for fear I’ll just start sniffing at her skin
like a dog wanting to get in—
or let my lips just skim the surface of her
neck and chin and—
“I can never get too much dancing” I say—
“I’m just happy
because you’re so beautiful”—
she smiles even more at that
and I feel great, and then she shouts back
“That was a beautiful poem you wrote about
the birthday girl—I’d love to have you write
a poem about me” and I don’t miss a beat as my lips almost
meet her ear so she can hear me say “I’ll
have to get to know you to do that”
and she says “I already know all about you”
and I try not to look like “oh no—shit—
what has she been told” as I ask “what
do you know?” and she says “that you have two kids
and are married” and I say “I got two kids
but their mother is dead” and she looks sad
for a minute and I’m thinking what the fuck
did you bring that up for at a time like this
in the middle of a dance floor when what
you really want to do is kiss this beautiful
apparition in this crowd of self-assured
white kids in black trying to be hip—
and I go on to say “In fact I’m living
alone for the first time in my life”
and that brings a smile to her face
and I want to get her out of this place
and into my arms where there aren’t swarms
of kids who look like cleaned up versions
of something I risked my life for and they
don’t have to risk any more than a few hours
of possible boredom—so I say something
about leaving and getting something to eat
but getting her number first cause I’m really
thinking I got to go home and do some homework
if I want to do good tomorrow—while I’m also
thinking now that we’re nearing more lights she’ll probably
take flight and I can spend the rest of the night
feeling vindicated by my own sense of—
but that isn’t what happened as we walked to the bar
and she told me we’d already met—
and I didn’t remember, but she was right—
it was at one of the poetry nights
at Helena’s, where she asked someone to
introduce her to me because she loved the way
I moved when I read my work and I’m
thinking I’ll probably never move that way again
because already I’m trying to remember what I did—
and she’s going on about how she came here tonight
just to see me and how maybe she should stop
and I’m saying “No, don’t stop” and she’s saying
“What are you gonna do, take me to lunch?”
and I say “No, dinner, are you hungry?”
and she says “I ate but you go fill your belly”
and there’s nothing to do but leave
I think, or buy her a drink which she’s
already doing and I’m chewing on some
memory of what might be already as I
go home and try to leave a message on
her phone machine about how the soil
where she was born is probably blessed
from all the prayers of gratitude me
and all the rest of the guys she has
mesmerized have sent out there, and I’m thinking
of her hair, so dark and full and the way
it framed her face and those eyes that
sparkled and shone so bright even in
those dim lights and some female voice
answers the phone and I’m thinking how did
she get home so fast? But it isn’t her
and I can’t leave my poetic message like that
so I try again the next day, only to hear the
same voice tell me she’s still not there
and so I don’t know what to do except leave my number
and then try and forget her because
I’m sure she’ll never call, I’m sure I should have
taken her outside and kissed her until we choked
and then let her watch my smoke
as I hit the trail for my own busy life—
but I didn’t, I left it like that—
me bumbling around for a way to say
hey I want to spend the rest of
my life seeing if you’re who I think you are—
the star of my oldest dream
the one about how if you really are honest
and good and true you get to fall in love
with someone who is falling for you
and it’s the girl in the dream—the one
who seems like the most natural beauty on earth
and worth all the shit you’ve been through
to get to this place, where you can spend
the rest of your life looking at that face
and believing she wants to do the same with you—
only the phone keeps ringing and it’s never her—
but you know what? the old ideas don’t occur
to me this time, this time I feel like whatever
she does or doesn’t do is okay—either way, I know
who I am and what I want, and what I do
is no longer based on what I can get from you—
but on what I can give as I live in a way
that will hopefully help us all get through each day
like it’s the only one that counts now because it is.
Isn’t that romantic?
