with catlike grace
with catlike eyes
with feline wiles
with danger warnings
and possessed space
she floats into my vision.
and noiseless cries
i watched her make the incision.
and subtle smiles
she poises on one toe
and ripe adjournings
i rise, and quickly go.
The Garden of Panic
There is a fountain
give in to the spring
springtime and i think of her
(not in the center, there is no center)
The fountain is whispering something. You cannot understand it.
It may be whispering something about you. It is of utmost importance
that you understand it.
You're slipping.
You think that maybe the grass is growing before your eyes.
Elongating.
The trees grope.
A nymph darts from behind a bush,
a shadow flits after her.
Buzzing, a profusion
of insects, multiplying.
You feel them within your skin.
The flowers are flashing red
It's taking root.
It's stem is winding about
your throat.
It wants to blossom:
magenta, unearthly.
Rushing the fountain is rushing spilling over
The butterflies have gone insane.
This garden needs no rain
before she was full and sour
springtimes she would sing
us by our pet names and
twirl her skirts, cascading…
a cool spring evening
we were circled under sallow moonlight and
she crept around the circle giving us each a kiss
like she was plucking petals from a flower one by one
i don’t know how it happened, but i think she realized her breasts looked good wrapped in black leather, and she wanted to be a queen beautiful and terrible “all shall love me and despair”. i didn’t see her for many years. cocaine glamours and fierce tremors, she’s never had an orgasm in her life she tells me, she tells me little but she tells me that. she wanted to be the girl that made it into the boys’ club but she went about it all wrong. viciousness and catered words and catty words and catharsis, she measured her spice, calculating it and so why do i think of pale blue flowers still, when i think of her? she thinks she’s fat (she is not) she thinks she is evil (just a slice) she thinks nobody loves her (can you love something you can’t see?)
she writes and her script has not changed, she writes me she says she’s in love but
how do you know when it’s the real thing ?
i write her and my script is loosely across the page i write her
let us run through the meadows and drink the melting snow
for you have been encased in ice for so long now
and if he loves you he will drink the melting snow with you
even if it looks dirty even if the water flowing from your numb body tastes bitter
he will drink it and it will pass through him and then you know it is real
i ask her do you think of persephone this time of year, persephone bound
to darkness because she was just so damn fascinated with the world
down there,
persephone brought to reunion with light and giving us all that light and
was there any year when she just wanted to stay low, beneath, sulky or even
desperate not ready to give into the spring?