Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Brooklyn Bridge

This fine moment is mine,
not yours.
Through my eyes,
in my daydreams,
my house is tall.
Up one thousand flights of winding stairs
you tirelessly find my hide hanging from oyster shell.
Thinned and sagging from my bones, I fall apart into your hands;
while my eyes are wishing, wanting, wanton--
little bottles of wonton lollipops.
I am baking you a breakfast of magnificent spiderwebs I found on corncobs.

My time piece, ancient like Central Station, says, whispers,
“Don't forget to look up.”
So I don't.
In a red tile bathroom we made dirty love.
I knew so little about you, except every subtle sinew, every nuance of your presence,
I knew so little about you.

My grandfather time piece, it stands on two legs with stiff arms
and circus feet.
Topsy-turvy acrobats fly from sill to sill,
and I open my windows to let the light in as it strikes dark.
I open my windows. The world drifts in.
The pebbles you throw reach the Afghan rugs.
Parlors, parlors, parlors. There are entire floors of parlors
full of Afghan rugs, in my tall house.
Silently they fall into the night
and this way you still feel like a six hour daylight shift,
of dreaming of fucking in the slough.

Your shadow tries to keep my warm.
Your shadow creeps into my sleep and tries to keep me warm.

You crept along my back with fingers (in notches) of water.
I was a rowboat tied to your bed post,
breathily, cut me off and set me downstream.
You flow like tender: through my hands
and in my pockets.
Your muttering under the word names
left me breathless; gasping exhales like drowning, I am breathless.

Frantic. In a panic.
I ban my words to speak your language.

Red tile bathroom, red tile bathroom
with the big red. read. arm chair out above.
My mouth is touching your atlas, at the nape of your thoughts,
and that, that is my favorite spot.
Hands, face, chest,
all pressed against a red-tinted vanity.
We screamed at each other,
you still called me “Pretty.”
My fingers are fiber-optics. Your skin is cerebral...

Now time has passed and your Fertile Crescent skin
(electrified with lights)
tastes metallic and brandished, like a dream.
We made wild stories in the dark.
We weighed mild allegories to black and brick yards.

I stretch my skin over the distance. A body. A bridge.
I just want to tempt you. I just want to spread
myself out like a map of the stars
and take up infinite space in your heart.

I secretly want you to stay a tragedy.
Where is Hercules when Poseidon is inside him?
To be the thin heroine, to be breastless and useless.
I am Philosophical. I am Godless. But you call me Goddess.
I can hook you with my fins, with my Trident I can reel you in.
God knows,
we are the loneliest of kin.

I slip into the streams of my own consciousness
as I sleep in my big tall house from the throws of my own empty nest.
And in this fantasy-reality you reach me,
you are dripping from tips
of nipples from breasts
heaving with the milk of human longing.
In kindness I reach out to relieve your sacred texts.

The hands of time reach nine and I wake to find no tall house.
I was grinding coffee. I was cutting your limbs. I was praying to willows. I was singing your hymns.
I sang. I cockled. I cooed. I stood, barefoot in a chicken coop,
recalling perfect eggshells, recalling how your face was seamless.
I asked the dreamless hens if that made you real.