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Tattoo
Ive tried to keep my mind a blank
canvas while the artists electric
fire prowls my thigh, and trust
in his expertise to affix the ink
exactly as designedan intricate
interlocking of double, fracted
curves that should, Ive planned, shift
kinetically: a fluid shadow
at the groinabstracted, yes,
but still, one might imagine dolphins
breaking through the surface, those pirates
souls transformed, leaping up
from the troubled sea of their denial,
attending, at last, a god in their midst.
O, Martyrs! Slowly beneath the needles
wasping, beneath what seems random
sputterings of jet and blood (What
have I done?), the lines begin
to arc across my legs pale ocean,
then coil back to their lasting deep
embrace with skin and schema. Yet why
this adolescent ritual, this whim
at forty-eight? Wasnt the sanctioned
infantile knife enough, or the chrism
and splash to the brow, the bishops slap,
the banns and vows, the Forgive me, Father,
for I have sinned? I should have no need
of selfish sacrament, this stain
that casts me out. But lookits done.
The Pornographer
Anarch of the actual, mine
is the dream of Eden,
minus a bouncer at the door,
world where Botticelli breasts
rise on imaginations foam,
where unappeasable arousal
heaves in oceanic swells. Maestro
with a metronome, miniaturist
of the oversized, I am the Siren
and ship of singular desire,
the mast you lash yourself to
to hear the unhearable and not
perish, not die entirely perhaps
to the sweet flesh, the pure
matter of being, now
puddled in your hand.
A Bottle of Ch�teau dYquem 1964
I cannot speak
of any perfect balance
between the wines color
and the tannin of the cask,
or even whether some lusciousness adhered
anywhere else than to the glasses
we raised in toasts to our lives
and all the sentiments we thought
that extravagant wine embodied,
nor, today, could I swear
it held the promised hint
of ripened apricots or pears.
Id like to believe whatever substance
passed across our tongues that day
became the bodys, could not be forgotten,
not become the mere evaporate we shared,
leaving no residue other than abstractions,
not leave us empty.
When you told me you saved
the bottle all these years,
I asked, What for?
Now you write that cancer grips you
like a weasel at the throat, that surgeons
have cut away part of your tongue
and palate. My encouragements
sputter, seem like dregs.
Even this poem, which emerged
from the pale citrine of my writing tablet,
lets a sediment escape:
If only youd . . . You shouldntve.
This is the radiation of reason,
the chemo of acceptance: that the anarchic
cells secure in the fortress
of the worlds marrow. Like a courtier
Ive come, summoned to its feast.
This evening I wandered the garden
shuddering beneath the chill
Maine air. The jonquils
are fewer this year than last,
struggling to recover
a narrow band
of yellow. It is enough perhaps
to remember the light.
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