Cry Back My Sea

by Sarah Arvio

  a bomb

  made of your atoms

  I have a diamond

  you have an atomizer

  of the anatomical

  & soul

  being

  concording your soul

  atoms

  into a sole

  bomb

  for atomizing my soul

  with its adamant

  gleam

  I’m toeing around

  & avoiding the pulse

  so as not to jig

  the trigger

  or tip the jigger

  this is a soul bomb

  solely for me

  arraigning my brilliance

  why do bombers

  bomb

  a beauty body

  Hitchcockian

  stop staring stop staring

  wagging your head and talking lies

  why don’t you do some staring at the stars

  even your cock is a crowing liar

  trying trying to hide your cry

  the cry of a bad hatching

  that hatched you

  as you are

  not as you should be

  can’t you fall down the hatch of your heart

  into the hole of the hell of it

  can’t you hitch your cock to some high pole

  a maypole for maying

  not dismaying

  can’t you hate your hatcher and not me

  a hatcher is a mother

  yours was a hatcheck girl she had all your hats

  and would not give them back

  oh somber sombrero

  and your heart is the worse for it

  even your soul is hitchcockian

  though he had a bowler

  you have a howler

  give yourself a little heaven

  as you should be

  not as you are

  go hitch a ride on a star

  Aguántate

  Did I want a gloveor was it love

  a globe of love a lobeno not a glove

  I wanted a globe a worldI got a glove

  Take off the gloveTry on some love

  This is global and localThis is my life

  I want your bare handson my lobes

  instead you’re lobbing mea lot of hell

  So you like making lovewith gloves on

  How bad it feelsas hard as hooves

  I’ll give you the beefI’m all beat up

  Too much to bearmy gloved boy

  Here’s the skinnyI want some skin

  but love mewith your both hands bare

  Oh beglovèd boyturn a cheek

  Tu Mi Vinci (or Hang)

  You hang me on the hanger

  of your anger

  like da Vinci’s triangle

  and vinci is vanquish

  and vanquish is

  like anguish

  and hang

  is what we do

  to criminals and clothes

  Is it a crime

  to hang round your neck

  staring in your eyes

  and kissing your lips

  Here I am hanging

  naked and splayed

  I’m hung up on you

  you’re hanging me up

  There’s no other angle

  I’ve flung them all out

  You’ve taken my self

  and you’ve hung it

  in the triangle of you

  where I’m dangling

  I’ll go away

  in a new set of clothes

  for a cocktail or a crime

  does it matter

  but please let me down

  off your hanger

  Oh love let me be free

  of your anger

  I’ll hang a round sign

  Now I Am Mine

  old words

  you can’t get the hang of

  Sad (or de Sade)

