Poetry

Tenderest pendulum,
     Your slender stem is
          Tremulous as it enters
               The minute’s fundamental;

As the scroll unrolls, scales
Ripple by the glass like fishes
Flashing gaseous tails,

Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth,
That wide wet kisser we
Smacked on to justify a pipe.

The corridor, a New Jersey of the West, its stucco newness.
What king was it that built this highway?

It’s a routine we’ve worked out
to pass the winter.
I saw myself in two, in three,
into a puzzle,

How I hate you tonight!
I tick off
the bumps on your back,
your hangnails, the acid

I watch the point of the twirling stick
Where you are sleeping, where you will come again.

In every sale a list of ways your home 
could be destroyed: flood, poison, earthquake, fire. 

This early, the small birds’ trudging notes;
Six storeys high, a crane looms
As in graceful blessing…

Meet me at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach,
That shabby, squat nightclub on its foggy pier.
Let’s aim for the summer of ’71,
When all of our friends were young and immortal.