Through the laurel branches
I saw two doves of darkness.
The one it was the sun,
the other one was lunar.
I said: 'Little neighbours
where is my tombstone?'
'In my tail-feathers,' the sun said.
'In my throat,' said the lunar.
And I who was out walking
with the earth wrapped round me,
saw two eagles made of white snow,
and a girl who was naked.
And the one was the other,
and the girl, she was neither.
I said: 'Little eagles,
where is my tombstone?'
'In my tail-feathers,' the sun said.
'In my throat,' said the lunar.
Through the branches of laurel,
I saw two doves, both naked.
And the one was the other,
and the two of them were neither.

My gibbet is a fine and private place
where a lady may tarry of a summer afternoon
elevated and untouchable--
an ideal love just out of reach
like fruit for Tantalus, all pointless sweetness.

Allen Ginsberg appears from out of the crowd,
pink as a schoolmarm, fat as a Christmas goose
carrying his harmonium
singing about plutonium,
barefoot as any angel, toking on the Golden Blunt.

He looks up, mistaking me for a caught kite
dangling above the street in my gibbet
making other women's children
point and cry
demanding candy or weather reports.

Someone climbs up and ties tin cans
to the bottom of my gibbet
in an atmosphere of giddy holiday.
I die and begin to stink
pieces falling away like confetti.

Here I sway to this very day, high above
the Emily Dickinson Parkway
a paragon of virtue and demure reserve,
dead as hell
black as a bowling ball
ring still on my finger, an ingenue of the afterlife,

until gentrification when they'll take me down
because gibbets are out, they're upsetting,
like poetry,
like dead dodos
like buskers in the subway, beautiful, buried, irrelevant.
_

That week was so hot,
every shotgun house gasped,
windows flung,
screen doors striking wooden frames,
the squawk of rusty springs.

Touching skin felt like punishment
at first,
then penance,
then prayer.

We were thin, androgynous,
switching cut-off jeans,
sharing tank tops,
slick with sweat and shaved ice.

Strays ourselves,
barefoot thieves,
pirates of the quarter.

Hibiscus syrup stained our mouths
outside the Prytania,
where The Abyss flickered
and you cried like a boy
pretending he didn’t.

Inside your walk-up,
we dipped into quiet love
like bread in stew.

The radio’s crackle carried The Ink Spots,
which I recognized but couldn’t name.
You mouthed every note like a secret
you wanted me to guess.

Faint smiling lines near your eyes
from knowing,
like you’d seen me
long before we met,

Not woman,
not man,
just two bodies
leaning toward the same heat.

I wouldn't see your fall or your winter.
When the seasons change,
I’ll be gone,
back home,
watching rain from a train window,
each drop undoing what we were.

That last night,
you placed your key by the door.
I saw it,
watched it glint,
and said nothing.

The snails were climbing.
The air was too sweet.
You slept through goodbye.
I left the key where it lay.

I made a thing from weeds and bark
and called the thing I made--a heart.
I wrapped it 'round with wire and twine
and crossed it, kept it--called it mine.

Love my heart, love it much
despite the rot and wasps and such
and when you're done--I'll love you back
to see what nightmares come from that.

In a nutshell, meat and wings
and infinite other disturbing things
that rise and rule with iron fist
the little nest that crowns your kiss

Curse the summer, curse the tree
that swelled such nutshells patiently
gardener saw, gardener knew
even as those nutshells grew.

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.

The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the ****.

The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.

And in the end the age was handed
The sort of **** that it demanded.

I had a planet,
just a little one
but still.

it had activities--
recreational
illicit
volcanic.

from a promontory above one of its seas,
I pondered what to do with a drunken sailor
early in the morning.

I had to rent out my little planet
due to the commute.
Years passed.

When I returned and saw
what the renters had done,
I brought the flood in my righteous anger.

Things are better now,
lo these many months gone by.

I have a koi pond with native goldfish.
I sleep in until lazy o'clock
or until the stars wheel above my gingerbread cottage.

The sailor got sober, survived the flood,
and sings, "Weigh-hay and up she rises"
when I stir

both my happy ***,
and the coffee he has kindly fixed
the way he knows I like it.

I have a planet,
just a little one
but still.