We abandon what only annoys us, take
our faba and melon alone and early
in such as light as the curtains allow, purchase
the weather from checkered gentlemen,
sketch lilies in the margins of unread flight novels
and barely speak of how our days went.
C’est la.
Take the print
from that wall.
It is far
too patent.
Hang it
over the antique
chifforobe, near
the finches.
It will echo
the colors
in their cage.
Our motives
are apparent
as the manner
of our shoes
is learned.
There is no music here
save that which winds
your necklace tight.
You twist a fingered imitation
of Moebius, strip gently
an oyster from its open shell,
tap your foot slightly
like your mother
and bemoan her
taste in stony gardens.
I tell another story, quit
smoking and wear myself
like a pedaled machine.
Say la. Oooh
this certainly is
the new man denied
before us, more ad
vantageous for the film
we’re in and simply
wet with worthy.
Pour les femmes
nous croyons, our visions
drawn by hands shifting
hairy in the softened
glare. A man is easier
to mold into a door
than to look at with this
much wonder. Viens-tu.
Tiens toi là.
Show us
the lighting
behind the fine
fine angles, the
lines pinched inside
the leanest shadows of you.
So blasé, the fat absentee
wiring a preference to the auction.
He is an artful office of rich
thick wool wound about the ankles
of makeshift lovers. They may
know a riddle and he wants
its name. We erase our faces’
creases with red styptic pens,
skin the peelings from our apples
and caw, when cornered, like mottled bitterns.
Oooh la la. She
is cleaner than a mother
goddess, but wanton
as a drunken peasant
at the harvest
festival, yet
finely so textured
and very well
mounted. More
than just a whistled
vision and brighter
than a primal
mask. And shaped, oh,
no demanding abstraction
or intrusion of colored
idea. No nervous
German this one; he had
a keen and steady hand
and placed on her
the correct amount
of breasts. Voila
mes freres, hypocrites
lecteurs. Ooh ooh and oh so la.
Tonight we buy.
We buy an ounce of odor.
We buy much and long
coats of favorite animal.
We want, again,
to endow our possible
limps with the lithe redemption
of hide. We cover
ourselves in the numbly felled,
in blacks and browns, in chosen
homes of nearly wood. If we
could see beauty as clearly as
the hairs we trim weekly,
we might stop bending
into magazines which ask
for nothing but our envy,
our awe, our firm pursuit.
We might lose then,
finally, these breezy lobbies
that make us wait, that play us
always, taut as catgut
across mauve violins.
What a palaver
these instruments
strewn about the band shell.
The minstrels of blue
have shut their lockers
at the station and left
whole gangs of echoes
to wander the tunnels, playing
fugues for crippled quarters,
cradling papered bottles
to soothe the din of afternoon.
A sad Selah. Our stories
are neither about ourselves
nor beyond our nailed ceilings.
There are colors
rawed in the hallway
and guitars in the kitchen
twanging inane rebellions,
the hits from days we surely
romanced or imagined.
We burn like flagged targets
in a blown sandy country
and scan the courtyards
for sculpted children
memorizing their phases of moon.
They may have lost their desire
to play as waves or sparks.
We dress darkly
and nothing of
the night surprises.
We mute its sirens by hanging
yards of grey-flecked drapes.
We count the roses
in a heavy delivered vase
and control the show’s volume
from the couch at ten paces.
We read of an emaciated carpenter
with awl holes in his palms;
he’s thin and set between panes
of glass, suspended in urine
and more than once named lovely.
Don’t bother to shock us.
We’re inured of shock, though
we know of bearded censors
and their casual cigars.
We are more than often
no more than amused.
What is immediate
we name knowledge.
We are politic, and can
spell, with some assistance,
abnegate and aesthetic.
Light,
more light.
We must
have light.
This is the art
of the lesion
on the classical
mask. Our
hope
is a tragic
lack
in blankets,
to cover
the darkness,
to illumine
our room at night.
We misquote
the whole
known universe
and mistake
the sublime
for fruit or time.
We haven’t begun
to define
our limbs’ uses.
Small Calm Farm 