Muldoon

How brash, how bold--

you brandish your dictionary

like a buckler slung low

on your almost feline hip

on your almost female hip.

Come at me again with your

whin, and gorse, and furze.

Tell me of the swamp grass under which

you saw me lying, saw me loving

and how it bristled in thorny ceiling

to shield me from the sky, the sun

but not from you with your rapier of incisive verbs.

Tell me that you saw it as rape, as racking, as wrath

and you shall say it so in print, in verse, in rhyme.

Load up your derringer of daring with your pocket of metaphors

and fire scattershot after your ten paces of nobility.

This is after all a matter of honor, a dishonorable matter.

How bold you are and brash

to accuse me by the whin, the gorse, the furze.

I tell you-- you shall need more than

one witness by three names.

Diane

You are a fearful thing in the park

with the dappled light leaving gaps

in your already ethereal skin

and when you run through the trees

almost I can see horns amidst your hair

and hear the baying of the hounds

hungry hunting you

and your hungry joy and their holy fear is mixed

with your hushed fear and their hunting joy

They would not dare you

alone

but in the rush they come

down the hill, invincible, crying out

their fearless, swelling joy

For they have found you and shall have

their piece at last

You must hear them in the wind

sounding the triumph call

Frozen and staring through the trees

Love find me running, crying out my fearsome joy

for I have found you and shall have

my peace at last.

Armchair

It is not as if you are a particularly charming armchair
although if you were an armchair

you would out charm all the polka dots and plaids and paisleys

and leave the solid respectable black leather and suede in full shadow.

Nor yet are you a sort of celestial sun of heart and magnificence too much to bear

though if you were how the planets would flock around you

jostling in their orbits to swing nearest to your blazing glory

and turning away in despair when you are too bright to see.

The sea and moon are too ordered for your likeness

for they change according to their laws and you only to your pleasure

how could any telescope chart the waxing of your presence

or sonar measure the trenches where your deeper mysteries lie

Besides you are dawn and noon and these ladies are only servants of the night

You are not the last great microcosm the smaller self of earth

for earth was made for your feet and voice and rule

and you formed for no master's hand nor tyrant mistress

to tease and prod and cajole is not your role nor will you suffer it

Earth is of the meekest dirt and you are nothing clay.

All these things you are and are not

All these things you are and are more

To list and argue, define and declare would take

a hundred years or more

and if I had a hundred years I'd rather

spend them curled in your lap

although it is not as if you are an armchair

For you.

Comets come closest to what you are

bright and far and how

can I ever fit inside what you

are and say and do

You have all the grace of physics

a marble on a wooden plane

the longest arching curve

Gallileo weeps that you followed him

that he came before a voice

silenced in the streets of Florence

(may its windows never bloom)

In all the world you move

most like itself

A thing not written nor seen

a song unhummed.

You are where the sun goes when it sets

the sea's first love and the night's firstborn son

Echo's eldest sister died for wanting you

it is her sorrow-love the wind sings

and in the spring all the earth's affection

grows brilliantly gowned for your eye

Everything is still when you come

Everything dark when you leave

In all the world there is you

only you for me.

Blondie (edit)

I cannot remember a time

when my neck did not ache.

I walk bent forward

like an old woman

trying to bear her weight on her knees.

My shoulders curve from my spine

my spine from my hips

and it is only when I am asleep

that I may stretch straight.

Even then it is an anchor

tugging against me

when my dreams toss my head

from side to side.

It is why I sit so still.

Dragging this mass behind me is a tiresome task.

It coils around my feet and slicks a heavy heat down my back

till I am just sweat and skin and weight.

If they call it beauty let them bear it

and brush it and braid it.

As for me, I'd let it all burn.

seared.

Some words stick

fly out of careless mouths

dripping with glue

to land sullenly

on sidewalks or stop signs

or selves

and stay stubbornly until

with sun and time they scar

pale and shining.

These are not freckles

They were my whole skin's tone

before you spoke.