Bucket List

Cooking beans & rice.

Returning every goddamn cigar butt

Samuel Fuller left smoldering on my Persian carpet.

Smelling cornbread & watching dust-quiet songs

falling on the tongues of handmade shoes.

Tasting a well-turned phrase. 

Pondering the distance between heaven & hell 

in the eye of the bee. Watching glass melt.

Lassoing bot-flies with a lover's hair.

Mailing turn-of-the-century postcards.

Singing with Sandy Samantha & Miranda

& writing their names in the river with a knife.

Standing beside chiaroscuro mannequins akimbo.

Making continuous line drawings with a green pen light.

Dancing mazurkas in moonlight

& soft-shoeing sunrise.

Witnessing the singular moment.

Thumbing the petosky stone in my pocket.

Ignoring the glass eye & tattoo of the last

mukhtar to sing down rain in this desert

Not Guilty, I Said

When I was 19 & drove my car into Lake Michigan, 

these are the things I gave away.

I gave nineteen palm kisses to all the girls who didn't love me.

I gave an Abhayamudra to my twin brother, Night,

sitting in the seat beside me.

I gave the Bellamy salute to American Legion Post Number 1964.

I gave the clenched right fist to my high school teachers;

they knew what I meant.

I gave the fist bump to intangible friends

who feared the handshake.

I gave the Moutza to all the people who wanted to do

away with collective bargaining.

I gave the ILY to all the girls who didn't love me.

I gave the Varadramudra to the crows who would pick my bones.

I gave the thumbs up & the thumbs down

& the telephone gesture to all the girls who didn't love me.

I gave them the sign of the horns.

When I was 19 & drove my car into Lake Michigan,

I was a saint

who didn't want to be found.

Southerly Wind

The sky is the color of Regina Spektor's eyes, 

a water-thin turquoise ocean, you say,

and clouds rush like an anxious flotilla northward. 

The Japanese magnolia is blooming, you say,

and the pink-white blossoms 

open like the cupped hands of our daughters. 

Would you believe me, my wife, if I said

I lied to you, if I said I lied

about talking to you in my sleep?

What would you say if I said

I never thought I could love anyone,

anyone but you? Would you believe me?

The Japanese magnolia trembles in this wind.

The tree unflowers, you tell me, one-by-one, 

the nine petals of each bloom.

 

Oh, my friend, we have no words 

for the blush and tumble of these petals

littering the winter-bleached lawn.

Look, I say. A  ragged line of crows 

meanders against the wind, calling 

onesies and twosies to one another. I suppose

I need this day to flow, to keep right on flowing,

just as you do, my darling, just as I wish it to

keep on pouring into my heart, into our hearts.

Tomorrow, I'll write a poem

and say we walked barefoot on the lawn. 
I'll say we danced like teenage lovers

beneath the Japanese magnolia,

and we watched, we watched each other

kicking the fallen petals windward.  

And I'll tell you the truth. I'll tell you the truth.

The sky is the color of your turquoise eyes.

Metropolis Maria

She whispered my desire 

through a smoke-ring smile.

She said: You think you're in love, 

but it makes you kind of nervous 

to say so. She said:

My pistol is the Devil's right hand.

  

I touched you with my bronze epistemology, 

she said, but you never know what happens 

until the deal goes down. Nothing touched 

the trigger but the Devil's right hand.

I said: I think I’m in love. 

Think I’m in love. Think I'm in

the Devil's right hand.

When Yesterday Was Young

You saw the new moon last night, 

and it was holding the old moon in its arms.

Four-and-twenty stars fell,

twenty-four brief needles of light

that kept my deepest secrets.

You saw night lean on me, my lover.

Tom Waits was singing something

about moon-shadow mosquitoes and sour lemonade

and the forgotten lyrics of  “The Nut-Brown Maid.”

You saw night look back and wait for me,

and I didn't wait for you.

Desert Sand Blues

I was not intent on standing 

for the next elections,

said Hosni Mubarak.

I thought I

was in your sight,

your heart.

I sobbed and sighed.

Adieu, love,

adieu, love,

untrue love.

In Scarlet Town, Where I Was Born

If I thought I saw Bill Evans 

leaning like the smoky shadow of a crow 

over cracked piano keys, 

if I saw his narrow shoulders hunched, 

pale hands poised like two forgotten thoughts, 

his corduroy jacket wrinkled at the spine—

if I thought I saw all that,

I'd tell the horns to shut their goddamn mouths.

It only takes one smooth pull on a cigarette,

one long push—and the smoke smiles

dark thoughts of a room

you can't remember. 

That's what I said to the man at the door,

just before he tossed me and my military ID 

card onto the curb.

Mark Winkler was playing piano in a club across the street,

and the rain was falling on New Orleans

Strawberry Larry