SMALL WORLD

I am forthright, forthcoming—my admission is this:

                    When I first saw you,
Beauty itself must have inherited your traits.
When I admit things to this extent, I feel that my body
becomes an anxious, nervous wreath twined from a gutted fish,
scales pierced into my solar plexus, as if inching closer to nearing
my finality, as if on the cusp of being impaled.

                    Why should atrocities be applied
to kindness & genuinity? Why should one be tensed to the limit?
What shall one “lose” in this “brutal” honesty?
                   
                    I viewed the Birth of Venus—
I saw you there. Who constructed the chorus of that night
that we first met? To blush by the mere thought of it.
            Was I re-living history? Was that I
standing from afar,
looking upon the beautiful Orphan Girl at the cemetery?
Look closely, I am there. That is no grievance.
Oh, but what grief there is
in knowing that the songbirds’ songs
will be muted in death, or will they?
Their deaths are like new beginnings inside of me,
so the birds live on singing within me,
which is what this poem must be.          Or, was I looking upon
the Young Woman Of Pompeii On A Terrace,
or the rosy blooms of L’innocence? More fair than
Lady Agnew of 1892, than Hayez’s Reclining Odalisque
or The Meditative One—You must be as the Angel
of Thayer’s creative wand; Dicksee’s Portrait of Elsa; 
Perugino’s Mary Magdalene—what else shall arise now?
                    Perhaps you are Ophelia,
having returned from the wells of a wild network of nerves
in the abdomen of the earth! as I look through this silver glass,
aching like history.

                    You said that you should have been born
in a different time & I told you that I have always felt the same way.
Gustav Mahler must still be awaiting my arrival to join him on a train.
I am not as confident as I may appear, as I may seem. I was once
quite melancholy as what a rotten melon could be culled from such
a thought; a salamander underneath a splitting rock; ragweed to the nose—
my confessions are usually repressions, never to see a page,
nor the light of day, or an air to hear these woven particulars.

                    You said that, while in Europe,
on a cold, wintry night, you stood alone on a train—serene
on that immortal locomotive—hark of melodic, soft snowflakes
falling around you, stars falling, a white hawks’ wing ensemble
in a slow-motion, exquisite dreaming, very still, the landscape
reflected the silence of the humane—how does one catch
that morning train?

                    Did you hear about the Ghost Train
in my hometown? You & I jumped off of the same rock at Sprewell Bluff,
but in a different time. You tell L. & I that you have a brick
that came from out of the wall from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
& you hear that everyone that has taken a brick from that location
has ended up dead, & that you now are afraid that you are going to fall
into that superstitious abyss that you believe is looking back at you,
to pull you into the Reapering darkness. You want to get rid of that
historical brick
              & I want to get rid of this historical frustration,
              this fiendish loneliness
             & my God don’t ever take me seriously,
like some lad in a Nightclub giving gifts to himself—pure stalemate.

I am detached from Logic, apparently; if I were a French poet or artist
would I be more appealing? The idea of something foreign
as more mysterious, what novelties & repertories will you visit again
with your friend?

                    What does The Unknown want from me?
It always comes with a crown of iconic promises,
to seduce & amuse,
but swiftly flees, heartless, soulless, like some troubled troubadour
that cold legends told.

                    I am disguised like thunder;
the weight of the sky is veiled upon what I am made of—
The sky, that is, a starling? I just want a few moments to spare
to be amidst your beauty that has parted from my sight,
but I am trapped like a mouse in a fit of despair,
my eyes still green as emeralds, sleepy like ruby-red,
slippering on boundless oil-slicks—who or what will beckon me
to lift myself from the perspiration of the earth?

                    Some days I feel like I am the head of Holofernes.
What about you? I once knew a girl that was as colorful as a peacock,
but was as violent as a piranha. She was Judith with a sword, my head
she held in her hands, her cold hands, but she wasn’t an enemy, no.
There are times when I am the enemy to myself. I once said that
solitude is a great romance, but I just want to sit with you
maybe where the sun blisters the flowery meadows of Kashmir,
or where the waves kiss the weight of a warm sandscape,
but it could be cold, too, cold as cave-noises. Someone uncloud my mind!

                    I must be too old-fashioned,
like some stylistic concordance, but what is curiosity but satisfaction?
The only security I could provide are in these poems, in sincere love,
& often they seem doomed to starve, as I bite the end of my pen,
sip the last drop of coffee,
look out of the window surprised that it’s now dark
as I feel cat-claws clenched into the soles of my feet.