Swordswallower

(He falls upon his sword from upside down
Himself an indecision hung bat-like from
That chandelier she bought in Okinawa.)

The hard brittle sword of cowardice
pierces my heart. Margret sits at our
café table sipping coffee black hot
like a wind from Oran where we met;
Her eyes and lips are beset with levels
of meaning like the finest jewels under
glass, hidden from random touch. She
is with another man and shall say it is
yet another of your brothers visiting.

I will seem to swallow that sword once
again. I will have the ear of this one,
as I have the lip of another, a finger,
toe, a part of this or that brother
with whom she met; there is a perfect
globe of a blue eye wet in our bed.

These parts will surrender Olduvai
bones in some forsaken future
when we have wrinkled with sword
point showing, blade seen
from hilt on through.

All these men form a continent of O's.
I am surprised that you sleep so well
as if guilt were so many patches
you'd sewn into the garment of night.

I am cold and shredded and ill-pieced.

Visiting the Neighbors in Early Evening

There is no etiquette to walking lanes
where front-porch sat, sunsets watched
no more. Now un-neighborly to even know
by name who dwell within that string of
boxes we call homes, more from habit
than from our having made of them.

Shutters open to summer heat spread
wide at night, reveal a window opening
upon your room whose curtains part in
welcome to a passing breeze that enters
to caress your naked form still damp
from cooling showers, your arms held
high in surrendering, you twirl around,
your hands embracing behind your neck.
You sigh. I walk by.
Catalysts to no chemistry.

Morning until late evening when he
wakes whenever that might be, they
check for errors. Is he breathing?
I hear breathing. Are those machines
online? They seem to be. Is his drip
bag empty? I suppose it is empty.
Has he moved at all? How could I tell?
Are his eyes still glazed or dry?

The fellow half way down the block
fluffs pillows on his bed of chintz
and satin; his face is blue with mask;
a red boa around his neck, he comes
to breathe the evening air; a gargoyle
grotesque, he spits on us below.

I hear someone gasp. Is that him and or
her - why must I assume? - in that next
box whose windows darken at eve's first
stars. Something light as a late night
kiss on a soft left cheek
of a woman asleep.

Romance is a flickering television
always in the background crowing
improvements to our spotty tepid
lives, insulting what is left of our
intelligence. Lovers stare together
from couches, fearing to rise, fearing
any contact of flesh to flesh. I walk by.

Our science flatters us with godhood;
we are barbarians alive only to senses.
Generations shudder at our inhumanity.

^

Biography

Chicago born, widely traveled (London to Kabul in 1960s), now living in Mississippi, a disabled veteran, and professor (literature and criticism), I've also been a cab driver and steel worker. My poetry has been performed and published widely in Europe and across the U.S.