She was throwing wax
at the sun all Saturday,
ruining all her mother's
best tapers.

But try and tell her
that piercing the
hard blue afternoon
as it moves inevitably
to an obscene yellow
isn't some kind
of worthwhile task,

try and tell her
that the wax arrows
that chagrine
back to the yard
aren't some kind of protest
against a foot's limit
when else she would fly,
try and tell her.

I awoke,
I understood,
I took in the meaning of it,
the meaning of your right foot
victorious over your left,
The Cairo perched above Q street,
the creak of my knee on the stair.

I was awake,
I saw it all,
the piles of fog like white
mattresses after the rain,
the scent of tobacco in the night
after the screech of madness,
the too-proper-by-half letters
I received from you...

I am waking,
I am open to it,
to the secrets that you tell
on a night when you are drunk,
to the wells in your eyes,
to the way you hold a pen
when you are telling me
goodbye.

Come and cure me,
if you can,
vertical man:

there's ice in the glass,
& rain-blacked grass,
as if by plan,

& a loosened sea
is a sad blue band -
this horizontal man

needs your cure,
Dr. A'Bunadh,
so don't detour.

On this red rug
the memories come:
the driving angels of meat,
the ocean yanked
around by the cue-moon,
the antler of sleep
that hummed past,  
the bar-room mystery
that was never solved
on a cold night when I
was about twenty-five.

Someday all of these
memories will fall away
into the crevasse
of my death.

Until then, all I can do
is bring them here
and give them to you -
as an offering,
as a plea.

"Ghost cries out to ghost -
but who's afraid of that?
I fear those shadows most
that start from my own feet."
-Theodore Roethke

It's true that each dark step
in the night-heavy hall
is given to the grave
in the air.  

But never, never accept
death's creaseless small,
cold palm. Be brave -
even a breath is a prayer.

I know that
you can never love me.

But even so,
the glove of evening
slides off as you approach.

So many have tried
this comb - and now you,
the man on the horse.

My lips starve to feel
more than the air
around the sound of your name.

I still mark your birthday
on my donation calendars,
you know.

Now I'm publishing
fractions of you
from 21 years ago...

But you moved on.
You drafted another
in my place. That's ok -

I'm here to tell you
that although every angel decays,
you have decayed slowest.