Reencounter with Myself

Past the third cup of coffee
the dream still clings to my skin
gutting my stomach like sacrifice.

There is a green bottle, six feet tall,
my name is on the label, and so is
my birth year, “Producto de Cuba, 1962”

Inside the bottle is the struggle.

The prisoner enclosed in the emerald
shape expands his shoulders,
(which look translucent)
and shifts his weight side to side until
the glass cocoon shatters and gives way
to a naked white body brandishing wings.

He picks glass shards out of his hair,
stands up, stretches like a predator
and takes flight. He never speaks to me,
watching from bed ungratefully surprised.

I am now on my fourth cup of coffee
unsure if I have seen my own birth or death.

DQ 2/27/09

Jasmine

The most incredible thing
is that there are others like us.

Others, who see the kiss
the way the artist does,
gradually turning deep red,
strokes of a brush painting a rose.

who say seduction is like
the tide, the water’s delicate
and rhythmic triumph
over immovable rocks.

who define climax by how far
the palm frond arcs towards
the sky, seduced by the soft
spoken cadence of wind.

who sense the lover’s touch
gilded and warm as sunlight,
gentle as a sparrow landing
on a blade of grass.

There are others like us.

Sometimes, when I see a fire
in the distance, their faces rise
slow and elegant, like jasmine
incense from the pyre.

DQ 2/27/09

TEOTWAWKI

Yes.
The day will come.

The moon’s cadaver
will plunge towards earth,
limp, featherless as Icarus,
and crush all our belongings
to less than dust.

Our photographs from Barcelona,
your short red dress, my gold
ring with the inscribed date,
atomized and indistinguishable
from everyone else’s things of worship.

Eons from now, on moonless nights,
insects in lab coats will reconstruct
our bones, set us in museums
in creepy poses, and theorize
about how and when
our prehistoric era came to end.

DQ 02/22/09