All birthed and happy

I walk along these hillsides

in the summer 'neath the sunshine

I'm feathered by the moonlight

falling down on me

Words: A murder of one by Counting Crows

Moonchild

The stars inside us

Christopher Poindexter, Crumble Life Series, Poem 43

The spaces between the stars

Christopher Poindexter, The Universe and Her and I, #247

If you ignore the world and find it in you to swirl the word (or, Same bones, different skeletons; or, Pick your poisson)

Eros scrabbles to rose and rage
to rose and rage
to rage
to smite homesick hours or violet types
flowers that say "love it" if you listen

                                                                       Me, I do 
and don’t feel it matters that evil thrives
in live, that we tinker and smash 
everything down to bits and then
try to patch a path back home, it’s our lotto 
in life, to have no clue
what a natural disaster is
when that disaster is us. 

                     Besides, what can I say about
language other than it’s an anal egg 
in need of one glorious u. Words
or sword — pick your poisson. Every time 
I try to peak into speaking, the bag
of gab to learn what our noodles
are really up to, I get flummoxed
that the tools I use
are the stool I stand on
to see a way in or out. I can’t even tell 
if I’m more trapped or rapt,

if meaning’s mean or play’s
a dumb waiter riding numbly
up and down. But have you noticed 
read becomes dear
if you ignore the world
as you find it and find it in you
to swirl the word, in the way 
solve and loves are the same 
bones, different skeletons. 


(Personal selection of Bob Hicok's The pregnancy of words)

Eleven

On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. You’re high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong? 

- Wendy Cope, "Waterloo Bridge"

I say eleven, you say eleven
I say... what? And you said... what else?
Some details do begin to fade
like they do when old photographs
are exposed too long to sunlight
or forgotten in dark, humid corners

Yet others remain spotless
like the way you tried on that hat
or the way you sipped all those iced coffees
The memory of all that
Time doesn't seem to be succeeding
in taking that away from me

The way your smile
does certainly beam
The way you said
how much you like to sing
even if off key
The way you still
sometimes
haunt my dreams
Time is not being able
to take that away from me

The way we first danced... 'till three?
When there was nobody else
on the dance floor
but people were watching us
probably murmuring to each other

The way you sneaked your arm
behind me
The way it reached down
to my waist
Or how we both already knew
that one of our faces
would approach the other's lips
and thus waited patiently
The memory of all that
Time just won't take that away from me

I may wonder
for how long will I wonder
why the Gods above me
(who absolutely were in the know)
thought so little of me
they allowed the music to change
from major to minor

I may wonder
for how long will I wonder
if there will be other lips
that will thrill me half as much as yours did
or if there will be another you
altogether

What is certain
though
is that time can't take the memory of you
away from me


(Variaton, the last, on not-exactly-Eleven jazz poems -and songs-, namely, Ella and Louise's Let's call the whole thing off,  Ella's They can't take that away from me and Every time we say goodbye, and Chet Baker's There will never be another you)

Many other nights

Jasper Gywn mi ha insegnato che non siamo personaggi, siamo storie. 

- Alessandro Baricco, Mr Gwyn

Will there be many other nights like
be standing here
watching you
like I could write your portrait
in my mind
while I watch you dance

Like I could listen to some truest self
speaking through your moving body
and come up
with the setting and the props
and characters and plot
that would speak about you
symbolically
like people would read it and say
yeah
that's him
absolutely

Will there be many other nights like
be standing here
trying to spot you among the crowd
of swaying and jumping bodies
trying to listen to your truest self
while I watch you dance

Variation on Paul Blackburn's Listening to Sonny Rollins at the Five Spot and Alessandro Baricco's Mr Gwyn

(Or variation the third on not-precisely-Eleven jazz poems)

A hundred indecisions, and a hundred visions and revisions which a minute will reverse

Celebrar el naufragio
Desatar al destino
Olvidar frente al mar
que lo mismo es distinto
- Jordi Soler, Los peces del viento

And would it have been worth it
after all
after the cups, the marmalade, the tea
after the sunsets, the dooryards and the sprinkled streets
after the skirts that trailed along the floor
after having beaten off the matter with sighs and cries and smiles
after having squeezed the universe into a ball
and rolled it towards all these overwhelming questions
after having settled pillows by each other's head
would it have been worthwhile
after all
just to say
once more
"I am Lazarus, come from the dead
come back to tell you all
but now I know I should not tell you all"

And how should I begin?
Will I find the strenght
to force the moment to its crisis?
And should I then presume?

(I should've been a pair of ragged claws
scuttling across the floors of silent seas)



(Yet another variation on Prufrock)

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).