Three Poems
King of the Apple
The apple looked like an artificial
[tab5]Fruit, made of plastic—Platonic[/tab5]
Insofar as optics went, crisp red shell
[tab5]Selling to the teeth a special:[/tab5]
The apple of your dreams in red plastic!
[tab5]A memory rings like a bell.[/tab5]
Seizing the gleaming fruit and moving it
[tab5]To the face requires no practice.[/tab5]
You do it like you walk and talk and tell
[tab5]Someone where to go—you don’t think.[/tab5]
But then when you think think, you do yourself
[tab5]More harm than good; you do yourself[/tab5]
A partial injustice, you walk and think
[tab5]Nothing, just the scenery. Swell—[/tab5]
The heart jumps recapturing the green stinks
[tab5]Of childhood summers, the raw pink[/tab5]
Mornings, bruised evenings … better not tell
[tab5]It so fractured, not everything[/tab5]
Needs taking apart—but an apple, well,
[tab5]What does it do but sell itself?[/tab5]
Or say that it came from an artificial
[tab5]Paradise, perfect—Platonic[/tab5]
Insofar as apples went, buffed red shell
[tab5]Urging teeth to chomp with special[/tab5]
Emphasis: the apple is not plastic!
[tab5]You bite and hear church or school bells[/tab5]
Ringing and pull the veritable apple
[tab5]From the face which is itself elastic[/tab5]
With gratitude and joy (fundamental
[tab5]Reaction, if histrionic),[/tab5]
Though in the apple, rotten under skin,
[tab5]Lived a warm pink worm like a king.[/tab5]
The Light Burns
The dead electric bulb becomes an object of contemplation
[tab5]This morning, in the prickly summer heat[/tab5]
Causing me sleeplessness, dizziness, and nausea.
[tab5]Breakfast repeating, I gulp into shorts[/tab5]
And head out to the patio where the goddess meditates
[tab5]In silence—well, sort of, the great outdoors[/tab5]
Can never really be silent. Indeed what is silence, then?
[tab5]It is the goddess, tightlipped, meditating,[/tab5]
Her eyes half-closed, their sapphires rolling rolling rolling …
[tab5]The sun is on fire more than usual.[/tab5]
What I mean by this is that flames surround it like a depiction
[tab5]Of Apollo or one of those Mexican[/tab5]
Solar folk masks. We worship the sun at its most terrible
[tab5]Moments: the goddess turns pink, then red.[/tab5]
I return to the kitchen and sit at the great table with
[tab5]A bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.[/tab5]
The light burned out long ago and I never changed it, why, I
[tab5]Don’t know—but today the raging hot sun[/tab5]
Provides all the light one would need: the goddess comes in and cries.
[tab5]She has a way of complexifying[/tab5]
The day: it is her calling, ontologically speaking,
[tab5]And on this prickly summer morning she[/tab5]
Calls me into her bedroom to apply a cooling lotion
[tab5]Over her red back, over her red neck,[/tab5]
Her skin so fiery hot to the touch she cannot be human;
[tab5]Sing to me, goddess. Sing to me as you[/tab5]
Would sing to the Father of the Universe, or the Mother
[tab5]Of the Universe, and I will save you[/tab5]
Much mockery and ignominy concerning the sunburn.
Important Bird Area
Orienteering strictly forbidden.
[tab5]What does that tell you about Paradise?[/tab5]
Urban run-off, industrial sewage
[tab5]De-clarify the carp-thronged watershed.[/tab5]
The carp wriggle golden and silvery
[tab5]In the mucked up grasses, and the catching[/tab5]
Comes easy. Who eats these? You’d be surprised.
[tab5]And if I told you that in coming days[/tab5]
You’d be fighting for a gleaming carp-head,
[tab5]You’d laugh—you find me funny: what I say,[/tab5]
What I do, how I do it. I can stand
[tab5]Here still and silent and you would[/tab5]
Find that hilarious and I would laugh
[tab5]And it would be like bread we were eating,[/tab5]
That laughter, at my expense—have no fear
[tab5]The window-cleaner will finish shortly[/tab5]
And we will return to the fun part of our
[tab5]Relationship—tell me you’re not faking[/tab5]
It this time, the mood, the domination
[tab5]Of black in it, or blue, I can never[/tab5]
Tell with you. What does that tell you about
[tab5]Paradise, or our humble version of it?[/tab5]
