Portrait of My Mother

Let me place you on the deck, like it should have been

With the tips of your toes grazing the water

I’ll make it so that it quivers

 Lazily with the brush of a breeze

And let the color be green

Or pastel turquoise, like your necklace  

So that it does not overshadow

The radiance of your lips 

Which I’ll curve gently

In a casual smile, as if you didn’t know

That I was there, and you were just happy

Stretched bellow the blades of orange light

I’ll make them razor sharp

Puncturing the center

Of your belly, poking

Playfully like a child

Not fire bright,

Carrot orange –

The last fuming flickers of the day

Before the chilling moon

Which, I’d make silver like cold metal 

But I want the day to look mild, not too warm

So that it does not take from the comfortable

Grip of your lustrous eyes

I’ll gloss them neatly, like polished pearls

They’ll be perfect spheres of tender

Brown, to complement the smoothness

Of your suntanned skin

Glazed in russet

Like a dress of wet sand,

And auburn hair will latch

Faithfully to your freckled shoulders

The damp ends spread out like the fingers 
Of an open hand 
And it’ll all look blissful

As if no one was ever there

Ode to Eyes

My eyes are dangerous

Weapons

They do not attract,

They enthrall

Nor do they request,

They command

Their lashes do not adorn,

They entrap

The long curled hairs

Are webs for fiends

Their blinks are not flutters,

But thunderous collisions

My eyes are proud dames

And should be handled with caution

They do not take lightly 

To bribes or deceit

When they speak,

They don’t stutter

When they love

They’re not mute

When they’re hungry

They devour

And when irate,

They offend

My eyes are muses,

They evoke desire

And they’re known to be gentle

If given respect

But if one was to gash them

With lies or betrayal

They sprout lethal fountains

For drowning the brute  

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-W.H. Auden 

Never a Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

I lost one love out of careless intent

I opted for silence, and the hour not spent

Dialoguing tensions,

The capricious moments undedicated to solutions,

To the many convolutions that could have been unfastened,

Fumed like the smoke of this indulgent cigarette

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

There are nights I lose the battle with myself

And I wake to find my body like a corpse

Sprawled naked on kitchen tiles

Bathroom rugs, living room floors

Tossed like shells upon sea shores

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

I’ve lost possessions out of reckless abandon

Renounced to treasures that my festering brain

Has let slip between cracks

Lean fingers could never retract

From slivers too slim  

I narrowed the trail to make it for one

Person at a time

But you kicked the shrubs and stones

Aside, and muddied the ground–

Newly glossed and glazed by the sunset’s

Tongue

You fail to understand

That yours no longer tastes as clean

Or loves as warm

To the Mirror

Behind the glass, you keep

A record of me

You possess the many faces

I have shown you – the softness of new skin

I cannot recover

The lust of unmarred eyes

Burning brown to unveil sights

I no longer wear

You have replaced them with holes

So hollow they offend

Who gave you the right to steal

My belongings?

The candid smiles were never yours

To keep, the unscathed beauty,

The natural grace, I offered

The world, not you

And now you mock me with this mask

Of melted wax

Lumpy like a raisin,

Frigid like a tomb

And I demand you

Give it back. 

 

The Sound of Anxiety

I 

I walked out and into

The thick darkness of penumbras

The night was black

And heavy as oil

My steps were muffled

By the inviolable echo

Of deafening silence

The tremulous whispers

Of the agitated wind

Cut off my throat

And lisped the words

Of fear

II

I woke up shaken

By my alarm’s blaring siren

As it broke the static silence

Of slumber

Like a knife

Ripping through a silken thread

Of dreams

I gasped as if I had surfaced

From a roaring ocean’s pit

And emerged victorious from the sea’s

Tornado of waves

III

Subtle shafts of morning light

Seeped through the cracks

Of my sealed glass windows

And I grew tense

By the screeching hum

Of the lit

Quiet space

The stuttering

Of my rusty heater’s crackle

Attempted to convey codes

Of anonymous significance

Through gentle taps

Like desperate supplications

Of burned

And withered  

Cries

IV

The train ride suffocated me

With a clutter of voices

Like an arrhythmic symphony

Of sputtered incoherence

My head, a grove

For restless termites

A cavity

For inarticulate multitudes

V

And your voice –

The lovely croon –   

Was suppressed and strangled

My attempts to heed

Your warnings

Distanced you from my reach

Your face –  deformed

Like jagged reflections

On distorted prisms

Parted its slanted lips

And gargled final words

Before drowning in the well