I love my baby
But my baby don’t love me
I love my baby wooo
My baby don’t love me
I really loves that woman
Can’t stand to leave her be
A-ain’t but one thing
Makes Mister Johnson drink
I gets low bout how you treat me baby
I begin to think
Oh babe
Our love won’t be the same
You break my heart
When you call Mister So & So’s name
{ ROBERT JOHNSON }
Before the world
was water, just
before the fire
or the wool,
was you—
yes—your hands
a stillness—
a mountain. Marry
me. Let the ash
invade us & the ants
the aints—
let—my God—
the anger
but do not answer
No—such stars
shooting, unresolved
are about to be ours—
if we wish. Yes—
the course, the sail
we’ve set—our mind—
leaves no wake
just swimming sleep.
Stand
& I will be born
from your arm—
a thing eagled, open,
above the unsettled,
moon-made sea.
Baby, you make
me want
to burn up all
my pies
to give over
an apple to fire
or loose track
of time & send
a large pecan
smokeward, or
sink some peach
cobbler. See, to me
you are a Canada
someplace north
I have been, for years,
headed & not
known it.
If only I’d read
the moss on the tree!
instead of shaking
it for fruit—
you are a found
fallen thing—
a freedom—not this red
bloodhound ground—
I want the spell
of a woman—her
smell & say-so—
her humid
hands I seek—zombied—
The bayou
of my blood—standing
water & the ’squitoes
all hungry—hongry—
to see both our bodies
knocked out—dragged
quicksand down—
They’ll put up posters—
have you seen—all over town—
Days later we’ll be drug
naked from the swamp
that is us—re-
suscitated, rescued—
the cops without one clue.
You, rare as Georgia
snow. Falling
hard. Quick.
Candle shadow.
The cold
spell that catches
us by surprise.
The too-early blooms,
tricked, gardenias blown about,
circling wind. Green figs.
Nothing stays. I want
to watch you walk
the hall to the cold tile
bathroom—all
night, a lifetime.
Once I ordered a pair of shoes
But they never came.
Like hot food
I love you
like warm
bread & cold
cuts, butter
sammiches
or, days later, after
Thanksgiving
when I want
whatever’s left
Wouldn’t be no fig leaf
if I was Adam
but a palm tree.
Once I danced all
night, till dawn
& I—who never
did get along—
decided to call a truce—
my body
buckets lighter,
we shook hands
& called it blues.
Mama, I’m the man
with the most
biggest feet—
when I step out
my door to walk the dog
round the block
I’m done.
To watch you walk
cross the room in your black
corduroys is to see
civilization start—
the wish-
whish-whisk
of your strut is flint
striking rock—the spark
of a length of cord
rubbed till
smoke starts—you stir
me like coal
and for days smoulder.
I am no more
a Boy Scout and, besides,
could never
put you out—you
keep me on
all day like an iron, out
of habit—
you threaten, brick-
house, to burn
all this down. You leave me
only a chimney.
Baby, give me just
one more hiss
We must lake it fast
morever
I want to cold you
in my harms
& never get lo
I live you so much
it perts!
Baby, jive me gust
one more bliss
Whisper your
neat nothings in my near
Can we hock each other
one tore mime?
All light wrong?
Baby, give me just
one more briss
My won & homely
You wake me meek
in the needs
Mill you larry me?
Baby, hive me just
one more guess
With this sing
I’ll thee shed
On the sun-starched
deck of a fishing boat
I have watched fish flip-flop
helpless as a heart—
thwap-thwap, thwap-
thump—and wished
to be caught
just like that,
a keeper. Mouth
that won’t quit moving—
Afternoons I wander aisle
after aisle in the bookstore, leafing
through women’s magazines
to see if my name
lists among diseases
on slick pages marked Your Health,
How to Spot a Cheat,
the latest from Spain.
Please quit lying
to someone else, save all
your stories for me—
This afternoon I tore out
cards for perfume
grew lightheaded
and thought of you—overwhelmed
yet drawn near, the way bees
can smell fear—then smeared
competing scents
over the thin
skin inside my wrists.
Don’t mind the cheating
I mind the leaving—
For days I’ve felt
sick. My stomach
a-swim, a ship
tossing. Think
of you two together
and the day I will pop in
to pick up whatever
I left: unlit
candles, underwear
folded neat and bleached
white as a flag of peace.
Driving home,
feel the quease of days,
my car’s lingering reek
till I reach under
and find the offender—
under my seat, out of sight—
an apple, uneaten except
by time and heat. The rest
forgot, wrapped in rot. Soon
I’ll teach my hands
better, how to roll over
to beg—
For now, chucking that husk
away, I think of stones
thrown into the sea,
how still
for you I would churn
its salt to taffy.
We were hobos every year.
