No Further Than Forgotten

When as if entangled in dry air

A memory opens like a dark rose

And again you lean close to whisper

Your breath caressing my neck

Your curls touching my cheek

I can’t sleep

Night breathes darkly on my face

And unbuttons my mind with dreaming fingers

I think of your lips

Your mouth a pink rosette

O sweet cockade of passion!

I have several festivals inside me

One of whose doors

Only your voice opens

My heart is a cavernous ballroom

Where silk-slippered acolytes

Dance among the mirrors

I have tombs of air inside me—

Hear my dry mumble

Echo in your city’s yellow canyons

Until I saw you

I never knew a woman

Without a shadow

O fire of naked flowers

Far from these avid fingers

What good does it do

To hold out the hand of my thoughts?

Since I came home

Spring squats on bare haunches

The hungry season waits

Like a dog in the road 

The Pernicious Advice of Dreams

Tonight I take no interest in the dark

Thundery torrent
Of angry decimals pelting the window

Tonight I feel like Hindu numerals

Before there was a symbol

For the missing position

When zero trembled brightly

Just out of earshot

Where music turned to noise

I remember you sweetly

Took the corner of your napkin and wiped

A prime number from my lip

I remember how you stood

Suddenly before a tribunal of angry algorithms

Having found among your many blonde hairs

A gray one

O fire of naked flowers

Far from these avid fingers!

In the rule of three

Multiply the fruit

By the desire

And divide by the measure

So you get the fruit of the desire

Deciphering These Snow-Ridden Thoughts

Certainly this able-bodied day

Fills up the page

Distance always occurs

Where light comes to rest

Imagine how to write it

The ill-fated sentence of a still-

Born affection squeezed between

Parentheses O demonstrative act

Of love be adorned and so forth

Be but some tender estrangement

Ceaselessly deferred and given

To simplicity given to simple words

Maybe too a common prayer

Or a double dash why not--

I haven’t had a hair cut in weeks

I haven’t even cut and cleaned

This intractability of fragments

A necessary return to distance

A space where I might find this

Inscribed date happening in silence

A precise imprint slowly forming

Right here on the very spot

Imagine a dome of cavernous air

Imagine!

Phosphorescent volumes of thought

Moons among demolished moons

Light in the Attic

Gustavo says it’s qualities of light

In whatever he looks at

The way someone’s past glimmers up

The trunk and into eucalyptus leaves

The way broken sunlight carves

A throat as radiant as yours

Or how a cloud shadow tills

Tender alleys in this yellow city

What does he know

Holding on to it for grace

For your silence!

Gustavo goes walking

With some intent to knock

He goes walking towards the sky

That passionate suffering can’t wrinkle

He goes walking

Where the sun blinks its infant eyes

Aflame in this immortal desire to die

The Sun Scalding the Little Day

So you promise we won’t die

A flashing bolt

A sudden kiss

Just laid onto the page

Just there you say

In whatever form

We can find it

Perhaps like a snow fart

Perhaps a tiny city

Drowned in a snow globe

Shake well touch on

Anonymously statuary

Watches us you say

The way we look

Our faces

Emblems of weary futurism

All winky and all kissy

All wet with digital ink

This isn’t paradise

It’s just another way of saying

Clouds consist entirely

Of ice-crystals 

And lateness

You say isn’t just

A book of poems

David Shapiro wrote

No way not at all

It’s also colors

We see through waves

As we stand by the balustrade
Admitting that this hotel 

Will be the death of us