THEY MUST BE GODS AND GODDESSES
Here’s the deal, you make me feel
like a god come down from on high
to see how you humans get through
all the pain and heartaches life
and the world throws at you and yet
still continue to pass the tests
and overcome the obstacles and all
the rest we gods like to add to the
stew of your existence until you
give up and we can feel satisfied
that we really do have it better—
only watching you do the ordinary
human things a god would never stoop
to do, like cook and do the laundry
and unhook the VCR so you can hook up
the CD player again, I understand
why some men are constantly thanking
us for making them men, and I want to
be a man, so I can take your hand and
kiss it without feeling awkward, afraid
I might frighten you with the intensity
of my desire to pay homage to you, or
that you might misconstrue it to mean
I want you to do things with me I can’t
even imagine now, let alone how it can
be done, this way you humans have of
becoming one with each other—I
watch you stir the sauce, or toss the
sheets into the dryer, or pick up a
child so effortlessly and it is like
these gestures are higher than anything
a god can do for or against you—ever—
and I am in awe and want nothing more
than the chance to do these things too
the way I see you do, without pretension
or calculation, without restraint or
complaint, but with a kind of skill
that is a mystery to a god—there is a
will behind it that transcends the
merely habitual, the daily routine of
it, and transforms it into ritual as
p
recise and mysteriously soothing for
your kind as the ones you call spiritual
—that’s it, you somehow understand
that the way your hand stirs that
cooking food is not just a matter of
kitchen expertise, but a perfect
opportunity to increase the power
that being human represents, a power
most humans believe is heaven sent,
they don’t comprehend what you so
obviously do, that the difference
between us and you is not that you
have to do so many lowly things to
get through just a few hours, but
that if you do these things with
love, then that exceeds all the powers
any gods could possess, and you are
nothing less than the object of a
god’s desire, not to make you a
goddess, but to be made human by the
caress of your hand as you take his
arm to get warm in the night chill
he can finally feel through you—
no wonder the gods and goddesses
keep telling themselves they have
it so much better than you, if they
for one moment could experience the
feeling of pure love you seem to
put into everything you do, there
wouldn’t be any gods or goddesses
left up there to talk to, they’d
all be down here competing with me
for the chance to see you open a
door, pick your glove up off the
floor, give a little girl more of
what she’s asking for, your love—
even the little girl I see inside
of you, who doesn’t need me to
take care of her because you’ve
done that so well—hell, what’s
a god to do with a human like you
who doesn’t need any of my godlike
tricks and omnipotence? how I long
for the common sense of an ordinary
man who understands just when and
how to take your hand in his—
oh yes, a god can be awestruck too,
once he has seen you—
*
On the other hand, and maybe more
realistically, you make me feel
like I am the mortal man, struggling
to get by all these years, and getting
by, sometimes only by getting high,
but not any more, and then suddenly
there you are, a goddess come down
from on high, to grace me with
your presence for reasons I can’t
guess, but worry I’ll mess up in
my clumsiness as I try to let you
know that I will go as slow as you
will let me in getting to know you
because I want this revelation to
last forever, this uncovering of
your goddess essence which makes
the most humble tasks look like
gestures of a love so profound—as
Selby says, wherever we seek God
we meet him, and that is holy ground,
so everywhere you are is holy and
God is found, and okay, it isn’t
that you’re a goddess and I’m just
a man that makes me forget all
my little schemes and plans that
worked with the other girls, it’s
that the way you carry your human
qualities, that dignity and grace
with which you move from place to
place to place and chore to chore
is more than any god could aspire
to, and so in you, I see the truth
that this is truly the dwelling
place of the gods—of the one
God—and every human is a god and
goddess too, and it is you I owe
for allowing me to feel that I am
too, that my age is perfect and
so is my height, that it’s okay to
look nice and even be white, that
I too can take my place among the
human gods and goddesses without
fear or judgment or false pride,
that I too can be the man I truly
am and yet still take care of and
share the little boy inside, that
anywhere we humans reside—but
I have to admit for me, especially
anywhere you might be—is truly
paradise.
