Rothko No. 21

The canvas is a burst of red –
            A cosmic bleed.
A red so moist, you feel

wet

            From the summer of brushstrokes.

A red, quasi-bleached from years

            Dripping, time

            Ticking, dust

            Kneeling over the naked paint. 

You stare

            And stare

                        And stare –

            Your eyes dilated,

                        Like nude oranges

Until you become one,
                       saturated
            With the color Red.

Monday Morning

Night has sweat through
            The two rocking chairs on your patio –
Where Morning, now,
            Is sitting with you, drinking coffee.

Contrast

Somehow
            That white cotton shirt
            With its order of stripes
Looks even more white

Against my dark brown skin.

What an illusion, contrasts can be –

            I think to myself, that very evening,

when the sky

            Is ablaze,

A marigold orange.

 

And then

I look at your fingers,

            Holding my wrist, circling around it

                                    Like a pearl bracelet.

            Looking so pure, so clean, so brilliantly

                                    white -

            I feel, as if, my skin is dirtying yours,

                         Making it, in a way,

impure, spotted –

                        Gently, secretly poisoning you.

Feel

Turn off the lights.

            Close your eyes.

                        Take a deep breath in,

                                    A deep breath out, and say out loud

                                                The word –

Crunch.

Feel, then

Your tongue

Break, crackle, splinter –

Into a thousand little pieces;

Scatter everywhere
            Like a puff of ash,
            Like autumn leaves,
Like a wisp of homeless sparrows.

Cantilever

I.

You were sitting in the coffee shop,

Reading Ulysses.

When I noticed

Sunlight –
Towards the bottom of your skirt
Caught in a knot.

It followed you around, wherever you walked,

But waited outside the door,
When you had gone to the bathroom.

II.

You woke me up from sleep, asking –

Tom, How old is the sky?

I avoided an answer, feeling

Words slipping down my throat.

I thought of God, then,
Oddly,
Not sure why.

III.

You were standing in front of me
At the parade. Your body –
A sculpted pear.

I asked,
What to you is
The greatest American value?

You said,

Duty. The sense of duty.
Or perhaps you can call it allegiance.

And that was all there was to it;

The night sky turning golden from
Flecks of burning sulfur, sizzling
Then disappearing like shooting stars.

Eating Your Feelings

Arrange your feelings in a pile
And rinse them thoroughly under running water.

Then put them on a cutting board.

Add celery stalks, stems of leeks, baby carrots,
            Cloves of garlic, zucchini, spinach and fresh thyme.
And chop them up, as finely as you can,
Using a sharp stainless paring knife.

Next, add water to a large pot

And bring it to a boil.

Then add all the ingredients. Sprinkle

A pinch of salt, a dash of pepper,
And two tablespoons of smoked paprika.

Then turn down the heat,

And let them simmer for 10 minutes.

When the leaves begin to wilt,

            And the feelings begin to soften,
Remove the pot from the stove

And pour them into bowls.

Garnish them with cilantro leaves
            And a generous sprinkle of grated cheese.   

Lessons Learned

I.

Sometimes, when we talk in circles,

I end the conversation abruptly, remarking –
I just don’t think we’re on the same page, you know?

And you’ll say to me,

What do you mean?

To which I’ll reply,

It’s like you’re on page 200 already
And I’ve barely made it to page 3.

You’ll keep quiet for a while,

Maybe clean the living room table,
Or the bathroom tiles –
Polish some silverware, even.

Then, after some time has passed,

Returning to the topic of pages,
You will ask –
Was there a particular book you were referring to, Tom?

II.

To the spider I killed this morning, squashing it
On the floor with one clean swing of the kitchen towel,
I felt like a powerful God
Practicing my whim.

III.

I’ve always had a hard time telling you

I love you –
Being taught as a child
            An expression, you are never to say out loud.

So I whisper them when you’re asleep, hoping that

The words in my hot breaths turn into clouds,
And you hear them, eventually, as rain.

IV.

You said to me,

The most powerful quality water has
Is its ability to adapt to any container,
Be it a tumbler, an eye, or the cup of an ocean.

And then you said,

You need to learn to be more like water. 

Repetition

1.

Before you left the room, you said -
The shock of death, sometimes,
feels not so sudden, Thomas.

So I followed you down the hallway
and asked,
How, then, does it feel, Peter?

You said,
More like hot oil
opening up your pores,
pushing, forcing
all the way in.

2.

