or Post-Profundis

“You made me waste the flower of my life.”
— Oscar Wilde, (Reading Gaol, 1897)

It rains—my birthday, too—and what is love
but weather with a pedigree for coughs?
The panes run down; the gutters learn to move
like gossip shaken from the laurel boughs.
You had a shifting genius for the soul—
that polished sigh, the entrance, and a certain
penchant for the wounded wing. I was foul
enough to call it depth. Now hear the rain:
it needles through the yard; the chapel height
goes vague as doctrine. I shan’t tear
my name to spare your legend—all the weight
fell here; I learned, at least, how best to bear.
Still, if you write, write plainly. I won’t read
the madrigals of scoundrels in their hour of need.

“I wept for him as for a wife.”
—Gilgamesh (Shiduri’s By the Sea, Shin-eq-unninni)

The sloe sits warm—a brackish purple bruise
that will not heal. I taste the cedar still,
sap-sweet and bitter; how we split its boughs
and made a doorway in the mountain’s will.
Enkidu laughed, the wind inside his hair
was wild as goats along the shale-scarred seam;
we wrestled dusk to ground. I felt him there,
hard flank to flank—more oath than any dream.
We felled Humbaba, yes, his resin breath
rose like altar-smoke smoke about our thighs;
the axes rang—twin pulses out of death,
two shadows locked beneath the gutted skies.
Shiduri pours. I drink what cannot stay.
His name returns, as salt on lips of clay.

“Beside the sea she lives, the woman of the vine, the maker of wine.”
— Shin-eqi-unninni (the Waters of Death, beyond the Mashu region)

My tavern is exclusive and discreet,
the customers irregular at times;
some drink from flasks of lapis lazuli
while others tip bejeweled carafes of wine.
Above the bar I dedicate a frame
to every famous patron I have served—
that’s Ea on the left, a tortured mage,
who drowned his sorrows when he drowned the Earth.
The Stone Men used to come on Saturday
to numb their week of service on the ship—
they were a stoic lot, but always paid
until one client smashed them all to bits.
He said his name was Gilgamesh, I think—
he crushed the pink umbrella in his drink.

“A straw hat on, my eyes flushed, might I resemble the former
preacher who painted a pool table and then maimed himself?”
— Rush Rankin (Descanso Beach Club)

The seaweed bends with the ocean, a field of women
kneeling, then standing row upon row, as if to offer
a benediction to the shore. Already I forget I am
floating in this frigid Catalina water,
not some ghost surveying southern France—
nor an ominous crow or a half-mad painter
scanning a landscape after a pint of absinthe—
A boat circles above me, the black chain from its anchor
stretches like an umbilical cord to the blanched florets
of coral below. The motor hums. A large woman peers
over the side as I ascend, her distorted contours
growing in and out of focus—and I am free,
more so than Van Gogh waking in Saint Rémy,
a dark habit caressing his cheek.

“Je voudrai mettre dans le tableau mon appréciation, mon amour que j’ai pour lui.”
— Vincent Van Gogh, to Theo (Arles, The Yellow House)

I want to paint a friend whose hair grows wild
like grain that leans toward thunder: days
half-spent the way a nightingale must blaze
with song because the night itself is riled
inside its chest. He will be golden-haired —
a harvest sheared and gathered from the bone,
and I shall press into the oils my own
dark gratitude, the love I never spared.
But love is color breaking discipline, burned
from yellow ochre into molten light —
to orange that cracks the ebbing noon in two,
to chrome and spinning citron forced to turn
like suns around his brow. I strike from sight
the petty room — and daub infinities of blue.

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say No in any of them.”
— Alexander Woollcott on Dorothy Parker (The Algonquin Hotel, Oak Bar, 1920)

Pour me a gin that’s educated in sin.
—How earnest. I prefer mine taught to ply.
I drink what makes a decent woman grin.
—I drink what leaves the decent woman dry.
Then let’s proceed. I favor discipline.
—Only if learned. You must go slow.
I never rush. I like my damage driven in.
—Good. I collect what lingers after “no.”
And when it burns, do you deny the fire?
—I file it, darling. Names are tools.
I name what breaks me just to watch it tire.
—Then order well. The glass remembers fools.
“God’s Promise?” Or “The Devil’s Repast.” A spark
flared up when she leaned in: I never experiment in the dark.

“I love a martini, two at the most. Three – I’m under the table.
four, I’m under the host.”
— Dorothy Parker (The Algonquin Hotel, 1929)

Shakespeare is dutifully remembered
for his plaintive sonnets and perfect plays.
We are ruined by his genius, forever
at a loss to be adequately pained.
Today, we are on the opposite side
of Elizabethan diction; we brood
in prosaic tones and truncated lines,
we cheer blandness and raise brandy balloons
to Sandburg, Hemingway, Williams, and Frost,
those cryptic purveyors of emptiness
who’ve dulled the edges of our lips and thoughts.
Should we remix their drinks, I would request
this recipe: a splash of Whitman’s Dick,
& a dash of Emily Dickinson’s Wit.

Before the name, the island pulling at the chest,
the sea rehearses what the shoreline holds, then spends
it back: a harbor loud with iron, tides that bend
the masts toward evening, salt on every surface pressed
to rope and wood; below, the broad streets manifest
their noise in increments, drivers’ bodies, heat
released from cobblestone, the stacked, close rookeries
now breathing back, the dark kept low, not yet expressed
in margins bleeding at the city’s edge,
hands that work the ward through night,
a river name unlocking jaw and throat, a thick
return of syllables the palate took in stage,
before the mind — the body earlier than light,
its ribcage swelling — breath not held — but quick.

From the mezzanine, Mary Lyon fills her box
the way she filled a doorway—taking space
the air had hoped to keep. The paradox:
in situ, she commands the place.
Her brows—two bars, now laid to rest—
lie flat as twin reproofs of life;
her mouth, re-stitched, a hyphen east to west;
that ruler—Old Dominion—like a knife
laid straight across her chest. I find
my knuckles, trace the scars—then look
again: the mouth—the brow—the mourners lined
in black: the cross — my kingdom for a book,
a pen—the lid swings down—and there: the mark.
A dash—I smile—I reach into the dark.

“Paris is a place where things are not as they are called.”
— e.e. cummings (Paris, 1917)

Dear Father — I am well. The room is small.
The Seine runs wide and clean. The bread is good.
I’ve seen the painters work along the wall
where voices break — then thin — I’ve understood
no single thing — or everything at once —
the rain strikes different here — on stone,
through skin — I find myself a kind of dunce
who cannot conjugate what he has known
(a sparrow on the sill)
the pen lifts — stays —
(bonjour) (the rain)
what falls here does not grieve —
dear father —
i am learning how to leave
the large word for the small — the sparrow sings —
and i am well — and well is everything.

“Not ideas but in things.”
— William Carlos Williams (Paterson, 1946)

Dear Father — I am ill. The noontide pour
unspools the day; my work is done.
The hands that knew their way before
are listless past a changing sun.
The plums I ate that Flossie set aside,
they tasted good. They tasted. Good. A measure
of the smallest vices: cold, unjustified.
So much depends on simple pleasures:
there upon the window sill,
a sparrow rests in counterpoint to crow
and cockerel; dips its narrow bill
to pick for mites, its shadow
cast against the bedroom wall,
my body in abeyance. That is all.