Yearn for me -

With thistles crowned, with eiderdown all bound
up in your pale white mane, your eyes, once blind
as malachite, are splintered to a kind
of gentle, keening radiance, not sound,
but light between the leaves, all green and brown
and gold. You watch me. Laugh, always behind
my back, but softly, wind on waves and mind
full blown with fields of time. Persistent hound,
yet deeper than rich earth, your slumber kept
my trail so fresh, to seek and bind my brow
with signs that now you count my every breath.
How strange that passion grows inside the crypt,
but you would not give love in life, so now
you find the way to yearn for me in death.

Where your arm curves into your touch-

When I tire,
I think of you.


It is like returning to a granite block, barefoot,
to absorb warmth and crouch,
for some time,
with palms supporting a body,
feeling the bulge and the grain.

Violent Prayer –

And even in this sacred time of ours,
When rain and night sound mix in dark
But silent passages of thought, I am
Afraid of all we said, and swore, and proved.
Do all the things you say reflect my own
Deep, wild, and mixing passions? Even I,
Who yearn for more than that which life
Has given me to taste and feel, do shy
From you and passions swift and turbulent
That somehow you evoke. But how could I,
When fate seemed set, have cut out ties when just
One moment cruelly gave the greatest and
Simplest foundation of my life huge rifts
Of insufficiency. By holding out
One hand, entreating me to join my lips
To skin so sibilant when gliding through
The water, you destroyed my solitude,
The base which formed my life, by giving me
Your love. Could I resist? If I had turned
And left you there, would I have felt the space
In me? The hollow echo of denied
Emotion, which your voice could fill with fugues
Of passion, would have racked my mind at night.
How simply emptied was my reason! Your
Mouth lit, with grace, upon my neck, thereby
Dispelling all objections and the doubt.
I lived but for the moment and for you.
My arms, my eyes, they know your form so well,
But still I am surprised when, each time, we
See change. The way you gasp, the way you move,
The sudden laughter in the room; all new
To arms and eyes in love with you. I pray
In whispers, God hear my loud cry, that we
Will love with purity that solely youth
May give. I fear my lust, yet need our love.
And even in this sacred time of ours,
When, satisfied, we hover near to sleep,
I press your form and shadow close to mine,
And thank the Norns for you, and love: the two
Which bound my heart and set my fear so free.

The February issue-

This was how I sought MacLaughlin,
positioning myself in window light,
letting him watch,
pulling slowly along the rifts inside.

I stretched along the months,
reaching for the part I thought was him,
past the wheatened and Rolling Rock,
the pre-dawn rowing on the lake,
when his arms would pull and part the surface of Cayuga.

Across a coffee table is the worst way,
but somehow when his lips
and mine
pressed and parted, tongued and moved,
there was an epiphanic saying:
"This, here, now, this is"
and I was blind when he touched my skin.
I tried to bring about
the rush and glory of his smile,
and leave his divided longing in our wake.
This was not his passage.

MacLaughlin was engaged in the Spring.

In October he lamented at a bar,
with his legs touching mine,
and his breath coated with division,
that there were so many choices,
doubled passages gone wrong.
I pressed a bottle in my hand,
feeling liquid inside glass,
wanting only to close my eyes.
Instead, I watched him,
touched his shoulder,
felt the tearing of my rift.

In his sight I felt all
the sunlight in my hair.



GLS
3/12/91

St. Patrick's steps-

A primitive soul would be lost here
where identity is a personal thing;
dissolution
in every walked shadow.
A black coat swinging and sunglasses kept
city-glare and wind and eyes from me;
I felt backlit
by a thousand pallid throats.
This Fifth Avenue cathedral,
limestone that summoned my solitude:
that absolute desire
for nimbus
not of flesh, but of space,
a clavicle of mouthed construct.
On that stairway I felt
my pulse, my toes, the surge of fear.
This is
alone.

