So, though she kissed my brain each day

With her fingers, her lips were reserved

For the guy who threw her downstairs.

Fucking, for her, was the last deception,

The final appeasement of the red demon

That lived only in her still-girlish cunt,

And stilled her heart with a dart of dream.

When we met twenty-seven years later,

We walked hand in hand in the street.

The only thing she wanted to know

Was did I ever murder her in my sleep.

 Ole’

I, her toreador, her cape and sword.

He, her bull.  Oh, how she made us suffer.

“What skeleton,” she’d say, “isn’t an object

Of fun?  What pricked blood doesn’t profane

Roses?”   Her smile bared crooked teeth.

Kissing, her tongue never left your mouth.

She made us flank her in the street, two

Grinning corpses she held erect gripping

Our spines, her fingers laced in dry ribs.

People wondered if she’d picked us

Clean.  She had sufficient flesh for three.

You ask?  You have to ask?  There is no

Dimension of habitude, no consciousness

Of degree, no adequacy of determination

To indemnify her eyes.  Onyx eyes.

Those eyes never left your emptiness.

He dissolved eventually, quickly replaced.

Nothing changed.  A favorite slapped,

A secret winked, a nipple pinched.

Her empty hips smothered us to sleep.

Late and soon, she forgot breathing.

My knees left white marks on the floor.

                        Pussy

A poet wrote sonnets to two lovers,

a cat and a crow, or so I am told.

She moved lithely, with mad divagation.

When I appeared at the window,

She chattered like a squirrel at war.

On dark beaches, I swear it, the gulls

Lit her sleek back with headlight eyes.

On the boardwalk I tugged at straws,

Never once unplugging that honey,

While she marched about with rat

Tails in her teeth the studs made her take.

Did she ever look beyond the harbor

Lights or yearn to lick the face

Of the moon or dream of climbing

Ladders?  She found me at last,

Out cold from striking a blue sky

Wall.  Shunning my feathers and guts,

She nosed my beak.  I awoke croaking,

Unable to fly.  Solemn, she flung me

Where the tide furled and unfurled

A blanket of sand that I would not resist.

They found only a headstone of claws.

           

   Kali

The blue of her cheeks is the same

As the blue of her eyes, the same as

The blue of her hair, the same as

The blue of her tongue and teeth.

She stood upon my breast and hip

Crying to the sky and clapping sword

And bread together flinging perfect

Slices across the cement beach.  She

Dangled a reddened shrunken head by

The ear and asked me which profile

She thought was his best.  She did

That with all her shrunken heads.

The magpies ate crow meat at her table

And the leopard she tamed with her

Thighs later became my pajamas.

She could draw like Fra Lippo Lippi

And out sing Marlene Dietrich and she

Thought herself beautiful as octopuses.

I slept through her day or crept beneath

The house with her concubines.  She

Kept two for each hand and never kissed

Me once without wiping her lips after

On the lips of two of those sad creatures.

I once dared to ask about her halo.

Her answer put a hundred pounds on my

Slight frame and nearly broke my spine.

I puked for weeks and dreamed of god’s

Certain love for the creature I called

My mistress once, who called my boys

Her purification of my semen.  The end

Came when I rolled over and she fell.

The end fell when she rolled over and came.

        Consolation

He painted the Holy Virgin as Athena

And knelt before her when she came

To life in his studio, when the flowers

In the carpet came to life beneath her

Feet, when the blue-sky mural he’d made

Above the archway became blue sky,

And all his songbirds dropped dead

In their cage out of immediate terror.

The creature commanded him to rise

And dropped the palm frond he’d given

Her and passed her hand over it, smiling.

Here, he thought, is the ideal woman!

She passed her hand again across the air

Between them, cutting it fine, a dust

Sword caught in the sunray risen above

The door. A diamond in her nostril glinted.

She pulled aside her robe to reveal the tattoo

On her left breast—a bite-red lipstick kiss.

          Remoteness

Some images are harder to manage.

