Pleasure Dome. Yusef Komunyakaa
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I hear someone crying
among crystal trees & confetti.
The sack of bones in the magnolia,
what’s more true than that?
Before you can see
her long pretty legs,
look into her unlit eyes.
A song of B-flat breath
staggers on death row. Real
men, voices that limp
behind the one-way glass wall.
I’ve seen the legless beggar
chopped down to his four wheels.
Imagination
There’s a deer no gun
can bring down like a big
woman in the grass sinks
to her knees to pray
in a white slouch.
He stands at the sunlit edge
of a snowy woods. Can you make him out?
An owl from its hiding place
spies on the buck.
Quails settle like a quiet
disturbance. The deer
stands more perfect
than man, like a slab
of half-gray granite
strong as midnight.
Precious as lust.
Eyes sharp & wild.
A wolf’s scent makes him stagger
As a hawk sails, powered by a hint
of day. One morning this deer will fall
when nothing or no one can nudge this man
awake. Where eyes cannot meet,
silence is a song, old bones
stashed in a decayed nest
in the ground.
Ghost Chant, et alii
Daydream the old Indian medicine man
who boards the Greyhound
at midnight outside Jackson Hole
& sits next to you,
the fat belly of life,
a lilacbush in May,
the smoke that curls
back up to eat itself.
Daydream a mongrel dog
who yelps at the footsteps of your sister.
The coyote-goddess’ lonely hill
to climb with the moon,
a stone vase
with a copperhead inside.
Daydream a mountain lion
riding air—to dismiss
the half song
of this machine’s forgetfulness.
A white ceramic Ferris wheel
surrendering sacks of grain,
the eccentric black book
that gnaws off your hands.
Daydream the viper & Easter lily.
A fifth of Ronrico
on the poet’s night table,
morning’s empty bottle,
a grunt-song that spins
itself from flesh
at the top of a spiral staircase,
the talking drum
the center of water.
Daydream a mermaid
peering into the four windows
of a lighthouse, the fandango
like a rooster struggles out of golden grass
with its head cut off.
Faust’s old greed & sick hair,
a gas leak
with twenty padlocks on your one door.
Daydream lies rot in the mouth,
a black Mercedes-Benz
& brass knuckles,
an old man who has seen too much
in a dark alley, the killer’s face
in seven mirrors on each wall,
hemlock in a silver chalice,
the shadow of a grave
beneath your slow feet.
Passions
Coitus
Ah, pink tip of sixth sense,
oyster fat of lovepearl,
dew-seed & singing leaf-tongue,
lizard’s head of pure thought.
Body Painting
To step into the golden lute
& paint one’s soul
on the body. Bird
goddess & slow snake
in the flowered tree. Circle,
lineage, womb, mouth, leaf-footed
godanimal on a man’s chest
who leaps into the moon
on a woman’s belly.
Blue-green Iridescent Flies
Meat, excrement, a source
of life attracts this
message & definition
of the ultimate us.
They fly off
with the weight of the world.
Peepshow
A new moon rises
on an elevator over the mountain.
String Bass
The moon’s at the window,
as she rocks in the arms
of this lonely player
like a tall Yoruba woman.
Pinball Machines
Encased in glass, a woman
opens her eyes. The room floods
with a century of bells.
Magnetic balls & sound of metal
seem enough to build a locomotive
moving through the room’s wooden bones.
Butterflies
Incandescent anthologies
semi-zoological alphabets of fire,
these short lives transmigrate, topaz
memories cling to air, release wordflesh
from the cocoon of silk fear.