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Posts: 640 · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:09 pm

I just "announced" that I'd be posting these poems, and why, under "I need a Hug." There are five of them; I'll post three in this message, and the other two separately.

(Just a word of warning: in the poem, "How You Looked", there is an anatomical reference that could possibly offend--although it's not in a sexual context at all. It just seemed like a good idea to offer a disclaimer!)

I guess I should also add the standard "reprinting these anywhere without my express written permission would be highly unappreciated!" statement.

Doe

PIKE PARK
Longer than I thought, the walk
Across Houston, through Pike Park
To a part of Chinatown I’d never seen.
It was October. Blue milk spilled from sky
To street, and lights were sparking on.
I don’t remember where
We meant to go, or who was leading whom.
Tarnished sea bass gasped in window tanks,
Slid their bellies in nervous shimmies up
The glass, losing scales, mouthing
Breathless o’s, then flipped
Back into the crowded dark,
To let the others have a go.

I watched you eat and paid for it
In a restaurant where in the windows
Ducks hung by their necks on hooks, plucked,
All flesh, eyeless heads bent sideways
In attitudes of shame.
By the time you finished, it was dark.
Leaves under streetlamps fanned from branches
Over shadows splayed and swaying, cards
Held in a nervous hand. I meant to leave you then,
But you were talking
And I had no one at home

HOW YOU LOOKED (VA HOSPITAL, SPRING, 1990)
David, let me wash and cool
Your swollen feet while you’re awake
So nothing can get worse, at least
For now, at least not here where we
Are so alone, the nurses masked,
Reluctant to come in the room
I’d almost tell you how you looked
Asleep, all afternoon,
Your body on a boat
Losing course, slipping over fish, the sun
A yellow wine that whispered
In my head to let you drift.
I watched your face fall fully
Open, saw your sheets come loose
And drop apart, your body a mirage,
Your belly hollowed-out and vaporous,
Your penis arched and cool
Dozing there, flawless in the glare.
The sound is just the rush
Of water and a washcloth
In a bowl. Tell me if it feels too hot
Or cold. You’ll feel my fingers
Run across your toes so thick
I’ll never pass a towel through. Your skin
Is breaking up like desert floor,
No longer big enough to hold you in.

BATH
Shock of water when you dropped, at last,
Into your bath: you had not
Undressed in weeks, much less
In front of me. Discreet, my fingers
Which had for weeks in secret
Decoded death’s maneuvers on your back’s
Cracked skin, once sleek to touch
As glass, my fingers which had felt
For fever on your brow
And found it, which had tapped the tempo
Of the lonely thoughts we’d had
Together, the dreaming symphonies.
Squeezing water
Down from your neck, passing soap
In timid measures along inches
Of your flesh, I startled
Nests of outraged sparrows
From where they’d safely slept.

Posts: 640 · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:14 pm

I just realized I could add the others in a separate post in the same thread. Duh.

Here goes:

HOLDING BREATH
April dusk drained, while I was out,
Into your mouth, the black
Collapsing cave, your glottis ticking off
Last swallows of the day. You watched tides
Receding, patterns on the rug
Recounting dreams, frail fingers
Fingering cold fences
That held you in your bed.
Coming in with sheets
And pillows from Delancey, I smelled your skin
Beleaguered, tasting itself, falling
Away, the smell of fruit
Rotting in a bowl, unnaturally sweet.
The nurse dismissed, I prematurely lit the room
With candles against night.
Then night began, a shadow
Lapping in the shallow moments. Rats
And pigeons rustled, pestilent,
Trapped in walls; open windows lifted tongues,
Sending quiet cadenced prayers
To infiltrate God’s monotone. Your eyes,
Slow fish, slid in wide ellipses
While I prepared us for the caterpillar ride
To dawn. By nine I lay
Against your back between the rails, your muteness
Sharp against murmurs from the street,
Against the muffled rush of breeze
Through pale fingers of new leaves. Hooded figures
Flickered and bowed
In gestures of atonement on the walls.

There was nothing to do
But wait. I lay you down. Sometime that night
Your whisper broke
An interval of sleep. I need,
You said. I waited while
You shook it from inside your head.
I need someone
To hold my breath for me. That night
I never slept again,
Imagining you driving on some prairie road,
Your arm dancing in the wind outside the window
With the rhythm of a country song.
I warmed your back curved hard
Against sleep, passing the hours preparing
For the time that we had left.

E.R., BELLEVUE, 4/20/1990
It worked, whatever
They gave you, for five
Minutes, miracles. For five minutes
A pair of jack-o’-lantern flames
Flooded the hollowed crescents of your eyes, found
Me, fixed. Blues and whites ghosted by;
Metals in the room hummed frigid wiry songs.
It was a shot you could have popped
Yourself, two months, or less,
Before, fingers and limbs obeying brain. You knew your name was David
Then. Your throat could swallow anything.

My mistake, your being there,
Your one request, to be at home, forgotten
When your sudden spasm woke me, the nervous marbles
Of your irises colliding
With the curved-edged razors of your lids.
A filling-station fear of death in deep-
Night solitude made me betray you, make the call
To have them come and bring you in.

The ambulance threw fire down streets
And ran against crosslights, and heaved your head
From side to side, and would not
Turn around again.
Orange suns crashed into asphalt
When you were carried out, and clouds
Behind you shook. A yellow moon, your face
Swung over the misting river, against
A whitening sky. Neon flashed, arresting in red
Your last uncertain movements in fresh air. I thought
I asked you something then, and thought you answered
By the way that your expression
Didn’t change.

Double doors breathed us in,
Exhaled the morning wind.
Patients turned their heads to watch it go.
Reciting all your numbers, all the thirty pills
I’d tried to make you take each day, infections,
Hospitalizations, whereabouts of kin,
I impressed the nurse who tied you to a bed.
Beyond that, being neither wife
Nor mother, sister, cousin once
Removed, it didn’t matter what I said.
The answer had to come from you, and you
Had put the riches that remained inside your rusted tin away
Two weeks ago, your mouth accepting morphine,
Nothing else. There’s method
To my madness, you murmured once, your tongue
Arced up to take it in. From then you spoke
At intervals spaced out like stars
Against a stretched, black sky.

So you got your one
Last shot. Your veins, frayed wires,
Remembered, sent adrenaline up
Into your dark rooms
Which lit in sequence fast as Christmas bulbs,
And for five minutes glowed.
Asked, repeated, the question passed
From voice to voice in rounds, a chorus
In the cubicles and curtains.
I saw you register what I’d done, saw
The answer rise through levels to your mouth,
Saw you shape it with your lips, breathe:
I want to go with you,
But the voices by then were gone,
And you would not be going home.

Doe

Posts: 2421 · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:41 pm

i really enjoyed your poetry.

Thank you

Suzi

Posts: 640 · Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:54 pm

Thank you, Suzi. I'm not sure they're too enjoyable--they're actually kind of bummer poems!--but I'm glad you liked them. Thanks for taking the time to read them.

Doe

Posts: 782 · Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 3:33 pm

thank you for sharing.
many thanks.