the first train
to town.
Il pleure sans raison,
my heart! here—
you never, after the first year, cared.
*
Lust, my fixed
star.
Both, how blue,
azure-headed,
my revolution.
To arms! To arms!
Two arms
to be held in,
mother, brother,
I cannot call you,
what—fellow sufferer
or spouse or
fellow dream-snuffer
or parasite, partner,
traitor
fixed foot.
*
The last sentence
of that book read:
“évohé, évohé, leaping
like young horses
on the banks of the Eurotas.”
Meaning, you said,
they had freed their feet.
And you jumped up,
fell forward, head down,
skirt up, head over heels:
marvelous cartwheeler,
I remember
your legs flashed
scissorlike,
against the sky.
This is the fashion, you said,
to be free (adjusting your hat),
and you wet your mouth
and stared;
but you never really cared.
*
Music dreams:
Cars, battles,
axes.
If praxis be the gruel of love,
play on! Open
your starry door.
I throw myself
on all your shards
or lie
beneath your small, glass-slippered feet:
ecstatic.
*
What I want, you wrote,
is to get rid
of all this “inwardly revolving.”
One foot’s fixed:
you spin.
Or tacked up
to some lousy Cross, fall forward,
the hanged man
with a broken ankle—
it makes me spit.
“Chère petite,” I wrote back,
“it makes me spit, too.
Let us make love with whips.
The Diva Club, at two.”
*
Cars dream:
violins, thighs,
loss.
If gnosis be the fool of love,
drive on. Through desert
to the micturating sun
of wetlands,
the dreamy jungle.
How richly I deserve you,
little demon,
little love-thing, little
bloody foot.
Filing
I look for you.
The alphabet melts behind a palm,
soft music. I expect
your eyes
a glint of neck.
Instead I find a garden.
The name blossoms, the heart pulls
out come
gazelles,
the tip of summer.
Truth and Satisfaction
The truth predicate, then, preserves his contact with the world, where his heart is.
—W. V. Quine, Philosophy of Language
“Mother,” I addressed her,
“you have created a monster.”
Outside
it was raining, the light
fell splendidly on silverware and tea.
She took a sip. She answered
she was pleased with truth and satisfaction:
they were enough.
*
Fiction
isn’t truth.
You hold its brute head down
until the breathing stops.
The world, the stiff world
isn’t truth.
But it’s where your heart is,
damaged and complete;
it sends you to the street
with a drugged smile
and the whiskey
dragging
like a child of love.
*
My mother is Voltairian
in several ways:
her hair curls,
and even terror
wraps itself around her feet.
She has, as well,
an understanding
with the deep unknown:
it wounds her lightly
and she leaves it
almost
entirely alone.
*
Satisfaction
has four splayed feet and a teat
filled with disaster.
Suck it and know heaven. Just remember
it goes dry.
It leaves you, crying
in your shoes, in
public places.
*
I was planned among the plethora of Geminis
control allowed.
My sister is the amorous mistake, martyr
to an impulse;
which