I know I am only paint, this within

What I will keep from closing in as long

As you don’t cut me out and roll me up

Only to bind me again in a tighter frame.

Look at me.  My body is shaped

Like a mountain, my toes resemble

Lichens, and the sand from my cheeks

And the shadow from under my chin lie

About my big blue dress like the rest of life.

The hills have ears and a coarse wattle

And the light is as flat as my barren chest.

Yet, you cannot look at me without passion.

You cannot ignore my arousal of hope.

You close your eyes and wish to spend

An hour with any woman in the universe,

At whatever age she appealed most to you—

A Marilyn or Eva at twenty, at thirty,

Your own wife on your wedding night—

And you find it hard to choose between us.

                   The Veil

Just as I could not see her eyes, but she

Could see mine, the veil turned our love

Into an affair that only one of us could

Remember; or that, at least, is how I

Let it trouble me at the time.  Mourning

Was a part-time pleasure she practiced

Whenever a man paid her a moment’s

Attention.  I never saw the smile

She offered in return diminish for even

A moment, nor intensify.  It hurt too much,

She once explained.  It hurt too much to move.

Never confessing the source of her sorrow,

She would only grasp the lace fringes

Of her wan abandonment and turn away.

I learned too late of her departure.  She never

Wrote to explain, not that I had a right

To claim sufficient hold on her perceptions.

I took it as well as any man without a hope

Of happiness can.  I put her from my thoughts.

Until one day I saw her.  She was without

Her veil and her eyes shone as though blinking

Away tears of laughter, or joy at least, and her

Hands were old.  Her hands were as old as stone.

Her hands that had rubbed the veil into dust.

       Bedridden

Her ferocity in articulation bent

Stone and balanced a martini glass

On a playing card.  “Nothing’s impossible,”

She would mouth and lick the tip

Of her nose.  The nurses told me that

The surgery had left two small purses

Beneath her arms that they swabbed

With disinfectant every other moment.

She remained my perfect girl, golden-

Browed and green-eyed as the sea.

She’d say, “No, that’s the sky you see

Through a hole they made in my head.”

She complained of dreams with no

Plot, character, meaning, or emotion:

Two of us, cube and ball, each pinched

Like cheeks holding the stamp of affection,

Rest on a blind boob as clouds come

Or go without shape or color changing.

When she died, I sat in the park and wept

Until lightning cauterized my eyes.

                   The Dancer

Snowflakes, with that lovely wrist roll

And waist bow, a dozen young women

Emulating each other perfectly and gone

Wide the one whose chalked cheeks blaze.

She cannot find her way back again

Through the sprung rhythms of her error

And the feet she dreams she sees

Stenciled in gold on the dance floor.

  

                    A New Eve

On the copper roof large raindrops,

Like golden coins tossed on a dresser,

But the perspective is canted, impossible.

What has the sun got to do with anything?

At least that’s what the young mother wonders

Waiting for her husband to pull his nose

From the wall in which it is encased like a knife

In its sheath, like his member in her sheath,

Like his tongue in its crumbling temple of teeth.

She boils his shit-caked drawers in a cauldron

They used to bath in on Sundays until the rains

Returned, the first time they danced since the baby.

Everywhere knives sever the taut cords

In the necks and bellies and hindquarters

Of goats and sheep and black-tongued men.

Why, she wonders, do they bother sparing hers?

Last autumn, the roof caught fire and her brother

Fell, a bucket over his head, to the bottom of the well.

Her sister three drunk boys played wishbone with;

though they’ve told the story, so that it’s told

and told again all over the neighborhood, they’ve

never even hinted at the location of her bones.

Of course, her mother and her father loved each

Of them equally, and each other, and they died

Happy to have watched the sunset diminish

A day that at least had not been as dark as hers.

Those were her mother’s words when she asked.

Those were her father’s words when she asked.

One bright boy with a golden fan had run across

Her bare toes and left her cheeks slapped red.

