Voicemail Anthem

Face – stay the face – O
don't be yet a name – Be not

the Beatrice. (Of longing.) You're
a nose, hot damn! And what you do best's a

criminal beauty. Don't be a word I needs must
mispronounce. If you do – even though

we have no child, I will have gained and lost
a kingdom. Don't laugh. City's not

as in movies, harmless. Here they can take away my
papers. Be. In the personal mystery. Not in

the phantom ring of
telephone in the shower, & when I get there, dripping –

Nothing. Nostril! Where's your passport?
Nostril, rip her. She's too thin and

neither snow nor pine-branch. Listen: stars are blooming.
Out of me. And I've become a blooming place. Almost

America—

 

Oranges

The man’s on crack and he’s touching himself.
He does this at present, knowing I can see
him. What’s around him, the before and after, is

blurry: (orange
train-seats.) I
was trying to eat an orange, but—

I see, he touches himself to open up his present. Must he
really? Well, since I’ve eaten his open past and future—
I’ve these two hollow orange skins, but the meal itself’s

blurry. Oh, I see:
he’s a colleague, really, in the service of the present. Or
is he history’s little bitch, touching himself? How to

know? —I know: take him home
with me. No! No! No!
No! No! He’s cracked. Here, instead,

have this orange. No, no— it’s a present. Oh, wait—
he’s not leaving?! I see: he’s eaten the
present. I’m just its orange skin.

 

Fall Hopscotch

In thorns a mourning is, for roses.
Into the leaves lead: dark green doors.
Can stemless roses also mourn their thorns?

If mourning be a stone, the thorns are doors.
A friend’s a friend: the stillness of one leaf.
The morning rose on dark green stems of hills…

Morning’s a rose: for whom, then, mourns the thorn?
All mourning is for roses, is their dark green friend.
On hills, now stemless, dark green stones crowd close…

A thorny rose stems leaden through the hill:
its dark green crown stills morning to a stone.
Morning is stone: can mourning be a friend?

Friend, close the door.

 

“The Moment of Love!” (a Board Game)

Do you take this—    —No.
        (Summer night. No stars.)

        Let’s try again: do you take these...to be your—    —No, I’ll
pass: they opened while I was sleeping. Do I look to you

a geometrician? Correction: I’m imprecise. And the city
          didn’t keep you up, ‘twas the reverse:   as soon

          as you lay to bed, the pop-up blocks folded. (Into
your nightie.) Yours truly,
 

I’m on a vague country’s border, touching another. A
          facsimil’d myself—

          words— Xeroxes/ of words
handwritten by the prettier sister (it would be easy to say:

sister in the future; but no, she’s in the present, it’s terrible—)
         & all my life I was groomed

         for this: not to feel a thing
for Brooklyn Bridge. It snaps (a rubber band.) —Do you take this—?   —No!… No. a weak
                                                                                                      one, almost Yes—

into what hole do I shout:
                                        —Gentleness!     The tap

                                        has broken, and I was never a do-it-yourselfer. It has
been months since they rang, am I—

am I still in the secret service of the present?      —Well fuck, now do you
              take this!?    —YES! I take these roses for my awful bedded

             roses— I’ll take the bridge, too— put them on
my card!      That was too quick. But well, hey, the creaky

machinery begins to turn     Again     A wheel
           in mud       No— In air—,       & child-in-play in

           the darkening nursery— O play. As light pulls
back and toys grow horns in the gloom. The moment of love