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People Around These Parts An old one holds his hat as though praying, leans on his shovel and smokes: vapors ignite with night. His dust should mingle with these stones. His lips remind me of my daughter’s lonesome mouth, of my wife’s longing mouth, a haze around the moon. I know I’m stardust that sizzles down to this gravel. “Can’t have these stones.” Well, who are you people? And they won’t tell me. “So what if we have no identity,” they shout. And one particularly pretty one says, “I could love you, if you would scream on key.” I could love you if I were a rainbow trout thrashing beautifully with my fins against these golden rocks. Unless Horses Ride
the the way these flowers do—horses not wild, not wild as flowers are, though purplish in the right light, now, while the sun is low, they seem more red or blue than purple like the flowers spilling out of window boxes onto a street or in front of someone who once lived and had flowers spread before him as he rode through the streets on his donkey or horse—it could have been a horse —what did Adonis ride through town on, anyway were purple flowers on this mesa then, were they in bloom, or did these flowers ride in some man’s saddlebags, unsuspected as he bumped over rocks and railroad ties, him longing for his wife, did these seeds spill from his sacks, hidden,— could he have made his fortune from them because they are so beautiful, but small, or am I inventing this and are these flowers wild and not sown from anyone’s horse? That Little Shop in
Taos with hundreds of crystals —many talismans many lives enclosed in odd relics : Bob’s shinbone : Sheila’s goblet : Andy’s garters How Tarot Can Make You
Rich is sold in the back while two folks on the the front lawn throw cards and burn incense for the tourists —didgeridoo and anjunabeats surround us inside and out the wood frame shop while hundreds of strange insects crawl happily oblivious to their former lives as stockbrokers lawyers and poets What Powell Must Have
Felt before we turned this river into his lake covering billion year old rock with silt and fishbones so old we are a pebble to how old this canyon is wits must have shook to see the vastness and gone enraged to the rim to be killed mistaken for escapists —one arm acrobat more monkeyish to them heroic to us will they discover what stone cold Powell knows our bones indebted to the minerals below
Kitty the little paws that can’t grip a pencil no light for the body no candles for the bedstead keen for the earth for the pen writing “earth” —sorrow soil covers us all peeping creeping small sparrow weeping through the pines pines not song Song rolls with the waves the wind driving the waves sand as it runs out glass for the wavering streams into waves old panes unwaved glass see through it built too close to shore you will undo me you gaudy thing Poem this stone etched by hand unknown, this pot glazed with old colors, these colors lost to us, breath lost, us lost— this mural stretching, this glyph, this stele, this mosaic, our figure, this figure some figure somewhere modeled Icarus birds migrate, find their way, their own way, guided, maybe, by sun, stars, instinct, but not landscape since forests have gone, cities, replaced the hills, and farms, the prairies —a thing changeless most others have rocked to, chained to, or spun by like tether balls yoked to an invisible staff, a thing that guides these birds has a name, but I’ve lost it— still geese, wild ducks swing through the sky like squadrons of angles pointing away from the hypotenuse of your bones People Who Disappear in a burst of lightning —struck soundly —fill the rolls of missing persons —as though God reached out and said, “Take that,” then took them burning to His breast, their hair, singed, brushing lightly against His nipples and their moans tickling His ears.
Baby does baby dream along or is it separate like men from each other and from God who after all had to give Jonah a pearl to light Leviathan’s bowels and see all that had come to pass— what fun it is to be all knowing— not in the belly of a fish does Jonah still dream the fish’s dreams or the fish, Jonah’s? a whale’s baby might know what its mama intends— yet they say the angels come to erase a baby’s memory at birth but what about a fish can rub out the thought of sharing briny sex with three instead of one— maybe it was fun though Jonah’s not telling and baby can’t recall cause Jonah won’t recall the fish’s humming that shook his ribs and thrummed his backbone until Leviathan and man were one Zenatra My daughter, Hayley, sits like the Budda and meditates on Betty Bear, a yellow chewy. What was her face before her parent’s birth? She looks like my aunt with her chubby cheeked smile but has my square forehead. Maybe she’ll like sushi better than her mom likes sushi. When Hayley backpedals her walker, Frank croons, “You make me feel so young.” Hayley mews, scratches my neck and nose, too. The sound of her satin-quilt bear rattlin’— the sound of myself rattlin’. She screams like true cloud-water. Sometimes when she yells, suddenly there is no Hayley— just sound.
Blond in Black
Leather A fire that won’t speak has darkness at its soul. So when you pass me and don’t say hello, I feel my tongue. I wish I had guts enough to still you, but you rush like iron and can’t be halted by smooth lines tossed at your back. Your silence moves me to you: your no-song, a glory meant for much more than me. May I touch your sunglasses? They show, “She is untouchable,” but more, they hide your fire and keep us from marking your darkness as a shroud. Foggy Bottom I stood and she sat. It gets that neat when the Metro’s full— even a thief must rise to allow the lady a seat. While I admired her, she read some brief from her firm. We didn’t speak nor look to one another for romance— our meeting would be happenstance. Our train shook her station as it stopped and she, tripping over my right foot, landed square in my embrace. Her eyes— what could she say, “Get away”— they had those blue flecks in their gray, and I, being less a man, might have let her get away. Here she stands, another chick— a sonnet is a moment’s taste, a kick.
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Thoughts on Pattern Recognition by William GibsonOneTwo Three Four Five Six
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