Oh, why had he not come back into the room

After the celebration had left the tables hers to wash?

Another had shot his arrows through golden rings

A hundred feet on a foggy afternoon and left her,

For the first and only time, with the sense of gravity

In her breasts and a faint ringing in her ears.  Death

Would come like the baby, hard work and hard pain.

No one complained of such things, nor would she.

But in the harbor the ships grew small in the blue,

Their sails flapping like bed sheets hiding ardor.

                  Violence

 Black cat scenario: surprised, twisting

The stray’s neck, he genuflected

And it squirted under the bed.

How could I be sure he loved me?

That night my green lipstick left

A smudge on his teeth he couldn’t

Erase with alcohol and steel wool.

Sometimes I think with my fingers too.

   Bourbon Bremen

He never let me leave my room

After that.  The anger broke his teeth.

The vane stem of the windmill

Was connected to nothing at either end.

They found the livestock starved,

And the horse with its hooves in the air.

They had to burn down the veal house,

And she sold the rest to the bank.

It never occurred to me that he

was at all wrong about it.  Not once.

 Combing Her Hair

I’ve heard you say that someday we’ll meet,

I’ve heard you say that I will dream of you.

The comb is black and sharp and toothed

Like the baleen of a whale and when it passes

Through your hair the world falls into place.

Other women watch and smile and their lips

Form small kisses I cannot reap in time.  I find

You asleep with that sea of tresses drowning

The faint flush of your throat and the rouge

Washed from all but the deepest creases

That make a dry delta of the years your eyes

Have watched between a billion blinks and winces.

I see you clutch your comb with three fingers

Cut by the tines and pinky extended as if

It would avert a demonstration of needless guilt.

I’ve also heard you snore in your sleep like a cat

Purring with neutered lust for its master’s hand

And not known the difference when we

Wove our knees and our fingers together.

I loved the amber leaf you brought to my desk

That took but an hour in the dry air to shrivel.

Nothing but sun in a dream is a dream of you

Though some contend to dream of sun is death.

The sun scorches the leaves on the trees

As though touching them with your lipstick.

The air your lungs make is a wind in my hair.

Someday we will meet and I will grab the comb

And train each strand to know its other.

  Star

Not her name—I called her Star

For her distance, her light years.

She saw closed eyelids in your eyes.

She daubed her lips moon orange

And hid her small breasts with blue

Flowers and white leafless branches.

Her flesh smelled like burnt corn

And her thighs stopped comets.

She turned at the corner and said,

“I want you to find me.  Will you?”

We spent a week entwined and she

Never moved within a league of me.

Eraser-nippled, she removed me

From the darkness and never returned.

               French Curve

Empty room and precarious balance

Of hat and stick, whiskey jar and skull.

Empty of her, that is, and empty

Of her perfume, if not her scent.

Triangles and rulers, French curve

And conic section, a Klein bottle,

And, on the floor, the wan palette

And stiff brushes.  The skull bites

A bungie cord hooked to a rafter.

A candle throws a cloud of light

Under the golden section of a bed.

Leaning against the fireplace, her

Masterpiece turns green in humid

Air the light fights with for love.

         A New Eve II

We flew ten hours with butterscotch

Vomit on her dress, through pinwheeling

Clouds and mountainous holes in air,

Only to arrive in light licked clean

By god, with each feminine nipple hung

For the eye to pluck.   On the tarmac,

She ripped off her gown and, braless in

Black intimate, strutted up to accept her lei.

                   Generations

They all look at me with the same eyes:

Mother, wife, daughter, her daughter.

Pine sap discolors the lacquer table

We bring out only for summer tea.

I sip from a cracked cup and return

Their stares without asking the question.

The clouds float beyond branches

Like supine women dreaming of labor.

                   Dedication

In this sepulcher of dreams, each

Concrete box has a golden handle

Inscribed with three letters.

This grip could be on that one

And that could be on this.

Only the initials are different.

Break open these old tombs, my dear,

And drink up their bitter laughter.