three poems courtesy of june

6/12


In Silk 

I thought I heard a rustle
I ran to the window
Nothing-- But the top
Of the tangerine tree

I knew no time
I knew only
Wild swans
And Whisky Dreams

They say
If you prefer a strong tea
Irish Breakfast

I have spent at least
Five hundred years
In love

In silk
In tiny

Words as quick
As minnows

As true

As trees



6/13

This is the Place

This is the place where
lush words grow over the visage
of whispers and secrets

This is the place

This is the place where
she was touched by a thumb
dark inky nighttime

This is the place where
pages were turned and more pages
were turned until

So much has been read she believes

This is the place

This is the place where
she sought womanhood
and of course found that it had never left

This is the place where
she thought she knew what she sought
and found of course that she did not

This is the place

This is the place where
She longs to run run around the blocks
Until her head is mirror clear

This is the place where
desire found her defenseless and cornered
weilding nothing but paper

a sheaf of leaves
pages are turned and more pages
are turned until

So much has been read she believes

This is the place



6/13

The Good Ship

This is all I know and hold me to it hold me fast-- it is my incendiary start, my stuttering end, my first and last. It is my wool and silver, bread and wine and oxygen. It is my milk and honey, silk and gold, my buttons and my boning. It is, combined, my now and then, my old and new, my how? and how:

This is all I know and hold me to it hold me fast-- Hold me tightly, hold me long, and lash me to the mast. I have no desire to guide your path. I only wish to be a coin in your pocket, tenderly, lovingly cast. This is some of all I know. More is only a scarce scrap:

This is all I know and hold me to it hold me fast-- rose, gardenia, plumeria, hydrangea, lily, fly-trap. Cypress, Cypress strong and gnarled, growing crooked and wind-thrashed. Roots sipping my blood like supplicants taking their mass. The cypresses are all I know and how they hold me fast, and call me by my true name with their whistling creaking snap--

This is all I know, these are the petals I've amassed. I boil them and drink the tea of my own history, and know myself to be nourished by all that lingers in the future fog and all that's dizzy passed

Hold me tightly, hold me long, and lash me to the mast. I go down with the good ship Love and Tenderness.