What name can I give you?
Surely there are none
and it is pointless to try,
like giving names to
celestial bodies,
or quantum particles.  

I thought I could capture it,
that the gaps would be filled in,
like space between
crocodile teeth
clasped on a zookeeper's hand.
I thought
If I could paint like Wyeth,
I'd have my Helga.

What name do I give you?

Maybe Odessa,
laughing on the crest of a wave,
dragged by purple currents,
among gulls on Earth,
and storms in the sea?

Perhaps Athena,
with gleaming eyes
and an owl in your hand?

Or Queen Maeve,
raw with beauty,
buried upright
facing your enemies?

Infeasible,
but it must be something,
for the shake of necessity,
So as to call out when
loitering on lake's edge,
or from across a room
when I see you there,
uncanny as my reflection
in a convex mirror.

I'll call it out.

It's not that I want to,
but that I do;
Just as frogs jump,
just as the tongue
pushes on the aching tooth,
I see Venice in
cheekbone crevices,
smell Vienna in a tangle of hair.

This tropism is
an elephant stomping
the marrow out of me,
and it's alright,
it feels good,
and Wisdom is her name.

I ate the whole world to find you.
Yesterday, and days before,
these are just bohemian villages to me,
where a boy flies a blue kite,
sees the sun on your back
and rainclouds in synecdoche.

Today, tomorrow,
but mostly today,
when the clogs blossom
yellow daffodils that
hide bare hairy heels,
bold and black
as Twiggy mascara.

A thousand phone calls later,
there won't be an answer.

For all our intermissions
were like cancer
ward smoke breaks.

Purple hands stained yellow,
with a dark blue mouth saying,

"Hold me, please just hold me".

Even if just for the warmth,
warmth which was
lacking here,
as cold as inside Russian tanks.

We hugged,
with all the surprise and violence
as an acid attack
on supermodels face,
we hugged.

Then after that,
tried as Latvian money,
half-alive in a ditch
pining over you,
the way a cat's tongue
pines for milk and breadcrumbs,
Tasted like salt, they did,
The tears that were shed,
Giving drinks to the mice.

The sun first rose
when I set sight on you,
the one who crushed up
all credence
with mortar and pestle,
pulverized until
finer than milky
Spanish sand
under the bare foot
of a fat British tourist,
gazing at half-buried
Camels mouthing
the words

"fumar mata."

In a desert,
I waited for dawn,
I danced for rain,
I thought of you,
and that somewhere
there was a little stray
dog lapping up puddle-water,
a Polish beer bottle pressed
to a drunkard's swollen lip,  
like a hose filling up
a plastic blue paddling pool,
while the children stood in the sun.

Bent over double,
my spine crinkling
and made from tinfoil.

Like an old concertina,
you wheeze from
the stress of it all,
so do I, quietly
to myself.

You're startled upon
an anthill's discovery,
as if it were found in
a lover's rumpled bed.

Beetles clamber away,
away from the sweat,
from the sighs
given freely away
to Mother Earth,
or anyone who'll listen.

An emerald frog
springs from
a verdant patch,
into a wet ditch.

Unkind to the body,
is this toil,
but the thoughts roam,
like a pig in muck,
laughing,
if it could.

White cotton flowers
coat the ground,
like peckish gulls
         on a landfill,
or a sailor's corpse.

After tracks are made,
here left for there,
blood trickles
down shins,
knee-deep
in brambles.

The nest of the lark,
the hive of honeybee,
the owl doesn't dare,
the sweet tooth,
nor bare hand,
doesn't dare.

I go on walking,
with Quasimodo slouch,
feeling the spring
of the cracked ground,
kinetic and tepid,
under my own weight.

I could sleep
easy and dreamless,
away in a damp ditch,
pillow of frogs,
(still soft emeralds)
blanket of muck,
stiffening under
the sun on high,
shimmering soft and
red as a Bolshevik.

Then,
in 2,000 years,
I'll join them,
those who I saw
in a museum once,
with skin like
bog oak,
jaws ajar,
with eyes of dust,
they couldn't
look away.

She’s filled with colours.
They emanate as if
from a beehive,
fill this head,
make smooth all edges,
and borderlines of mine.

An orange August sun at dawn,
Risies like a lid.    

Wake me, wake me,
show me now,
please,
show me
colours again.

Oh, to grow!
the quickest I did it
was in those
first few weeks,
away in the womb,
but
if I was to grow
as fast as I did then,
by 50,
I'd surpass
Mount Everest.

Warm daze, when you wore flowers in your hair,
sleepless nights with your shawl wrapped 'round us both,
under glowing moon, paradise was there,
the blue of the night from the undergrowth,
down a dark garden, so far from daylight,
sharing the night with the sounds from the wild,
if the howls frighten you, I'll grip you tight.
With black flowing hair, in perfect mess styled,
take me to the beach, bury me in sand,
don't you know you are my approaching tide?,
the broken finger on the other hand,
for you, all of my doors lay open wide,
to places unknown and all things unplanned,
we'll hide there in golden castles of sand.