OBSESSION POSSESSION AND DOING TIME
Of course I want to possess
whatever I’m obsessed with—
that Bonnard painting in the Phillips Gallery in Washington DC
that I visited at least three times a week
for the years I lived a few blocks away
until one day they moved it—so I moved
back to New York where I was obsessed with the same old stuff
like poetry, and city rain,
the corners of certain
city blocks and buildings,
the way the traffic lights glowed so bright against the sky
as day begins to turn to night—
the drugs that made me think
I needed them to see that—
the dreams of making my mark on the world
in ways that would make up
for all the times the world
tripped me up, threw another
obstacle in my path, smacked
me down, kicked me around,
beat and battered me into
an arrogance so powerful
people thought it was really
me, so did I for awhile,
and with a style always so out front and unique,
or so I wanted to believe,
other poets and artists would
seek me out to discover what
they were doing next—like
moving to L.A. where the look
of neon at that magic time of
day when the sun goes down
became a new obsession that I
found I didn’t need the old
drugs to dig or enjoy or even
comprehend—I got to lend my obsessions out again
until I saw them on the screen
and heard them on the radio—
and I thought this is a funny
way to go—I’m out here learning
how to grow beyond the petty
drives that drove me into self-
obsessive possessiveness with
all that mattered to the point
of being shattered into billions
of bits of the memories I thought made up my life—
and then I thought there is
no way to mend myself I need
some help—and I got it—
I’m still the same obsessive fighter
for the dreams I’ll never give up
whether you still see them in my eyes
or not—I got to possess what I’m
obsessed with just as much as ever,
to the point I want to be it—I
wanted to be that painting by Bonnard,
or the rain, or the glowing traffic light
or neon bright against the darkening blue—
or you—and I was and am—I always knew that—yes,
I am the obsession, and I am the possession,
and I am the time that’s being done—
and that’s just life as I unfold it
day by day and not some universal
contest to be lost or won—I’m
grateful every night for the bed I sleep in
and every morning for the sun or clouds or rain—
which doesn’t mean I’m not ambitious
or that being with you is not the most
deli
cious way of spending whatever time is mine—
hey, I’m grateful for all my dreams and visions—
especially the one called you—
but I also love the way I’m
letting go of having to possess
all that I’m obsessed with and
letting time do me for a change—
speaking of change I’d like to be possessed for awhile
and be the object of somebody
else’s style not just this
not-so-neutral-Jersey-cowboy-hipster-
nice-guy-but-don’t-get-too-close-cool-
master-of-my-universe in which I’m
always generous and never act out of spite—
I know that ain’t quite the way you see it,
so straighten me out, get a ruler
and draw new lines, make me climb
your mountains and ford your streams
until your dreams are mine and I’m
in them with you, especially
the ones that come true, which
they all do if we let them—
we just might not be there to get them when they do—
so com’ere let’s drop a tear
and swap a kiss and reminisce
about the way we want it to be,
until we can see it so clearly
nothing can keep us from getting there—
even when we already are—
you know the dream—it’s
the one where we’re finally truly understood—
understand?
THAT FEELING WHEN IT FIRST GOES IN
“I am the poet of sin” said Whitman,
or something like that in my head.
I want you in my bed right now more
than I want all the junk in all the
stores you can’t resist. You kept on
insisting that you needed to be alone.
Like Garbo supposedly never said.
I have been alone in this bed since
the last time you were here. I remember
the first woman to call me “dear” just
like in the movies. I wasn’t sure I
liked it. The few girls who did that
back when the movies really were the
movies, sounded too American or maybe
Protestant or something foreign from
the Irish-American women I grew up around.
Or even the few Blacks. None of them
called their men “dear.” That was
something from Father Knows Best,
back when television was really tele-
vision. What an idea, to tell a
vision, sort of another description
of poetry. Yo, check it out, here I
am again at the typewriter speeding
two-fingered around these keys, trying
to locate the place where the motion
toward life originates in me, not you,
because we’re through, at least until
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