  So it’s over nowthat’s what you say

  How sad to saywhat isn’t so at all

  nor should it beI’m saying this to you

  I’m saying I love youand you love me

  It’s sheer sadismto say this isn’t true

  which is what you sayat least once a week

  wanting to persuade meto be sad like you

  My desideratummy sole desire

  O saturnaliaof sad desire

  I love you satanicand sweet as you are

  siring and stirringmy distraught desire

  I’m your Sadieyour sweetheart your girl

  How could I hate youbecause you’re sad

  Sad to say to say and doI’m sorry

  you’re sad and sadisticyou’re sorry too

  Or I think you’re sorrythat’s my sole hope

  Monsieur de Sade was sadwe all know this

  That’s how he gothis satisfying name

  And aren’t we allam I not aren’t you

  wanting to livea sane and hopeful life

  Oh my Sade How sadyou are sad I am

  Truly sad to seeyou are as you are

  Shoe

  I was going to meet my own death

  and it stood me up

  Or that is I stood up and said not now

  Some days I know I won’t stand for it

  Can you stand the thought of being dead

  some days I think I’ll take it lying down

  Sometimes it’s good to take a stand

  though I think I want a standard-issue death

  Shoe in shoe out without a horn

  or play me a horn as I go and come

  Or maybe not you but someone else

  whose job it is to usher me forth

  Stand down I don’t know what this means

  Stand up and soft-shoe across the room

  The issue is well do you like your life

  Oh hand me a tissue I do want to cry

  There’s no such thing as a stand-alone shoe

  There are always two to cover feet

  Think of not knowing how to feel

  think of that while dancing on your heel

  Death might not be up or even down

  it could slip in sideways it could shuffle

  It could stand very still

  like a life on the stand of the world

  Do hand me a tissue or a handkerchief

  I don’t know whether to wave or cry

  I don’t know whether to live or die

  it could slide sideways after all

  Like two shoes dancing in the living room

  or two heels hopping in the dying room

  Handbag

  I felt some desire and I lost my cents

  it was expensive to feel so much

  I lost my sense and my money I did

  not consent though it was consensual

  It was a con and it cost me my self

  I was selfless I was trailing a scent

  I was moaning but not for the money

  and that’s a mistake I lost my sole take

  and now there’s nowhere to stake a claim

  I’d put a stake in his heart but I can’t

  O Bacchus will you dress me in grape leaves

  I’m back to the bar to begin again

  and needing a quaff of some rich stuff

  and some hair dye and a bewitching scent

  and all that is sensual and cunning

  without a cent or sense in the world

  and nothing in my handbag but my soul

  Tanager

  This was the year I saw th
e tanager

  flitting out from behind a tall tree

  like Tanny Le Clercq wearing scarlet

  and then turning she twirled and was gone

  cutting a tangent through the sky of my life

  and the effect was as tangible

  as a trip to Tangier

  This was the year

  of bright change

  the year of the dress

  the lovely fire-red dress

  and black shawl

  that would take me

  to the sunset or sunrise

  And it moved in me

  like Tanny Le Clercq

  fire tones leaping

  in a fiery thrill

  Wouldn’t you live

  for a tangential thrill

  that goes to the skin

  and bones and sex

  to all the bright points and

  colors of your life

  I had seen it in books

  —the tanager—

  a bright black-winged cry

  bringing me up

  to its tablet of joy

  its template of joy

  its plateful of fruit

  The tangerine tanager

  that should be its name

  and how do I eat it and dance it and do it again

  this once-only moment of life

  Red Dress

  It’s wrong to live wrong I was thinking this

  and wringing my hands I wrung my hands

  Wasn’t it right to live right and to write

  about the right life rather than living wrong

  and writing about the wrong life Which is

  righter which is wronger The thing is

  if you have the wrong life you don’t want

  to tell thinking always that somehow you

  will right it Righting and writing it’s a kind

  of redress a new dress I’ll put on when I

  rewrite my life I’ll run out and get it now

  while there’s still time a red dress for joy

  a red dress for redress and I’ll dress you

  down as I walk out the door You’ll ring

  and ring but I won’t rush back I won’t

  write back You’ll be right and I’ll be

  wronged and that’s what I’ll tell if I get

  the time but not to you you won’t be told

  You can read my redress in the papers

  I’ll be out on the town in my red dress

  Peacock

  It sounds like a part of the body

  doing something that it has to do

  not like a vegetable or rooster

  more like the male part of the male body

  riffling its wheel flaunting its eyes

  every feather the figure of an eye

  many like the arms of a Vishnu

  many like the breasts of Artemis

  O heaven and all the lotuses

  the hues of all-prismed reflection

  with a keen that pierces the garden

  And this is the bird with the name

  that’s also the name of a penis

  that is peeing the peacock peeing

  Why don’t you meet me in paradise

  the place of the parrots and dice

  the place where we go to die and sing