It was cheap—
Our mother each
Halloween smudged our cheeks
stuffed us in someone
else’s clothes—
We hopped houses
like trains
asking for sweets
Much like last night,
empty-armed, at your door
I begged you
Tonight the train horn
sounds like plenty
enough loud
to warm even the autumn—
The night air with a nip
that catches by surprise—
White light, blue
light, fog starting to rise
She has me tied,
a tongue, to the tracks
Her new man’s
elaborate moustache
Train comin fast
Can’t cry
out to save my life
Drats
I’ve heard tell
of a town where the train
bound for New Orleans slows
just enough, a turn
that folks place cars
good only for insurance in—
The train cashes them
coming round the bend—too late
to stop, to slow to derail—
That’s how I feel
watching you & the station
being pulled away, one hand
hovering the emergency brake
the other
out to wave
Even a dog got him
a house.
Me, I am rent
unpaid, or late—
I am a small bird
beneath a big wheel.
Snail-brown
of November. Night.
Even a bird-dog knows
what way is home.
Me, I hunted
the high places, the low
where only the wingless go.
Of the trees, nests
are all that’s left—
in wind pine limbs creak
like an old man’s,
a door opening.
The noise beneath my feet!
Even a bird,
a dog, got him a cage
he can bark
all night in, or sing.
The day folds up like money
if you’re lucky. Mostly
sun a cold coin
drumming into the blue
of a guitar case. Close
up & head home.
Half-hundred times I wanted
to hock these six strings
or hack, if I could, my axe
into firewood. That blaze
never lasts.
I’ve begged myself hoarse
sung streetcorner
& subway over a train’s blast
through stale air & trash.
You’ve seen me, brushed past—
my strings screech
& light up like a third rail—
Mornings, I am fed by flies,
strangers, sunrise.
Verde que te quiero verde.
—LORCA
1.
Every day since I have practiced a sort
of amnesia, forgetting keys, misplaced
names. I have begun to escort
spiders out of doors, into wind, unrest
reaching them at last. Even then
you rise up, remembered—a polaroid
or slip of paper where your writing’s begun
to fade. Black, turned brown. I try to avoid
spring, but dust rises and settles over
all things, even the words like
ours, his and hers, who stole the covers
all seem so far. Green again. Schwinn bike
in the garage I’ll never ride, three-speed,
its thick chain locked. You gone with the key.
3.
Soon I’ll thank you for leaving
all at once, and for good—
no more months of begging,
or not, of waiting for what
we both know only grows,
goes away—our nights days
we’d lie beside the other awake,
pretending sleep, sorrow
a child snoring between us, slightly,
child we’ll never have. Thank you
then, for not even the note, just my
opening the door to find you
missing, like my fortune cookie
our now-final meal, broke open empty.
5.
When I said I didn’t mind
your leaving I lied—
even the funny-lookingest kid
in class gets a valentine
and I hear he’s now got mine.
These nights I’ve become
caged by quiet, a zoo of one—
a polar bear pacing like tide
his half-empty pool, loopy from heat,
coat grown green—or some lust-
lost captive who won’t quite mate,
so his keeper brings in a stud to save
the breed. Or so, unkept, you claim.
Tell me his name.
6.
Stumbling home in last night’s
smoke-soaked hair and clothes,
strip bars all closed
and wanting to call you right
away, to plead and preen.
I try sleep instead. The phone
can’t even recall your voice, no
more your name on my machine.
Lord, let me never drink booze
at least for one more week.
Lord, let me eat more fruit
than comes in a mixed drink.
No one answers
where you are.
7.
There are no more saints—
only people with pain
who want someone to blame.
Or praise.
I am one of them, of course.
Miracle, or martyr, or worse—
wanting a desert to crawl
out into, marking my fall
by sun and thirst
instead of by this silence
that swims over me. Oasis
not really there, penitence—
you the sand I’ve crawled across,
my hairshirt, my tiny albatross.
Quite difficult, belief.
Quite terrible, faith
that the night, again,
will nominate
you a running mate—
that we are of the elect
& have not yet
found out. That the tide
still might toss us up
another—what eyes
& stars, what teeth!
such arms, alive—
someone we will, all
night, keep. Not
just these spiders
that skitter & cobweb,
share my shivering bed.
Tonight I wake with mud
in my head, a thick
brown I sink
my line into. Fists
full of fish.
Tonight even the storm
cannot calm me.
My hands tonight scatter
about the place, folded
quiet like fine lady’s gloves.
Cue the saddish music—
how like flies it rises!
Outside, the suicides
float by buoyant
in their lead balloons.
Your name is harm.
The bar fills
& empties eddies
like a drink & is not
the answer. Ain’t—
I’m all kinds
of lost, watered,
down. The shot
glass like
a microscope strong.
I should be a natn’l
day of mourning
one week minus
mail. Entire month
of Sunday—a sabbath
swaying
mouthing hymns—
Where, pray
tell, went the words?
Rider, you are a whole
church-worth of hurt—
My wife of words,
ambassador of grief.
