Rose - Song and Spectacle

Open the book of thyself, contentious one, thy book in four chapters, four scrolls. Rise on your own yeast. Spill your villanelles hot vowels. You will not go blind. Though imagine what you might see if you did. Begin with a friend (a writer) playing a board game at a party.

Question: something found in a desk that starts with J. His answer: Jizm. Haiku the difference between men and women. Stray red leaf. Begin with seed, then. The way we touch each other.

Flipped: a car on fire after a game involving men in padded suits. Brute mob drenched in fuel. Saltpeter. Fertilized papyrus of undecipherable texts. Ink licked to language, stanza after stanza of buttons popped. Terza rima of nipples, navel, quilt washed in light.

Outside bombs dismantle a station. Somewhere else not here. Begin again, please. Pantoum com munion. To be written, to be folded into shapes suited to the poem. Not here. Not here.

Begin again, please. Pantoum: come inside my body. Joy of song without words suited to the poem. Smell of a river waiting for salmon. Silhouette of your form against a torn white curtain. Poem of thy creases.

O where have you been, sweet reeking ballad monster? Pray that tomorrow will know by heart today. Begin by holding hands under the table. A hip kisses a tambourine. A troubadour is condemned for her troubles. Our love meets in the ruins of a castle full of ravens. We buy daffodils, we play the cello badly but with joy.

We grow yellow tomatoes. We let them cut us open, we put children in the garden. Remembering the loneliness of the lunch room, we decide not to have children. If the form can be found, there may be salvation. There are lilacs. Lilacs have form.

It is quiet but for the poems gasp. We bone thrust until we bruise apart. Naked in the kitchen, we slice chanterelles for dinner, add a fistlump of butter, crushed sage. Fragrance enters your hair. My own. Is there one god, or many? Evening star sings forth a thousand more in the pale green mosque of the sky.

Stretch marks. Two lemons on a table. Still life. Begin with the body, poisoned to save the body. Tragicomedy. The form.

There never was. The willingness to be wounded may be all we have to offer. Dr. Abraham Verghese
This morning I planned to dig manure into the garden, but woke to a cold snap, each horse turd rimed with ice. Still, I wouldnt go inside as the baby napped in her carriage, mourning the brevity of my solitude until my hands were numb. In an hour, Ill wait at the corner for my sons bus, wondering how long its been since Ive changed my tampon, if the halibuts thawed, if I shouldve put the laundry through instead of falling on the bed in the other room coming, screaming alone into a bent pillow.

Perhaps its these dark-at-four November afternoons that sting my eyes, the rain, the knowledge that Ill never be pregnant again.
The years have shown
Ill never again be doubly alive, and no matter how hard I tried to pay attention, each change appeared as I was folding the small jumpers, as I was wiping the plastic tray, fractured, unwashed, not truly listening. When did her hot foot outgrow my hand?
She wakes, apricot-cheeked, and fits herself to nurse. We sit this way for a long time and nothing happens as she grows. When I ask her if shes done she shakes a tiny finger at me, then pops off to explain, I cant really talk right now.
The bursts of joy shrapnel, bringing me to a crouch, and
there is no armor.

But a new one every spring! The soup always simmering, a baby always on my shoulder. That sweet spit milk, my sour armpits, its tiny pursed lips, and my love walking in with anemones and dry cleaning. Longing for a chance to pay attention this time.
Also to live the ascetic life of a poet in the mountains, books my only company, a narrow bed, my fire the size of the afternoons gathered twigs.
There never was
time to be monogamous! To know that grace, that serious marriage but sometimes music pulses from cafes I long to enter as I hurry home with my hot loaves, two jugs of milk and
the willingness to be wounded.
Yes, the desire to love several countries, to have familiar relationships with shopkeepers on every continent.

To live and die in this house, growing the garden, a dozen white chickens
may be all we have to offer .
There is no armor. Now I see. The bus coughs my son free. His face holds the days last light. He runs spilling papers across the floor.

Her hands lift my shirt. Her teeth hurt. There is no armor. Let the ordinary days endure.

Dont believe it. Im the life of the party. Nor am I like a wheel: You can mend me when I fail, with stents, pacemakers. To learn by me is to know by memory for all your years. Come to my rooms, my chambers. The Chinese proverb says If I keep a green bough in my heart, a singing bird will come .

Please dont try this. I am the seat of metaphor. I am absolutely literal. Aspirin soothes heartache. Try it. Loyal? You bet your life.

Use me hard, Ill grow stately, Ill last. Im here for you, I tell your time. Set to tick by an unknown shock, I begin below the mother clock. Without me, youre nothing. Clench of systole to scarlet tulip, diastole of anemone. Arterial. Arterial.

Knock-knock. Im talking to you. Once I was called a book. I held all your feelings. Saint Augustine weighed me in hand. I was divine with secrets.

Now I am secular, your faithful valve. I work without vacation or sick leave. I fear arrhythmias, lightning, bullets. I am the red engine between your lungs: I think I can. Chuff and spark, I go on. You may, in this life, draw my queen or my knave.