I was
Christina
in the Wyeth, but
with
cowboy boots and
blue jeans worn
thin by hands
grasping at yellowed stems,
with eyes lifting over grain
to an empty home
and a face lashed by hair.
Trembling, my hand
closed with delicate curls, like husk from kernel,
upon itself.
Amidst taxis pavement rumbling wool from coat horns
pigeon wings -

I aswirl
grassed stillness
and some selfish absolution.



GLS
3/25/91

Something surfacing-

It is hidden in the magnolias,
which are blooming now as if they have no knowledge.
As if, with texts and words
we should know the way that men think,
anticipate the shiftings of a mood and welcome it,
find the lexicon of pain, and the reference of its healing.
They, at this fragmentary time,
hold the sibilant shape of alphic love,
and dip the branches with the weight of this responsibility,
the honor of their call.

As if passing beneath them, they
laugh their emblamage upon me,
winnowing the light with careless ease upon my shoulders.
I watch a woman walking ahead,
see the colors of her eyes, the swell of skin beneath
a creamy sweater, the aurelole of her nipples
flushed.
I see this as if my hands are the wind.
I see this as if I know her and her ways.
I see this.

it all goes back to the magnolias.
you see, the way they spread and die
their color seeping from their edges like cut wrists,
and their shedding of petals a tease that ends in
death and fertilization.

And it doesn't matter, which way they wilt,
how they blow, all those
words;
they have the option to return in a year.
A woman throws back her long hair,
and stops. She looks down,
balancing on the concrete for a minute.
As if she felt the slow drift of a petal,
heard it brushing the path,
and knew that it was not a fall,
but something breaking into its own element.

This made me falter,
stop, breathe, and turn.
I shy from what will be here, under me, so soon.


GLS
4.27.91

No fear, McLaughlin-

At times,
conversations are measured not by words,
those uttered strung vowels,
but by the pauses in sound, tensile silences.
These are the harmonies of our attraction;
exquisite, pristine, balanced.

In the smell of your sweater as I lift it,
beaded by late summer fog,
damp cotton, woven blonde
where I pressed my head to your breast,
these speeches of you billow in my inner ear
with the inflection of sheets and snap of your slight accent.

I am frustrated by your abstract designs,
not drawn, but walked through my life with details:
signs on notebook covers,
a Walkman with no volume control,
a copy of “The Rainbow”
with no cover,
your constant, gentle, humming,
no lyrics, and much denial.
I fascinate you with inherent shock value,
rumbling your conventions until you must laugh,
or submit to the need to touch me.

Will either prove that I am real?

You watch my fingers reaching for a branch,
or my lips moving over a Franciscan prayer,
my legs curled around a barstool,
simple indulgences that remind you
of your still rooms
devoid of my voice and the warmth of my skin.

When you draw breath,
I need strength to resist you, John.
Don't you see the rapture you bring
when you descend upon me from your silent plane?
I am responding to imagined arms, almost drawn skyward,
when your breath moves through my name.



GLS
8.3.91

Never having seen Guilin-

Someone, perhaps my mother,
or some other lovely blond,
told me
that if you didn't eat it all,
it wouldn't come true.

And I thought:
"How nice
that for once I can truly choose my destiny;
how considerate that it all hangs
on my appetite."

But I found that I didn't like
the taste of flour and manifest destiny.
Something about eating "control"
in order to summon a saying
into
existence.
I'd much prefer a form
of fortune fruit pie,
where the opening reveals only
sweetened syrups,
and the only revelation
is that nothing on the inside
is real.











GLS
5.12.91

The natural order-

I never knew that he could dance,
this man who stood before affection
as if before a lash.
I had perhaps scorned him
in his flashing rages over hinges
or his witherings under mother's gaze.
Though he gathered us in family
and led us across continents,
though he was trite authority
and gifts from airport news stands,
I kept looking for a weight
beyond a candy bar at nine o'clock.

