Midnight Angels
after Castro Alves, "Os
Anjos da Meia Noite: Photographias"
When the living dead
and the gravestone angels
arc the night
on cushions soaked in sweat
and even the throat-broken pines creak and groan:
When the blood light swells
from its socket, fades and then surges
like a sweating soul,
singing out its own fever to the
ripe mask of madness:
When everything shivers and melts,
switches on and hums, throbs then reveals
rivets and scrims:
Then the dark worlds get
bucked in spasms and some spasms start to leak:
So when the pale threads that rip
the midnight into Angels start to fray,
we all line up and I murmur
in the corner: these are the Angels
of my love life past just streaming by,
who pruned the drama from
from my sperm: women I loved
Angels! bitches! virgins!
Waking the strains of an endless
evening on a cracked mandolin:
And in the ether, one by one
these visions rise up
and go streaming:
MARIETA
Like a fisherman drying
his net on a naked hook
she chops her hair off. Fold
it all in tin foil.
My palm glancing a breast
seizing her hand. Swelling
and feel her yield and even
the night knows she won't
last.
Cobbles can't kill the spiral
steps up to a ledge where
kisses kill and kill and can
Marieta spark my heaving
shock and gasp as Juliet
does Romeo for good?
BARBARA
Blonde between her eyes,
bleach teeth + bled lips,
horny shoulders, witchhazel
shins + kiddy feet:
eyes alive like mirrors
open on a total lack of
throat like a breath of music
the lip: a kiss
the kiss: a clip
on a wound string waiting for
wind
that's Barbara for you
ESTHER
Come on there's a cock in
your stuck lung so so so
get in my sleeping bag
with a cold wind bleating
on
this bank where scarecrows
spin. O take this lyre and
sing
the threats of your wanderers
no no: you start a sect
by stealing the idol's arm.
Talk secession then you leave so
a star gets stuck in the
seaweed
and Esther your face cracking
the only smell I have left:
FABIOLA
Like lemurs pinging the vastness
you look like the rare whore
who
perched with corpselike logic
says night night:
night night
Fabiola (that's you) a cry
seared up to heaven
smoldering like a sore
ripped from its scabbard
pumping the night full of
more + more horror
and blood (refried in a pan)
and blood (blossoming
like brains)
and this blood is my blood
CANDIDA and LAURA
Near a tank at Sea World
two white swans in the gutter
chilled out on dolphin water.
A pair of swayed stalks:
a lily and a lily and a violet
in the arms of some vine:
two orbits swiveled inward
like the first buds of ivy
and
I let you pass through my night,
kids, bringing me spring,
kids, telling me: swallow
DULCE
Fetish in the mire,
trickle in the crag,
crypt flooding with oil:
we all scream. Make room
for
the beggar, the feast
will wake the poem.
It had to be you, sweetie,
seizing my agony
like a cross. But if fate
resist my share,
I'll die for a kiss in
the kinks of your rosary
LAST GHOST
Who are you Who are you Dome
before day break Face up in
shadows Fizzed out in free
mists Swooping down from
vaultings Who are you First
screening Fine young blossom
Show me your face O mystery
Where do I know you Another
sphere One I looked all over
for Deflates my chest
in dreams Who are you Who
are you Just my luck
Maybe the best I can hope
for Good maybe the end
