Self-Portrait At 28
I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
Forest Of Europe
The last leaves fell like notes from a piano
and left their ovals echoing in the ear;
with gawky music stands, the winter forest
looks like an empty orchestra, its lines
ruled on these scattered manuscripts of snow.
The inlaid copper laurel of an oak
shines though the brown-bricked glass above your head
as bright as whisky, while the wintry breath
of lines from Mandelstam, which you recite,
Passport
They did not recognize me in the shadows
That suck away my color in this Passport
And to them my wound was an exhibit
For a tourist Who loves to collect photographs
They did not recognize me,
Ah... Don't leave
The palm of my hand without the sun
Because the trees recognize me
Don't leave me pale like the moon!
When A Woman Loves A Man
When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."
He's supposed to know that.
When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
The Daughter Goes To Camp
In the taxi alone, home from the airport,
I could not believe you were gone. My palm kept
creeping over the smooth plastic
to find your strong meaty little hand and
squeeze it, find your narrow thigh in the
noble ribbing of the corduroy,
straight and regular as anything in nature, to
find the slack cool cheek of a
child in the heat of a summer morning—
nothing, nothing, waves of bawling
Ode To Meaning
Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer--
In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:
Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
The Emperor Of Tribalism
As most Nigerians remain ruefully lukewarm
about President Buhari's second term bid;
an ever-increasing multitude of potential
voters across ethnic divides, seem to be
enthralled by Atiku-Obi presidential ticket,
on the duo's restructuring manifesto and
remarkable track records of achievements.
It's as if the masses with full intent or
otherwise, have at last come to
Kral Majales (King Of May)
And the Communists have nothing to offer but fat cheeks and eyeglasses and
lying policemen
and the Capitalists proffer Napalm and money in green suitcases to the
Naked,
and the Communists create heavy industry but the heart is also heavy
and the beautiful engineers are all dead, the secret technicians conspire for
their own glamour
in the Future, in the Future, but now drink vodka and lament the Security
Forces,
and the Capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes but let Indian brown
Home
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
I Think Of You
I Think Of You
(short words but thoroughly honest)
when I see dry leaves
I see all autumn
I think of you
when I look at a cat
so sweet and tender
I want to pat it
At The San Francisco Airport
This is the terminal: the light
Gives perfect vision, false and hard;
The metal glitters, deep and bright/
Great planes are waiting in the yard-
They are already in the night.
And you are here beside me, small.
Containted and fragile, and intent
On things that I but half recall-
Yet going whither you are bent.
Traveling Dream
I am packing to go to the airport
but somehow I am never packed.
I keep remembering more things
I keep forgetting.
Secretly the clock is bolting
forward ten minutes at a click
instead of one. Each time
I look away, it jumps.
I Forgot To Tell
I have heard that and I forgot to tell
Second day of Easter Holiday is a hell:
They told me through the phone:
Huge queues at Manchester Airport,
Heathrow already at 'near capacity'
with early international passengers
'sent to arrivals to wait'
and chaos at Dover with P&O Ferries suspended
check in queues reported
at Manchester and Heathrow Airports this morning
###their Amazing Ardour
Arctic smiles
Atlantic smiles
Pacific smiles
Himalaya sounds hurray!
No comparison with their substance, their minds, their ardour,
Who create tremendous affaire de coeur!
Someone says-
Love these days
Great Serenity: Questions And Answers
People in a hall that’s lit so brightly
It hurts
Spoke of religion
In the lives of contemporary people
And on the place of God
People spoke in excited voices
Like in an airport
I left them
I opened an iron door that had written on it
Mr. Mine
Notice how he has numbered the blue veins
in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.
Now he goes left. Now he goes right.
He is building a city, a city of flesh.
He's an industrialist. He has starved in cellars
and, ladies and gentlemen, he's been broken by iron,
by the blood, by the metal, by the triumphant
iron of his mother's death. But he begins again.
Now he constructs me. He is consumed by the city.
From the glory of words he has built me up.
' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' A Wonder Told Shyly(For Res)
He cradles it
palm to palm
like a newborn.
Talks to it
tenderly
as if his self
was talking to his soul
A Meeting In Copenhagen
We are sitting at an airport
in Copenhagen drinking a lot of coffee.
It was most elegant there, and comfortable,
and refined to the point of lassitude.
Then suddenly he appeared- that old man-
in a plain green parka with a hood,
his face deep tanned by salt and wind-
loomed up rather than appeared.
He walked, furrowing through a crowd of tourists,
as if he’d just been sailing a boat,
London Airport
Last night in London Airport
I saw a wooden bin
labelled UNWANTED LITERATURE
IS TO BE PLACED HEREIN.
So I wrote a poem
and popped it in.
' ' ' ' Around Midnight
The smoke curls
& coils
itself into
a?
as the air is
stained with jazz
& other rethorical questionings