LE WEEKEND
In a Friday
Trying not to let go of it
I lay down on the altar
If I could wake up
From this dream
Not eat today
Not feed the cats
Not go to Lowe’s
I thought I might give
Birth to a calla
Friday Friday Friday
My heart cried
Holding on like a cat
To a string of sun
I lay Friday down
Brush her hair
Hold her purring in my arms
Still she dies
The week dies
The year dies
And I lay reading
Bolt up from the striped day bed
Doctors shout from the other room
It’s going to be a calla!
But it’s not mine
It has your nose your eyes
EGGS
I woke up in tokyo
The sun white as an egg
Outside my window in the tree
My ancestor warmed my egg
His white robes fluttering
I opened the paper door
And left the hotel
When I passed he dropped
Yen in clean bills
All around my head
I stopped and neatly placed them
In my wallet thinking
What a wonderful dream
I had lined my eyes with black
Filled my mouth with red
Like a monk putting on his saffron robes
I slipped into the mask of a woman
Walking down a stone path
I met someone who looked like me
This happens in asia
I smiled wryly and carried on
Shopping I lost my wallet
In one of the alleys
Unable to buy anything all pleasure lost
I returned to my hotel
In the mirror there was another mirror
In which there was another hotel
The kind someone howls and thuds against
The kind of hotel you go to die
In this mirror I watched myself
Dance naked
My black hair flowing to my ankles
Wet black fur glistening like a dream
That cannot forget itself
Thin and weak as seafoam
Clinging
Soon three more women joined in
Black hair black eyes red mouths
Naked I had lost my identity
I could not spot the one for whom
I bought
Candles chet baker and little blue and white dishes
We ate each other up
In a race to exist
Chewing I looked up and saw everyone
Was watching
Everyone was there
Dressing hastily I pulled shut
the paper door
But still
Everyone was there
Everyone was watching