Sometimes when we sit in therapy
I forget
If this is real life
or an acting school.

3.

I say out loud,
every morning,
the following words:

Gaillardia bulb
Oleander
Iris
Majolica jug

And repeat them,
forty times each
or until
my jaws go numb.

Motion Pictures, Park Avenue Armory

Based on Martin Creed's 'The Back Door' exhibit

1.

A suited man walks along the invisible river bank

Of a voluminous S,

His feet thrumming under wraps

            Of light brown shoes, pointed tips

Behind a cast of wrinkled leather,

Toes curled, pearly with sweat,

            His face, a tone of mystery.

The path he takes to come to me is undulant, as I stand

            In a room of black emptiness, light from his motions

                        Muddling my face. He grips, in succession,
Bouquets of fresh blossoms – bracts  

Of trompetillas, Brazilian plumes, floss flowers, lady slipper orchids

And smashes them on the ground such that the impact

            Of flower on rock

            Plucks limbs of rosemary greens, piecing off, like blocks,

            Legs of chartreuse,

            Lips of dark, clotted scarlet,

            Inflorescent wings, like butterflies carved out of warm ivory.

 What was once a clean white floor, is now a gallery of broken skulls,

            And unused knuckles, and bellies filled with panting seeds.
What was once a clean white floor, is now a bed of scandal –
            Objects of tenderness shredded, flanked,

For me to bear witness to nude testimony.

What was once a clean white floor, is now a site of massacre –

            Even the air, ashamed, cries into moon-silk kimonos.

What was once a clean white floor, is now held across your eyes shaped

            Like magnified trombones, for the sake, he said, of art appreciation.

Post-Pride

We hoisted rainbows 

Caught in flags, chanted

Slogans praising Love, and gays and the puffy throats of guns,

And marched in the company of decorative floats,

Smooth, silky, automatic –

Themselves rolling, like pieces of clouds.

People kissed other people, nondescript 

            The roles of gender, and held hands

                        Firm, definite, moist –

As diffident eyes burst in cheers.

Streamers coiled toward the sky,

            Their bodies twined in helices.

Voices bent in shallow arches –
            The air tilted with applause
                        Raspy, explosive, successive.

So much applause, our voices
            Drowned in the tributary of a celebration,
Forgetting never, that you and me,
            Were illegal once, in the eyes
Of our Nation’s history.

Birthday Wish

II.

‘No more wishing over candles’
Was the promise I had made,
Post happenstance of prior years, where
I had made my thoughtful wish, and moments later
Watched it stick, like captured kites,
With armless might –
To burning lips of candlewick.

Birthday

I.

What has age-d isn’t me, per se,
But my birthmark, stretched
Across my arm
Like a squatted jellyfish –
Having grown, on this day,
A darker shade of brown.

Word Fall

Grab a book now by its hip
And give it a shake, and watch

The rows of sleepless words

Peel off its face, and fall
            Like feathers made of lace

On to the hard-wood floor, and settle down

            Quietly

Like schoolchildren in a hall of prayer.

Walk down to them, pick up a few,

And lay them down on strips of cloth,

            Gently, carefully, like nacre pearls,

And feel their weights, in tens of grams

Like paper stems and wings of wasps.

Then bring them close, under your nose,

And force a whiff, until the smells

            Of honeysuckle, white lily, jasmine

Waft into your soul.

And when the course of examination

Is done, roll them up into a ball,

            Check for any leaks or dents

And gently watch them fall.

Beach Bodies

We were at the beach once, when
A runner-by, had yelled out
Get going, you fat brown pig.

I had laughed in response, noticing

His eyes caught behind a shade of
Dark glasses, his pale white skin baked
Into a wrap of leathery brown.

I had stared at the sky afterward,

And had noticed the ocean’s deep blue wrinkles,
Open and crack and disappear. And had felt so small then,
Staring at the blue bodies’ widths,
Felt so little, so insignificant, that I had cried quietly
Into the red bucket with which we had made
Sand castles, cupolas, and fragile minarets.

Later, I would dip my fingers into the colorless puddles

Of confusion, feeling its salinity sucked into my palm,
And inhale sounds of the saxophone they had left behind
An hour before the bonfire.

Little had I known then, how, years later,

Six pointed words would ring in my ears,
Like an automatic response, well-rehearsed,
Every time you’d ask, Want to go to the beach, Tom?
Want to go to the beach? Leading me, instead, into
A cool, dark corner, away from the mockery of sunlight.