The Carolinan hills that pushed him
from East 82nd to Cedar Creek
could not foretell a thing to his child.
The patterns of the razorblade
when he removed his beard
left no message of import.
Even the scents of morning kisses,
replete with light like smoke,
were no more than semaphores
of wool and Polo cologne,
obscuring my sensual gathering.

But I was choked with a son's fear
when I first saw him dance,
as certitude and grace finally
took this man above me
and hid him from all words.




2/10/91
GLS

movement through the leaves –

God will grant me this time
after the magnolias have died beneath the bell-tower,
to walk the shadows of the Quad,
listening for the sibilance of June's arriving.
These walks have drummed a solitude around my open soul,
like lessons in the classrooms,
like dreams that recur.
The world, life,
finds ways to touch you,
new ways of wounding when you think
you are deserved
of this stillness from bird-wings
this absence of light.
To walk these wide paths,
to move below the arched windows,
and Ionic columns,
there are echoes of Dendur in the Metropolitan mid-day,
wrappings of Wendy's laughter as she tilted over my note,
and I paid for this and these
in separation.


Wrought iron lamps rising from cold stone,
cold stone arched above gorges,
where students have ended their lives in long spirals,
where foam and full moons
welcomed Courtney and Cecil and I,
stroking across the slate.
Past. Past like the devolution of ice.
Now the greens are layered, pressed
upon and leafed, black with
scales and glimmers - lush rustlings of a new wind.
I can smell the moisture,
taste it in my bare feet, and my underarms.
In this silence I can say anything,
so I breathe, just.

I walk naked on a plot,
bounded by hovering rooms where I learned the stories
I tell myself, and live others.


There is no tempo of similarity to the caroling of birds,
and echo of welcome,
announcing the Eden coming
in the blue behind Sage Chapel, the sloping of roof and dawn.
Here, place, so very much laughter
with Matthew,
the humming of sun on Karen's pale Irish skin.
All of this, from aerate pressures on my nudity
bird-voices layering like the intensity of leaves on my eyes,
moisture calling my skin,
calling like oceans in the trees,
washing the sky before the light,
warning of betrayal of the loss.


Airié has told me
people see me as strong,
but that the world wounds certain people,
wounds them a lot.
Does she know that these people
have taught,
that this place has loved,
that this final dawn,
spoken in the language least studied,
is my sensory goodbye.


GLS
6.13.91

Lullaby-

Icons flock my dreams,
grazings of memory with eyes
that pool and dry
like fading chords:
Philip's warms chest surfaces against mine,
sheltering voice and lips on my shoulder;
owls in bathtubs,
claw-footed porcelain vessels,
coppered eyes and talons ruffled
into my arm.

This is why I do not like sleep;
it takes and presses like a murderer
through concious moments
with desire
for gritty foam on feet,
with fear
of being voiceless.
Sleep denies my reality;
plagues of need scrape my lips at night,
moans heard by curtains,
gauzy sounds
from batallions of lost conversations.

Each day opens
with longing for the night.

There, terrors were bred to my taste.
There, Philip holds me on streets,
my forehead dipping
to his murmurs.
There, Beverley and I sleep
under the winter mimosa,
wombing each other
as branches web the scrim of stars.

Not allowed to leave,
I wake, wrestling
with unattainable images of comfort
and Ithaca's April snows.




GLS
4.2.91

Lost on the driveway -

This life is filled with Juicy Fruit jingles,
with other people's babies,
with dance mixes, rebates,
statistics that always rise,
and then,
there is the rainfall on gravel.

It comes surprisingly soft.

To the senses it is most aural,
a metallic slate color,
but a veil of sound.
Sheer glamour of loss,
water on stone and somehow, the mind,
it leaves.
To lift the eye and thought from this hissing tympany
would be cause for death.

So I need a prayer now,
as I struggle with this calm.

Returning to the noises is when I need you, Lauren.
It is your turn to redeem.
My sister must save me,
barefoot the wet gravel and speak me from the loathing,
the denial of the rain.
If there is a way through the world to where I am,
you will find it.
And if you remember the way,
you will lead me.
Or we will remain, or we will die.






