ONE AND A HALF SONNETS
FOR ANNE WALDMAN                    
While remembering Frank O'Hara and Ted Berrigan

Dress me up and I'll out with a veil
The light is now blasted in the hall
We'll get married to pose on the stairs
(I have a thing about balustrades)
New taboo connection might get passionate
The firemen rush through undergrowth to see
Person on the bed is badly shaved
Room is arranged for crazy notions
We are looking for the Golden Age
Of LANGUAGES and MARRIAGES
Who's masquerading in the lobby?
Get out of your bubble bath fast!
I'll do beautiful promise things for you
You surpass me in your spangled tutu.

The light is now blasted in the hall
Our living room is for crazy notions
We'll get married to get passionate
In the bubble bath and badly shaved
The firemen rush to pose on the stairs
Dress me up in the water city
I'm out to find some LANGUAGES
Some beauty.
 

MEMORY DREAM 9                
                                        
Above my head his face high in a light
somewhere in a light outside dimension I thought
I must remember voices struck us the night we met
outside the big party doors and how when
he gave I particularly loved his
allegro, its complete grace
although he's separate from the color I'd call it now.

Ah but I couldn't do it
I couldn't get out of my mind often enough
in his banquet hall of solace and amazement;
couldn't risk the sentimental or shout down "the sturdies"         
to lie with him quite sincerely
under the pianoforte
at the last royal wedding of the old millennium.

MEMORY DREAM 13                 

                                     Moon over Oensingen
at 4 a.m. on the highway there are so many places
                                     While you were waking lavishly
I was off and thinking repeatedly like a litany:
          Today will be
                               freshness and flowers
          overlooking, of course, obstacles of that concept

I should have stayed with you on a wait-here basis
            roots and all, unafraid — Stay!  Wait here!
should have savored soil and crystals and those other
            signals I found        eager or angry
But caught in the mountains we city people
            fear the moon's dashing down, surrounding us
Such clear space such angular generosity