David

The first time I undressed
you spoke in syllables.

You said I looked like David
standing at the Accademia

wearing nothing but marble
like the moon.

You watched my body harden
then moved towards the window

and pulled the shade down.
I saw the first chaos

-the one that made the universe-
flash from your eyes as you walked by.

I never want you to see me again.
No. I want to remain the image

of the barefoot boy by the window
eternally burned in your pupils.

DQ 3/14/09

Seconds

Seconds

You came to the beach looking for me
and found me stretched out by the shore
covered in moon. Then, you spread over me,
the contour of your body so familiar on mine.

The last time you slept on me - I was whole.
It was the night we knocked down
the plastic statue of the virgin Mary
from the nightstand while we wrestled,

nostrils flashing. Our bodies, zodiac charts
simply decoded by fast unmeasured breaths.
My skin dripped rain. Your voice a drumbeat.
Back then you never came home late.

Tonight, half buried in me, you ask forgiveness
praying the stars chart a path back to the room
where the virgin broke. The tide stammering
on the rocks, which slowly erode.

It is too late for us, my body is proof:
Sink your fingers in and try to hold me.
The sand beneath you, will pour from your fist,
each fine granule, a second swallowed by the hourglass.

DQ 3/8/9

Oblivion

Even with eyes closed
I cannot find silence.
Yesterday’s sounds are
the menacing growl
of beasts in the distance.
And the inner crystal ball

that predicts the next day
only repeats the last hours
with the furious black
noise of angry bees vibrant
over the whisper of dawn
and the lark’s song.

I swallow saliva.
Silence betrays me.
Even in the solitary amplitude
of my eyelids, the thump slips
from my sleeve like
the ace of the sharp.

And then the sound of screeching tires.
And then the boy tossed through the air.


DQ 3/6/9

Yes

We had, in the end,
only three letters to remember,
the affirmation of the moment
and how it unfurled
jubilant and brisk like morning
plummeting over itself from
your tongue like crashing waves
until it jackknifed in your throat
on the last halcyon breath
and your face became the face
of one who feels the gratifying
sting of the needle
do its numbing work.
Yes, I remember the word
and how it encircled the night
until you made memory out of it.

DQ 3/4/9

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

Dandelions

All afternoon I watched
the air fill itself with
florets, a stagnant cloud
of whiteness awkwardly
suspended above the fields
floating towards the horizon.

Near the end, you seemed
the same to me. Your kiss
growing weaker across
the room, a stale quarantine
of windborne seeds
lacking the substance to
land anywhere near me.

All afternoon I watched
the fields with bitter sadness.
The florets of dandelions
-like all things that travel the wind-
sailing the un-destined path
towards the horizon.


DQ 1/23/09

Dream Tectonics

The blaring sun becomes memory
on our skins, there is no horizon line
between sea and sky. How incredibly
fortunate we are to know the silence
of Zen in these hammocks.
You lean towards me, skim my chest
with a clasp of your hair until I fall asleep,
and here is where the whole
god-dammed thing changes.

I wake up in a strange room to the sound
of public radio, someone has brewed
coffee instead of tea, there are math books
stacked on a nightstand next to the window.
Outside, the streets demand their morning
fix of cars and shoes. A crowd at the
bus stop is blurred by rain.

Years have passed. I still
don’t know where the universe broke.
The champagne toast we planned for later
did not happen, neither did the twilight
horseback ride. Perhaps sleeps got cross-tied,
or a worker on cloud nine misplaced a file.
Perhaps there was a sudden shift
in the velvet black of dream-tectonics.
For all I know, a man I’ve never met
woke up under your clasp of hair from a dream
that by all rights, should have been mine.

DQ 12/30/08

Paperweight

One of the items I cherish most
is a star shaped paperweight
made of brass and smeared with
that eternal moss which grows
on metal after enough years elapse.

Back when it shined like god's eyes
we lived in the apartment where
we kept the windows open
to save on the electric bill, and we used
the weight to hold down love notes on the desk.

I suppose it will outlive
most things I own: my books,
the car, my new home,
-even my own life-
due to its heavy simplicity.

Every now and then I lift it
to check if it weighs as much as I remember
and I look at the inscription you
engraved at the bottom of the metal star:
forever yours, your name, and date we met.

Then I confirm that for any
given volume, memories
are far heavier than brass.

DQ 12/26/08

Kneeling

Slowly they rose from their knees,
heads hung wounded, hands holding
the dead wood of the pew in front.

The heavy man leading the service
read every possible sin from a book
and pointed towards the congregation

directing god about the gilded dome
to seek and punish those that had fallen.
A wicker basket in the shape of a nest

made its way from hand to hand
multiplying itself in green
like fish and loaves of bread.

Later that evening as I walked
through the woods I saw god
kneeling over a small bird

that had fallen from its nest
and I asked him if he had seen me
leave the service before it ended.

He kissed the bird, placed it back
in the nest and said: No, I did not see you.
I’ve never been to church.

DQ 12/24/08

To a Painting

Between green swirls
of ocean where mermaids sleep
she glances towards me
-sunlit face turned in my direction-
with a stare I’ve dreamt of
old gray stones gathering
sun by the shore.
Even and deep
like footprints that have
made the earth quiver with
the weight of something
indestructible.
How foolish of me...
to think I could bear
stare at her in real life.

