in the hall of mirrors

Easter

Dead men were
Flung spreadeagled from the barricade.
The fight drained from our angled wounds.

We fled the bunnies
And their flashing hatchets,
Limped across the reddened curb

Into the alley,
Its end blocked by a spaceship
Guarded by ducklings with long black knives.

You said:
Let’s fight, we’ll grab the ship and fly,
Set the controls for heaven.

And I said,
Falling forever into the ground:
Wild rabbits couldn’t drag me.

[Los Angeles, 7/24-9/25/91]

[Art by Michael Sowa]

The hospital room, at midnight

Drained neatly, each hour,
stapled to a network
of steel, wet plastic,
web of blood and urine.

Before the final bell
of this fluorescent night:
an orange.

Oils burst, wild,
juices glow,
virginal, cold – alive! –
a caravan, the blue-white sky,
red haze of cinnamon, and
bitter aloes, desert wind.

In any trap,
escape is within:

it will be
white cinnamon,
sweet aloes.

[Los Angeles, 3/7-27/90]

Dreams II

Not yet asleep, his house, his bed, I breathe
His skin, reshape my legs to fit his legs;
But when I leave the waking dark to feel
Another air, I’m faithless to this place:

Dream buildings.  See, they rise with radiant walls,
Yet skeletally, fling steel bones from earth
To air, float nets of brick and painted wood
On broad, calm lakes of plaster framed with sky –

Tall homes, night visible inside, whose rooms
Change shape: doors vanish, melt to curtained traps,
Blue mirrors glint with eyes that trace the path,
The hidden latch to open secret stairs...

When morning falls, I’ll start awake to rise
And smile, as though I never left his house.

[Los Angeles, 12/18/91-6/19/92]

[untitled]

The classroom reeks of undergraduates.
The walls lethargic beige, the chattering,
resentful, handsome faces, golden thighs.
A grimy fog of answers, questions lost,
and every year they miss the point again.
The concrete park outside is filled with bursts
of advertising, merchandise that blares
with stenciled letters, mascots, girls’ glazed smiles.

The struggle ended years ago.  But still
we make our motions, fake a gray concern,
while knowing that the center and the heart
of it is dead these many years.  We fall,
a slow descent from sense to sense, the loss
of all our lovely castles, and the air.

[Los Angeles, 5/9-22/90]

Airports

(Rilke’s Last Flight)

We walk inside huge jewels, ropes of
white tourmalines, square-faceted;
we straggle, silent, lonely, lost –

The varied forms of faces thaw
from fears or sudden loves, melt with
unwelcome passions, freeze again;

Then, waiting in black fields of chairs,
we dream of those we nearly knew:
we breathe the sun, we feel the air.

[LAX – SFO, IAD – LAX, 11/4-12/30/90]

Postcards

Flying, flying, endless air.
Half asleep, we watch clouds
For evidence of a plan,
For our real destination.

•••

My arms sleep in white sand.
Palm trees relax, stretch, flow easily.
I’m sitting by the ocean for days.
I don’t know where I am.  Find me.

•••

The wind explodes,
Fires lake-ice into my eyes.
Brutal and cold, so cold.
Thinking of you.

•••

Between vine-gagged forests
The river pulls fanged terrors
Under.  Later they float,
Blue and rigid.  We all laugh.

•••

Dark brick for miles, a thousand
Houses loom above the snow.
At night I walk towards true north.
Red and black and mortar: heart’s blood.

•••

The seaside cottage, which
Feels a sharp west wind.  We sit
And gaze out towards nothing
For as long as we can.

•••

The stinking alleys off the docks
Conceal secrets, maybe wisdom.
Morning comes, and some of us
Return again to light.

•••

Cross-continental, the plane
Flies ever faster,
Trying to take us home.
I say: can’t be done.

[Los Angeles, Chicago, 9/25/91-6/17/92; rev. 7/05]

The white wall

(a folk song translated from an unknown language)

He came out of the dry east with a leather bag
He stood in the square, and I know he smiled at me
Stroked his mustache, boasted to the village men
No one knows who told his secret

The leather bag was left empty against the wall
Behind it red spots, blood red
He shouldn’t have looked at the other girls
I wash and wash the wall, I rub very hard

[Berlin, 3/30-31/94]

Postcard from exile

Beautiful cars float on the freeways.
The Hollywood sign has been repaired.
Surfaces are chromed and dazzling,
fine sunglasses conceal our memories.

[Los Angeles, 5/2/90]