A muggy dream walked to me
Yesterday night, all roads down
The equator
With the taste of salt and sweat
And the clocks of the world
Stopped for a moment,
I wrote without papers
Of all the things he ever said.
The drama of falling from a cliff
I did not know I was dreaming,
A careful section of love letters
Obscured under leather jackets
Flew with the body, down to the sea.
My red mail box had to wait
For the Orientalist’s stories,
It did wait.
I trawled his journals and poems
Like a desperate lover hunting-
For a vilified unpublished hero.
I didn’t want to be his Halloween-
Horror night or fallen oranges of the dusk,
I wanted to be the cigars he puffed
The rancheras he sung and the clipped
Clothes that hung on his backyard.
The clichéd sappy night fall,
Physical sensation and a tight lipped smile;
I had to write poetry, chew my nails
Chop my hair to fall normal again.
Why did they not teach in schools
To pause poems and eat popcorns
Why did they not tell me
To stop my wiggly sly will?
Lover, I’m drunk in Chaucer
Sea and a monster, now I’m drowning.
Let us paint the house, draw the walls
And say sorry to malicious kids we made
Let us take photographs, hang them on
The walls and make trips back to our sacks
Let us drive the hills, sing songs
Shock the folks and live out of track.
