‘Oh, Mariachi Me’ (2006)

All my life I have wanted nothing so much

as the love of women. For them I have fashioned

the myth of myself, the singing troubador

with the flashing eyes. Always for them

my black sombrero with its swinging tassels,

this vest embroidered with hearts, these trousers

with silver studs down the seams. Oh, I am

Mariachi me, as I had intended. I am success

and the price of success, now old and dusty

at the edge of the dance floor, still smiling,

heavy with hope, clutching my dead guitar.

‘Pocket Poem’ (1986)If this comes creased and creased again and soiled

 

as if I’d opened it a thousand times

to see if what I’d written here was right,

it’s all because I looked too long for you

to put it in your pocket. Midnight says

the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped

by nervous fingers. What I wanted this

to say was that I want to be so close

that when you find it, it is warm from me.

‘Screech Owl’

All night each reedy whinny

from a bird no bigger than a heart

flies out of a tall black pine

and, in a breath, is taken away

by the stars. Yet, with small hope

from the center of darkness

it calls out again and again.

‘Song of the Ironing Board’ (1992)So many hands lay hot on my belly

 

over the years, and oh, how many ghosts

I held, their bodies damp and slack,

their long arms fallen to either side.

I gave till my legs shook, but then

they were up and away. Thus the lovely

soft nap of my youth was worn down.

But I gave of myself and was proud.

I was there for those Sunday

touch-ups, those solemn Sunday

sacraments of Clorox in the church

of starch, the hangers ringing.

On stiffening legs I suffered

the steam iron’s hot incontinence,

the melt-down of the rayon slacks,

my batting going varicose.

And it all came down to this:

a cellar window looking up

on February, where a cold wind

pinches clothespins down an empty line.

I lean against the wall and breathe

the drifting smoke of memory,

a stained chemise pulled over

my scorched yet ever shining heart.

‘At the Office Early’

Rain has beaded the panes

of my office windows,

and in each little lens

the bank at the corner

hangs upside down.

What wonderful music

the rain must have made

in the night, a thousand banks

turned over, the change

crashing out of the drawers

and bouncing upstairs

to the roof, the soft

percussion of ferns

dropping out of their pots,

the ball-point pens

popping out of their sockets

in a fluffy snow

of deposit slips.

Now all day long,

as the sun dries the glass,

I’ll hear the soft piano

of banks righting themselves,

the underpaid tellers

counting their nickels and dimes.