DQ 12/3/08

Still Life

The alarm clock sits on the
nightstand by the bed
where you and I are sleeping.
Right above your head
our children sway in the swing

behind the old house. You watch
them through the kitchen window
with a jug of orange juice
in your hand and call them in
to do their school work.

My hand cuts through
the perfume of an unknown woman
laying in the bed of a hotel room
and I knock over an empty glass
as I reach for the alarm clock.

One minute before, the repelling dreams.
One minute after, the joined monotonous day.
How we have changed, and how alike we are.
Neither one of us wanting to get
up this morning.

DQ 11/26/08

After Qu Yuan

Wood paddles whip the water in
a frenzy of orchestrated chaos,
the drum repeats the one-pointed beat
-the concentration of the devotee-
each arm a reflection of next, each lung
propelling the same breath, breathing
the mystical word that parts the sea,
each heart calling for the poet’s body
to be raised from the undertow
which is the only absolute we truly share.

The world waits by the shore, the ordered
rows of buildings, the four lane highways,
the paper pushers, the pale skins.
But they don’t exist here.
Here is the narrow floating temple,
the unrestrained prayer of the athlete
who cannot taste sea-salt from sweat
whose skin reflects the alizarin chant of noon.

The sunrays are in blossom, the drum repeats
the arrow pointed beat, the water churns again
in anger, and there, under the chaos of the blades,
a white-robed figure looks up from the deep.

DQ 11/10/08

Film Noir

In those old detective stories there is
always a reporter in an overcoat
taking photographs of the chalk mark
that outlines where the body fell.
I imagine someone had to actually

straddle the dead and run the chalk
close –if not touching- the edge of the
contortioned shape, and I cant imagine
the feeling of nausea such a task
would bring about on the artist.

Our park. I went there today.
Someone had used a white chalk
to outline the shape of a heart
at the foot of the bench where
I said I no longer loved you.

DQ 11/08/08

Horse Feather

This is a horse feather,
white, the calm of clouds.
I saw it fall from the sky
a slow dart from antiquity
swirling its habitual pattern.

Its vane gentle across my lips
its sturdy rachis could
pen a poem or two about
the process of kissing or
stammering ecstasies.

I wondered if the mythical animal
would part the evening sky
with its pale steady silence
turn its crimson eyes in my direction
and rapture
me on moon-hooves

over the matrix of skyscrapers
wearing nothing but its ribcage
between my legs.
Nothing is impossible.
I once loved like that.

DQ 11/7/08

Kisses I Remember

My father kisses my mother on their 25th anniversary.
They stood behind the table
holding each other as they did
while they slept. Their faces pressed
together like dried flowers in a book.
Long ago, they bloomed.
April 1985

My last kiss.
I can still hear its echo disguised
as memory. One sound. Then
the void of all the years that followed.
Every kiss after that, hollow.
You asked me to leave her as you got dressed.
June 2001.

My best friend’s first kiss at Shenandoah Junior High.
Her face was covered by his,
I saw him release her hands
shortly after.
Girls are like that, they say
the opposite of what they mean.
January 1976.

A kiss I saw on TV
They bridged the gap toward
each other like magnets.
I wanted to be naked, like
they were. The lens closed in
on their moist lips just like I hoped it would.
March 1997.

A kiss from Judas
Every time we make love
I hear its sound, the kiss,
metallic like coins.
You ask me if I love you
and I say yes.
October 2008.

DQ 10.13.08

La Provençal

No longer a fan of French cuisine
I avoid my favorite restaurant.
I wouldn't know if the outside

tables have been folded or replaced
or if they still serve the hot crepes
covered in béchamel sauce.

Last time I dined there, Albertine,
the waitress who always recommends
the salmon béarnaise, gave me

the wonderful news that you were
seeing someone new and had just
given birth to a lively baby boy.

Can you believe my arrogance?
...to ask if she had any idea
what you named the child?

DQ 10/4/8

Aubade

What if we step outside this dream
and not return where we came from,
those ashen images that blur at dawn.

- Look, time has not touched you -
your hair still drapes in waves of indigo silk
and your eyes are still the shade of ancient woods.

You ask me to lay in your bed, to love you
in the room with the red walls again.
And me…restored to the body

of Apollo, the archer god,
the gold sun that woke you every morning
and kissed your bare feet.

Let's walk outside this dream before we vanish.
Don't be afraid, we will not fall.
There are no rules, no gravity in dreams

DQ 9/25/08

Burying

When you knelt by the dirt road,
wedged your fingers in the cracks
and slowly dismembered
the earth’s old flesh
tearing roots to make
a grave, I wanted to warn you
about the useless effort.

Yesterday you sat naked
on my chest, wedged
your fingers deep inside
my ribs looking for the heart.
You found it, held it, read it
and asked about the name it had
engraved.

Here you are digging again, burying
our love...“the part that died” - you say.
Well I got news for you…
I buried one long ago,
and now its blood comes out
singing, yesterday you read
her name out loud.

DQ 9/25/08