cœur

 We are thinking “tucked under sheets” the world creeps up to a sudden chin-- 

somber hearts sleep in temples of flesh
                

                         Beating through the telephone wires/    

bleeds in whatever direction

         

                                       the thin, platelet suns of ourselves      

 call the transfusionist for new blood--

call anyone who will gather a listen     

to mystical arrays of whatever love is siphoned

                through the intricate tubes of an arm

 

                                                                          I’m howling--- then I’m over it

I’m colder than a tomb in some Gothic romance novel ------   

                                              my bed is engulfed

 in musky currents of sweat                and she is dying like a poet                  dies

with her head full of minute circuitry    

                                          and words beginning with the letter C

[No] Plath

It is 1961

Life is all around/ digesting the debris

from moon-belly,  diagram of decorative spines

seed-vessels, pinked

    

In 1962

A similar species furnishes space

a small, narrow stem     of the fringed polygala

             [ in its laborious year]

star torn from its bodice -------   I appear mad and invigorated

open up between slits of skin

[1963]    

 Everybody glances wantingly at the gorgeous girl’s knees

kissed with sun  -------

                  she is a dream in the voice-box, awakened

   some furious fruit/honey/baby      [two-lipped, four-sided]

           absorbing fractured syllables, arcs

                                of fray

reckless, accidental   ----- torrential honey-pot terminally delicate

      --I appear, my eyes, nectar pouring out

 of each ripe orifice  

stroke the air and its bulbous vacuums

[it is]    1964

    To music; thieving boys, human longing rose
up just past the knees        how much is discernible? How much

is left to tremble beneath?     ----I am potentially ajar, steaming with

flux                            [needle is said and done for the eye

   

                     

               

flowers exaggerate with age]

------death adores her,

                                                 she’s not alone

1964 [it is still]

    All I think about is obliterating the bay,
any bay,      waving poems and bellowing   ----- where God

is a sensation of white noise and youth-spunk

                          Ariel, you witch, I’m invigorated once again

   [we become photos of her most unphotogenic moments]

Ariel likes a landscape where everyone is lost and clinging
to their neuroses           ----- thighs sore with necrosis

my plastic bag obscenities smothering your jollies

Ariel enjoys talk of planets in retrograde, women coming late

or not coming at all      succulents in their late withering states,

    

                                    once healthy children bursting with consumption

   ----to Ariel, their suffering is like an inaccessible breast

she longs for the painful music within it

1965

Medusa stopped him dead, so why can’t I?

This poem fits like a glove, the old cliche

            I depart where my line ends; I am not endless

guttered and abandoned -----  he did things I would have laughed at

     had I worn another skin

                        little tremors around the mouth

[     it is a thousand degrees

                     where my heart rests  

Ariel enjoys the dense fog of wonder

[another] 1965

   Real men fuck with indifference

pound muscles, broadly

   I see enough to know what is, is

but don’t quote me              -----  the gloss is obscene

  [   where one comes scourged and sweet on the gums,

                                         as unforgivable as God or bad sex ]

-----    a little bloodiness left on the hands

   

the ruts are extra dangerous, shows skin-moves,

sin after poems   ---- /doctor, I rubbed it until it slid

leaving jagged pieces of myself

here is the bad blood      [ of a pulverized flower

----decoys of us apparently broken    ]

///the untouched area between coccyx and navel///

Ariel doubts the lover who whispers in her ear
takes her hand as if she is suddenly stillborn
pink and blue around the corners -----   

              he likes to say she is thinner than heroin

                            shooting through the veins

                          Ariel doubts this, too

*

There’s porn in your raw curves, the mere renderings of loose teeth,
all double entendres pooling at the crease of your cunt. Mother,
it’s not getting any tighter these days, the gut is strained
leaflets of papyri & suffer---&  you’re a wild gal
with your suggestively raunchy glance.

How many of you are you nakedly? How many of you
from the gutters emerge like a silk-drenched pearl
from a beggar’s mouth? He’s seafaring, gone
every six months, but still manages to stare back
at you with fishy eyes. Loose slickers & a bit of scurvy on the lips.

You’re a little bit of a rash if you know it. Good for you, or bad
depending on the weather. Nothing can reshape your mouth
to do better than a noose—all up in it, tight-lipped.

Dew is a mercy of the morning! Scarlet wet with blazing intentions.
 A buxom bold. A hold of ecstatic tongues—you come scourged
& sweet on the gums. I fashion you into my skin like a salve as you divulge
the deepest secrets, claim the locusts swallowed
your lover’s bones as you fished your rippled face out of a river.
You say you were l’inconnue de la Seine in your past life.
A jawbone the shape of a cliff, as you waited for Him
to harness your endless body.

Portrait of a Gemini (analog collage)

Ex-Voto

Call it “flesh vessel”, oil forming
rings around the stomach
of her papoose, a rind of thick skin
heaven knows it holds together so
what  mouth knows to be soft
fruit, a tang, fur-lined olive

a fistful
of holly in a sea of moths
─the exact moment light bends
into phosphor & slow decay

I think She, or Radiant Hummingbird
her intense sun, prays to thickets
of pulse trapped in the blood
of Mayan gods—she stretches
her breasts to meet the tongue
earth shaking between the knees

Call it “honey temper”, simmering
in her saliva, ointment or salve for
mosquitoes—all utterances slick
with hum her vulvae spreading
to receive flowers