^{for Dominique}

I know this

from looking

                          into store fronts

                          taste buds voguing

alight from the way

treasure glows

                          when I imagine
 

                          pressing its opulence

into your hand

I want to buy you

                          a cobalt velvet couch

                          all your haters’ teeth

strung up like pearls

a cannabis vineyard

                          and plane tickets

                          to every island

on earth

but my pockets

                          are filled with

                          lint and love alone

touch these inanimate gods

to my eyelids

                          when you kiss me

                          linen leather

gator skin silk

satin lace onyx

                          marble gold ferns

                          leopard crystal

sandalwood mink

pearl stiletto

                          matte nails and plush

                          lips glossed

in my 90s baby saliva

pour the glitter

                          over my bare skin

                          I want a lavish life

us in the crook

of a hammock

                          incensed by romance

                          the bowerbird will

forgo rest and meals

so he may prim

                          and anticipate amenity

                          for his singing lover

call me a gaunt bird

a keeper of altars

                          shrines to the tactile

                          how they shine for you

fold your wings

around my shoulders

                          promise me that

                          should I drown

in want-made waste

the dress I sink in

                          will be exquisite

She
Who searched for lovers
In the night
Has gone the quiet way
Into the still,
Dark land of death
Beyond the rim of day.

Now like a little lonely waif
She walks
An endless street
And gives her kiss to nothingness.
Would God his lips were sweet!

Dresden china shepherdesses
Whirl in the silver sunshine:
Columbine stars
Float in gauze petticoats of light…

Little Columbine ghosts, wrinkled and old,
Smelling of jasmine and camphor;
Prim arms folded over immaculate breasts…

The pirouetting tune dies…
Stars and little faded faces,
Waltzing, waltzing,
Shoot slowing downward
on tinkling music,
Dusty little flowers,
Sinking into oblivion…

After the music,
Quiet,
The glacial period renewed,
Monsters on earth,
A mad conflagration of worlds on ardent nights…

These too vanishing…
Silence unending.

Dim gold faces float in the windows,
Subtle as perfume,
Soft as flowers.
Dim gold faces and gilded arms
Are clinging along the silver ladders of rain,
Climbing with ivory lamps held high;
Starry lamps
Over which the silver ladders
Thicken into nets of twilight.

White breast beaten in sea waves,
Hair tangled in foam,
Lonely sky,
Desolate horizon,
Pale and shining clouds:
All this desolate and shining sea is no place for you,
My dead Columbine.

And the waves will bite your breast;
And the wind that does not know death from life
Will leap upon you and leer into your eyes
And suck at your dead lips.

Oh, my little Columbine,
You will go farther and farther away from me,
Out where there are no ships
And the column clouds
Soar across the somber horizon.