Rewind
In the hotel room we outdid Hopper:
I did not sit on bed-edge, grime-lit;
you did not bury your head in the papery lampshade;
I did not strut fiercely with red nipples and a sneer;
you did not turn into a floral chair.
In the hotel room we painted the moon with a single hair,
then walked crookedly straight into each other, naked
through the stop-sign mirror, through the black forest of the past
where we lay like two cobalt-blue oars breathing;
our proudish musculature lured movingly by rivers welled up.
Outside–the cracked crate of the heart
sits in the branch with silent hands
as the skin of the river floats off
as the dusk of our sound settles dark.
You are Not the Wolf in My Room
though you filched a rainbow, bent its elbow back until it spoke
and became a wheel for you, wheeling you wherever you wanted;
though you wrung a wild tree sick
and ordained it for fire;
though you goad and spit the cloud
to ruined fur, slack with mud.
The blue axe you loved and stroked
you abandoned to the maw of blade-starved rust.
Skeletal as keys, I caught
you sleeping with a porpoise wearing a white wig,
and envy caved my face
that wears a bride's masked smile.
Erase you, erase you not.
A flower halts its stemmy step before you,
bent in thin concentration as you pin
and crucify childhood's lizards.
