one
She came in a suit of yellow hair and falling
as we whispered with our ribbon lips just met.
In her pocket I left a letter which said walk into the bedroom
when you're finished with the working but, please, don't say a word.
two
So straight and lean she stood in the empty light of evening
I said 'stand' and she was standing on the eaves of her own bed.
And I was there beside her, between her and within her,
behind her on my knees with nothing much more said.
To be balanced upon a mattress your thighs and calves akimbo
must not be quite so easy, for she faltered on both legs.
Almost slipping forward slowly, as though some light fell falling
but I asked to be standing and so straight and lean she stood.
three
This morning waiting flat, I watched her walk the floor
from the doorway to the window, before turning back again.
In a white robe fallen open, her hands inside a dresser,
I saw her pick up pieces of white as though in dread.
But in the thought of herself unnoticed, she threw them as we will do
when blind in our observance, yet wanting to be seen.
She chose two other pieces, black companions, and slid slowly
into one and then the other, as I laid there on the bed.
four
And now I think of cream and my skin grown even softer
in the hours left here waiting with eyes both open shut.
I was on another surface (this was downstairs, simple heaven)
and I saw her legs behind her as she crawled across the floor.
And I watched her in her watching as she arrived to kiss upon me
in that moment of forgetting, where being dead should be.
five
On a balcony in rain I stood completely wet
until through two doors she took me into her mouth.
And in the middle of cocaine she knelt,
her hips raised higher than her shoulders.
And her spine curved into a parabola
which said: No doubts.
I lost all sense of anatomy then, each part of her was my other,
each door an entrance, a hole undone.
six
On the tiled floor of an outdoor shower, walled by glass bricks,
I pushed my tongue far between her thighs so slowly.
The sun fell into the Caribbean sea and rose again
on the tiled floor of an outdoor shower, walled by glass bricks.
Before the Pacific, on a rock ledge we made love
with the ocean over my shoulder and the world beyond hers.
Until it seemed as though time had begun again
on a rock ledge before the Pacific had ever been.
seven
Across the horizon of her window, the day begins to darken
and I wonder about talking or will our faces remain unsaid.
I'm thinking of an hour later and see a candle long within her,
as though I am also tallow, after burning soon to melt.
I think of smearing color and these scarves which wait for wrists,
of being tied together as I'm waiting to be now.
eight
Sound travels and I can see her in an elevator
descending from the day, perhaps talking, now driving.
She's waiting at a stop-light with one hand slid between her legs,
rubbing gently, she catches another driver's eye and suffers him a smile.
Pulling off the road to buy wine, she walks to the liquor store
tired with heavy Monday, she's alive within it too.
The bottle is cold in her hand, she pays the clerk and says
'you too' as he makes change, telling her have a good night.
Alone on the bed I can feel her car door closing
ten minutes before it gets here.
nine
I hear an answermachine through the bedroom wall, a woman's voice
and want so badly not to hear hers. I think of sleeping.
Of allowing her to wake me, but know that I could never design a heart
while waiting in the hallway.
ten
It's before six and in German also, before sex. A gull calls my name,
but the most unusual of other phenomena hold no interest.
As a woman sings 'come to me now', heels walk across the floor below me,
a paper bag is screwed into a smaller ball, a cork opens, a glass too.
She lays together in two pieces joined and we begin silently
our limbs become confused, and things happen, I remember little, everything.
She is flexible, my mouth dry and I lose my voice, coming on her,
not in her, as though to share some child, ourselves in pieces joined.
eleven
In the light, awake, in a railcar traveling North,
I think again of the waiting, for we don't begin and end.
Only endlessly begin again
my cock is awake also and not in memory.
As I think of how she kissed me before the airport
and how I should have pushed this tube into her own.
For to be traveling North, back within another suit, talking,
yet stood with this piece of me, would be a better way.
I dream her in a hotel room sucking full
as she watches some screen.
Or in a Wisconsin bathtub with this snake resting its head
between her breasts and sliding.
twelve
And always is it different and always it's the same;
soon I will be in her railcar, traveling to the South land lower.
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