Lament

Just like you emerge from dreams,
the moon’s pale reflection
dissolved through clouds, then
stretched across the ocean
stroking my shoulders
with her tender melt.

The tide’s swell has set
the reefs adrift like ghosts.
Darkness brightens them.
From the pier, a fisherman casts his net,
-expects the woven trellis returns filled
with vagrant stars, living quicksilver

pulled from the sea’s black throat-
In the dream, you sit on my bed
in a blurred white circle of silence
and as I approach to kiss you
your skin parts through my hands,
your lips disappear inside my mouth.

The fisherman with the cut-off jeans
spindles his net back in a sweep
and it comes up empty. From the pier,
I watch the moon’s wavering mantle
go swiftly through the dreamcatcher
just like it does when I awake.

DQ 4/7/9

Evicted

Here’s where I was before he met you,
before his reason for sunrise.

You shook his hand with flames
and said hello, with little regard for my home.

He didn’t hear a word about your zodiac sign
or about your theories on rebirth.

He only stared at your eyes, the night’s edge
and sang your name wavering in fog.

There’s never been music here before.
Here’s where I was before he met you:

I was living inside the dead man’s body
using his shawl of solitude to cover myself.

I was watching my limbs stretch inside
his wounds on the silver of the coffin.

So still they are, the dead, so spacious.
But no more, now that he’s met you.

DQ 3/28/09

Unsaid

Unspoken and unread; a void that creates a face
for itself between lines, the language of Lazarus,
the language of the blind in the darkness of abandoned houses;
like finding meaning in alphabet soup, one word that changes
your life, there, in the broth of chicken,
in the unspoken space between soft letters and your face
all those syllables rising in smoke; each an enigma, an invitation,
a voice in Braille with the sting of firewater,
speaking to the thing that drives you.

Words spreading like flux, like zodiac charts
each a field of poppies trapped in stained glass,
acts of love dissected to symbols,
the ghosts of black letters making noise
in the cellar, the sound of light coming through
the window like consciousness, a dream,
a half light through the fractal structure of air.

Translucent letters, invisible graffiti on the walls of my city,
keep unspeaking in colors, in solitude like debris of war.

Calliope, my mother: whose breast I have fed from,
whisper your spell between lines,
speak the language of Lazarus: a poem.

DQ 3/23/09

Embers

Here's what to do to build a lasting
campfire: Search the woods for tinder
at the last squeak of daylight.
Place the dry sticks above each other,
and flint strike the pile in multiple places.

Slowly add more tinder, and rouse
the slender flames until
they undulate proudly, rising elegant
like fierce birds of prey
seizing command of the sky.

A flint strike of passion spreads much the same.
Mouth to mouth in the summer evening
subject a mortal body to the abrasion
of yours, this friction will cause
a chain reaction, a series of chrome

bursts that overtake the winded
red flush of skin, until the immortal
halves break themselves from flesh,
rising fierce and elegant like birds
of prey seizing command of the sky.

3/22/09

Gems

They call us by the wrong names
and we snicker at their ignorance.

When was the last time you stood
up when someone called for Pollux

while waiting at the doctors office?
And have you ever heard me

say: Hello, my name is
Castor, pleased to meet you.

Never.
Never.

I call you by your proper name
when I step out of the shower

and see you across the mirror.
You call me by my proper name

when my reflection rises in
the creek behind you house.

Can we blame them, these people
that name things… how could we?

They have never danced with diamond
bodies, hand in hand across the summer sky.

DQ 3/21/09

At Dinner

Today a whale beached
itself above your tongue.
All the oceans and its
breaking waves
held against your cheek,
the blue machine and its
swaying garlands of algae,
alive with schools of fish
and mermaids showing off
their breasts, singing hymns
about Poseidon’s cobalt
kingdom with its white coral
towers and seashell dancehalls.

She means nothing to me, I said.
That’s when your lips gave way
to the flood, and I saw the eye
of the blue monster stare at me before
I knew the darkness of its mouth.

DQ 3/20/09

Ophelia

Between ripples and foam
her face rose, hair filled with
lilacs and chicories.
Her eyes, the gray of angel
wings boiled into clouds,
which are the pillows of god.

I kissed the wet melody
that covered her mouth
until the notes hardened
on my lips, the way
unforgettable things become
solid to memory and blood.

And then, the creek slowly
faded and her with it,
as time reattached itself
to the mauve breath of dawn.
Did I really say I love you
before you washed away?

Always, after a dream of Ophelia,
I wonder who writes the script
of these perfect encounters.
Is it the dreamer or the dreamed?
It was not me. I would have
written a different ending.

DQ 3/17/09