Absently dreaming

I have seen them riding seaward
Combing the hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black
   - T. S. Eliot, "The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

The melancholic seaside smiled
absently
dreaming

The waves pretended silences
They understood

Flop

the now
sentenced
to fault

speech
depends on the eyes' voices
your voice
my lips

step and flop

Feather

O the lovely bankteller, like a moose he
Rode my spirit quite outside my clothes
And chrysanthemums sprouted I assure you
Out my nipples when he kissed them.
     -Dorothea Lasky, On Old Ideas

The weightless
svelte
drifting
sexual feather: your body

Your body follows
many a exulting
flows of jazz
It follows them truly

Your body's occasional youth
swallows my hips
(my keen hips)
Your body curves and swallows
my keen hips

It dips into my height
(arched and fragile)
It stings it
Your body dips into my height
and stings it with firm weather

God distinctly has pitied us both
has pitied both our lips
leaving them breathless

God distinctly has pitied my
wise
nifty
half-grown breasts
my laughing body
my lisping flesh

but not my feet
not my bungling
stumbling feet

not my steps
which would rather part
before they tousle your
agile
slid
svelte
drifting
feathery body

Your body
following truly
through a dribbling moan
of jazz


Variation on E. E. Cummings' God pity me whom (God distinctly has).

En busca del tiempo perdido XVIII

Jugamos que tu eras yo era tu
decía tu nombre y soñé
que era a mí a quien llamaba
    -Adriana Enciso, Espejo

Rara, y ocasionalmente, el tiempo también encarna una imagen antigua, propia, que creíamos extinta: una fotografía viva y de colores nítidos: una voz de infancia cantando versos que habíamos olvidado, con el mismo color en la piel, la misma forma en los ojos, y el cabello como lo peinaba nuestra madre.

Rara, y ocasionalmente, el tiempo nos muestra que somos, también, fantasmas de otros cuerpos.

Happily never after

There are a few exceptions, a few provisos and a couple of quid pro quos.
   -The Genie (impersonating somebody else in Disney's Aladdin)

Don't get me wrong, dear
If I were to make somebody else's pancakes
every morning and afternoon and every morning
and afternoon and again every morning
I would consider myself a slave
(plus, I'm all for a healthier, diversified diet)

I do love going to creperies
and bakeries, and pizzeries
and taqueries
Though I suspect you're not the
we're-dining-out-tonight kind of guy,
hansdome boy

I also love summertime and moonlight
and winter and sunlight
much too much
to be bothered with grief

I would just like to know
all a jazz artists knows about jazz
Maybe play some Django chords
or sing when you're near
there's such an air of spring about it

Still, there is one art
I have come to master - that of losing
(even losing you, the joking voice,
a gesture I love, I shan't have lied)

Variations on Angela Ball's Jazz and Elizabeth Bishop's One Art