Isn’t this always the case,
returning from afar to a field of sea
like the one we benched-pressed from the coffee table,
on a plaid book, that resembled the chest of heaven.
Rubble of grinds and the polite pollutions of talk
generally find its place. Looks are exchanged
for a sample form of credit. It can be anything,
even a teal pellucid peel of fruit.
This kind of conversation happens inside the room-house,
taking the rugs, scrubbing the air, making the walls nice.
After all, each habitat has a sentry
to protect what a century of dreaming had left.
The bereft, stooped shoulders of a girl waiting.
And the pistachio-littered manuals about mating. So
you stroll down the spiral attic
and emerge in the yard of yesteryear,
pruning the hedges and squeezing
the aquatic memories of your screwy self.
Like an octagon one holds up to the light
to see that is itself light. All along
the boards had been roughed and spruced.
Time ticked off about a lost appointment
but the counter had a sentient quality,
the way nail polish can give off a sheen
not unlike a cut-out from Nineteen Such-and-Such.
When those that inhabit and take over
and renew their frayed selves are done with the shelves
then what is left over is a digit like a fortune cookie.
Its brittle pecan hope is one with the picture
of a boxer your father had told you about
in the raining movie theater. And the garbage
are various sentiments like that of quartz. Chintz fabrics.
He remains in the house and strokes the invisible railing.
He takes off his shoes and sees on the set stage
a man with his laptop thinking of the monsoon and
scribbles off a note on lettuce leaf about how soon
the moon will come. But it never does. Remote, childish,
and not without a sense of purpose that undermined
the situation. What was the situation? Relative
unease with too much easiness. The restless linens
and lavender mazes that had built up in the sink
and chided you for your politics (the hangman’s noose);
the ashtray you had always wanted from Bilbao.
I don’t pretend to tell you what you should do now.
All I can say out on the catwalk, in the shut dimities,
and the blue peach quiet, is to strum a finger
and feel things out. A talent for vanishing
usually comes in handy around the third act
or so, when I-don’t-know-dudes show up.
This was the beginning of Figaro.
A wooden kitchen where a maid
measured a bed and removed the floor.
A vanilla tissue had on it the vestige
of plump, starry crumbs. A kind of
materiality of printer cables and dumplings. Shove
off, you tell the maroon sky, its skimpy patrol boats
hovering. Bunched damp petals stick out of your coat.
Two persons, meanwhile, are stalking the dusk
for their final dialogue. Maybe even a monologue
will ensue which will explain why said actions
had come to a corkscrew moment. An addled breath
we can mistake for conscience, for our ideal.
You know, like a statue.
MAY 2009