Her subtle lean left
accentuates the curve

of her waist - reminds
me of the curve of a street

in Rome where – I falll
in love with time

that moved so slowly –
The movement in the song

she plays for me turns
towards me, - The air

is a scented moment
of bed linens, lilacs,

leather, wood, ***,
soil - where memories

are instantaneous –
Everything is memory –

Everything has taken place – I am
in the middle of a Matinee

that I have never seen
before, but remember

so fondly. I am here now.
I easily could have been anywhere else.

The Lone Ranger writes a letter
to his Tanto, he writes,

things are not as they used to be.
I am as useless as an Iron Lung.

Riding around in his Ford Pinto
The Lone Ranger looks for anything
to do − the one working headlight
finding vultures on the side

of the road.
Driving through the night
scanning the radio for WXYZ

This long prairie night of his soul.
finding no one to save
he buys a *******
with a case of silver bullets.

She holds him like a little boy
Rocks him back and forth.

They don’t have ***.

He cries in her arms,

“I’m a man in a boy’s costume,”
“I am a jaw bone at a wedding.”

Later that evening
The Lone Ranger writes another letter

Dear Tanto,

Things are not as they used to be.
I am as useless as mouth without teeth.
I wish you were here.

Sincerely, Lone.

I did conspire to love you.

2. The moon was happy with us.

3. Baudrillard’s concept of “Object Fetishism” is more relevant than Marx’s.

4. Thank you.

5. Trees are closer to heaven than the angels. (I know, you already know that, but I like the line).

6. You have the most beautiful sorrowful eyes.

7. The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. (RILKE 1912)

8. Locomotives fall in love going in opposite directions.

9. Certain earthquakes do not like themselves.

10. The more one contemplates the less one lives; the more one accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less one understands ones’ own existence and ones’ own desires. (Debord 1967)

11. I did plot to love you.

12. The black crow on the wire is not me.

13. Umbrellas can be opened inside. (Only black; counter intuitive, I know).

14. Your touch; my body remembers softly.

15. I did love you.

16. Clocks sometimes stop for no reason.

17. Even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that contains a desire or its reverse, a fear…Everything conceals something else.
(CALVINO 1972)

18 Sometimes letters sent, never arrive.

19. Only you ever made me blush.

20. In the end, everything is just a dream.

21. This poem will maximize your interval times.

22. Love is ambiguous, at best a “Contamination”, from the Latin *** tangere. “leaving a tactile print.”

23. I will let you go.

24. I will publish this poem

25. I will always love you.


Sincerely Mr. Leibow

My mouth is filled
with the taste of rust

and ***.
I sweat above her
& a drop falls

into the
shallow
of
her
neck.

The drop vibrating
like oi on the ground
from the passing
train – carrying

coal to keep
The cities burning.

In my chest,
the drone of a fly–

wheel
a counterwieght
a boiler
a bag of bees

She is below me
I feel her heart
it is an abrasion,
a bruise,
a beating fist
a bed of nails

This is how it is.

And here we are
lunging back
and forth like a Stoker
our breath chasing

after the last locomotive

plaintively
pulling away
                 from the station.

Here is the girl
with the fish
hook in her

heart , heart skipping
every leap year.
Skin slippery like a fish

Shimmering as if caught
in a net of stars. Her body’s
dull thump against the side

of the ship sending Thank You
cards to everyone she’s loved.
The fishermen come in from the sea

bellies full of insomnias,
while their women wait
on docks playing lush lullabies

on mandolins they carry
in their chests. Tonight their men
will dream of drowning as they rock

them to sleep, Their women’s
backs gently thumping
against the headboards

This poem was the result of a comission to write a poem for Bello Magazine. I was given a photo essay on Cuba by a Latino photographer. I wrote two poem based on the photos. Unfortunately they chose the lesser of the two poems. This is the poem they should have chosen.


If I were to write the creation
The first man

The first woman
Would be born from

The heart of
Cuba

Where angels live
Among men

Disguised …. Walk
Among us rolling

Cigars, wait for
Rain and drink

Coffee. In
Cuba

Man and angels
Would be on family

The one hidden
To the other like

Two sisters caught by
The camera just before

Laughing One sister
With wings hidden

Under her dress.
See the shoeshine

He is an archangel
His sword hidden

In his box. In Cuba
It would all begin

From the cane fields
Adam would rise

Sweet and coarse
And Eve would

Emerge from the beating
Of a drum.

We would all dance
And carry dolls

and wait for
the moment of redemption

As if it were a summer
Storm moving closer


Filled with love letters
From God.

The Secret Lives of Things

I am thinking of
the lives of Ferris wheels
and how the world revolves
because of the dream
of a barber sleeping
in his chair.

My meditations are such.

Now I am thinking
about the arguments
of scissors
or the disclosures
of curtains
or the epics of children
playing in clouds of pollen.

Have you ever thought
if somewhere there is
a librarian who only falls
in love with men named
Dewey?
or if stairs
contemplate the meaning
of varying degrees of
footsteps?

Maybe not.

I once over heard the deliberations
of empty rooms wondering what
they can do to dwell more consciously
in the spaces they enclose,

and eavesdropping, I've listened to
the murmuring of windows
trying to be less vulnerable
to the gaze of strangers.

This world is filled with such things.

Like the time I was involved
by accident
in a contest of streets
everything was moving underneath me.
or being accused by a debate
of church bells for not
believing
in the providence
of empty chairs.

Have you ever wondered
about the dreams of hats
or the tragedies of suits?

Or more importantly,
the secret lives of your fingers?
How they remember your life
in small gestures like the path
of stars displayed in a child’s hands?

I have.