  the place where we go to sing and die

  Apparently it’s all pure there all joy

  pure as my heart when I look at you

  right here in the throne of the pleasures

  The peacock tilts its fathomless eyes

  and then folds its great fan and departs

  Garden

  You could say a garden is a garden

  but guard against the place where anything

  is what it is and nothing more A garden

  can be avant-garde or not avant at all

  or from a vantage that never mattered

  except to the gardener and no one else

  It could be a place where Adam and Eve

  were happy though not yet fulfilled

  Nor would they ever be if history tells

  us anything at all If the bible can be

  called history Let’s say it can because

  it belongs to the history of our souls

  And so there they stand naked and the snake

  and the penis are one and the same

  It can snake through your garden and take you

  places where the flowers sometimes go

  to that bliss of fragrance and bee-buzzing

  or else can be a hisser or a hater

  or a pisser and really mess things up

  and mow over your pretty violets

  And while you are there guarding against

  the gorgeous or the garish or whatever

  something insidious is going on

  and insinuating and undulant

  Much as you may love and guard your garden

  there is no protection from its power

  En garde! Kiss the gardenias and hope

  Regal

  There are some violets in the grass

  purple and pretty and in the grass

  and now I notice that the violets

  are the color of a bruise

  They are pretty but not quite a pensée

  and violet we know is not quite purple

  They are a posy of my violation

  or the bruise is the color of violets

  and you are posing as the lover boy

  who brings the posy of all pure joy

  This is a position a person can take

  almost as joyful as anything

  and voilà this is my enviable life

  the veil of my lovely and loyal life

  This is the question I’m trying to pose

  about life behind a veil of invective

  I don’t want to say a vale of tears

  or a walk through the valley of death

  Shouldn’t my life be inviolate

  not kicked and insulted and royal

  the purple regal of the royal house

  Aren’t all our lives made to be holy

  and royal almost always is violent

  The queen of the grass is deposed

  Nonpareil

  for Linda Ollerenshaw

  How I wish I could be something else

  I seemed to change I had to have changed

  and yet plus ça change plus c’est pareil

  I wanted a cup of dark tea and a nonpareil

  I wanted a life without a parallel

  a peerless and unparalleled life

  made only of chocolate and sugar

  on a dark night pearled with stars

  and I got it just like everyone else

  as though getting what was coming to you

  could really be what anyone gets

  I was on the parallel bars turning

  over my own self and then turning back

  but that was many years before I changed

  into the one I am now who’s turning back

  through her own life to find the nonpareil

  as the past smokes up from the dark tea

  Did I get it just like everyone else

  with a sip of dark tea and a nonpareil

  Am I both the same and something else

  or had I gotten it like no one else

  exactly what was coming and nothing else

  Sheepfold

  It’s so cold here and there’s the snow

  he doesn’t like snow he’s from the tropi
cs

  there’s ice to be precise there are icicles

  he wants it hot he wants the tropics

  he keeps saying it over and over

  she is thinking that this is a trope

  or de trop de trop

  she does know she doesn’t know

  he does know he doesn’t know

  say this all fast and it will be as snow

  as white and cold and as ephemeral

  all of their truths will be as snow

  the trees are black in the winter woods

  and now they are passing the sheepfold

  white sheep and black sheep mingle together

  they are a tropism all turning one way

  and fold is a word that she desires

  fold and wool are things that she desires

  but there is much cry and little wool

  the sheep are running as a herd

  their little hooves pounding the white snow

  she needs to be careful she thinks or she’ll die

  of exposure out here in the cold

  the ram is out ahead there’s only one of him

  but here they are now the two of them

  you snowed me she said which meant he had lied

  Rodeo of the Rose

  It’s like I fell off the horse of my life

  I was horsing around and he bucked me

  I went over sideways or backwards or

  I don’t even know how I went but I

  went It’s like you don’t know your own horse

  It’s like you’re riding along and he rides you

  He keeps at it and at it till you buckle

  and break a rib or a toe or a heartbeat

  Never mind that I wanted to be soothed

  and suckled never mind that I wanted

  to ride and ride replete with life joy Ah

  ah Ay ay all the sighs and gaspy breaths

  when you’re riding full out on the joy path

  But there are folks who can’t bear the joy

  the rippling riveting enchanting joy

  They’ve got to buck you till they flip you

  They deride you and they deride themselves

  Whose horse was this anyway Wasn’t it

  mine Or was there someone else somewhere

  leading them in and handing them out

  glad-handing the folks at the rodeo

  A grand master of disaster and desire

  carrying a whip and a full-blown rose