GLS
10.16.91

Inisheer, beyond the edge-

Airié knows
that we rely too much
on vapor from coffee mugs
to tell of the cold.
She turns to strangers
for their omnipresence,
finding her comfort in her being alone.
And all of our holding hands in
dark parking lots
and through crowded hallways
proves nothing except the reflex of muscle and heart.
I watch her eyes for more,
seeking a telling wince,
but Airié keeps pointing out my moods.

Writers are annoying in that way.

She analyzes rings on tables,
and speculates on belts and jeans,
and keeps avoiding mirrors and still, open puddles.
I know that she seeks islands,
shrouded by heather and the smell of sheep,
and hungers for the magic of a ship
and storms that blow like reason over seas.
She, like I, would discard the sunsets
that we finds so frightening,
and all the unease of the dawn.

So we order from a catalog:
a sweater in gourd, leggings in cranberry, a scarf of chiffon
the color of shaded leaves
after a rain.
She laughs at some expression I make;
I have tried to draw her fingers on the form.
The next day we buy the requisite stamp,
lift the letter,
and wait.




2/14/91
GLS

Immersion was a moment-

So, the waters still, and then they die.
I do not think that they care, they move without emotion,
the inanimate in this world do not feel.
I can beat against water,
slamming fist or open palm against
a pond, a puddle, a surface without substance,
there is no pain.
Liquid knows no tensile lasting,
it knows no burning,
it just moves.

Escape comes simply,
through evaporation, lifting,
scattering to particle and stratosphere,
through branch and fingers and grass and skin,
water lifts as if winged;
in the end we are all embalmed of moisture.

Without it, there are things that wither,
ground that splits and pales,
mouths left open,
spilling more of life onto busy city pavement.

She should have told me that her leaving
would bring the thirst.
Before she ran down rivulets, moving in glacial slowness
to meet the vast expanse of anonymity
known only and best
by those who seek her kind.




GLS
6.18.91

First mournings-

You spoke of David, and the way he breathed,
so I turned up the volume;
there were crop reports on the radio,
when I wanted Pagannini in the air.
You opened windows and turned on fans,
as if to dispel the scent,
but he will be here like weather,
a stifling heat, a lulling rain.

"He's too close, he's too close."

"He left, he's . . . it's quiet in here, isn't it?"


When you spoke, you forgot
who loved him best.





GLS
7.22.91

Far from troublesome creek-

How do you measure the sand in your life,
as it slides into cracks in your skin?
The dunes of St. Simons keep on returning,
rumbling through dreams like bison in bed.
To think of him was like entering
rooms filled with sunlight,
spattered by dropcloths
and motes in the air.
I ran to the island and walked the long tide-bars
made where two rivers slept with the sea.
Buried in music from the green jam-box
and the dancing sand and the howling gulls,
I lay still and let the sun's burning find me,
to furrow out the thoughts and force me to breathe.
At nights when the Southern moon
hung over the marshes,
and crowded the fiddler crabs out of their dens,
I rode Paintbrush without
English saddle
until the glint of Jeckyll appeared in the bay.
I did these things which
did not mean
snowfall
or chalkboards or big hands or jackets
with stripes,
because in the lowlands of Georgia
by moonlight,
no one rowed sculls, and no one would write
of green eyes closing under my fingers,
or shoulders that quivered in fear at my touch.
This was the gifting of that small island,
which found me and forced me
to keep this alive.




2/06/91
GLS

Excision and coercion -

Lauren watches my lips as we eat;
she has told me
that they are treacherously lovely
for a brother to own.

I have written to her on thick red paper,
sinking the letters beneath some skin,
forcing myself not to say things;
neglecting to define.
I know that they are difficult to read.
I have to turn on lights to find myself
behind the lectures and the thoughts.

