THE THINGS OF YOUTH ARE WILD HORSES
 

Beautiful boy,
blonde androgynous angel
whose skin hums of summer.
You fall out of Eden
to go in search of the pusher.
You slide, rather than walk,
down Sunset
where Morrison exacted his myth.
And the girls who are pink and raw
with all the promise
their eyes can hold wait for you.
In the rooms at the Chateau Marmont
they come to you.
They rise from the dead
to taste your sweetness.
And in these motel mirrors,
wiped clean each morning,
you are told
You Will Be Beautiful Forever.
Does it matter
that an overweight comedian
died a little each night on these bathroom tiles.
Does it matter that a 17 year old prostitute
was strangled and stuffed
beneath the sink.
Does it matter?
The stars will keep shining
in their mad constellations.
The curves of the rich
will keep being kind.
Little ones in countries we'll never see
will continue to wake with hunger pains.
And throughout all
you will be beautiful.
 

You tried to be holy
but the world-eaters consumed you.
You tried to remember the smell
of oleander and earth in July,
the color of the dragonflies.
You tried to remember how warm
the summer rain felt across your forehead.
But these things were ashes
in your own holocaust.

The things of youth are wild horses.

And it is no mystery
the way the world turns.
They smile and they move on.
They smile and they move on.
 
 
 
 

SWALLOWING LIGHT
             For Jonathon
 

From out of nowhere the stars
And stars for miles burn their time
In an allegiance of desire,
A gift of longing
 

That is constantly being born.
Music alone remains, a guitar
Stringing the moments
Into some kind of semblance.
 

What can I do for you,
The only son of a deserter who gave me
Goosebumps and vertigo by moving too fast.
How often you wished on stars
 

That were already dead.
With all of your effort you will not burn
Like those stars, shining years later
In the atmosphere falsely,
 

The beggars crawling from their shelter
To count on you.
Perhaps one day the lovers you left dry
Will come to moisten your black mouth
 

With fruit and rain,
To finally conclude the red
Initiation of your kiss.
For you there will be no shortness of breath.
 

For you there will be no singular suffering,
Only the tide receding permanently,
The brown and purple of nostalgia
Tainting the strange and the familiar.
 

You will not be like those others
Eating their hearts out for religion or love.
Your hounds, damp with nature,
Will prove loyal. All of them.
 
 

II
 

The future is everything.
I'll give you divinations.
Overwhelmed on some gold November night
You will enter a chapel for warmth
 

And hear Ave Maria sung from the balcony
By an intoxicated, melancholy man.
You will laugh, sing a few lines,
Wipe a solitary tear from your eye.
 

It will not be your beloved who discovers
The constellation of beauty marks on your body,
But a nameless whore
You met at the fruitstand on the corner.
 

The past is everything.
I'll give you recollections.
Back when the sidewalk cement on Main Street
In your home town had yet to dry,
 

When you were still a humble boy
You carved your name with a stick
And left one hand print.
This was your only immortality.
 
 

Years later the recurring scene
From that Plutonian summer of our reunion
Is one lone sunflower towering
By the kitchen sink and falling
 

With the glass over and over.
Picking it up each time I felt small,
Like Alice when she obeyed the note
That made her shrink.
 

I continued that way,
Unable to reverse alienation
As another raw season
Healed over the last.
 

III
 

In the hour of confrontation and cleansing
Your skin was soft as the feathers
On the breast of a newborn bird,
As the down of a dead dandelion
 
 

Children make wishes on.
Your hand reached mine in a gesture
Of understanding. Shapeless and cool
My palm felt against yours,
 

My tears staining the ivory of your sleeve.
Your hand reached mine,
The hand of the failed lover.
From beyond the walls
 

I heard a pigeon with two hearts,
A restless dog in the orange groves
Where the fruit leaned gently,
Polished by the moon.
 

I heard the old Spanish woman sing softly
On the front steps,
The tapping of a warped screen door.
I heard all the questions your silence was hatching.
 

I hardly moved from the edge of the bed
Before daybreak came.
South forever.
The cawing of immaculate black crows.
 

How you slept soundly on and on
Into the dark courtyards and rising grey pillars
Of the next evening
Without once changing position.
 

In this I understood
The sum of your inheritance,
How the mornings were ashen
When we awoke already settled
 

Like the frozen figures of Pompeii,
Unharmonious and overcome.
(Meanwhile the sisters warning me again
Of shadows and tragic adventure,
 

Mockingly in one ear)
What a comfort they were.
Why this burning then?
My meditations were simple, my confessions candid.
 

I was soft in the negotiations.
I did not censor the obscene.
I made music out of you.
I made poetry from you.
 
 

IV
 
 

The passage of time witnessed
The skull evolving, the warm blooded
Creatures blooming and growing extinct.
The human touch proved to be a dangerous act.
 

