Balloon Sandwich

I went over our conversation
with a fine-toothed gland.
It was a game of immovable stomachs.
I choose to remember the coffee
because a painting is the lie
that tells the truth.

Where are you now, my sweet
misunderstanding?
Standing in a vacuum cleaner
that moves from vacuum
to vacuum?

Why did we not grip that sandwich tighter
to give a little flavor
to the memory?
Why didn't we do it
again?

The quiet fills my head
like warm whispers ballooning.
Too bad I'm so
thin-skinned.

early 70s

Chiarscuro: The Days

The days succeed
as pulleys

carrying this
and that
across the fine
synaptic edge.

My skin is the fulcrum
of the sun and moon.
All day, in weariness,
I dodge the delicate missiles
not meant but meaning
to kill.

At night
my dreams
are massive retaliation.
They grow like mushrooms
on the bark of daylight.

I am sustained
by this ecology of dreams.
This other, this
daylight noise
is what I do

to launch my dreams like obsessive arrows
aimed at my destroyers:
those I hate
and those I love
alike.

1970s

The News

Institutional mayhem releases official fractures
unless the tide of forgiveness roguishly washes
through the light buried beneath
the fear of the world.

Then we need no longer parse the noise
as if it meant something. We will be free
to sponge the graphic estimates with
uncontaminated mystery.

Maybe the answer is turquoise.

6/07