In a lecture on development I saw her nursery.
She slept beneath the gaze of pandas,
who, pieced by color and two feet high,
crawled through painted bamboo,
cloning around her crib.
I memorized her name,
made it a child's mantra,
when crossing the street to see her for the first time.
I did not want to age and then forget;
I knew that I would say it
often in my life.

Lauren.

Now see her in red sheaths,
pressed against young men,
leaning on their egos and their fear.
I have the sense of empty nurseries,
of crawling, crying pandas,
of someone wearing lipstick,
and her stride approaching mine.
Against the brush of ink and postal time
I want to say,
"Lauren, I never told you





GLS
3/12/91

Embraces find their own -

You shouldn't leave me now,
when I'm so close to the understanding.
Here, with candles growing old,
patina around the silver vines,
I am beginning to notice the snow,
and how it waits.
There is only warmth beneath layers;
earth knows this:
it inhumanly welcomes the cold,
allowing accumulation to bring slumber.
Is this why you have accepted
my sudden threats of leaving
with such calm?
Are you certain that I will learn
to equate time's passage
with contentment,
not loss?

I should not be allowed to stand outside.
Alone amidst the whispering banks
and flurries of descent and sleeping ground
there are promises of purity.
Hints of death. Transformation of a whole.
A place of confusion to battle a certainty.

But it is only a snowfall.
A snowfall where we walked in summer.
A snowfall where you took me.
A snowfall finding its place on earth,
somewhere,
between us.




GLS
12.8.91

As we looked steadfastly on him-

The headstones did not grow here,
they look nothing like pale mushrooms,
they were deliberate place-settings,
identifying implants in this garden.
We walk through the wrought-iron gates
to the marshy light and snapping limbs,
rustling hydrangea and blooming paperwhites
and the sudden cherubims of stone.
I am afraid of tripping.
Over my name, or that of a loved one,
or the silence of these melting marble words.
Arden, Leila, Jonathan, Maggie,
beloved, only, cherished, first,
died, departed, gone, left,
perhaps to somewhere greater than this soul-strewn yard.
But there are clusters of mulch and leaves
as fragrant as orchids,
and light like a lover’s touch
on the ground.
“This place needs a well,” you say,
”One with no bucket, one with no string.”
There is a pause, as if there should be a flight of doves,
the slow rise of a crane overhead,
some creature leaving this place.

I want to hold you,
feel some pulse beyond my own, hear it, know.

Some need for sound.

“We saw his face as it had been the face of an angel,” I read.
And it is graying, lichened, plain,
but I touch it,
and shadows spread from my fingers, leaking to the ground.
I feel you behind me, and under me,
around me in shadow and scent,
and my thoughts are as obscene
as the desire to bury angels.



GLS
7.24.91

Appointment on the lawn-

Bruised fingertips from sifting so many pebbles;
dip into beds, dip through water, dip through stone
and touch.
Marshall lost his wife,
and told his grandson how
he cried his eyes out when they left,
finally. What if there were headstones
waiting on the lawn?
To mark time or to enjoy life,
a Kannapolis home,
distance of a life behind,
sudden freedom, a flurry of wingbeats.
We do not expect this,
this is far from liberation,
this is so far from responsibility.
It is forced retrospection.
Photos, curtains, green couches, kitchens with no movement.
Grand-children.
He never learned piano, but he can restore
a Packard, a Volvo.
Where is everyone?
Laughter seems tiresome
because laughter seems lost.
He had signed up with the Lord,
and hoped
for an option to renew.
He had chosen and paid for her casket.
In two Saturdays,
there was a reunion of his high-school class,
which he would miss
for another touchstone.
Would there be sun on the blanket of grass,
lapping around her,
shadowing the crevasse of her name?
This copious silence.
Wrinkled fingers,
as if caught in a tub for hours,
but dry,
ball up the linen napkins
as if she will scold him.
Colored stones in a glass bowl,
sorted by size,
sifted by the colors of Myrtle Beach,
coated in ash.
Perhaps another rose garden,
blooms under touch and hazy eyes,
before the settling
of dust through the slanted light.





GLS
4.5.91