I am knee deep in the history of things,
Contemplating the conclusion, the nature
Of farewells and chance meetings.
From out of nowhere the stars
 

And stars for miles burn their time
In an allegiance of desire.
Here we go.
South forever.
 
 
 
 

THE END OF DESIRE

The door is ajar
with an amber light inside.
There is a white gardenia in my hair
and I am waiting
for your mouth
to spell me out.

Like diamond dust the snow
fell that night I held
your face in my hands
and told you
sin isn't rare anymore.
 

Why I dreamed there was a serpent
in my heart
coiled in the shape
of your initials.
 

Every home
turns to leaves and ashes.
Dirty reflections
and dry offerings.
After the end of desire
even birdsong
had become an unnatural thing.
 
 
 

MARTYR, DO YOU DREAM

Martyr,  do you dream of what if
while watching the girls
conspire about love on the corner?

You are caught up in symbols
Of obscenity.

But Sweetheart, if you were a bird
black & swift above the horizon
you would know how small
the heart of a stranger
can be.
 
 
 
 

THE BOY WHO ATE FIRE

Like every hell,
extinguishing sin.
My mouth pale with devotion,
and silent with burning.

What will the angels,
blonde and pouting,
let us take from this union,
unholy as the ecstastic's dream?
It is a
dark and unfamiliar thing,
this flawed majesty
of ecstasy and suffering.

Then, as it always was,
the shine of wheat fields
in November
outside
the motel room window,
and every morning the bossa nova
of the 6:45 train.

And you,
forever with a carnival tune
on your lips
and fire
on your tongue.
 
 
 
 

RAPTURE

Who can remember
that above every storm
there is only blue?
 

Sacred lines of ancient scriptures
circle around you.
You flinch at the alter,
Star-gazer,
where the Virgin's lilies
are in bloom,
spotted red, spread wide
with nectar gleaming.
 

You think of forbidden
4 letter words:
Love. Lust. Fuck.

      Believe.

Here is faith
beneath my breast,
and here are the wayward angels
moving a flesh & arrow crown
around my head.

Later, in the temple,
incense, wine and doves
in a mesh of chaos,
and through the stained glass,
exotic orphan,
the timber of your voice
pressing for truth.
 
 
 

IT IS ONLY
 

         As a child you grew
           Rare and wild-
          One cheek toward the sun,
           The other shadowed like a moonflower
              At a lunar eclipse.
 
 
 
 

Now it is only your voice
and the bells of Saint Matthews,
and the gospel after midnight.
Now it is the coming of Autumn
and the slow declension
of a dying light.

Now it is only
the silence of thee,
the prayer of an old man,
the tattooed crucifix
and the quarter moon
hanging like a scythe
in the trees.

Now it is only your voice
that returns to me.
 
 
 

RUBY IN ECSTASY

How easy comes surrender
in a dirty blackened corner.
From nowhere your skin,
already carved with my name,
blood pressed to my sleeve
like a worn transfer.
 

You drop to your knees,
overcome
with divinity.
 

And you dream ~
You are in the pale tea room
with your hand on her knee,
moving upward
toward the blushing spots.
 

The city outside
shakes down with decaying leaves
and the tired horses
pushing through Central Park pause,
and all the suspects
with sharp hidden charms
wait for the alleyways to fade
and grow dark.
 

      And later, she will prick you
       With a knife
         Just to see
            If you can bleed.
 
 
 

IN THE DREAM

Leaves of desire
cover the windows,
color of fire and sky.

And in the dream
I awaken at the 247 Motel
and twice call out your name.
Through the parted curtain
the street lamp shines
like the prop
of a full moon,
though it flickers in November wind,
imperfect and hallowed.

And this was your dream
of ecstasy and thorns,
of divinity falling like a star
from the North.
 
 
 

IDLE FIRE
 

There is the black and white
Angel at the Sepulchre
Of a dead rock star.
Cigarette smoke
Dances like limbo ghosts,
But there is no music.

       April and its perrenials
       Startling forsythia
      And lilies, sign of everlasting.

A whore with a phone to her ear
On the steps of a downtown
Apartment house.
She is wrapped in blue
And knows
That kissing leads to heroin.

And everywhere
Idle fire
With nowhere to go.
 
 
 

THEE EVERLASTING

Madonna with sperm.
Proserpine with pomegranates.
Venus with a halo of butterflies
And a sword to her breast.
Lucrezia with poison
And credibility.
White poppy held in the hands
Of an overdosed beauty.
The brightly startled world
Of Rossetti.

      Always with a mouth that has been kissed.

Dante you have called
Lovers forth
From a dark necropolis

And here they sit,
In the electrified cold gallery,
Century old,
Waiting for the sweetness
Of immortality.
 

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