the brave white hat

Wearing the brave white hat
wondering where the hell you went
these days represent stairs
dancing down the choreography
of time and light. The body
decays—drinking again.
No state of grace driving up
outside the door. I am
abandoning the ship with its jazz rock
and those other Narnian fantasies,
staving off the hollow bell,
the locked closet of this fear.
And where the hell did you go
in the midst of that whirlpool of moments?
Why won't you tell even one
secret, like the shrouds of your sailor's
warning, covering the moon?
Can't you take it any more?
It was your decision: Don't you
see the points beginning to tangle
in what little that is real?
Now the bullshit is like a normal cartoon.
Bullshit just packing this coffin.
I should've known, all the risks you take,
the killing concrete, the six hour bruise
of night, the laughing chance, the odd
gamble with death, this would be
the one time you wouldn't bet.
Anyway, I'm taking off the brave white hat,
that damn hat, and having another drink.
It's 97 outside, in here the heart
is glazed with black ice.



Alison Gaughan. Not much to explain. She had destroyed me by this point. I admit, I allowed that to happen. The heart is some sort of icon for that which can be lost. This life is so much about losing. My world, though more detailed, becomes smaller as the years pass and I wonder how much of this reflected any actual people. Some, though perhaps not as much as I'd like to believe. I miss you all.

"laughing chance" comes from Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues," which Alison quoted to me in a letter, explaining our losses. "They call Alabama the Crimson Tide..."

the pump shudders

listened to the tape last night
heard your voice
prayed for a dying or a return
the usual farce from inside
drank of the stars but fell
back on the bed flesh in my hand
concentric rings of light
each curved into a scene of you
like vertigo the pump shudders
your low laughter breaks the current
into sparks the semen
spraying a diamond into lace
and then I was on an asteroid
no sense of movement
the vacuum would not carry
the sound of your words
this rock tumbled through the positions
no ribbons no toe shoes no form
no you


Coming from the time in the end of the 70s when I became involved in an affair with someone I shouldn't have and the forced and abrupt separation from this person. Lost love is a powerful form of grief; the image of being on an asteroid with neither air nor movement accurately describes my existence in 1980-81. The person spoken of here was a serious student of the ballet. This is one of a number of pieces with a masturbation subtext. The pump shudders.

the Lady in the dream

Annaliese the breaths of my days
grow small leafs in a pagan design
symmetrical the constant golden
dramatic skein of another life
leads the season the notes falling
from the flute truth served as best
one can your frail figure the woman
in the wings a candled memory
which is thy truth? The leaves
upon the wind in their dancing
stories telling of the solar river
the lunar catharsis points reached
gates opened poems spoken?
Annaliese you are there unremembered
truly but the song and the wind and
the summer of this life has now passed