The Arcade (poem)

I grew up at the Arcade--
no, not the nickelodeon sort,
though it had its reels as well,
I suppose--no, the one down on Calhoun,
at the corner of South Main.

My memory flickers on, begins to roll,
and I see its modest square face
looking west towards the Mississippi;
it was young then, so recently born
out of the exuberance
of the war to end all wars.

My mother and I shared
one of the luxury suites,
one of the seven with a private bath,
and I would help her make gin
in our four-legged tub.

Old soldiers would buy it
for a dollar a pint and then take
my mother out to dance at a club
on Beale Street and return after
flushed and smiling.
Her legs were pretty then.

Now, I hear they're razing
the old Arcade, its face scarred
and written upon, its windows blinded
with boards, its bones sagging,
as old man river keeps rolling on.
And my memory flickers once,
and winks out.

The Musician (poem)

With clean flute, I would pierce the holy heart,
     the bright notes, a petal-strewn path through God;
     or, with low moan of bass, I'd play a part
     to lull the whining cosmos towards a nod;
yes, to bend green trees to sing new songs,
     I'd play both black and white, those keys in strife,
     to weld in chords the unruly notes in throngs,
     enticing leaf-laden branch as joyous fife.

But how this I say "I" when song begins?
And when lips with ivory and wood first kiss,
     and fingers' tarantella first descends,
     how find myself at the heart of the tryst?

So when love's motion's begun, the quivering bow at play,
     then comes the breathless one, the man without a name.

Synchronicity (poem)

Because it was high noon of the twelfth day

of the twelfth month of my year of years,

and because I, too, heard Aleppo's bells

and saw a haloed face within the sun-paled bay,

and because you looked, our moment nearing,

into widening eyes with wonder--we could not tell

that somewhere in the orchard

an apple fell

unheard.

The Question (poem)

                                          (with apologies
                                         to Charley Simic)

Greasy ropes with baby nooses wind
through summer weeds, through sun-bathed words
oiled and obtuse, their bodies portending
some languor perturbed.

Greasy ropes with baby nooses grasp,
and groaning, glide, slide from the hands
that would fondle and dandle, would work them in brass
a mask, soi-disant.

Greasy ropes with baby nooses coil
in ringlets, so this mirror would moan,
a crown writhing and fit for a lonely gargoyle,
loquacious and stoned.

Greasy ropes with baby nooses trap
a spectral light, and shine it upon an alien
land, where anonymous ghosts tramp
a course to my mate.

On Her Birthday (poem)

(for Holly Miller, April 26th, 1993)


For me, that year came in
wearing the soft white down
of winter's quilt, murmuring
the words of first marriage vows
under the impossibly pale sun
in a Colorado sky.

And it burgeoned, and grew
to life on an elixir
of pink and white chablis,
shared Gaulois, and idleness--
we whiled away those hours
in a narrow bed, listening
to the fermenting fruit
of our homemade wine,
the passage of hours
decadent and sweet.

That next spring, we began
our long pilgrimage down
from our mountain retreat,
and out onto the great American
plain, riding the roulette
of our thumbs north
with three fat suitcases
and the two black kittens
we had conned from the pound.

We named them Brother and Sister
though I couldn't tell them apart
and the four of us rode
a seemingly random vector
back into the Wisconsin winter
of Madison, mecca for malcontents,
anarchists, marijuana imbibers,
and practitioners of free love.

And then came the spring again,
serenaded by Brubeck and Coltrane,
blissed in the haze of a bigfat bone,
sitting ten floors high on a balcony
watching Lake Mendota slowly
unthaw its hard white into blue--
anyone had never a care then.

Soon, too soon it seems now,
I began work for the state IRS,
and she, for the local Blue Cross:
and our long march into summer
sun had begun; the seasons unwound,
month by month, year on year,
till that march led me, solitary,
to the door of your house on Angelus
to celebrate your twenty-second birthday.

And so on this day of celebration,
though for all that, not one
so unlike so many others
yet to come, I would offer the donation
of a green, green memory
of that time when
I was also a keen twenty-two,
bending supplely in the quickening wind
of my springtime heart, blueing
the world with eyes of wonder.

Making the Bed (poem)

First, the upper-left (all that was wanting
was love), and the oversized pad is soon snugged
(bounce a quarter on that bastid) smooth, taut

to the bed (you gave me); then (have drugged enough)
the bottom sheet (you gave me, too), spread smooth
to the touch (lingering, your diffident touch):
\
(Yo! and behold [yes, ecce! homini lupus])
this baying blank of our daily bread
(forever wanting what for want of you)

covered now with the two pink blankets
you also gave me (flesh oozed beneath),
and last the patchwork quilt (and the song said,

you get what) which is too small (but was free,
after all)--place the pillows back at the head.
To sleep, now, and perchance (all that was wanting

From the Dead-File (poem)

Dear Jan, as once you husband, but now perennial
lover merely (though on some distant urn
of a more distant yearning, we still bend
to love's learning,

I suppose), I propose to you a new acquaintance.
But first, let me begin to try to express
who it is I am, what I've become.  Pure chance,
you see, has pressed

and shaped the man whom you once knew and loved
so well (though, rest assured, the priapic wand
upon which you once danced, and dallied above,
still stirs to its longings,

now and then) beyond his own knowing self,
though perhaps you would know me just as well--
bah! but enough of that; the thing-in-itself
can always tell

the ultimate lie.  What I really want to say
seems impossible to mouth (though wanting for words
cannot still the urge to paint you some day
silently flourishing

for you and me, and Grace, too) without you
to cling to as it's said.  All that's left me
is the silver stud for my ear, the loud, blue,
Grateful Dead T-

shirt, a black beret, and the squinting picture
of an angry baby.  (Such frail, frail props
to hang a heart upon, this not of course to bitch
about the loss

of so much else.)  I cherish them still, for all
they speak to me in Braille.  Bah! no thimbleful
of wit can recall our one summer's slow thrall,
can it?  Yours, Michael

ps  I would propose to you a new acquaintance, love.