Love Drops
In candlelight
by the vase of purple and yellow carnations,
snacking on peanuts and light beer,
icing a pulled heart,
he remembered a muddier, scarier,
sweeter, more endangered night.
He came home from work
to a dim, pleading flame.
On the floor
of his suburban, beige-carpeted nest
was a splendid Chinese picnic
spread in coyly polished elegance
atop a soft, forgiving blanket
the color of a dry spring sky
at dusk with the unendingly deep light
of a flexible soul.
Wicker basket, thick sturdy porcelain
of tempting, minimal caressing curve,
rice grains aglow with soft oil absorbed,
dumpling skins pinched into infant wrinkles,
meats and peppers and fish,
and palm-pleasing vessels of gentle green tea.
Her eyes—question comets of impatience,
the thick, black plumb line free-falling mane of hair,
the cheeks pastel planets of heat
pressing from the blurred tan cosmos
of wide Asian face in tired night,
the lips scolding, hungry, impertinent,
a language apart in prescient pressures.
Plain white T, long cotton skirt,
lift and fold aside.
A brow, a lash, a nipple.
Skin’s dialogue, tongue’s solo, finger’s itinerary.
How many ways they found to embrace,
to show the angry, clutching aptness of longing.
Along with the other utensils,
they lay on the flat twirling plane of delight—
moist, empty, oblivious.
________________
Passing the Moon with Dad
“Even life and death aren’t matters of life and death.”
–my dad
I dreamt Dad and I were on a spaceship
that was a plane as big as a city.
The wings were terraces, open to the un-air.
One could enjoy one’s leisure there,
the torpid essences pirouetting
through the galaxies’ vacuum,
the harsh sun bombarding unsuspecting orbs
with a jagged intensity of electron anger.
Dad and I sat together on the wing,
relishing the spacious melancholy,
when we passed the moon, blazing,
spread, peremptorily, before us,
larger than thought, than joy,
larger than love and age,
and we lingered greedily there
in its brilliant sleepy stillness.
As it shrank to our side,
the planets and stars ahead
began to speed up and shiver and diminish
in a purpling Einsteinian frenzy.
“Better go inside,” Dad said. “Relativity.”
We retreated into the ship, said goodnight,
and went to our separate quarters.
There we slept until
what must have been
the end
of a period
of time.
________________
My Love and Abstract Art
You are in the luscious window voids of light,
the tossed, sweet precipitation of ecstatic color,
the steamy suns of whiteness
lurking freely behind contrivances.
You are in the targeted tension of layered texture.
And watching you spread wonderfully,
tauntingly,
across the stretched canvasses
of skins and linen,
I think to myself,
“She is everywhere. Just everywhere!”
And suddenly it comes to me, whatever is to come,
that this is my time to be happy,
and that you are my endless, endless pleasure.
________________
Boulogne
I read today in the Globe that a ferry had
capsized in the ocean near Boulogne.
Fifteen people were trapped and died in the hull.
There was a photograph
of a woman at the memorial service
mourning for a loved one.
Boulogne was the town
where I learned the names of flowers and,
having drunk too much espresso, went
wild over the smells and the colors
of the fruits sprawled out
carelessly and abundantly
in the stalls of the downtown market.
My girlfriend and I sat half nude on the beach,
not acknowledging that it was a little chilly
and a little far north
for that kind of thing.
It was the first stop on our trip
south through France and by the
Cote d’Azure to Italy and then
up and east through the thick of
strange dim countries—
satellites.
Drunk and full of ice cream,
we went one night to our hotel.
Giggling and terrified,
she fiddled in the bathroom while I
contained myself beneath the
stiff and freshly laundered sheets.
Finally, my friend, my mate, my
animal and me animal were
paws and mouths,
shivers and cries
and tears and gasps,
trapped beneath each other’s hulls,
then happily asleep.
Boulogne is far away
and so is she
and so am I.
We’re friends,
and wonder how it ever came to be
that once we were afloat,
once were trapped,
once were saved.
I read today in the Globe that a ferry had
capsized in the ocean near Boulogne.
Fifteen people were trapped and died in the hull.
There was a photograph
of a woman at the memorial service
mourning for a loved one.
Boulogne was the town
where I learned the names of flowers and,
having drunk too much espresso, went
wild over the smells and the colors
of the fruits sprawled out
carelessly and abundantly
in the stalls of the downtown market.
My girlfriend and I sat half nude on the beach,
not acknowledging that it was a little chilly
and a little far north
for that kind of thing.
It was the first stop on our trip
south through France and by the
Cote d’Azure to Italy and then
up and east through the thick of
strange dim countries—
satellites.
Drunk and full of ice cream,
we went one night to our hotel.
Giggling and terrified,
she fiddled in the bathroom while I
contained myself beneath the
stiff and freshly laundered sheets.
Finally, my friend, my mate, my
animal and me animal were
paws and mouths,
shivers and cries
and tears and gasps,
trapped beneath each other’s hulls,
then happily asleep.
Boulogne is far away
and so is she
and so am I.
We’re friends,
and wonder how it ever came to be
that once we were afloat,
once were trapped,
once were saved.
________________
Fairgrounds—Corpus Christi, Texas, 1988
She and I spin in the bottomless barrel,
stuck happily to the planked wall,
Guns ’N’ Roses obscenely loud,
“Sweet Child O’Mine,” trashy and ethereal,
plastering us securely to its crinkled floating decibels
in the hot wet seaside night.
Dazed, fetally inspired by the lights and crowds and litter,
I clutch her to me and tickle her pale neck with my eyelashes.
We eat junk and burp and wonder
how we willed ourselves into this coastal chaos.
________________
To Jojo at Six Months
If I could only see as much as you do,
in those recessed, limpid pools you use as eyes;
if I could only say as much as you do
in a random, static vowel;
if I could only be as cunning
as is your wet, thick-lipped,
undaunted, lopsided smile;
I'd be a brilliant, wealthy, ecstatic man,
even happier than I am now
looking at and holding
your soft, warm, ineluctable density.
- Alexander C. Kafka
- Alexander C. Kafka
