Three Poems

Before and after

As often, I discovered a new poem
while shitting. A woman’s mother died.
Two men carried her small body
out the house in a blanket, stopped
at the door for the woman to kiss
the final warmth in her mother’s face.
I know the poet. Had a one night stand
with the blanket. It’s softer in the poem
than life. I got up. Flushed.
Walked the dark to a room, found the moon
in my chair, sat on a bed to write a note
to my mother’s eyes, my father’s hands.
The sun arrived, the disguise of light.
I looked out a window at thousands of trees
I’d never meet, most resembling twigs
in the distance. This poem was years away.
As was my wife, our life. A minute ago,
I smiled when I thought of everything
this poem isn’t going to tell you or me.
My mouth opens to keep its secrets.

À la carte

She took her underwear off in the restaurant
where you eat in the dark — fingered herself
in the dark while noticing the complexity
of saffron in the dark — slipped her finger
in my mouth in the dark — when we got outside
we took her underwear to the Seine
and set it free — and went our separate ways —
I have not seen so deeply into the world
as with a stranger at my back after hours
of dark and being waited on by a blind woman
who smelled like waking up as a child
after holding my breath until I passed out —
like the soap my mother used and the memory
of her gentle face not worried in the least
that she’d raised a beast but letting me
do what I needed to — thrash and crash
until something caught me and held — holds

The best tonics don’t intend to be

Twenty seven thousand, three hundred
and sixteen people have watched the video
of John Berryman talking with a blazegaze
in his eyes. Most of the comments
are about how drunk he is or if he is,
but I’m slightly also potted, so if he is,
we’re a team. The revelation for me —
his beard. It’s as gray as I imagine
the inside of Edith Piaf’s coffin
must be and has swallowed his face,
as it’s too late for Edith Piaf to do.
It’s not too late in his life
that his eyes have killed themselves
over Minnesota, that it exists.
With the sound off I listen to his beard
and concentrate on wondering why
we write poetry, why we toboggan,
why we think the body is a jar
holding a soul that doesn’t really want
or even need the jar. Need is a word
that if you add more es, seems neeedier,
like a person who, if you add more beard,
seems better camouflaged
from the pointy sticks of being.
When I consider the smallest truth
of this moment — that I’m watching
a dead man not being dead — a dead drunk
maybe not being drunk at all — maybe
being excited about favorite books
while touching his gorilla beard
and looking out at the future
through thick black glasses
like my father and every father wore
to the sixties to make it clear
they were not taking LSD, even if they were —
I want to embrace strangers
and tell them we’re each a band-leader
in and of our heart and be forgiven
my exuberance and inappropriate touching
on the highest plane of existence
and the law. I didn’t intend
to watch this video or exist
or ever love John Berryman for looking
so traditionally poet-crazy
that I think I now have the power
to swim the English Channel,
to wash up in France and ask them
where they keep their inner resources
and to be nicer to Jews. It’s a lovely world
that gives me proof I can’t expect to know
how the story comes out, beyond
the obvious — people will die
for a cigarette until they get one,
and then, a little while later, die again.
As long as you want something, you’re eternal.
Look at Berryman — every time I pause
the video, there his open mouth is, poised,
ready to jump off the cliff, into the open air
of the mind.