From you I am far,
firefly fading, jarred.
Across the night lawn
lightning bugs wed.
Through woods echoes
my widowed voice.
At dusk women
walking alone give off
the strangest light—
till you realize they’re not—
a dark dog races
to meet one, leash
tailing; or,
a boyfriend not worth
the wait, gleeful
ungraceful, follows
far too close.
Children tire of ignoring
their mothers who half-watch
them holler. The boys
skateboarding beyond
even their bodies
have got it right—
fling yourselves, friends,
into whatever guardrail or concrete
the world has, then find
someone to get it all
down on tape.
Later, the falls will
seem obvious, about
to happen—re-wound,
the women all look
better off—and those
who fall shall stay
airborne, oblivious, halfway
to happy.
I spider the days—
each one a shorter
stitch in the quilt
which you will kick off the bed
quickly, when you return.
Dawn—
patchwork once—
is now these scraps
all day I save & make
something out of
that the dark undoes.
You & your travels!
your encyclopedias
have kept me keeping
company with the quiet.
Outside
my window the suitors circle, smoke
their unfiltereds
into ash. They ask
after me.
They serenade,
guitars in hand, play
their second
fiddle. After you
they ask also
interested
Are you dead—
Have I any word—
I repeat—
You have taken afield
your samples to sell & soon
we’ll see you scraping your boots
along this very stoop.
The dog, greying, has grown
too tired to hunt
the underbrush, to rise
& whine whenever
the wind our screen
door creaks.
At night I dream
your skin quicksand,
ground that gives
way—sinks—
I wake alone.
Come home
& warm
your side of the wrought
iron bed
I’ve kept for you cool.
For you my list of things
to fix will be nil
though the old place you will
barely know—it’s too much
the same as that day
you whistled out our door
with your nicotine
promises & schemes
of green.
Our old photos
fading, the piano
unplayed, your fingerprints
cover the mirrors
as does dust. All night
I toss
like the scattered stars you steer
somewhere by, shore
to shore, hawking your
insurance
& whiskey.
Even cars have their graveyards,
piled and turning
the one color
of after—
And me with nowhere
to send my bones
to be counted,
made whole.
This is
Providence, Providence—
Not even a dentist to visit
once a year like an aunt
squeezing my cheeks
too tight.
Without you I got no one
to say sorry to—
Only this winter
pretending spring, fooling
few blooms. New
Haven, next—
The trees never do reach
our train that clatters past
blurring cars—three parts
primer, the rest rust—
the color of ash,
of ember.
Tonight I am a man
tap-dancing the train tracks
red light—red—
while the 10:50 nears,
sweet horn blowing.
I jitterbug,
Charleston bound—
take down
the tarnished stars, my breath
will shine them up new.
Tonight I want a tongue
stuck to the wintry track
& swear when that freight train comes
I’ll yank my thick head back.
Tonight I’ll grab hold
the striped arm
of the crossing bar—
let it dance me
round real slow.
Tonight I tango
alone.
If
I die,
let me
be buried
standing—
I never lied
to anyone,
or down—
wouldn’t want
to start up now.
The dirt grows up
around us, dear,
the dank & the way down
of it. The day.
Once I was
in love. Once I would not say
or could not, the under
that awaits.
Today, I say over
your one name,
sound
that sole gravity.
The old draw-
bridge, rusted, is always up
North, New
London—we cross
ourselves & the river
into the past—
the submarine
memorial for those lost
at sea, sunk
miles under—the docks dry—
the rust & mist
Count me among the missing
The apples
have not kept
their promises,
grown rotten
& ran, skins
bled into brown
I come to your town
fog clinging to bridges
to the baring branches
In the calamitous city
in the songs & sinners
among the thousand throngs
I barter & belong. Out
of the coward’s tooth
& arms of ocean
out of sheer
contrariness
I continue. Keep watch.
Hunger has me
by the belly
Why does the waiting
scare you & me
the silence that surrounds
it, us, this life—
I am inside this
stone you call
a city. I am king
of the gypsies.
Thin throne air.
No crown to speak of.
My body
dying, divine.
The day will, I know,
come—not now—
but soon & they will say
you are gone
Will I know it by
the lack of breath
—mine—the long grief
in the trees
Or will it be you
they tell of me—sickened,
stiffened, through.
Do not
worry. Will be
me beside the foot
of your bed, nothing
haunting, just
a hint. A wish.
Think
of me & breathe!
say over
again my many
my million names.
Here snow starts
but does not
stick—stay—
is not enough
to cover
the bare thaw-
ed ground.
Grief is the god
that gets us—
good—in the end—
Here—churches
let out
early—in time
to catch the lunch
special—at my local
hotel. Sunday—
even the bus
boy has your
face. And still
having heard
some days later you
were dead—
I haven’t caught
sight—day
or night—
of the Falls. I know
they are somewhere—
near—like you—all
gravity & fresh water
& grace rushing through—
