'Broken heart, you
timeless wonder.


What a small
place to be.'

M. Ondaatje

I dream of our fallen voices-
I am awoken by the vestige of your breasts,
like legs of wine falling.

I hear our voices over a table,
again your elbows,
the distinct way you placed them,
upon a January night-

but it was not my place or way to stay as i have stayed before-

falling upon the empty vases,
the Aprils; the mornings when the windows spoke of our love
as children swing swaying in the park,
but in the mountainous challis of the dark red lips of a winter night,
when from under a crimson hood you let fall the beauty of a woman's face
kissed with the cold kiss of winter-

I kissed you,
my fingers snug atop your tufts of twirling amber;
invisible falling stars,
we enter drifting,
passing through a door,
another moment to notice,
your elbows kissing plates-

but the writing of the night above the corner of a thousand horns-

I peer into the window,
the dimly lit light,
endlessly smoking,
imprisoned within the portrait
of one anthers eyes-

the morning, the coffee, the door;
the staircase was an organ to my heart-
your colossal legs the steps to your beautiful cunt
which I should have drawn blushing,
bursting beneath a mauve duvet.

8

We walk and take to sitting, the swing swaying in Birchwood Park. The moon casts a glib shadow upon her, slim and leaning; she talks like a train, folds earth from under her tongue.

‘Is it the tequila or do you love as I the implacable buildings?’

It is quiet tonight from above where the garden often sings, the man whose hair is long and flowing, the heavy way he walks in the way of love-

like a stumbling drunken sailor each and every night in Calcutta, which lay upon our wall. The horizontal redeeming eyes, a vertical dress, and from then on I bathed within the song.

In the way of love...

A singular river flowing red organ, we are boundless beings- 

I have listened to the sesames and lilies, the way she curves like a tangerine kneels when the word becomes flesh.

The great romance of construction...

9

But of the man I met the other night:

I see him standing in the parvis, the bright blue grass garnished with the granular way we construct this endless talking, to acknowledge where I might be headed, the headlights and all the tired nights you must have seen on that beautiful California, it was a postcard you had shown me, it was not a picture, I remember now, seated and saying, yes but do you call her often?

If only we could find a way to break that which keeps me from coming to visit you and your cylinder candle.

10

From the coliseum where the lions have swallowed Rome,

the walls have a dowry of tigresses’ eyes,

the windows the eyes of Degas,

the brick top roads of amaretto-

 it is there where I have made ambrosia out of silence,

 speaking from the cracks within the boards.

If only to have seen the verdure,

the vernissage in Paris,

the colorful sidewalks,

the palatable street side vendors,

the women selling the New York Herald Tribune-

the story of her lumbering sienna curves, the concordance of her hourglass form, her rubber heels walking...

Yes! I am writing of the black ocean tempest dreams,

to love again in the black ocean of another’s eyes.

'It is such a secret place, the land of tears.'

-A.De Saint-Exupery

7

The moon collides, the door closes.

I sit, fix my pipe, have a puff while she dresses. She is laconic, the wind in increments, her anabatic breath treads.

The symmetry of her curves fluid from her neck to her toes like flower petals yawning; she stands like a waitress.

The corner of a thousand horns.

6

The furnace and the factory, circa 1984.

The giraffes, the grisette, her name is Griselda, we met whilst I was asleep; Griselda, the gray battle, the magic mountain at rest.

We walk and she talks,

I listen and she walks.

The venerable way of her womanly figure, the lines as they fall, ‘Griselda may I?’ ‘Yes.’ I press upon her slow like drifting Antarctic boulders, I fall into her and she vanishes.

5

Of a man I met the other night:

Noisy Illinois, the bricklayers bother my sleepy thoughts, tell me more of the men in California, their kisses; the stained glass window of his vision hanging in the flowerpot- I have seen the bowl of orchid petals.

His cheeks are florid in the pettifog of our voices.

I see him often, of the man I met the other night, we have the same everlasting vision of the comet and the furnace; the ornaments he carries sealed within the pictures he has shown me.

Her neck is four days long,

her Venusian mouth,

her nose is a diaphone-

as steam rolls heavily upon the bay,

in a house just down the road,

wet tongues sink atop the neck,

golden with rust,

where we dream of slumbering beds

at the bottom of the ocean;

of the palpitating glow of our twin bellies fallen

upon a bed of feathery clouds,

for the morning to drink us,

so we may peel the lids of our eyes.